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D&D Ideas — Petrification

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is petrification, which we discussed in our live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST and talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of petrification, coming up in May we’ll be rocking the Patreon rewards in a trip to the Garden of Statuary with a mix of Fifth Edition content for Game Masters and players alike ready to drop right into your games. Check out more and see what $2 gets you over here. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy, by signing up here. Visit us over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel here and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss these live chats on Mondays at 8 p.m. eastern, plus our regular three videos each week where we talk about D&D and other RPGs. While we are at home following health safety guidelines we’re continuing to film our videos remotely and Live Chat Revivified streams weekdays at noon eastern with creators joining Nerdarchist Dave to talk nerdy and take questions from the live audience. With the COVID-19 pandemic situation we want to assure everyone we’re following all the guidelines and regulations, and practicing safety and preventative measures like social distancing, and we strongly urge everyone to do the same. Our partners and employees health is our No. 1 priority. Visit Coronavirus.gov for the latest news, updates and developments.

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Delving Dave’s Dungeon

This week’s theme is petrification. In honor of the topic I’m going to throw together a couple of petrification flavored ideas to drop into your D&D game.

Gorgon’s Revenge. A statue of an iron bull stands glaring angrily with a tight lipped grimace. The horns are missing. A character who succeeds on a DC 25 Wisdom (Perception) check reveals the jaw is hinged. The bull stands 5 feet at the shoulder and nearly 12 feet long. It stands on a 2 foot stone plinth. Arcane etchings wrap around the plinth. A successful DC 12 Intelligence (Arcana) check reveals the writing:

“Grasp the bull by the horns or lead him by the nose? Both are dangerous, but only one will reveal his true nature.”

Its horns and a brass ring sit in front of it on a 3 foot pedestal. There is an invisible script in Abyssal on the pedestal and detect magic reveals something is there but see invisibility is required to see it. It reads right, backward, left, backward, forward, ring up, ring down.

Once either of the horns are placed in the bull’s head or the ring in its nose they all lock in place. They can’t be removed until they’ve all been placed, which causes the mouth to open unless placed in the right sequence: Right horn then left horn, both pointing backwards, then pulled both forward to the right natural position, then the ring placed in the nose curve up and then pulled down. This will reveal a secret compartment in the plinth or a secret door somewhere. But if done incorrectly and the mouth opens, the gorgon’s breath is unleashed.

Petrifying Breath. The gorgon exhales petrifying gas in a 30 foot cone. Each creature in that area must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a target begins to turn to stone and is restrained. The restrained target must repeat the saving throw at the end of its next turn. On a success, the effect ends on the target. On a failure, the target is petrified until freed by the greater restoration spell or other magic.

Basilisk’s Egg. A large stone colored egg that can be hurled up to 20 feet away. On a hit the egg explodes covering the target in fine dust. The target must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw against being magically petrified. On a failed save, the creature begins to turn to stone and is restrained. It must repeat the saving throw at the end of its next turn. On a success, the effect ends. On a failure, the creature is petrified for 24 hours.

The egg contains a fine dust made of ground up cockatrice eggs and alchemical reagents.

Cost: 150 gp

From Ted’s Head

Petrification can be a tricky thing when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons. You have to look at it, are you playing with permanence or a temporary turning to stone? Based on this the cockatrice and the basilisk are fairly low level monsters. This gives us the ability to enjoy this concept from almost the beginning of your story. So without further ado, let’s put together an Out of the Box style encounter using this lovely thing called petrification.

Environment

The adventure, like many, starts and ends in a town setting but parts of this are going to have to take you out of town to investigate the lair of your chosen beastie.

Suggested Level

Level 1-3

D&D Beyond shows the cockatrice at challenge ½ and the basilisk is a 3, with a reduced threat basilisk as a 2. This means you can run this little adventure right from level 1 with 1-2 cocktrices in the cave or a deadlier encounter with a reduced threat basilisk. You can run it as high as 3rd to 4th level just upping the monster or monsters to make it more challenging. You can keep going higher if you like but if you do you might want to create a new monster or power up your beasties to handle a higher level party.

Treasure

The town could reward you with whatever they deem appropriate 50-100 gp times the average level of the party is a good start. Unscrupulous characters might want to steal from the merchant. Alternatively, if the merchant is convincing enough it might take the adventurers down darker roads if they are willing to go a dark path along with the gnome Giplock.

Descriptions

In the small town of Krestin, they are having a problem (as these small towns are known to have.) As usual people are going missing. Everyone knows someone who has gone missing. If you need to generate townsfolk, you can use a random name generator. The one I use is Fantasy Name Generators.

Giplock is a dabbler in many trades. This gnome, with wild unkempt hair, favors making potions. Most of his wild concoctions do not work. However, lately Giplock has stumbled onto a new recipe and has become the rage around town for anyone doing dangerous work. His potions are selling for much lower than they should given how potent they are.

See below to get details on his potions. Giplock has found a way to turn his bizarre immunity and connection to crazy creatures to his benefit. He has stashed a cave with his creature(s). When he goes to explore he breaks off pieces of the petrified beings and grinds them up to mix into his potions. He refuses to write down the recipe so he will not be caught. He is extremely friendly and concerned for the missing townsfolk and when prompted leads adventurers who happen to ask out of town in a different direction than the cave with his petrifying creature.

Complications

Petification by a basilisk can be a fatal issue at low level.

The players might find out Giplock’s plan and attempt to blackmail potions out of him or join him in his evil plan.

The players might believe Giplock’s lies over other townsfolk saying the people went in another direction and not find the cave.

For Giplock, if you have access to Hoard of the Dragon Queen you can use Jamna Gleamsilver and just add petrification immunity. Feel free to add the ability to communicate and control cockatrices and/or basilisks. If you do not have access to HotDQ you can use a commoner and add these abilities to him. Giplock is not a fighter and will not put up a fight if push comes to shove.

Potion of physical resistance

Potion, rare

This dark purple potion seems a little gritty when it is drunk. Almost as if it has sand in it or that it was not properly mixed. When you imbibe this gritty suspension you gain resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage for 1 hour.

From the Nerditor’s desk

Did you know petrification doesn’t mean a creature turns to stone in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons? That’s right, even though all the monsters who cause the condition translates into turning things to stone and both the single spell (flesh to stone) and magic item (wand of wonder) causing the condition turn creatures to stone the condition itself does not in fact cause something to transform into stone.

Petrified

• A petrified creature is transformed, along with any nonmagical object it is wearing or carrying, into a solid inanimate substance (usually stone). Its weight increases by a factor of ten, and it ceases aging.
• The creature is incapacitated (see the condition), can’t move or speak, and is unaware of its surroundings.
• Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.
• The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws.
• The creature has resistance to all damage.
• The creature is immune to poison and disease, although a poison or disease already in its system is suspended, not neutralized.

It’s a minor thing, and petrification usually turns things to stone, but not necessarily all of the time. Including this clause tells me there’s space for expanded concepts about the condition, but what? We have not seen any official material deviating from the classic turning to stone scenario.

The next closest condition is paralyzed, which is much more dangerous for the affected creature because any attack that hits a paralyzed creature is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature. Compare this to a petrified creature, which is resistant to all damage and immune to poison and disease.

What does this mean? On one hand it’s just semantics. All the effects apply whether petrification turns a creature to stone, wood, ceramic, metal or gelatin (a solid at room temperature). Being stone doesn’t even make the creature vulnerable to stone shape since the spell affects a stone object, while a petrified creature remains a creature.

There isn’t even a flesh to stone spell like earlier editions, making it nearly impossible for a player character to afflict petrification on something. (We might have a little something in our upcoming June Patreon rewards to change this, and we definitely have something in our newest store addition Hairable Ideas from the Way of the Gorgon Monastic Tradition.)

While Nerdarchists Dave and Ted focused on ways for a Dungeon Master to incorporate petrification into a 5E D&D campaign, I’m interested in how players can utilize this and if I’m honest I’m coming up short! The suspension of diseases and poisons seems the most likely use, and after planning our video about mummies and mummy lords with their Rotting Fist I could imagine adventurers intentionally petrifying an afflicted creature until a cure can be discovered.