D&D: Five New Consumable Items in the DMG
Maybe this is the edition that consumable magic items make a comeback. Jury’s still out, but these five are pretty cool!
D&D has a love-hate relationship with consumable items. Most RPGs do, in fact. There are entire generations’ worth of memes about how players will struggle to take down the final boss despite having an inventory full of 99 elixirs. But what if there’s a fight after the boss?
And D&D is no better. Despite things like spell scrolls and potions being intended to give a one-time use, the player instinct to save for a rainy day is strong. We’re all part magpie We’re all part dragon. Only hoard, never spend.
But that said, these five consumable magic items out of the new DMG are theoretically pretty cool. Not that you’d use them. Even though it’s a Bonus Action to drink any potion now. But, you know, they’ll look nice on the inventory sheet.
Potion of Pugilism
The amount of restraint it must have taken the designers to come up with a potion that increases your Unarmed Strike damage, supplementing it with 1d6 extra Force Damage, and then not say it tastes like “punch” is monumental.
But that’s exactly what this one does. Drink it, gain 1d6 extra punch damage. Straight forward. Sure, mostly only Monks will use it. But if you’re ever caught unarmed, pop one of these and suddenly you’re much more of a threat.
Potion of Greater Invisibility
Pictured right next to the spinach green of the Potion of Pugilism, the Potion of Greater Invisbility is going to kick off shenanigans if it’s ever drunk. It is a potent one. This potion, as the name suggests, is bottled invisibility.
But it’s invisibility that lasts for an hour (longer than the Greater Invisibility spell) and that doesn’t break when you make attacks or cast a spell. So for one hour, you can be totally invisible and do whatever you want. What could go wrong?
Pot of Awakening
Do you want a magic item that will make your DM cry? A Pot of Awakening is a fantastic item. It’s a humble terra cotta pot. But if you bring it a shrubbery, plant it, water it with care within its earthen confines, that plant will become Awakened. There’s the Awakened Shrub stat block, even, so you know what you’re getting.
But stat blocks don’t matter when you can ask the DM what your cool little plant pal sounds like. And then dig into its complicated backstory of “being a shrub.”
Scroll of Titan Summoning
This will surely end well. This scroll summons a titan, which inthis case is one of seven different cataclysmic creatures. You might summon:
- An Animal Lord
- A Blob of Annihilation
- A Colossus
- An Elemental Cataclysm
- An Empyrean
- A Kraken
- The Tarrasque
They appear within 1 mile of yourself in a suitable spot that you pick, and are Hostile towards all other creatures, including, it should be pointed out, the summoner and their allies. The titan sticks around until it drops to 0 hit points, so once you summon it, you might want to start running.
Wand of Conducting
Wands aren’t necessarily consumable. Sure they have limited uses per day, but, most magic wnds regain their charges the following sunrise. Something about the electromagnetic dawn chorus must recharge magic wands. But if you spend all your charges, there’s a risk that your wand might run out of juice forever.
The Wand of Conducting is singular among wands, in that it has a rider effect on this happening. If you spend all three of its charges—an action that lets you take a magic action to create orchestral music that can beh eard out to 120 feet from its source, and then roll a 1 on a d20, something special happens.
A “sad tuba sound” plays as it crumbles into dust and is destroyed forever. And it’s worth it, every single time. Mark my words.
Sign-off line!
