A Special Kind of Loot

[Palanan]

This is a DM-only thread, my players begone.



So, my next game session is around the corner, and I need suggestions for some customized loot.

The PCs are searching for an abandoned monastery on a small, mountainous island some hundreds of miles from land. The brethren of the monastery were all slain centuries ago, but a small stash of relics and other treasures has survived.

The community venerated nature and living things, and many of the brethren were herbalists and gardeners, so I'd like their treasures to have a druidic or nature-oriented theme. I don't want Joe Druid Item, like a potion of barkskin or a wilding clasp; I'm trying to think of small things which would have value and meaning to a community that venerates growth, life, and the cycle of seasons.

These can be mundane as well as magical, preferably modest and humble objects, with a singular meaning to men of the earth. What comes to mind?

[AntiTrust]

A stick or bone with runes on it, when thrown some sort of dog retrieves it, blink dog or wolf or something good for their level, and will follow your commands for a short period of time. Simply called a "fetch stick"

[Phelix-Mu]

Maybe some kind of magical sickle that allows one to "harvest" goodberries a couple times/day as per the spell (or some other spell that is appropriate to the current level) from any plant.

A bead that detects poison on contact by glowing. 3/day it can cast purify food and drink.

A watering can that can create water as a 10th level druid once a minute as a full-round action (or some other refluff of a less powerful decanter of endless water...be wary of handing out actual decanters of endless whatever...law of unintended consequences).

Monks often use prayer beads. Necklace of prayer beads (DMG) is an excellent item, and you can custom make a special bead/s for it that grant entangle 3/day or something.

[icefractal]

Boots of Rooted Communion
A pair of boots made of living bark, with tree roots growing from them. While in a natural setting and standing on the ground, you can activate the boots as a full-round action, causing them to root into the ground. You can't move while the boots are activated, but you have the senses of every living plant within [range] (basically tremorsense and detect light/darkness). You also know the health of the plants, and related things about the environment (presence of water, underground caverns that block roots, etc). If there are no plants around, you just get the condition of the soil and tremorsense within [smaller range].

Globe of Transplanting
This clear crystal globe is half-full of dirt. By touching a plant (of any size), it is immediately shrunken and stored within the globe, appearing as a bonsai version of itself. When holding a plant, it can be instantly planted anywhere by touching the globe to the ground. This doesn't harm the plant, although it may have problems later if the ground isn't suitable.

[Twilightwyrm]

It is actually fairly easy to make items work thematically with the place they are produced in. Simply decorating items with floral or natural motif can often work to convey what you are getting at, even with relatively "standard" items such as healing potions, enchanted weapons and ability boosting items. Even no motifs can help communicate a tool that is more "natural" or of vale to those practicing personal austerity. If you want the things to leave more of an impact on the players, however, turning potions to magical dried fruits, scrolls to runes on pieces of bark or leaves, a focus on wooden weapons, possibly modified with the "Ironwood" spell to produce suitably lethal wooden versions of otherwise metallic weapons, focus on hide and leather armors, and other such steps to either simplify or "naturalize" said magic items can leave more of an impact.

Note: Whatever they say, some players may not appreciate this particular aesthetic choice with regards to the magic items they gain, and may well be more inclined to swap them out, or avoid their use entirely, because it doesn't quite fit with the design of their character. While it is true that, statistically, a plain, ascetic (or indeed an "Ironwood") +3 longsword is no different from a normal +3 longsword, or that a necklace of prayer beads that grant a +2 natural armor are functionally the same as a normal +2 amulet of natural armor, this difference does effect how the players "see" their characters, and if it conflicts with it, they are more likely to want to get rid of the offending element. I would say then that you should make these thematic adjustments with what you know of your players in mind.

[ArcturusV]

Random homebrewed magic item idea?

A simple bag (about the size of a fist) filled with 2d12 seeds. Plant the seeds, water them. Even in inhospitable ground, the seeds will grow to maturity in 6 hours. If it is a fruit bearing tree it will bear fruit once per hour until 18 hours have passed. The tree withers, dies, and will rot until nothing but a broken stump, covered in moss and lichen remains exactly 24 hours after the seed was planted and watered.

[Slipperychicken]

They're still looking for that monastery? :smalleek:

Also, the Druids may have made their items out of wood, bone, and rock, with feathers and nice-smelling herbs tied to them. Mostly a flavor thing, but it could help for description.

[Story]

How about the Holy Symbol of Nature from Complete Champion?

[Palanan]

Thanks for the suggestions so far, I appreciate it.

There's some good ideas here, and I really like the concept behind icefractal's Boots of Rooted Communion, although I may change the item to an anklet or amulet. And ArcturusV's seeds are almost exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

Anything else along those lines? Crazy and creative is just fine here.

[Mephibosheth]

Check out this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1451681#post1451681). There are a whole bunch of magical animals and plants that don't pose any threat to PCs but that have economic value. Maybe the monastery has an abandoned greenhouse or formerly well-tended gardens that contain some of these plants.

[Darrin]

Ehlonna's Seed Pouch (1400 GP, MIC). Three acorns which work as goodberries. It's also a relic, which you can refluff to whichever deity the monks favored. Unlocking the relic power requires the True Believer feat and 15 HD, but then each seed can become a treant, wall of thorns, or a fire seed.

Feather Token: Tree (400 GP, DMG). Too many uses to list here.

Goodberry Bracelet (2000 GP, MIC). 5 berries per day, provides a medium creature with a meal and some minor healing.

Hand of the Oak Father (5000 GP, MIC). Six 1/day spells: barkskin, entangle, goodberry, plant growth, speak with plants, and tree shape.

Tanglepatch (100 GP, Races of Faerun). Don't use the MIC version. The RoF version is cheaper, lasts longer (10 rounds), and can be thrown further (20' range increment).

Thorn Pouch (4400 GP, MIC). 5 charges per day, entangle = 1 charge, spike growth = 3 charges, wall of thorns = 5 charges. Great limited-use item

And I'd probably throw in something like:

"Gaelen's Groundbreaker", Merciful Monk's Spade +1 (25260 GP). Exotic two-handed double weapon from Secrets of Sarlona, 1d8/1d8 bludgeoning or slashing damage and crit x2/x3. Both ends are enchanted as a merciful +1 weapon. Monks that are proficient can treat it as a special monk weapon. Also includes the following command-activated spells: sanctuary 3/day ("ataraxia"), calm emotions ("hremse") 1/day, and phantom plow 1/day ("drotron", from Lords of Darkness). If the spade is ever delivers a fatal blow a living creature, it loses all magical powers for 24 hours.

[Palanan]

Hey, Mephibosheth, thanks for that excellent thread; I'll definitely be using some of those. And Darrin, thanks for the list of items there.

Still taking ideas...any suggestions on scrolls, tomes, prayer flags, other sacred texts? I'm looking for a way the community's accumulated lore might have survived, a way to safeguard both their herbal and magical knowlege.

[ImaginaryDragon]

Wow, your players are still there? So much for a side adventure lol

Let's see, if I recall correctly, you had a bard/rogue and a barbarian/warblade.
Do either of them care about herbal knowledge or mystic things? Think about things that they can actually figure out or use, since a lot of these magic items might be beyond them for a while. I certainly wouldn't give them anything with limited charges and then make them spend charges figuring out what it is.

And again if I remember rightly they're mostly on a boat right? So a lot of tree/wild oriented stuff they might not actually be able to use much...

[Azoth]

Maybe the prayer robe of one of the higher up monk's grants a few weather-ish spells 1/day.

Things like: create water, obscuring mist, wind wall, call lightning, wall of stone, control wind, call lightning storm, ect depending on party level.

Or a series of these style of robes, capes, crowns, bracer, rings, ect.

That way you can show the growth in rank within the monastery also meant a greater understanding of nature and its power.

[Miranius]

In a past campaign of mine, an NPC stole magical gardening-scissors that the players later looted. Its original use was to cut branches off plants without hurting/damaging either end to help with growing offshoots.
The evil NPC however used them to cut the hearts out of victims he wantd to blackail without killing them and kept their still beating hearts as collateral.

If that is too complicated or tempting... maybe recipes for custom magical rituals (as in UA) to achive somehwat larger sized nature effects (rain, growing, repelling pests...)

If you feel very generous: droughts of awakening.

[CaladanMoonblad]

One of my players has a druid, and their prize possession from exploring ancient dwarven ruins includes;

The Golden Sprinkler- this golden plated sprinkler holds just 1 gallon of water but sprinkles up to 10 gallons in an hour across a 20'x60' path (it pulls itself along the ground like a tractor) without needing a refill. While magical, it is used to water the druid's home garden in the party's stronghold (a 3 story tower they picked up from an auction house).

The Golden Spade- this gardener's tool is excellent at removing weeds; it has a touch attack that shrivels non sentient plants by chanting a song to Obad-Hai. In addition, any plot of land (60'x60') tended by the Golden Spade to remove weeds for at least 1 hour per week is effected by a Plant Growth spell.

As items without a construction type, they cannot be "copied" and mass produced. They are one of a kind items from a civilization that has forgotten much of its gloried past (it's a homebrewed world where dwarves and elves ruled prior to humanity and their Cold War erupted into a cataclysm for both species and paved the way for humanity to rise to become masters of the world).

[Cirrylius]

The PCs are searching for an abandoned monastery on a small, mountainous island some hundreds of miles from land ...and I need suggestions for some customized loot.

The weathered bones of Leonardo DiCaprio?:smallbiggrin: