I had an idea for an offensive consumable item, and I figured I’d share it and get some feedback. Its power scales with the user, so it should presumably be pretty rare. on consuming, it casts a spell, but I didn’t want to make the spell separately so I’m just describing the item as though it was a spell too. it perhaps tries to do a bit too much, but I thought it wouldn’t be the same if I took away any particular aspect.
#The Martyr’s Evil Eye
- range/area: self / sphere 5ft + 5ft for every level of exhaustion sacrificed
- duration: instantaneous
- damage: necrotic / remaining caster HP + 1/3 max HP for every death save sacrificed
- save: CHA save for half-damage
A black marble with faint green swirls, that seem to move when seen out the corner of the eye. With a willing sacrifice of life force and stamina, the marble cracks open and a necrotic aura radiates out, quickly obscuring those within the sphere. Flashes of green light from within briefly silhouette nightmarish creatures. The aura expands out, reaching its maximum size, before popping like a bubble and exposing the haggard survivors and withered bodies of the dead. The fragments of the marble turn to dust.
Item must be in contact with the caster. All creatures within the radius of the sphere, including the caster, take damage equivalent to the caster’s remaining HP. The caster may increase the damage by 1/3 of their max HP for every death saving throw they sacrifice. All creatures, except the caster, take half-damage on a successful CHA saving throw. Radius of the sphere is 5ft plus an additional 5ft for every level of exhaustion sacrificed.
The item is for self-sacrifice in a moment of desperation. The more you sacrifice, the more damage is dealt, but the lower your chances of escape and survival. Sacrifice more of your own life force to deal more damage to each enemy, sacrifice your exhaustion to deal damage to more enemies. If you sacrifice all 3 death throws, or all 6 levels of exhaustion, then you’re instantly dead, but you deal the maximum damage to maximum enemies.
I thought that an item that always killed the user was kind of boring, so i included the part about death saves. I included the part about exhaustion so that even if the unconscious character is immediately healed back to consciousness, there are still lasting repercussions that make rejoining the fight or even fleeing difficult. Plus it fit thematically - health for health, and effort/exhaustion to cover area.
I also imagined the exhaustion bit as a ring, where you could increase range/area of a spell by spending levels of exhaustion.
What are your thoughts? Its kind of mechanically complicated, but I didn’t know how to simplify it without losing something too much character.
One thing to mention: The saving throw type should match the means used to resist the effects.
Charisma represents your force of personality, your sense of identity, and your ability to interact with the world around you. This effect targets none of those things, nor can it be reasonably assumed to be counteracted by any of those things. Thus, this should not be a Charisma save.
Examples of effects with Charisma saves are possession (resisted by your own ability to be in control of yourself), Zone of Truth (resisted by your ability to interact with others), and forced planar travel (This makes sense with a longer explanation, but can’t really be summarized.)
This should be resisted with Constitution. It withers the bodies of those trapped within it, so naturally should be resisted by how healthy that creature is to begin with. Dexterity is an option, too, but that’s typically represented by effects that can be dodged with a split-second reaction without leaving your space.
Hmmmm, I picked CHA because I considered it to be a contest of willpower. I was originally going to make it a contested roll rather than a save against DC. But you’re right, I’d have to jump through hoops in the (already complicated) description in order to justify having a CHA save. CON makes the most sense. Since this can be used even by non-casters and casters from other schools, how do I say that your normal DC stat is ignored and DC is calculated from willpower? Is that even a reasonable thing to do?
You would simply say “The spellcasting ability modifier for this spell is Wisdom.”
Wisdom is the stat that represents your willpower, your experience, and your ability to perceive the world around you. If something attacks your mind, it is most often resisted with Wisdom for this reason.
Realistically, it probably shouldn’t be a spell, and it definitely shouldn’t be this complicated. Spells used to have this level of granularity in earlier editions, and 5e specifically moved away from that for clarity and speed of play.
My recommendation is to decide if the person this item was created for (not necessarily the PC using it) is supposed to die or not when using it. If they are, then the item just kills them. If not, they fall unconscious at 0 HP, then suffer one failed death save as normal when the item detonates. Don’t mess about with charging it with death saves or exhaustion levels, just have it do some damage.
That’s fair. I think that this is probably beyond saving; it loses a lot of it’s flair without the ability to decide how many death throws to sacrifice (like chosing to cast at higher level).
I might try to salvage the exhaustion thing into a ring that allows you to extend the range or AOE of a spell by using exhaustion levels instead of charges or something.
FWIW most of what I read online seems to indicate that charisma most closely aligns with force-of-will. But it’s pretty murky, since like you said a lot of mind control magic is WIS save.
Most of what you read online is incorrect, then, or at least misleading. Willpower isn’t actually a stat in D&D. When your character asserts their will, they succeed at doing so, full stop. The save is for whether or not the character has an opportunity to do so.
What you have instead are Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
Intelligence saves are how much your character knows. An example here is illusion magic. Illusions are imperfect, and better understanding of nuance lets a character see an illusion as false, and then exert their will to disregard it.
Wisdom saves are about how much you can perceive and intuit. When someone attempts to control you, it’s subtle, and the saving throw is about noticing that something is wrong. Once you notice it, your character exerts their will and shrugs it off.
Charisma saves are about your force of personality and sense of identity. When someone attempts to possess your body, they are attempting to change who you are, and is directly opposed by how strongly you believe in yourself, and how strongly you believe in who you are. Once you resist the attempt, you then exert your will and drive the spirit out.
I’m aware that there is no stat for willpower, which is why finding something to roll for it is unclear. I’m not an expert but I’m not a complete beginner either.
To me, the biggest argument against rolling for willpower is that we don’t want to take away player agency for things that are internal to their character. But the counter to that is people can’t always control things internal to them, like mental disorders. A roll to see if your player stops procrastinating could be pretty entertaining, for example. Or more likely a roll to see if you give into a temptation that you know you shouldn’t, like if you’re a reformed thief presented with a great crime of opportunity. Sometimes it’s fun to add some chaos. It’s why we roll to begin with.
It’s worth noting that your description of charisma sounds a lot like willpower. That whole bit about believing in yourself 😜. I know it’s not what you meant by it, but I think it’s a pretty salient regardless.
The first issue is Death Ward. It basically negates a big downside of the item.
The item also doesn’t seem that good for a desperation self sacrifice scenario. Most likely in any scenario where such a move is necessary the user won’t be anywhere near full hp. Reducing the value of the item. The small range also severely limits the use of the item.
I would say in a lot of scenarios casting any aoe spell centered on the person would achieve more. A simple fireball is around 28 damage with much higher aoe.
The item requires a lot of planning and preparation to be useful rather than being an emergency item to get out of a tricky situation. Which isn’t necessarily bad but goes against your inteded usage.
the low-hp scenario is why I included the bit about sacrificing death-throws for added damage. the idea is that if you sacrifice all 3 death throws, you’d have reached your massive-damage threshold anyways. WRT the AOE, its pretty big. assuming you don’t have any levels of exhaustion, and you want to survive, you get a 30 foot radius (5+5*5).
so say your character has a max HP of 90, but you’re down to 10, and you’re not exhausted (which is pretty common, i think). you could deal 70 damage to all creatures in a 30 foot radius, and still survive (unconscious, severely debuffed, and with 1 remaining death save). or 100 damage to all creatures in a 35 foot radius, and die.
but the fact that it wasn’t clear to you is a pretty good indication that this is probably too mechanically complicated to be actually fun :(
also you raise a good point about Death Ward. Thematically it would be fine - you’re “willingly sacrificing” your health, rather than taking damage, so apply it directly to your hitpoints rather than temp hitpoints, bypass all those kinds of defenses, etc… but that just adds even more mechanical complexity.
I have to admit I underestimated the damage a bit. I imagined it to be around 40 in most scenarios.
But I think streamlining the range wouldn’t hurt. Instead of making it optional by expending exhaustion give it a longer base range and cause a fixed amount of exhaustion. Or perhaps make the user fall in a magical coma for X-time instead. Because I would say exhaustion rules are often ignored and I personally didn’t even know how many levels there are and what they do.