#Fun with magic items

[atompalace-official]

Moon Cosmic Power 🌙💝✨ Make Up!!!

[merverelli]

"you just feel yourself let go."

still thinking about this episode. man. 💪💥

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Rage Form

[coffee-bard]

Synnove - the Void Diviner✨🌌

Full-body + Item Design for @//bearicornblues!!

[justalittlebluetiefling]

I think they should have Liam or Lou GM an 'oops all GMs' game where Brennan, Aabria, Matt, and a few other people who regularly GM get to all play as characters together.

[perilegs]

i know astrology is fake but i'm not too keen on how a lot of people on this website seem to be clowning on it as a hobby a bit too hard. i swear the woman who thinks it's neat how she and her friends with the same sun sign are all similar isn't trying to say that you are who you are born as and there is nothing you can do to change it. it's a hobby. an interest. what happened to finding meaning and joy in the small things. does it affect you if someone enjoys tarot reading or crystals. does it make you upset someone has interests that they enjoy.

[niuttuc]

Hydra's Tear

Recently, I've created a magical item for one of my MtG characters, and I tend to spend a lot of time refining unnecessary details for these, so I felt like writing down what I've got on it. Feel free to include it or a variation on it in your own creations. I'll put up the story side of things with the historical model and a short description first, then go into the unnecessary details under a read more.

The Myth:

The legend associated with the Hydra's Tear harkens back to days long past, and long forgotten, on the plane of Theros. It is but one small part of the tale of the Founding of Meletis, the story of the Aesthelith. It is known to only a few yet, woven as it is into the story of Kynaios and Tiro, the Guardians of Meletis.

After defeating the tyrant Agnomakhos at the goddess Ephara's behest, the two lovers founded a city who the goddess would be the patron of. To show their love to each other and devotion, they declared that the first ceremony to be conducted in Ephara's temple in Meletis, as soon as it would be finished, would be the kings' wedding.

Ephara was pleased by their dedication and success and delighted at this announcement. She set forth to find a wedding gift fit for two kings, and for a goddess to grant as well. After giving humans magic to fight in the war against Agnomakhos, she wanted to show the good magic could also bring in peace.

Knowing his skills with magical crafts, Ephara went first to her cousin Purphoros, god of the Forge, with her requests. Purphoros assented to help her, but only if she procured for him the centerpiece of a creation he had in mind, but escaped the grasp of even the god: a tear from a hydra. Cunning Ephara assented, with already a plan to extract it from such a beast.

In Nyx, she found the great hydra Polukranos in its lair hidden in the stars. There, she waited for it to sleep, then started telling him the story of Kynaios and Tiro, of their bravery, but more than anything, of their love. The story was so beautiful that the sleeping hydra wept a single tear. The goddess was swift to claim her prize and return to Purphoros's forge.

In Purphoros's hands, the tear became a gem, and holding it firmly, the god split the green stone in twain. From its halves, Purphoros fashioned two gold brooches to his and Ephara's design. She thanked her cousin, and took the jewelry to the city of Meletis, where a wedding was being arranged.

When the day came, the goddess officiated the wedding herself, and gave to each of the kings one of the brooch. "Behold," she declared, "by my word, you who were two are now one. These are a symbol of your love, and of mine. While a brooch can fasten clothes, these will fasten people together. Like the hydra it hails from, for as long as you keep it against your skin, you will be as two heads of the same body. You shall see what the other sees, hear what the other hears, and feel what the other feels. Never again shall you be alone, in life or in death."

And as she spoke, so it was. Through the magic of the brooches, even when their duty sent one of the kings to a far-off country, they were never alone. Never separated from the other's voice, or touch, for the rest of their lives.

Then, as it does for any mortal, their time came. Tiro died first, and on that day, Meletis wept, and Kynaios grieved. And nowhere on his body could the brooch be found. Ephara had spoken true, and the brooches, created by the gods, were not impeded by death. By the next night, Kynaios smiled once more, hearing his husband's voice, seeing through his eyes the groves of Ilysia, and feeling his touch.

With his husband's counsel, it is said that Kynaios reigned in his last few years with wisdom beyond compare, for he had seen sacred Ilysia, and could through his husband seek advice from heroes past. When his own turn came, he passed with a smile, and once again, his brooch couldn't be found.

Legend tells that they used their magic still that day to find each other in the vast and lush groves of Ilysia. And that they still wore them in the centuries thereafter, their love as strong or stronger as the day of their wedding.

In Practical Terms:

Hydra's tear sensory brooches, or Aestheliths, are pairs of rare magical items that allow the wearer of one to share one of the primary senses of the other, and vice-versa. The main uses are to share hearing, sight and touch, but taste and smell are also possible. Some more nebulous uses might be possible, but if they are, their use isn't as simple. All the current examples known of the items can only share one set of senses back and forth at once.

Having two sets of sensations for one sense is quite disorienting and overwhelming at first. It takes days of training with any one before one can learn to act normally with it active, and weeks or months before being able to make reflexive use of it.

It is entirely voluntary on both ends, and can be used by anyone, even if they cannot wield magic. While the item can be controlled with a hint of magic with thoughts, it can also be set and used by hand. It is done by turning parts of it to select the sense, and pushing lightly on the gem to activate it or accept the activation from the other of the pair. The effect can be interrupted from either end with a directed thought.

Despite being called brooches, these typically sit directly on the body of the user, under any clothes in the way. They don't have traditional pins or clasps, but they stick to one's body magically, and can be moved around their skin easily with a finger to slide it around.

Besides the lack of magic necessary to operate them, they are notable against other forms of magical communication devices because of their incredible reliability. They are almost impossible to disrupt or intercept, instantaneous, and can work even through planar boundaries and other magical limits. On Theros (and probably Kaldheim and other planes with similarly physical afterlives), this includes allowing direct contact between the mortal realm and the Underworld, which is otherwise particularly difficult. Of course, getting it there involves someone dying with one of a pair, and still wanting to contact the person on the other end after their deaths, so that makes exploiting it a bit harder a task.

The Unnecessary Details:

The Gem:

A Hydra's Tear is some form of magical gem. Whether or not it actually originates from hydras and their tears is unknown. It has a rough appearance due to its property to regenerate from its largest fragment when splintered or cut, a dark green lump of irregular shape. As such, extracting it from rock is fairly easy, you can just smash the rock and get the bit that regenerates from there, but further sanding or cutting it into shape is impossible, and each Hydra's Tear will have a unique natural shape.

When cut into two exactly equal pieces, the magic of the stone doesn't regenerate it, it instead acts magically as if the stone was never cut in the first place. This link transcends distance, Realms and Planes, and is almost impossible to disrupt, offering room for interesting enchantments.

However, cutting such a stone exactly in two is an incredibly difficult task, and has only been achieved by Gods or master craftsmiths with a divine favor. Even for those, it has required a lot of trial and error and sometimes days of work. As a result, the following experiment of further cutting the two halves into exact halves (quarters of the full thing) has so far never succeeded. It might not be fully impossible, but since each stone is unique, it would require succeeding in this arduous task twice in a row, and it's impossible to tell whether a failure is due to it being outright impossible or just the result of a minor mistake. The gem is pretty rare in the first place, as are those able to cut it once, so experiments such as those have been few in numbers.

Notably, once a gem is cut in this way, it doesn't lose its regenerating properties, but as far as its magic is concerned, it is still a single gem, so chipping or breaking it doesn't cause the link to fail or anything of the sorts. It simply regenerates whichever half got chipped or broken into its proper half.

The Brooches:

The most common (but still incredibly rare) item created from cut Hydra's Tears are brooches modeled and enchanted after the mythical pair, though not all those that have made them knew the myth. Those are called Aestheliths after the Theran term, or sensory brooches. As was mentioned earlier, they allow the wearer of both brooches to pick a sense they both have, and experience at the same time their end of that sense and the other wearer's. It is disorienting at first.

It does not function when the sense only exists for one of the wearers due to different species, but it does function if one of the wearers has that sense impaired but would otherwise have it, such as with blind or deaf humans, who can see or hear through the other wearer's senses. If both wearer share a sense but differ greatly in its characteristics, such as being able to perceive different wavelengths of light or a much wider sense of smell, it will still function but will be even more disorienting and difficult to parse for both people involved.

They technically can work with any sentient creatures, but are only really practical with sapient ones. Training an animal to wear, activate the brooch and then not immediately panic at the flood of sensations and interrupt the connections has proven beyond the skills of any who have tried it.

With the typical design, as far as manual (non magical) use, a ring of sorts surrounds the gemstone, and can be turned to select a sense, then pushing on the gem sends a "call" to the other wearer that makes them aware of the initiated link, that they can accept with a push of their own end of the gem, or dismiss with a thought. The sense shared is always the same on both ends, and there can only be one shared at a time.

The brooches adhere to skin, but can be slid around freely on there, like a magnet would behave on a large magnetic surface. They are impossible to pry off without removing the skin they're attached to when active, and require quite a bit of effort to remove by a third party even when inactive. The wearer can remove their own with much less effort if they want to. Much like other controls, they can be moved around one's body with a though and a hint of magic channeled at it, if the wearer is able to channel magic.

Here are some notes on stuff to expect with the typical senses.

Sight:

Sight is perhaps the most disorienting of senses to share at first. It helps to acclimate someone to it to start with both people involved keeping their eyes as close to each other as possible, and looking in the same direction. Learning to move your body according to a point of view that is not centered on your own head takes practice, and when that point of view is itself moving, it can lead to nausea at first.

While the brooches allow one to focus on a different part of the other's vision than they are, it doesn't allow one to move the other's eyes, or head. As a result, it can be a confusing and frustrating experience to want to look at something at the edge of the other's vision, when you physically can't turn your head or pivot your eyes to see it better.

Because sight can only be shared on its own, communication is difficult with it while in different locations. Many pairs of wearers eventually develop a code, often based on blinks for humans and similar, for some common actions... Or to switch to hearing for more complex discussions.

Between species with similar sight characteristics, there can be slight differences of color in how the world is perceived, or large ones in the case of some color blindnesses.

Between species with different sight characteristics, the mind of each will eventually adapt to recognize more colors they wouldn't usually perceive, but the process can be slow and headache-inducing.

Some have reported an unusual feeling upon seeing themselves through the eyes of another, likely linked to the fact people usually only see their own face through a mirror, whereas the brooches do not mirror the images they show.

Hearing:

Hearing is possibly the most often shared of the senses with Aestheliths. It allows conversations at any distance or simply seamless eavesdropping.

It is not typically as disorienting to share hearing as sight, though it can be when trying to locate the source of a sound. Your mind will associate the location depending on the position of the ears of the other wearer, not your own. This is even more disorienting when standing in the vicinity of the other wearer, but looking in different directions.

One of the quirks of sharing hearing is that both wearers hear a different voices than they expect for the other (and themselves), but not any other person. Because people hear themselves through not only their hear but the resonance of their own body, the voice they hear for themselves and the voice others hear are different. As a result, when sharing hearing with someone else, one will hear the "internal" voice for the other when they speak, and the "external" voice for themselves as well if they speak anywhere the other can hear. The speech of any third person will be heard the same as normal.

Due to sound moving relatively slowly in air, there can be a slight feeling of echoing when speaking and listening while sharing hearing, particularly as the distance between the two wearers grows larger (but still within range of hearing the same sounds).

When hearing is shared between two species with different hearing ranges, similar to sight, the mind slowly expands to understand sounds beyond the normal reach. But, similarly, those sounds can only be heard through another's ears still.

Touch:

Touch has a lot of unique traits as far as being shared. It goes beyond just being touch and some other characteristics are shared as well. Some elements of proprioception as well: sharing touch involves knowing the position of the other's body and how it feels in many places, though the mind will try to assign that perception of the other person's body to the wrong position in space. This can be changed with trust and training, and a learned pair sharing touch can move around each other without ever getting in one another's way or looking at each other.

While touch will share many physical sensations, be they pressure, temperature and pleasure, it also has a special handling of pain, that is... Othered, in a way other shared sensations through the brooches aren't. When sharing touch, you *know* the pain the other is in, but you don't feel it as your own. This peculiarity of the enchantment is very purposeful, and one of the reasons replicating the enchantment is an intricate and involved process.

Touching the other wearer while sharing the sense of touch with them feels like touching your own body in many ways, since you receive both the feeling of touching and being touched at the same time. A fascinating experience.

Smell and Taste:

Smell and Taste are separate, but I'll address them here together, as they're similar in being more rarely used, and less unique in their handling.

Smell can be very useful if one of the wearers has a much more developed one than the other, such as when a human and a leonin are paired. Similar to sight and hearing, one learns to decode those new signals with time and headaches. Unlike with hearing and sight however, some of those might become recognizable without needing to be sharing smell anymore eventually, as faint but present. It might even allow one to become receptive to pheromones they normally do not notice or react to.

Taste has a bit more to it being shared, like touch, in that you can also get the texture and warmth of what is being tasted through the link. Interestingly, individual preferences also are translated through the shared sense of taste. If something is found delicious by one of the wearers and disgusting by another, how it is experienced by both will depend on who actually eats it, it will feel either disgusting to both or delicious to both.

Other senses:

Beyond the five traditional senses, some might be able to be shared with the brooches, though they might require being able to magically choose the sense to share, as the selector ring doesn't typically cover anything beyond the five main ones (and an standby position to avoid accidental activations.)

Other senses that can be shared this way include magnetoreception (the perception of magnetic fields), thaumasthesia (the perception of magic), vestibular sense (perception of balance and acceleration, generally pretty useless and nausea-inducing to share with another), and more... As a reminder, both wearer need to have the sense, or the potential for it, to be able to share it this way.

There are rumors that one can also share a sense of self through the brooches, in a way that would allow two people to perceive each other's thought processes. While there has been successful activations with this idea, the process is so overwhelming, disturbing and disorienting that everyone that tried it ended the connection after a fraction of a second at most. It is possible something like that could be sustained, but it would take years if not decades of very brief and lengthening contacts to be able to maintain a usable link for any reasonable amount of time. And there are worries that doing so would permanently alter both wearer's personalities and thoughts to match the other closer in the process.

[chronologically-challenged]

Officially headcanoning Claude as an alchemist specifically bc I think alchemy existing in the isat universe would be cool as heck and Vaugarde would make the best alchemists.

[sunburstsandmoonshadows]

So I've been watching Cardcaptor Sakura a bit as part of my "oh hey I saw a couple episodes of that in my teens I should watch more" initiative and. As one might imagine. I looked at the red embossed book that kickstarts the monster-of-the-week plot and went "hey. where have I seen this before?"

I'm imagining a Cardcaptor Sakura AU staring Dipper and Mabel. That's where I'm going with this.

My first concept for this is that it's basically taking place in GF canon, except at some point in his studies Ford found/made the capital-C Cards. (I think it's funnier if he made them. He starts working for Bill to make the portal to change the world and be famous despite already having cards that can reVERSE TIME FORD YOU'RE ALREADY THERE--). Then he stashed them away in a hollowed-out book like his journals because oh god imagine Bill with physical access to those cards and then Dipper and Mabel find it.

Cue them opening the 'book' to find the cards, cue "...Windy?", cue all the cards flying away and now they're the new Cardcaptors. Congrats!

They have to share the key/baton probably. Or maybe one of them gets a sword like Syaoran since I imagine they're each others rivals at the start instead of there being a romance plot. Mabel would be the one with the sword if that's the route I take.

Unsure of what would replace Kero. The Axolotl? Or a piece of it, at least. Maybe guiding Ford to make the cards was its attempt to get him away from Bill that still didn't work.

Misc. thoughts:

If Ford is the one to make the cards after going full wizard, I think they'd be called the Conifer Cards. That way they reference his name but don't give away that he's a Pines to preserve the twist.

Following the naming idea, once Dipper and Mabel make the Cards theirs, they're Star Cards to reference Mabel's shooting star motif and Dipper's birthmark.

All of the card names are properly conjugated to make sense as titles because Mr. "Let me pick a fight about grammar while saving the world" would not call his cards things like "The Fly". Windy and Watery and such are probably just "The Wind" and "The Water" too. Maybe Mabel calls them Windy and Watery and so on anyway.

The Cards do still have the same art-nouveau look though. I think him doing an entirely different art style for the cards is funny.

I imagine that the canon GF episodes are still happening, its just that the cards are also involved. Like in Headhunters Dipper and Mabel are both investigating the 'death' of Wax Stan and tracking down Sword, and then Dipper uses Sword to fight Wax Sherlock. Dipper battles Fight while training with the Manotaurs. Stuff like that. Other Cards that can't work in episodes are found in their own adventures happening between canon eps.

Stan has literally no goddamn idea about the Cards. That's new information to him. He nearly strangles Ford when he learns the man invented TIME LOOPS and still felt the need to make the portal to make his mark on the world.

Ok that's it for now. I'll chew on some more thoughts about this maybe.

[smilesrobotlover]

Differences between red potions and fairies

Red potions:

- are able to be made by different ingredients found in Hyrule

- can cause phantom pains from your previous injury after drinking one. They usually last from a minute to a couple of hours

- can make a red potion to have different levels of strength. For example, you can have a red potion simply heal smaller injuries, while some red potions can heal you entirely if you’re seriously injured (think of hearts in Zelda. Some potions only heal four hearts while others heal 8)

- for it to heal properly, the wounds need to be fully cleaned out, with any debris out of there so nothing is healed over or around anything.

-overall a great alternative to fairies

Fairies:

- fairies are a more natural and divine way to heal yourself.

- fairies do not cause phantom pains. You’ll feel that wound completely gone

- though fairies can only heal so much. If you’re seriously injured, they can definitely heal you and save you from death, but they cannot heal you all the way. There’s nothing you can do to heal that.

- fairies blood can revive dead people or can heal seemingly Incurable things (think of losing function in your hand because of an injury. Fairy’s blood can heal that)

- the wound doesn’t need to be cleaned but any large debris needs to be removed from a wound.

[fluxedbuds]

can’t believe it took me this long to make a magical frosted tango tbh

[lathrine]

there's a TTRPG opinion i've seen A Lot online (mostly [but not exclusively] in D&D circles) that giving your players magic items is stupid and bad and they should Be Earned Through Sweat And Blood because otherwise they Unbalance The Game.

this might be true at big tables. i wouldn't know.

but i have DM'd A Lot. like A Lot A Lot. i wouldn't consider myself like master dungeon master or anything-- there is a lot im not good at and a lot i still have to learn-- but i do have a pretty good grasp on how the flow of a small table works. i have DM'd for tables of two-three players almost exclusively for six years.

i don't know what the current stats are, but many years ago WToC released stats that showed most 5e players never get past level 10.

if you have a two-three player table, any campaign book is lethal under level 5, and 6-10 is only slightly better. it does not matter how savvy your players are, how experienced, how tactically minded. you, the dungeon master, are playing a constant stressful battle against yourself to keep your party from instantly becoming paste. do you fudge rolls on the fly so enemies dont inflict 27 damage with an ill-timed crit, absolutely vaporizing your level 2 bard? do you reduce the number of enemies in an encounter, constantly fluctuating between too few and too many? do you let every roll lie where it falls, so The Struggles Are Real, regardless of the consequences? do you give them an NPC companion, to help even the odds? the answer is you do all of the above-- plus some extras-- in varying amounts. its one of those dm things im not very good with.

i'm running Horde of the Dragon Queen right now, and the inciting incident is a bandit siege on the town. the players are level one. the encounter is the entire night with a boss fight at dawn. if you follow the encounter Exactly as written the party fights-- and i am not exaggerating-- upwards of 60 enemies without a long rest, with a single short rest, and at level one.

as written, it is not survivable with a party of under four players. and frankly a party of 4+ would struggle.

and this is relevant, i swear, because as a dm of parties of two-three players, i love magic items. i love giving them out, i love the party having them. i love knowing that i dont have to pull my swings because the playing field is more level. i love being able to present them with A Challenge knowing it wont be an exercise in futility-- just challenging. i love giving silly magic items, that arent particularly powerful in their own right but if used cleverly can give a pretty big step up in future scenes.

i love making magic items, themed specifically for the player. something i can give them at a big milestone or story point, that's maybe a little beefy but feels Special.

i dunno mang. its the video game of it all. i have given out Tons of magic items over the years and my players have used maybe like 10% of them. i think very few players want an item that just lets them win the game. most people just want to feel Cool when playing the imaginary make believe game with their friends, and magic items are a great way to do that.

i think if you cant trust your players with magic items, because it'll Ruin The Game, there is a fundamental disconnect somewhere at the table.

[writingnotes520]

Get yourself a bestie who will use her reality manipulating powers to drag your boyfriend into the void between your universe and her/the authors' universe and give him the most terrifying shovel talk he'll ever experience

[scribblingface]

I wish there was the option to go to the creche without the artefact. just leave it with your companions at camp

[askteamsupernova]

What was Sheena's rescue team like? Is she still in contact with them?

Sheena: I'm very glad Requiem and I moved to Treasure Town, but I will admit I miss seeing my old friends in person. Letters and photographs are excellent, but something about sitting down for tea with someone you love is so very healing.