Anybody have any random roll tables they want to throw in this stew?
I was tinkering with writing out some of these random flavor tables for common dungeoneering tropes that could be more magical or weird
Spell Scroll Forms
Coded into Sheet Music
Embossed onto Snakeskin
Words spun from spider silk
Etched onto glass of lantern
Carefully inked on noxious black leaf
Projected from a mirror onto blank page
Crudely carved into a cracked skull
Runestones suspended in ooze filled jar
Secret Door Reveals
The wall section crumbles away effortlessly to plaster powder, revealing a dusty door.
The wall roils with activity as a swarm of perfectly camouflaged beetles suddenly take flight and reveal a secret door.
The wall shimmers rhythmically before a glistening wave of energy ripples across a section, revealing a secret door.
A portion of the wall suddenly melts away like liquid wax, pooling up on the ground before a secret door.
Pieces of the wall begin rattling rapidly before bursting into clouds of steam, when it clears a secret door is revealed
Molten rock suddenly begins spouting from the wall, it builds up rapidly before cooling and revealing a secret door
A stray shadow stretches into the area,climbs up a portion of the wall and pushes into it revealing a secret doorway.
A cold mist rises from the ground and settles on the wall, the droplets race down the wall faster and faster until a reflective liquid silver door shape is revealed.
Extra effect of Healing Potions
You glow from within, making your vascular structure clearly visible for the next 30 minutes. Enemies will attack you first in combat.
You find it difficult to speak and your skin becomes dry and chalky. You have to yell to be heard and gain resistance to non magical weapon attacks for 30 minutes.
Cold spreads through your body healing minor wounds and causing your breath to crystalize in ice. The frosty breath causes Disadvantage on Persuasion checks for 30 minutes.
You sweat profusely and your eyes/nose start to run. You find it difficult to manipulate small items. Disadvantage on checks to hold onto small items or use tools for 30 minutes.
As the liquid makes its way to your stomach, a golden glow is emitted from your mouth while open. Opening your mouth casts dim light in your immediate area for the next 30 minutes.
As soon as the stopper is pulled, the red liquid rushes to the top in a foamy spout, lyou quickly drink it down and a tingling spreads through your body. It is impossible to drink this without being noticed.
As the stopper is pulled, the liquid instantly evaporates in a cloud of red mist, you inhale deeply and catch the faint scent of sweet flowers as your muscles feel rejuvenated and relaxed.
You upend the bottle and a clumpy red liquid slowly pours out. With a little chewing you get most of it down and feel as if you just ate a 3 course meal.
Did some rolling to see what I got and do a little imagining
Words carved on an ooze filled jar
(do the words control the ooze? do they free it? Maybe the words are used to categorize this ooze amongst other oozes in a laboratory?)
Runes etched on a cracked skull
(classic demon cult loot)
Musical Notes written in spider silk
(my favorite one, could be cool for a bard, a spider that writes magical sheet music)
Musical Notes written on a mirror
(do you play the notes forward or backwards? Maybe this mirror casts counterspell?)
Runes embossed on a noxious black leaf
(some poison spell perhaps? Maybe this is how ettercaps send each other communications lethal to humans)
Runes etched on spider silk
(literally ON the silk, you gotta be a gnome with quadrifocal glasses to read this spell)
Words projected from a mirror
(does the source of the light flavor the spell you learn from this?)
gotta get @Terance in on it for sure!
What should our first table topic be?
“D6 Questionable Food Items found in the Ogre’s larder?”
“D8 Arcane Pests in the Wizard’s Study”?
“D12 Ludicrous Boasts of fraudulent Adventurers”?
We do this in a discord I’m in, where everyone takes turns posting 1d10 somethings, and we try to come up with the most gonzo topics. It’s more fun than useful, but it can be inspiring!
And I love a table that’s d4+d6+d8 or d6+d10+d12 etc, because they’re always going to be evocative but not descriptive; and being forced to think on my feet is when I find I’m making the best ideas.
Interesting! It’s not the dice that make it evocative, though, right? It’s the entries. Is it that you find that the folks who tend to format their tables like that tend to go for big ideas over details or do you find some inherent quality in that dice design?
Hey! Perfect timing! I wrote out a few little tables , rolled on them, wrote out the results and then REWROTE them to actually make sense haha.
Here’s the results!
D8 Arcane Pests in the Wizard’s Study
Encyclopedes
Ribbon like centipedes who chew books and resemble bookmarks when not moving, petrify your hands if they bite you.
2.Indented Stonebirds
Small birds that drill into stonework with beaks, creating dust that nullifies cantrips in the area and causes blindness upon contact with eyes.
3.Dimworms
Black Caterpillars that form webs from candlesmoke and cast shadowy illusions of crawling worms made of smoke on surfaces.
4.Spellswell Mice
Bloated mice who build nests from arcane components and ingest them as well, if nest is disturbed their combined flatulence can Dispel Magic in the area.
5.Dust Cover Moths
Sleep Disease carrying moths who resemble book covers, petrify books shut as they rest on them.
6.Filchflummox Oooze
Slippery sentient oozes that dissolve objects and take their place, stinging barbs that induce confusion if touched.
7.Blot Bugs
Stinkbugs that secrete a deep blue inkstain ruining scrolls and books,able to spray at threats to induce temporary blindness.
8.Museweb Spider
Small crystalline spiders that spin nearly invisible crystal webs above comfy armchairs near windows,consume stray thoughts and ideas, their painful bite induces color blindness.
I really like these pests but I feel like a couple of these should be fleshed out into full-fledged creatures! I could see tying these in as hazards of owning a wizard’s study. If you don’t spend some downtime properly maintaining it (or having some apprentice do it!) you’re liable to attract some of these nasties!
A thought: if dragons are attracted to treasure, what might be attracted to a concentration of magic?
I like that idea! I probably should get a minimal statblock for some of these critters, maybe use swarms or something.
My thought is that these are more nuisances that might interrupt a wizard’s downtime study activities, breaking their concentration, altering their ability to read etc.
Annoying effects for a wizard, but probably no problem to deal with once they are rooted out.
Having the infestation get so bad your adventuring party has to come address it because the apprentices are getting hurt is a hilarious adventure hook haha.
Something being drawn to concentrated magic could be quite scary!
I like the idea that some kind of large reptile or something would like to just “bask” near it and passively absorb the magic, but large reptile starts sounding like DRAGON haha.
Maybe some kind of Ethereal whale that passes through the tower at night and sieves the magic into its mouth like a baleen whale.
Would be pretty cool to see this big spectral whale go right through the tower in the middle of the night - maybe it’s like a freight train going by and all the bottles rattle off shelves and potions go inert.
Then it passes through and fades from view back to it’s native plane.
