Bewitched Fetishes

Once, in the ancient times, in the most impervious and secret places in the frozen forests of the Western Lands, the ancestral men of Kragan dwelled.
Their warlocks, feared and respected, created fetishes imbued with magic to amaze their tribe and show its members their power. To the eyes of these ignorant natives these powers were astonishing and unbelievable. But even if we, scholars of the arcane arts, know well that those were nothing but trivial tricks in respect to our art, for those people that was the maximum expression of their rudimental power.
In fact, even with the use of their powers, they could nothing against the men from the south, arrived to ravage and pillage their land and kill their people. The fetishes, then, quickly became nothing but trophies and curiosities. Some were sold to collectors, other were used or studied. Alas, most of them were lost, or scattered through the world.
Every now and then one of these fetishes is found, usually in the strangest and most unexpected places. Between some noble’s collection of antiquities, in the hands of a bandit, in the darkest recesses of dungeons inhabited by goblins, in a sealed old crate found floating in the middle of a lake.

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Sometimes all you want is to make your players’ characters find an interesting magic item that, however, is of no great power or of immediate and predictable use. We are sick of all those rings of protection!

Enter the Bewitched Fetishes!
With this table you can quickly create little magical items with unique effects, sometimes even negative, to be used with creativity and cleverness.

For example, changing your rival’s fantastic stew taste with that of a rotting fish. With some luck, he will vomit all over the rich merchant with whom he was going to sign that contract you wanted to sign yourself!

Effects are usually limited to the Fetish user or to a certain quantity of matter (an object or material) and, to activate a Fetish power, it is necessary to perform a ritual.

To create a Bewitched Fetish roll on the following random tables:

1. Fetish (d66*)
What kind of object the Fetish is?

11	Skull of a newborn
12	Feather
13	Leather strip
14	Small roll of desiccated skin
15	Scalp
16	Hollow bone full of leaves
21	Lizard's tail
22	Bag of dust
23	Glass eye
24	Vial of liquid
25	Vial of dust
26	Woman's rib
31	Desiccated cat's head
32	Toad's skeleton
33	Wooden stick
34	Wizard's ashes
35	Bone pendant
36	Glass pendant
41	Iron pendant
42	Lock of hair
43	Mummified hand
44	Small desiccated heart
45	Stuffed songbird
46	Bottle
51	Iron plate
52	Wooden symbol
53	Piece of polished glass
54	Clay cup
55	Statuette
56	Coin
61	Pottery fragment
62	Bat's wing
63	Candle
64	String coil
65	Ribbon
66	Bowl

2. Bewitched Appearance (d66*)
How do the magic imbued in the Fetish shows itself?

11	Painted or engraved arcane symbols
12	Slight iridescence
13	Sparkles in the hot
14	Sparkles in the cold
15	Hot when touched
16	Cold when touched
21	Light electricity shocks when touched
22	Strong electricity shocks when touched
23	Has a magnetic field
24	Has a gravitational field
25	Slightly vibrates
26	Buzzes
31	Produces noise when moved
32	Makes ears ring
33	Provokes light headaches
34	Radiates candle light
35	Does not makes sounds
36	Unusually light
41	Unusually heavy
42	Shines where touched
43	Leaves a luminous trail
44	Does not has a shadow
45	Exhales smoke or steam where touched
46	Emanates an unusual bad smell
51	Emanates an unusual good scent
52	Makes you feel observed
53	Burns the surfaces it touches
54	Freezes the surfaces it touches
55	Levitates of few millimeters
56	Makes you hear unintelligible whispers
61	Calls by name who looks at it
62	Geometric lines of pulsing light
63-66	No particular sign

3. Activation Ritual (d20)
What ritual you must perform to release the Fetish powers?

1	Break it or smash it
2	Set it on fire
3	Immerse it in water
4	Swallow it
5	Spill it with your own blood
6	Press it in your hand
7	Throw it in the air
8	Pronounce a word
9	Pronounce a formula
10	Drop it
11	Inhale it
12	Spill it with salted water
13	Wound yourself with it
14	Hit yourself with it
15	Chew it
16	Stare intensely at it
17	Have the intention
18	Spit over it
19	Touch it in certain points
20	Roll again and combine the result

Items from Nepal, New Guinea, Africa, Philippines, Timor, Persia, Iran, Ethiopia, Thailand, and Bohemia.
da Becky's Gallery

4. Number of Spells (d8)
How many spells are imbued in the Fetish?

1-5	One spell
6-7	Two spells
8	Three spells

Performing the ritual all the spells imbued in the Fetish will be always and immediately activated. All spell effects last 10 minutes.

5. Activation Distance (d6)
From what distance can you bewitch matter (an object or material)?

1-2	In view
3-6	Touch

5. Spells (1-3d100)
What effect is released when the ritual is performed?

1	A knot is untied, no matter how tight it is
2	A small object of your choice levitates
3	A small quantity of water boils
4	A small quantity of water evaporates
5	A small quantity of water freezes
6	A small quantity of water sublimates
7	A small sized object becomes incandescent
8	A small sized object is teleported within the user field of vision
9	A small sized object liquefies
10	All the user's hair fall
11	An incredibly tight knot is tied
12	A medium sized object levitates at few centimeters from the floor
13	An object changes colour
14	An object doesn't make any noise
15	An object of food changes its taste
16	An object of small or medium size becomes slimy and slippery as a soap bar
17	An object of small or medium size becomes sticky like glue
18	An object of small or medium size becomes very heavy
19	An object of small or medium size becomes very light
20	An object or food changes its smell
21	A small or medium sized object becomes invisible to whoever is beyond 1d4 meters from it
22	A small sized object becomes icy cold
23	One of the user's five senses is extremely sharpened
24	The user appears to the sight as a humanoid mist
25	The user call an object of his choice towards him
26	The user attracts objects made of a material of his choice
27	The user becomes blind
28	The user becomes mute
29	The user can calm a small or medium sized animal
30	The user can carry a single object of medium size as if it had no weight
31	The user can cause a creature to become sleepy
32	The user can change his body odour at his choice
33	The user can change his hair length, quantity and colour
34	The user can change his voice
35	The user can change the color of a part of his body (hair, eyes, skin etc.)
36	The user can create a rubbery fist-sized sphere of light
37	The user can find the exact location of the nearest secret passage
38	The user can hear noises at great distances
39	The user can jump up to 3 meters of height
40	The user can levitate for no more than 1d4 meters of height. If he lands, the effect is dispelled
41	The user can peacefully call to himself an animal of medium size
42	The user can peacefully call to himself an animal of small size
43	The user can perceive the vital signs of those around him
44	The user can see any recent trace or mark, even if invisible to the eye
45	The user can see in the dark
46	The user can see through clothes
47	The user can shoot webs from his wrists
48	The user can taste flavours at a distance
49	The user can understand when he's being lied
50	The user cannot taste any taste
51	The user casts a Spell (randomly determined at the Fetish creation)
52	The user causes light shocks when touching something
53	The user dies, but resuscitates after 10 minutes with no harm whatsoever
54	The user becomes as little as a cat
55	The user does not cast a shadow
56	The user does not feel any harm
57	The user does not feel tired
58	The user does not make noises of any kind
59	The user does not need to breath
60	The user does not need to sleep for 1d6 days
61	The user feels a sharp and constant general pain
62	The user generates a gravitational field
63	The user generates a magnetic field
64	The user generates a shockwave that hurls away any object or creature in 1d6 meters without causing any direct harm
65	The user generates noises when moving
66	The user gets drunk
67	The user gets thermal vision
68	The user is no longer drunk, or hangover symptoms are erased
69	The user is paralised
70	The user is sated and quenched for 1d6 days and does not need to eat or drink
71	The user knows the exact length of something
72	The user leaves a light trail when moving
73	The user materialises the image of an medium sized object of his choice in front of himself. The object has no weight or consistency, but it can be manipulated as if it was real
74	The user passes out
75	The user repels a creature of a species or race of his choice
76	The user repels any creature, be it human or not
77	The user repels any insect
78	The user repels objects made of a material of his choice
79	The user sees in black and white
80	The user starts convulsing
81	The user starts to sneeze without interruption
82	The user starts yawning without being able to stop
83	The user transforms to a random anthropomorphous creature of the same sex and size
84	The user transforms to an anthropomorphous creature of his choice of the same sex and size
85	The user's body becomes sticky as glue
86	The user's body becomes slimy as a toad
87	The user's body burns the surfaces it touches
88	The user's body can bend and squeeze itself freely
89	The user's body froze the surfaces it touches
90	The user's body gets covered by bark
91	The user's body gets covered by feathers
92	The user's body gets covered by hair
93	The user's body gets covered by scales as a snake or a fish
94	The user's body glows where touched
95	The user's body is surrounded by a light mist
96	The user's body starts to glow like a candle
97	The user's dominant hand gets swapped
98	The user's nails become indestructible claws
99	The user's voice has an echo
100	The user's hair grow down to his knees

* d66: roll two six-sided dice: the first die is the tens from 10 to 60, the second is the units from 1 to 6

† Download the tables in PDF format †

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† Try the Generator! †

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The initial idea was give to me after the Numenera Cyphers. I found them very interesting given their particularity of having strange and not immediately useful powers. I thought it would be fun to do something similar for a fantasy setting.

Hope you like them!

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