MYSTERIOUS WONDERWARES #1

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So working within an art style that I’ve played around with in the past, I decided to try and create a simple and fun looking design for a possible series of magical items I’m doing on my Instagram. The idea is to have icons for the core abilities that I can eventually turn into a simple legend, at the top of my card and have references to those icons in the more elaborate text at the bottom of the card.

First is a simple +1 weapon icon, then the damage + type (bludgeoning), then the amount of charges that the magical item has, the recharge ability (with a little sun icon to signify that it recharges at dawn) and the weight restriction. The charge icon being reused in the text below to show how much each ability uses.

The initial design for the Seaquarium had much more text and flavored abilities to it that I did eventually chose to leave out because it was just my imagination running a bit wild with the concept. This included stuff like that it needs to be fully submerged to recharge. When it is recharging that a reef starts to take shape around the item and you can hear the sound of the ocean. Also had an idea for a critical fail causing to crack the head of the maul, maybe even smashing it to bits. A patron of mine also came up with the great idea of having a possible supercharge ability that if the user keeps it in the ocean for charging that it actually has double the amount of charges afterwards for 24 hours.

Everything in this image is all mine, and I’m not super proficient at creating content in 5e so there might be some mistakes in there. I tried to do my best to have it as balanced as possible.

The Dovahkiin longbow is an ode to one of the best game series I’ve ever played and when I came up with the concept for the item, I just knew I wanted to do something special with it. Spending way too much time, as I used to do in the game itself, creating this silly little level up animation with the music of the Skyrim trailer playing in the background.

Choosing the bow as the weapon to represent this series is also the best representation of my experience playing the game. Doesn’t matter how many playthroughs I went through and how many times I decided I was going to do a unique build for my next character, I always ended up with my trusty bow going for that sneak 100.

The weapon itself and the animation is all based on the animation in Skyrim of course, where upon killing a dragon air comes rushing out and the dragon slowly turns into a skeleton as you hear the crisp sound of a crackling fire. Killing a dragon with the Dovahkiin bow does the reverse, as the air (or soul) comes rushing in the bow transforms into a golden dragon hilt with the elemental energy (represented by the breath of the dragon) surging out on both sides. You can now use the power of the dragon to fight your foes. Now generally I try to create my own stats to the best of my abilities but for this one I did come across the perfect stats for the weapon as I was browsing DnDbeyond. I tweaked the design a bit to fit my own ideas behind it but I don’t think I could have done a better job myself.

One day I’ll create a campaign that is silly enough to include weapons like World Ender, it would be the perfect weapon for a quest line where the BBEG intends to find it and use it, or if my players decide to go full evil and want to find it for themselves.

When designing both the look and the stats for the weapon, I tried to focus on keeping it silly while still trying to have it make sense in a 5E game. I knew from the get-go that I wanted to incorporate as many references to our own solar system, giving the orb a similar look to our own world but changing the scale to give it enough detail, adding a little moon that seemingly makes the world orb at the top of the weapon float and inserting 7 smaller orbs in the hilt to represent the rest of the planets. (Including a little belt for Saturn). The shaft of the weapon also includes references to “The Fifth Element” as a base for the magic that breathes life into the planet above it.

The stats were originally going to boast a +3 bonus, but when I started putting together this concept of a living weapon that is empowered by the age of the planet, I decided to adjust all the stats to make it fit.

In the end there are so many random ideas I’ve had about the lore surrounding the weapon, like a meta story where the wizard, who had created the weapon, had actually managed to bring our world to life in the concept world of D&D, creating a super fragile balance where destroying the weapon would destroy his creators. The realization of him being a figment of the inhabitants of this world’s imagination turning him mad. Another idea was to have this world represent a world in one of the realms in D&D and destroying this weapon would destroy that world. An even crazier idea would be that when the bbeg actually hits a player with this weapon that you can see a massive version of the character’s head being crushed by the world the players are standing on in the sky above them. A battle like that could also be spiced up nicely with a random table full of environmental effects like earthquakes, meteor swarms, tsunamis, whirlwind etc.