A player asked me if he could have a Ring of Dexterity for the game.
And i went: suuureeeee….?
So here is what i have:
These magic wooden rings are made by elven greensingers to be awarded to the champions of the elfqueens hunt during the night of the two moons. Their intricate carvings tell the story of the hunters exploits and the game she or he brought back. Their magic can be called upon to allow the wearer one act of perfect grace and dexterity. By rotating the ring around the finger one of its charges are spend and the ringbearer is filled with its magic. It is rare that such a ring caries more then 3 charges of magic.
It is also said that should ever a dwarf lay hands on such an item, no one would ever be able to defeat him.
How does that look to you?
Awesome. So are Elves and Dwarves hostile towards each other in your setting? That’s the only thing I might change.
that is not really what i wanted to imply. I just had to write up some flavor on the go and thought the dwarf bit might be funny. It is more about dwarfs being more or less clumsy in comparison with an elf hunter.
So Ring of X
Comes with 3 charges. Spend a charge to simply do something using X as if it was perfect.
Looks good to me – nice flavor!
I agree I have a love for what might be called ‘limited resource perfection’ and usually love the beads of sweat the player gets when deciding if this is finally an event of such epic proportion that it merits the use of that very last charge.
INT makes little sense like this potentially. Might be 3 charges you can spend to just know something or figure something out.
Yeah, like a Ring of Uncanny Wit, working on that principle. Use it to know something you really shouldn’t know.
Mechanically does this just allow a success on any roll+Dex?
no. This allows you to simply do.
To be more precise. Think of it like druid shapeshifting. Your move is
“be super dexy”
Like a Thief with evasion dexy
And you probably can’t use it to simply disable a trap if you don’t know how to do that in the first place. You just move with perfection for one moment. Your body does everything exactly right and above its usual capabilities. But if you have no muscle memory about what you want to do at all that might not work.
That’s what I mean by allow a success. You simply negate the need to roll for the move because the magic of the ring makes it so you never trigger the move, you jus succeed.
yes. Like that.
Bernd Pressler commented that a constant artifact that gave you an extra use to move when activating might be better – but what do you roll with when activating a magic ring?
I like your way better. It’s rooted in fiction. The ring is magical and limited in its use, but that use is reliably exact.
Totally stealing the concept too.
thank you
I think it is more of a personal preference. To me one-use (or in this case three-use) -items are simply worth less. When you pay a price for a one-use item it would better be high-impact because once you have used it, it is dead weight. But you still payed the price. Depends a lot on the price for me.
Dead weight? Its a ring 😉 An elven ring at that! Also, the price is the fictional interest. That’s the complication for our protagonist, that’s the grist that makes us want to see what happens next.
This is awesome Tim. This will definitely be making its way into one of my upcoming sessions. The wife is currently taking part in some Orc games. I’ve been on the hunt for prizes ^_^
Glad to help