Making Skyrim's Standing Stones in 5e

[Techcaliber]

So, I tried to find if this had already been made, but I only found one for 3.5e. The question is simple, although how it's executed may not be. How would you make the standing stones in 5e? What abilities would they give and how much would you be able to use them.

And one more thing: what ideas do you have for custom Standing Stones?

Thanks

[Dork_Forge]

Some general ideas (I can't remember all of the stones from the actual game right now):

-1d4 to a specific skill check

-Darkvision (grants if have, boosts if already have)

-Don't need to sleep

-When rolling hit die to heal yourself, you take the maximum instead

-Once per short rest (long if you want to tone it down) you can make a weapon attack as a bonus action

-Advantage on saves against charm effects

[sandmote]

Off the top of my head:


The Mage Stone: proficiency with Arcana or History.
The Thief Stone: Proficiency with Sleight of Hand or Stealth
The Warrior Stone: proficiency with Athletics or Acrobatics
The Lover stone: Jack of All Trades, basically.
The Tower Stone: when making a check with theives' tools, you can take a result of 18. You must choose to do so before you make the roll. Once per long rest
The Shadow Stone: cast Greater Invisibility once on yourself, once per long rest.
The Steed Stone: No speed loss from heavy armor and +100 to carry capacity.
The Ritual Stone: cast Danse Macabre once per long rest
The Lady Stone: roll hit dice twice and keep the higher result.
The Serpent Stone: ranged spell attack dealing necrotic damage and forcing a save vs. paralysis. Once per long rest


The first four there give a bonus to skill leveling, so they give some form of proficiency. Except for Lady the others are basically copy-pastes of their effect in Skyrim.

The Atronarch gives bonus spellcasting and spell absorption at the cost of spell recovery, the Apprentice doubles spell recovery at the cost of vulnerability to spell damage, and the Lord reduces physical and spell damage slightly. I'm less sure of where to start converting them.

[Techcaliber]

Sandmote, this is great! The ideas are simple yet effective, so thanks you.
Dork_Forge, I like the idea of the 1d4 to certain checks, so thank you!

[T.G. Oskar]

The Atronarch gives bonus spellcasting and spell absorption at the cost of spell recovery, the Apprentice doubles spell recovery at the cost of vulnerability to spell damage, and the Lord reduces physical and spell damage slightly. I'm less sure of where to start converting them.

The Lord Stone could grant resistance to non-magical bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. Sure, it won't provide resistance to spells, but it'll fit the bill. You could make it so that it worked as Aura of Warding, but then it'd be super broken, particularly if tied to those resistances.

Since the Druid and the Wizard have it, you could make the Apprentice Stone allow you, once per day, to recover a number of spell slots whose total levels don't exceed your character level, and no spell slot can be higher than 5th level. In exchange, you gain vulnerability to spell damage.

The Atronach Stone could work as a Rod of Absorption. You gain advantage on saving throws, and if you succeed on the save, you absorb the spell, recovering that spell slot. However, while affected by this spell, you can't recover spells through a long rest. (Therefore, it's great when you have lots of combats, but when you're not facing spellcasters using offensive spells on you, you're screwed.) This would be insane for any kind of Paladin, since it means you effectively get a ton of spell slots to fuel your Smites, but only if you face spellcasters.