Adventures are usually about the events taking the heroes away from home. But this series explores possibilities when taking a character back home. What troubles lurk in a PC’s hometown? What manner of curse, bogeyman, disease, or nuisance was part of their upbringing? How does it now become part of the party’s greater story?

Each post in Hometown Hazards addresses a different PC heritage from the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide, focusing on ready-to-go concepts of what “home sweet  home” might have looked like for them (and what imperils it).

Arcane Savants

A cloud heritage upbringing is filled with wonder and awe beneath skies and stars—and sometimes homework. These arcane conclaves, often established around a grand spire or tower, are devoted to the study of magic, astronomy, and arcane-adjacent fields. Surrounded by observatories, libraries, and mentors of all stripes and proficiencies, cloud heritage characters emerge in bastions of arcane study and knowledge, becoming proficient with minor spells even when they don’t choose the path of a spellcaster.

But what perils might lurk in these studious centers?

PEDANT PANIC

Curse

This “harmless” prank of a curse was concocted and is perpetuated by apprentices or arcane academics to sabotage know-it-all rivals and annoying lecturers. Whenever cursed texts are made or found, enterprising pranksters slip them to targets with a challenge to pronounce an “impossible” word or phrase, or a claim that reading the phrase aloud enhances intellectual aptitude. Those afflicted by the curse find their spoken and written words, regardless of language, scrambled into indecipherable gobbledygook.

Trigger: When a Humanoid reads text enchanted with this curse aloud, it must succeed a DC 13 CHA save or be afflicted with this curse.

Effects: A victim can still read and understand any language it is proficient in. However, when the creature attempts to speak or write, its words are scrambled into nonsense indecipherable in any language. Attempts to communicate are not recognized as a language by spells like comprehend languages. If the creature attempts to cast a spell with a verbal component, it must succeed on a DC 13 CHA save or fail to cast the spell, expending the spell slot in the attempt.

Resolution: The curse can be lifted with a remove curse or similar magic. Alternatively, the curse ends immediately if the creature genuinely desires to admit to being wrong or to praise another for knowing something better than it does. Speaking or writing such an admission or praise won’t be scrambled. This alternative resolution might only be discovered if some active pranksters are behind the curse, requiring a successful DC 13 CHA (Persuasion) check to find and secure aid, or digging through the right histories to see if the curse manifested before, requiring a successful DC 13 INT (Investigation) to determine.

Flux

The scrawny wizard in apprentice robes cackles with unhinged laughter, his eyes glowing white as arcs of uncontrolled lightning crackle around his body. Every inch of his skin is covered in magical incantations and glyphs, some inked, and some scarred into the flesh.

Arcane Overload. A flux starts as an apprentice or other student of the arcane who, through some combination of overwork, poor supervision, and attempts to harness magic or knowledge beyond capability, burns out into a vessel of destructive energy. Fluxes tend to occur in communities with high degrees of magical tutelage and education. While frequently elves (especially those from cloud conclaves), any humanoid can transform into a flux.

Magical Madness. As fully trained magic-users don’t ever seem to degenerate into fluxes, scholars theorize that learning magic isn’t a simple question of ability. The existence of fluxes suggests that some humanoids are incompatible with channeling arcane energies, regardless of education and merits.

Volatile Mind. Fluxes are unstable, bearing only basic resemblance to their former selves. They’ve been hollowed out by the same arcane energies they once hoped to grasp and are now shells driven by volatile elemental energy. Their intelligence remains, but it’s turned toward violently unleashing power. An aura of painful confusion surrounds a flux, sometimes even afflicting itself with inexplicable whims as its former identity unravels.

FLUX CR 4

Medium Humanoid

Armor Class 13
Hit Points 75
Speed 30 ft.
Perception 11                       Stealth 13
Senses —
Languages Common, Elven

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
−1	+3	+0	+5	+1	+2

Erratic Aura. A flux exudes an aura of uncontrolled magic and infected with its fractured intelligence. A creature that begins itsturn within 10 feet of a flux (including the flux itself) must succeed on a DC 13 WIS save or become confused (as the confusion spell) until the start of its next turn.

Magic Ancestry. The flux is immune to the charmed condition, and magic can’t put it to sleep.

Magic Resistance. The flux has advantage on saves against spells and other magical effects.

ACTIONS

Multiattack. The flux makes two Elemental Lash attacks.

Elemental Lash. Melee or Ranged Spell Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 or 15 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) lightning damage.

Spellcasting. The flux casts the following spells using CHA as its spellcasting ability (spell save DC 13):

At will: acid splash, fire bolt, ray of frost, shocking grasp

BONUS ACTION

Elemental Shield. The flux conjures an unstable shield of energy around itself made of the same energy as the flux’s current Elemental Lash damage type. The flux has resistance to this damage. In addition, when a creature within 5 feet of the flux hits it with a melee attack, the shield erupts. The attacker takes 10 (2d8) damage matching the flux’s Elemental Lash damage type. If the flux’s Elemental Lash damage type changes, the shield fades at the end of the flux’s next turn. Otherwise, it ends after 1 minute.

REACTION

Reactive Magic. When the flux takes elemental damage (acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder) different from its Elemental Lash damage type, its damage type changes to the attack’s damage type instead.