Dust of Appearance, leveled

This entry is part 8 of 13 in the series wondrous items, leveled

Cullen’s Dust of Appearance Any creature who enters the Dust of Appearance’s zone will sparkle. invisibility will be impossible, stealth will be at -5, and removing the sparkles requires either a wash or an extended rest. While sparkly, subjects leave a glittery trail that can be easily followed.

My old houserules for leveling magic items mean that every piece of magical treasure has the potential to gain power in ways that the players can’t predict. Furthermore, WOTC recently invented the concept of the “rare magic item,” but we don’t yet have lots of examples.

While some items may get mechanically better (for instance, a +1 sword becomes a +2 sword), it’s more challenging to improve items that don’t have numeric bonuses. I thought I’d go through the Wondrous Items in the 4e Player’s Handbook and give examples of how each could gain powers that reflect their history.

Adso of Melk’s Dust of Appearance of True Thoughts
When you sprinkle this dust on a page of text, handwriting appears in the margin, annotating the author’s true thoughts as he or she wrote the page. The new text is in the author’s handwriting, in a different color of ink. If the document was written in good faith, no new writing appears.

If the author is alive, you must make a wisdom, intelligence, or charisma attack against their will in order to see their thoughts appear on the page.

Adso’s dust is especially handy on diplomatic treaties and self-serving revisionist histories.

Dust of False Appearance
When this dust is sprinkled in a zone, in addition to its other effects, 1-3 illusionary monsters, of random type, are “revealed”. With a minor action, the dust’s owner may grant move actions to all the monsters. The monsters disappear if they are attacked or leave the zone, or at the end of five minutes.

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