More unreasonable D&D magic items: an enchanted ring that appears to grant the wearer occasional strokes of plausibly deniable good luck. What it actually does is confer upon the wearer the near-religious loyalty of a mob of small, extremely stealthy goblin-like creatures who believe that it’s their sacred duty to help the ring’s bearer without allowing their involvement to become known. This works well enough in wilderness or dungeon; problems start to arise when the wearer gets back to town for some downtime, as the ring’s minions have never been outside the dungeon and have no idea how civilisation works, but still feel obliged to help.
i love these goblins and will defend them with my life.
let your players make up the magic system as they go along, doing whatever overpowered bullshit they want as long as they give a brief in-universe explanation of why they can do that (e.g. “actually i’m immune to fire magic because i’m wearing red”).
keep track of everything they do. then use the magic system they created against them, turning every deus ex machina they ever gave themselves into a diabolus ex machina (e.g. “you notice that the giant plant monster has a red ribbon tied around its trunk, making it immune to fire magic”).
Instead of a human who shapeshifts into animals, they’re, like, an owlbear that shapeshifts into a human.
They’re mystically attuned to cities, which their powers treat as a sort of exotic but naturally occurring terrain.
Rather than seeking intuitive oneness with untamed nature, they carry out hilariously reductive scholarly analysis of humanoid society, all writing up thesis papers like “On the nesting habits of the Common Halfling”.
(They can still call down a lightning strike on your ass, though, because some things don’t change.)
Summon Fallen Powerline; rev-Drd 3
#concept of powerlines need not be invented yet
This is pretty much exactly what I got thrown out of a 4th Ed D&D game for, which is to say it’s EXCELLENT and you should definitely do it.
Site Title 