Sacks and Seeds

You can find the ever-growing list of “Better Than Nothing” items  over on the right. Read ’em, like ’em, share ’em, and comment.

Hood of the Lazy Kill

“Oim tellin’ yers… he come staaaaaalkin’ in the noight.  Roight up ter yer baid whil yer slaepin’.  His ole gnarly hains reddy ter chalker loif outer yer.”

The rest of the group lazed about the campfire, ignoring the old ranger’s stories… and that ridiculous accent.  It was always stories, more and more terrifying–or at least he intended.  Whoever heard of a half-orc assassin, honestly… and where the hell was Grimsy? He’d only left to tend the horses for a moment….

System: Said to be the favorite possession of the great assassin Odom the Green, drunk halfsie bastard of the hill orcs, the hood itself is a powerful addition to any would-be murderer.

A black silk hood with little lead weights sewn into its hem, with a leather thong laced around the mouth, it’s designed to float down and then pull shut like any high-priced garroter’s sack, but the arcane magics infused into the hood give it a darker purpose.

Once the hood comes down, no hands are needed to constrict the opening–but, no hands can stop its inevitable strangulation of whoever is so unlucky as to be caught by it. The hood slowly squeezes harder and harder, asphyxiating the target, then cutting off all blood flow to the brain, then slowly cutting through muscle and then bone to sever the head completely.

Only when it has taken a head can it re-open.

The hood can be dropped over the head of an unsuspecting medium or small creature, The context is an opposed Dex(Sleight of Hand) versus either Str(Athletics) or Dex(Acrobatics–victim’s choice. The Dex(Sleight of Hand) roll sets the DC for all rolls against the Hood.

At the Start of the creature’s very next turn, it may spend an action pulling the hood free before the hood fully tightens. This requires having both hands free. (Str) Athletics versus the Hood’s DC. If successful, the Hood is dropped to the ground and lies there motionless, thwarted. If failure, the hood pulls tight against the windpipe; Creature can stay conscious a number of rounds equal to their Con modifier, automatically, and then rolls Con Save at the beginning of each turn against the Hood’s DC or pass out unconscious.

At the beginning of the first turn after falling unconscious (not the turn they drop, the next), Hood begins squeezing tighter and tighter, doing 1d4 bludgeoning at the beginning of the creature’s turn.

At 0 HP, Hood keeps squeezing (each turn, 1d4 bludgeoning; treat as an auto-hit before the death roll), at 3 death roll failures, head is completely severed and a geyser of blood sprays all over the now motionless Hood.

The Hood visually blinds anyone wearing it. Anything that doesn’t need to breathe is unaffected by its other properties. The magic of the constriction can be temporarily dispelled with Dispel Magic (for 1d4 rounds, the hood becomes a normal scrap of cloth again).

On a failure to take a head–either by the victim succeeding to not be caught by it or other magical means “disarming” it–the Hood ceases to work magically as intended, becoming just a normal strangler’s hood until the possessor kills someone with it themselves. Then its magical properties come back.

If it fails to take a head, the player needs to kill someone with it before it works again.

Seed of True Sight

“Stop snacking, you shit!” the gruff paladin had spent the last half a year yelling and threatening and menacing the gnome.  Barkways was awful bloody tired of it.  And as they approached the dread wasteland of the elvish bloodmages, he felt half conflicted as he meandered about the ruined hills with the party.

“I swear, Bark, you daydreaming twat… get BACK IN ORDER!” more screaming, what a jackass.  Barkways wandered left and then right and then straight and left and right… all to the frustrations of Ser Broadways.  And just as the old paladin was about to raise his voice in crass offense one more time, the ground exploded underneath him and pieces of the human went flying, spraying half the party with viscera.

Barkways cleared his throat… “Everyone?  Just come over to me and step where I step… I think I can get us out of this one.”

System: A small bag of grain, simple seeds blessed by a great priest of the The Raise, Field Mother, the Bringer of Life… plain sackcloth, uninteresting, but infused with the divine perception of the gods and goddesses themselves.

By feeding a small amount of grain–several kernels–to a Tiny or Smaller animal (animal as a Type and must be naturally existing, not conjured), that creature gains Truesight to a distance of its normal perception (if more than one, the greater of them).

This does not work on any other creature or thing posing as a creature (through wild shapes or other means). The goddess, herself, the Great Midwife of the green meant for this to bring her great clerics and the earth closer.
The effect lasts only for a few minutes, the bag holds 12 “charges” of feedings of grain and replenishes 1d4 per day–last charge and roll 1d20, on 0, bag is just a bag.