Most of the adventuring gear presented here has a specific application that makes it useful. Many of these items also lend themselves to being used in other creative ways.
Bell and Whistle: A bell is useful for setting an alarm, while blowing a whistle lets you alert comrades at a greater distance.
Bestiary: Each of these books offers lore about a single combination of creature origin and type, such as fey humanoids. When you fail a monster knowledge check related to a creature with this origin and type, you can reroll the check by spending one hour studying the bestiary. You must use the second result.
Block, Tackle, and Winch: After you attach this set of simple machines to a solid surface, you can pass a rope through it to triple the weight you can lift, pull, or drag on the other end of the rope.
Caltrops: You can drop these pyramid-shaped metal spikes into a square adjacent to you (or gather them back up) as a standard action. Any creature moving on the caltrops must either treat the square as difficult terrain or become slowed (save ends). Creatures that are running can use only the latter option.
Camouflaged Clothing: While you are not moving, these garments allow you to blend into your surroundings by granting you a +2 bonus to Stealth checks.
Candle Clock: Lighting one of these wax tapers allows you to count hours by observing how far the candle has burned down against marks made in the wax. Each clock lasts for 8 hours and is consumed after use. Candle clocks are typically sold in pairs to help synchronize timing between separate groups.
Chalk and Slate: Use chalk to write on dungeon walls to help find your way back out or to leave messages for those who follow. Drawing on a slate lets you communicate simple ideas when you need to remain silent or work around a language barrier.
Charlatan’s Kit: This kit includes caltrops, a crook-eye, disguise kit, gambler’s gear, gambling cheats, and a glass cutter. Many purchasers supplement this kit with Goodnight Tincture (see below).
Chirurgeon’s Tools: This surgical gear includes brass wedges that can be heated to cauterize wounds and jars of leeches for bleeding patients. When you use these tools to treat an ally who has contracted a disease caused by an attack from a creature, that ally gains a +2 bonus to the next check he or she makes against the disease.
Cold-Weather Clothing: Wearing these furs gives you a +2 bonus to Endurance checks against cold weather. Wearing the snowshoes included in this gear allows you to ignore difficult terrain caused by snow and ice, but reduces your speed by 2.
Crook-Eye: You can look around corners with the angled mirrors in this leather-bound wooden tube. You grant combat advantage and take a –2 penalty to Perception checks while using a crook-eye, but you can trace your line of sight from a square adjacent to you.
Crowbar: Wielding this metal pry bar gives you a +2 bonus to Strength checks to break open locked doors or containers.
Dagger Boots: These spike-toed footwear help you kick notches into a surface you are climbing. While wearing dagger boots, you gain +2 bonus to Athletics checks to climb but take a –2 penalty to Stealth checks to move silently.
Delver’s Kit: This kit includes a crowbar, ten iron spikes, iron manacles, a miner’s helmet, two sacks, surveyor’s gear, and a ten-foot pole. Many purchasers supplement this kit with clinging essence of fire.
Desert Clothing: Wearing this mask and loose-fitting robes gives you a +2 bonus to Endurance checks to resist heat or to avoid the effects of persistent dust or sun glare.
Devotee’s Kit: This kit includes two candle clocks, chalk and slate, chirurgeon’s tools, a doctrinal book, and regalia. Many purchasers supplement this kit with holy water (see below). Disguise Kit: Using these cosmetics and prosthetics gives you a +2 bonus to Bluff checks to pass off your disguises.
Doctrinal Book: Each of these volumes holds lore pertaining to a certain deity. After a failed Religion check associated with this deity or its followers, you can attempt the check again after spending 1 hour studying the doctrinal book. You must use the second result.
Footpads: While wearing these felt soles over your normal footwear, you gain a +1 bonus to Stealth checks to move quietly.
Gambler’s Gear: These dice, cards, knucklebones, or diviner’s sticks are necessary equipment for games of chance.
Gambling Cheats: This marked gambling gear gives you a +2 bonus to Thievery checks to cheat while gambling.
Glass Cutter: By affixing this tool to a piece of glass, you can quickly and silently etch the surface and create a round hole large enough to fit your arm through.
Hidden Item Compartment: While wearing this cunningly crafted piece of apparel, you can conceal an object on yourself that weighs 1 pound or less. You gain a +2 bonus to Stealth checks against Perception checks to notice the item.
Investigation Gear: This bag of equipment includes containers made from different materials, brushes, dusts, tweezers, picks, probes, a magnifying glass, ink and quills, parchment, and a small journal. You gain a +2 bonus to Perception checks when you use the kit to search an area for specific details.
Iron Filings and Lodestone: Watching for disruptions in the patterns that iron filings normally form around a lodestone can help you perceive strong magical forces. When you fail an Arcana check to detect magic on an object or a location, you can attempt the check again after spending 1 hour spreading and studying the iron filings. You must use the second result.
Iron Spikes: Hammering one of these blunt, wide metal wedges between a door and its frame requires a standard action and adds 5 to the DC of checks to open the door. If nothing but a spike is holding a door shut, the base DC to open it is 15. Spiking a door is noisy; each time you drive in a spike, creatures within 20 squares can make a Perception check with a +5 bonus to hear you.
Jar of Glowworms: The tiny insects in the jar create dim light in the jar’s square.
Manacles: When you put these shackles on a helpless or otherwise incapacitated creature, that creature is restrained until it escapes or is freed. The Acrobatics check to escape from these restraints is against a hard DC of the creature’s level. The Strength check to break the manacles is against a DC that depends on the quality of the manacles, whether iron (DC 24) or adamantine (DC 31).
Map Case: This waterproof leather tube can be unrolled to form a writing surface. The maps you make with the tools inside, which include parchment, charcoal, ink, and strings with distance markings, can be sold to others interested in your discoveries.
Miner’s Helmet: You can attach a lantern, a sun rod, or some other lighting device to the forehead reflector of this headgear to provide hands-free illumination.
Regalia: In social situations where appearances and wealth matter, wearing regalia gives you a +2 bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate checks.
Sack: You can carry up to 100 pounds in one of these leather or canvas drawstring bags.
Sage’s Kit: This kit includes a bestiary, a hidden item compartment, investigation gear, iron filings and lodestone, a jar of glowworms, and a writing case.
Snares: When you use these baited tripwire traps, you gain a +2 bonus to Nature checks or Dungeoneering checks to forage, but each check requires 2 hours instead of 1 hour.
Signal Ammunition: These arrows, sling bullets, or crossbow bolts incorporate sunrod materials that ignite when the ammunition is fired, and are useful for coordinating maneuvers or signaling for help.
Surveyor’s Gear: With this plumb line, measuring chain with pins, and slate for recording notes, you gain a +2 bonus to Perception checks to search for secret doors or hidden rooms, but using the gear takes at least 5 minutes.
Ten-Foot Pole: Prodding dangerous-looking things with a ten-foot pole lets you trigger many traps from the safety of 2 squares away.
Traveler’s Kit: This kit includes camouflaged clothing, cold-weather clothing, desert clothing, a map case, five pieces of signal ammunition, and snares. Many purchasers supplement this kit with icening (see below).
Writing Case: This leather case holds a blank journal, loose sheets of parchment, an ink stone and ink brushes, a blotter, quills, and penknives.
Goodnight Tincture
This liquid is dissolved into the food or drink of an unsuspecting victim to knock the subject unconscious. It is said that street vendors in the City of Brass spread fearful tales about how the city’s taverns dose their patrons with goodnight tincture to sell sweet water to visitors.
Greater Sovereign Glue
This ultimate adhesive is stored in a special vial. Greater sovereign glue can be applied directly to bond two objects together or thrown at an enemy to keep that creature stuck in place.
Holy Water
It is thought that the secret of making holy water was given to mortals by the gods. Most members of good and unaligned faiths see holy water as a symbol of the deities’ common origin in the Astral Sea, despite the many differences in religious iconography that have emerged since the deities carved out their individual dominions. Adventurers who have little time for devotion still value holy water for its effectiveness in harming the traditional enemies of the non-evil gods.
Aside from its effect on undead and demons, holy water acts as normal water in all ways. It can be distinguished from normal water with a successful Arcana check or Religion check.
Icening
A now-deceased deity of winter carved her dominion from the Astral Sea with a single snowflake—when she exposed it to the formless stuff of creation, the silvery material took on the snowflake’s rigid perfection, forming a crystalline structure. This alchemical formula creates a seed crystal whose shape resembles that primal snowflake, and it can influence normal water in the same way.
Gear up and play Curse of Strahd to Ravenloft I6 as a One-Shot Adventure
