D&D: Five Magic Hats Worth Reaching Back Under a Crushing Ceiling Trap For
Clothes make the adventurer, and these five magic hats are well worth risking life and limb to hang on to.
If you found yourself escaping from a crushing room, hell-bent on turning you into adventurer paste, what would be worth reaching back for? Is there a single item of clothing, hat or otherwise that would be worth the risk?
You might not be Indiana Jones. But these five magic hats are worth risking 12d6 points of bludgeoning damage. Also, it turns out, crushing room traps are surprisingly survivable in D&D, once you get past like 4th or 5th level. But it’d be a different movie if he just let the walls close in on him and soaked it with his HP total.
Anyway, on to the chapeaus!
Hat of Disguise
Let’s start with the most popular of D&D’s magic hats. The Hat of Disguise is eminently useful in all sorts of enterprises. While wearing the Hat of Disguise, you can use an action to cast the Disguise Self spell, at will even. So while wearing one hat, you have whatever outfit you want.
You could start a dungeon looking one way, and end it as a totally different person. Go from a Tiefling to a Dragonborn – it’s the sort of thing that you could make a whole alternate identity around.
Crown of Whirling Comets
The Crown of Whirling Comets is a hat of a different sort, in that it’s a tiara. But what a tiara. This crown not only signifies that you’re a pretty princess, but it also comes with glowing gems that orbit your head while wearing it. While wearing the crown, you can use it to take flight, glowing faintly with starlight for ten minutes. Or you can launch bolts of frigid starlight (2d4 cold damage) at creatures, unerringly like a magic missile. Finally, you can cast Ice Storm with it.
Making this one tiara you won’t want to leave behind.
Skull Helm
The Skull Helm out of the Book of Many Things is a skull-shaped hat that grants you resistance to three types of damage: cold, poison, and necrotic damage. But it has a secondary function: once per day, this skull hat lets you summon forth a Spirit of Death (per the Spirit of Death spell). And that’s pretty good, because the Reaper Spirit that the spell summons is capable of dishing out some significant damage with its scythe (4d8 + 3) and its ability to haunt a creature as a bonus action, causing them to be Frightened until they either die or a new day dawns.
Mindblasting Cap
The Mindblasting Cap is a soft, violet cap that is reminiscent of a stylish brain. The brain motif is for good reason: it’s brimming with psychic power. It allows you to focus psychic energy into a 60 foot cone, granting you the stunning blast of a Mind Flayer. It deals 5d8 damage and stuns creatures that fail their save.
And what’s more, you can do this as a bonus action. Which means you can stun a bunch of enemies and then lay into them with your Action to attack the now stunned foes.
Headband of Intellect
Finally we have the Headband of Intellect, which is more like a diadem. It raises your Intelligence to 19 while wearing it, making you a genius even if you decided to dump your Intelligence at character creation.
