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Tome Unbound: Repository

Tome Unbound: Repository

Alternate Traits and Actions

The following changes allow GMs to alter a repository without modifying its challenge rating.

Curse of Misspoken Language. If a repository is reduced to 0 hp, it explodes, leaving behind its small, pyramidal chest cavity. Each creature within 20 feet of the repository when it explodes must make a DC 15 Charisma saving throw. On a failure, a creature takes 7 (2d6) psychic damage and becomes cursed, such that it loses its ability to use language properly. On a success, a creature takes half the damage and isn’t cursed. While cursed, a creature has disadvantage on Charisma checks that rely on speech and must make a concentration check to successfully cast a spell that has a verbal component. The curse lasts until removed by the remove curse spell or similar magic.

The repository loses its Self-Destruct trait.

Slash Adaptation. As a bonus action, the repository changes the damage for its slash to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing.

The repository’s damage with its slash attack becomes 11 (2d6 + 4).

Wordwarp. The repository is immune to spells that use verbal components and magic effects that require a command word if the spell is cast or the command word is spoken within 60 feet of the repository.

The repository loses its Magic Resistance trait.

New Magic Items and Spells

The following magic items and spells are inspired by abilities possessed by a repository.

Death’s Retribution

5th-level abjuration (bard, cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, sorcerer, warlock, wizard)
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Self (30-foot-radius sphere)
Components: V, S, M (a fragment from a repository)
Duration: 8 hours

You infuse yourself with devastating energy to be unleashed upon your death. When you cast the spell, choose one of the following damage types: acid, cold, fire, lightning, necrotic, radiant, thunder. When you die, your body detonates, and all enemy creatures within range must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes 12d8 damage of the selected damage type on a failed save or half as much damage on a successful one. The creature that inflicted the fatal damage to you has disadvantage on its saving throw, and all 1s on the damage dice are treated as 2s. You can choose to release this energy when you reach 0 hit points.

You and everything you are wearing and carrying, except magic items, are destroyed when you detonate. You can be restored to life only by means of a true resurrection or a wish spell.

You can subject yourself to only one casting of this spell. Subsequent castings replace the damage type, if applicable.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, the damage increases by 2d6, and the sphere’s range increases by 10 feet (to a maximum of 60 feet) for each slot level above 5th.

Language Pyramid

Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)

Script from multitudes of languages flows across this sandstone pyramid’s surface. While holding the pyramid, you understand all languages as if you had cast comprehend languages.

The pyramid has 3 charges. While attuned to the pyramid, you can use an action and expend 1 charge to allow all creatures of your choice within 30 feet to understand all languages. Additionally, you can use an action and expend 1 charge to grant yourself the ability to speak any language for 1 hour. The pyramid regains 1d3 expended charges daily at dawn.

Personal Repository

Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)

This sphere, fashioned from stone and an amalgam of metals, acts as a bag of holding, except it is limited to 50 pounds of material and a volume of 8 cubic feet. The sphere weighs 2 pounds.

While attuned to the personal repository, you can painlessly insert the sphere into your torso. A sphere within your body can’t be found through mundane inspection, and it doesn’t register as magical. You must normally use an action to retrieve an object from within the sphere. You can instead use a bonus action to retrieve an object, but you can’t do this again with the repository until the next dawn.

If the sphere is within you when you die, it becomes accessible to anyone who reaches inside your body. If the sphere is not removed, it and anything contained within it dissolve into nothingness after 1 hour. A living creature trapped within the sphere is instead shunted to a random location on the Astral Plane.

Verbal Assault

4th-level evocation (bard, sorcerer, wizard)
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self (30-foot cone)
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

You utter words of power laced with deadly psychic energy. Each creature in a 30-foot cone must make an Intelligence saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 8d6 psychic damage and is stunned for 1 minute. On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage and is not stunned. At the end of its turns, a stunned creature can make another Intelligence saving throw. On a success, the creature is no longer stunned.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 4th.

Repository Adventure Hooks

  • A wizard from antiquity stored the location of a dungeon housing a powerful magic item within a repository. The wizard also included hints about the existence of a separate repository that carries details about the dungeon, including its traps and undead guardians. Upon defeating the initial repository and learning the dungeon’s location, the victors make themselves known to the wizard who has since become a lich.
  • A once minor noble entered into a pact with a peer and entrusted the pact to a repository. The noble has grown considerably in political power, while the former peer has languished in obscurity. Both parties seek the repository—one to destroy the pact and the other to recover the pact to enforce it—and hire adventurers to carry out their respective wishes.

If you’ve got a favorite from Tome of Beasts 2, please let me know in the comments or elsewhere in the kobold warrens, and I’ll make sure to add it to the queue.

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The Tome Unbound series fleshes out monsters from the Tome of Beasts 2, giving GMs ways to modify the existing monsters to surprise well-prepared players or to introduce monsters to a campaign.

3 thoughts on “Tome Unbound: Repository”

  1. I’d love to see more about the storm maiden or the dancing foliage. Also interested in what treasures might be found in the various dragons’ lairs.

    1. Thanks for the suggestions, Stephen! The storm maiden and dancing foliage look like they would be a lot of fun to take on for an article. I’ll also have to give some thought to dragon hoards.

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