Some Artifacts

Here are some artifacts extracted from my brain for you viewing pleasure. I've writing this for Into The Odd because that's what I run, but their fairly system neutral.

1. Mirror of Symmetry:
It's a mirror with a line of onyx inlaid down the middle. When the right invocation is spoken a target reflected in the mirror is enchanted, speaking the same invocation backwards undoes this enchantment. While under this magic any wound, ointment, paint or magic that is applied to one side of the target is also symmetrically reflected on the other side. The line of symmetry is determined by the inlaid onyx when the invocation is spoken. Any damage(or other things that apply to some part of the body) taken by the target is doubled unless care is taken to hit the target right along the line of symmetry. The effect is only skin deep fortunately for everyone who's eaten under the mirror's power.

2.The Heels:
While confidently striding in these extravagant heels, you can be anywhere within your line of sight as you damn well please. It's not teleportation, space just folds seamless, you were just walking yet somehow you ended up at the top of the tower, despite all the space between here and there. Unfortunately they make for very cumbersome footware, it's difficult to balance on these stilettos in even even on even surfaces, and due to their height you'll probably need help getting back up. Your going to have to make Dex saves to keep standing, and Will saves to stand proud for the Heels to work their magic.

3. The Heterofox:
Wait, you a creature, what are you doing in this list? Damn foxes. Either way, the Heterofox is a fox black wire fur that will follow you and whisper sweet blasphemies into your ear at night. If threatened it will jump into someone's mouth and hide under the tongue or between the teeth, shrinking to the size of a flee and flattening paper thin to do so. While it will try to make it seem like your blaspheming, it's really bad at mimicking other people's voices and can only clumsily force your jaw up and down. It knows a great amount of history, all of which pertains to religious conflicts, schisms and the minutia of differences in doctrine. It's willing to share, in fact it's difficult to get it to shut up about it. It has a sibling which it will always avoid talking about. Other than that it's a fox.

4. Spherering Marble:
Everything within a couple meters of this marble gradually becomes more and more round and spherical over time. Rock gets smoothed like river stones, smooth stones become more symmetrical until they are perfectly round. People get fatter and have softer features if they carry it for a couple of weeks, and luckily usually stop carrying it around to see the latter stages. Rumor has it that it has something to do with the Spherical Wizards. The marble is in a round bag with other marbles, so you can't quite tell which one is the magic one.

5. Seeing Nail:
If you shove this nail into you eyeball, it will grant you normal human eyesight from the end of the nail you didn't shove in there. It looks kind of cool, so I guess it's an upgrade.

6. Sigil of Malice:
With this symbol tattooed on your tongue, you will always be able to say how and why you hate someone, regardless of any languages barriers, ambiguities word choice, deafness, muteness or drunkenness. This will be one thing that you will always be able to communicate clearly and accurately. There is also an analogous Sigil of Love, Sigil of Confusion and Sigil of Restrooms. All of these sigils are exclusive to each other.

7. Remembering Boots:
When you walk in these boots you can cast your spirit to see, hear and smell a place where these boots have been. Roll as many d6s as you want, add them together and that's how many days worth of travel back you can cast your soul. Your able to instantly come back into your body unless you rolled an amount greater than your will, in which case your going to have to find your way back to your body. While your soul is cast back your body is in a trance state that continues walking indefinitely.

8. Spiritual Bindings:
These are large heavy and metal bindings for keeping buildings in place. Except their intangible and invisble without some form Wizard vision or second sight. They can be used to spiritually link two things, if your able to get them on and nail them in, but once there in there nothing will get them out. Rumor has it that the country up to the north is covered in these things, you know the one with bears roaming the streets and the regular bathing.

9. Pain Inversion Suit:
When wearing this garment, all pain is inverted into pleasure. Reduce incoming damage by 1 and gain complete immunity to effects that are purely pain based.(Why yes, I am literally stealing someone's idea wholesale, but have you previously considered that this could exist in D&D? Didn't think so.)

10. An Unsettling Garden Gnome:
All living things within a mile radius of the Gnome will sense it's presence and want to avoid it. All within 30' of it will have the that feeling you get when your next to a cliff and you can't help but imagining how easy it would be to fall down, except instead of a cliff it's the Gnome and instead of falling the action you can't help imagine in fear and curiosity is breaking this ceramic thing. Sleeping in it's presence requires a Will save.

11. Bound Key:
This key will never loose it's owner. If the owner is somehow stolen or lost from the key, they will find their way back to the key. Trading or giving away the key does transfer ownership thought. Your not sure but you think the current owner is a ghost.

12. White Tuning Fork:
When this tuning fork is struck against a surface and makes a sound, that surface will go invisible. If the surface is scratched or involved in any activity for 1d6 hours the invisibility will dissipate. It can be used on people however they will be blind while the invisibility covers their eyes. Closing your eyes while striking the Fork will allow prevent the blindness, but it will leave your eyes still visible. In the the room where the Fork is found there will be several invisible objects with vague silhouettes outlined by the dust that's settled on them. 

Very Smug Cat

A couple days back on a Google+ I stated that I was going to make a Glog cat class to accompany the noble Very Good Dog, the furious Very Angry Goose and Witch Coven, who isn't technically affiliated with the previous two on thumb-less adventures. I made it, workshoped it a bit on discord and just sat on it for several days. Speaking of which, thank you Chis Wilson, valzi, Type1Ninja, Skerples, AuratTwilight, Tomes and The Lawful Neutral for helping out with that (I think that's everyone (I'm not sure if this is the right etiquette for this sort of thing(I am however sure that nesting sentinces this way is terrible))). Fair warning, this has not been play tested, so I'm not sure how fun this class is.

Very Smug Cat

Equipment: None

A: Cat, Nine Lives, Tongues or Puss in Boots, Purr

B: Reflective Eyes, Opportunist 

C: Purr 2, Slip

D:A Cat can look at a King

For each Cat template you get +1 Stealth. For each 2 templates you possess you get +1 Initiative.

You generally shouldn't be able to multiclass with this class or get it after the first template without some ridiculous shenanigans.

Cat: 

You're a cat. You don't have thumbs to use tools and don't have an inventory(carrying anything large enought to take up inventory slots encumbers you). Your movement is 10 (Human movement is 12). You can bite and claw at people for 1d6+STR damage. You have excellent night vision and sensitive whiskers to sense what you can't see. Your able to climb shear surfaces as long as there's something for your claws to latch onto. Fall damage you receive is greatly reduced if you have time to flip yourself onto your feet. Getting pulled on the tail is the worst. 

In character creation reroll your Dexterity scores and take the highest of the two. Your HP is 6 and won't increase from that amount.

Nine Lives:

Unlike other characters you die at 0 HP but have 9 lives to spend before truly dying. When you would die, instead barely make it  with a nasty but badass scar and one less life. If the death is a continuous danger to your health, you get out of that danger as part of loosing that life. So if you drown, than you would wash up on some shore with one less life rather than repeatedly die until all your lives are depleted.

Scars include things like poked out eyes, torn ears and seared tails. Every scar you have adds a +1 bonus for saves against your Purr ability.

Each of your lives also counts as a soul and can be spent like one without any negative impact on the others.

Cat got your Tongue:
While you aren't able to innately speak if you are able to swallow a tongue you steal the voice of whoever's tongue you got. If you got only a bit of a tongue than you have only a bit of their voice and it will sound like really weird almost understandable meows. Since everyone knows cats can't speak, people will rationalize the sound as coming from somewhere else or consciously ignore it while it subliminally enters their mind. The sufficiently mindful or paranoid targets can get a wisdom save to tell that something suspicious is going on. Children, magic users, beings that never experienced cats and other people who don't know that cats can't talk aren't fooled by this.

You start the game with one random tongue from the Tongue Table.

Puss in Boots:
As everyone knows that cats don't wear clothes, if you wear clothes you aren't recognized as a cat. You are also now able to walk around on two feet, and can use tools as gracefully and elegantly as possible for someone who doesn't have thumbs. You are able to imitate speech and be understood as long as nobody stops to think about the sounds coming out of your mouth as sounds rather than words. Children, magic users, beings that never experienced cats and other people who don't know that cats can't wear clothes aren't fooled by this.

Purr:

When you purr you cast charm person that only works if the command is to feed, pet, adore or otherwise pamper you.

Reflective Eyes:

Your able to see spirits, demons and other invisible things, this works like Wizard Vision without the downsides.

Opportunist:
Whenever you get a situational bonus to an Attack roll (surprise, evasion, etc.) you deal an additional +1d6 damage.

Purr 2:
If you lay or sit on someone under the effects of your purr they are are not able to move until you get off them. If you so will it, you can also graciously bestow cure light wounds to someone your sitting on once per day.

Slip:
Once a day, if no one is directly looking at you, you are able to escape from an enclosed space regardless of plausibility.

A Cat can look at a King:

You are immune to differences in social standing. Regardless of if your speaking to a beggar a king or a god, you'll always be treated as roughly an equal to however your talking to.


Tongue Table: D8

1. The voice of a small child.
2. The voice of a awkward youth.
3. The voice of a kind grandmother.
4. The voice of a strict mother or teacher.
5. The voice of some nobody.
6. The voice of a sensual sort.
7. The voice of a brute.
8. The voice of a foreigner.

Edit: I've spruced up the presentation of this post and added some small additions to the class. The first is a healing ability to Purr 2 from the suggestion of Michael Thompson and the second is a starting Tongue table, which I realize is needed the same way random starting spells are needed.

New Spell/Arcanum: Chimeric Exchange

Years ago I came across this thread where people brain-stormed magic systems. And one of them stuck in my brain for years now, accumulating more details and thoughts. So I'm making it into a specific spell with a place in the world. The entry was this one:
"43. Body Parts
Inspired by a post in the "Why do wizards wear robes?" thread ...
People can't do magic. In fact nobody can really "do" magic, but creatures from other realms have properties that could be described as magical - and those properties are a part of their body. 
An air elemental flies on wings of lightning more manueverable than a hummingbird and faster than an arrow. A salamander has arms literally made of fire, that can stretch to fill an entire courtyard. And if you had those parts, you could do it too.

Not by stealing the parts and stitching them on (although that would be a possible magic system itself); that's not how the ritual works. But you can trade them, and many creatures are willing to make that trade. For them, the properties humans have are magical - things like being able to stand still when the wind blows or touch things without burning them. 

Sometimes, the parts you get in return are a straight-up substitute, but often they're insubstantial, or entirely different. So senior wizards tend to have a lot of prosthetics (hence the voluminous robes to cover up how strange they start looking). A master mage might have false legs (moves around by flying), one arm made of shadow, no tongue (communicates via writing and an assistant), and lives off heat from fires instead of eating food. Making the right choice is crucial - woe to the mage who trades a unique body part for something worthless. Assistants are always useful - while you can't trade their parts for more of your own, you can convince them to make the trades you need and use the resulting abilities on your behalf."

Chimeric Exchange

Level whatever spell

An object similar to a Chinese finger trap, but metal and not woven. (if it's an object)

As a spell the caster selects two parties. If the these two parties come to an agreement, than they can trade body parts between themselves with the same ease that item are exchanged. The deal is finalized with a hand shake (or equivalent custom that both parties except). 

As an item, it works the same except negotiations don't need to be identified before hand and the deal is sealed by both parties inserting an appendage into one of the wholes.

• For it to work, both parties need to agree to the exchange.
• The spell doesn't distinguish between willing agreement and coercion.
• Knowing the specifics of what your giving up and gaining isn't required.
• The exchange can be one-sided. For example, the spell allows you to give someone an extra eye without taking something from them, if both of you agree.
• You can trade goods and services that aren't body parts. This is equivalent to a one-sided exchange as far as the spell is concerned. In the above example, you can demand compensation of 10 gold for giving away your eye.
• As a spell, the caster doesn't need to be one of the two parties but they can be.
• Once an agreement is reached, the tendrils of etherealness appear and remove the agreed upon body parts and attach them to their new owner. While this is happening both parties are effectively petrified.
• If interrupted, both parties are unpetrified and die slowly from blood loss or immediately depending on which organs are exposed. If you were exchanging an eye, you'd probably survive with bandages and will eventually need a patch or glass eye to cover it up. If you were switching hearts, than you're screwed.
• The organs can be placed either where the agreement specifys or what makes most sense if not specified.
• After the spell does it's magic, a party may die if it suddenly doesn't have a vital organ. If you gave someone lungs without receiving some in return, you're going to start suffocating from not having anything to breath with.
• There are not scars or stitches left from this spell.
• Organs that are gained through this spell kind of become part of the person, kind of don't.
• It takes anywhere from a few weeks to a life time to get used to new body parts, based on myriad of factors.
• Younger people generally get used to it quicker for example.
• Beings changed by this spell do not breed true. Procreation results in the offspring using genetic code of whoever the organs originally belonged too. If I sell my testicles or ovaries, it means that anyone born with them are biologically my children.

You can ignore all the bullet-points if want to as the spell description is enought to go off of. The bullet-points are additional ideas that have accumulated over time as the ideas has bounced around in my head. 

World-Building Implications and Possiblities

• Wizards hide under large cloaks and big hats to hide their weird transmogrified bodies.
• Wizards that don't use this spell still do it to maintain the mystery.
• There are physically imposing opponents that none the less have great weaknesses. 
• Due to trading his liver for the strength of ten men, this person has to be vary careful with his diet.
• It's common knowledge that deals with wizards is full of peril.
• A variety of hybrid monsters have some interesting story behind them.
•  The Manticore is one of those bastards who demands you give him your best physical features on threat of eating you, than proceeds to eat you afterwards anyway.
• People want him dead for the obvious reasons, but other chimeric mages really want him dead for besmirching their image.
• Manticore is also an incredibly petty bastard.
• When the horse nomads came from the steppe to attack our lands, we we're amazed by how the horse and rider moved as one. To counteract whatever sorcery they use to achieve this, we have merged together our strongest steeds and most greatest warriors to produce the centaurs. It is a great sacrifice and those who under go it are noble men indeed.
• Nobody has the heart to tell the centaur's nation that the magic used by steppe nomads is known as "riding on horseback from the age of three".
• The Sphinx is also a lion-bodied human who eats people. However unlike fucking Manticore, she doesn't eat people from her country of not-Egypt and targets not-Greece instead. 
• There is conversely a lion somewhere who is enjoying having opposable thumbs while Sphinx out there eating people.
• Harpies are a group of birds that wanted human faces.
• You may wonder who would enought beings to agree that the Chimera should exist like it does. Don't, really don't want to know why this came about.
• Hybrid creatures that you want to be (un)natural without this spell could still exist, but I would make them "less hybridy". For example merfolk could be made either more mammalian, by making their tail more dolphin-like, or more fish-like like all those creepy mermaid illustrations.
• Different cultures can have different opinions on this magic.
• In one place this magic is despised and reviled. Mages who use it are assumed to steal the organs that they gain from it.
• In another culture the the practice is allowed and has become a part of fashion. Blue eyes are in season right now. Generally only the wealthy have the opportunity to mess around like this.
• In some places they choose a champion who receives the best organs from willing donors to represent the entire community in a sport or a war.
• The donors generally swap out organs with the champion and don't die from this.
• Some kings, priests and heroes have have lived beyond mortal years by swapping out bits of themselves Ship of Theseus style.
• In places the spell is known the slave trade includes the consideration of person's organs as having separate worth.
• In places that the spell is not demonized there is variation in whether or not it's ok to change you body shape to something nonhuman.
• The desperate will give away parts of themselves to survive or pay a dept.
• Artists would give up their painting hands to pay for things, having to rebuild the muscle memory from scratch.
• A teenager sell their face for an ugly one and a cold bag of coins.
• Spies could be anywhere and they can hide under anyone's face.
• They often don't but the possibility is still there.
• Grandpa lost his leg in a battle, so he could support the family he secretly went to a witch with a goat. She replaced the stump with the goat's hind leg and accepted the rest of the animal as payment for services rendered. Grandpa is deeply ashamed of having a goat leg and hides it from everybody. While he still walks with a hobble, at least he's able to support his family.
• The witch Matilda has cat ears instead of human ears. She replaced her ears with those of her familiar's back when she was an novice and has worn them ever sense. Even thought human ears make Matilda's familiar look kind of silly, he's accepted this because it makes Matilda so happy to have them. 
• That won't stop him from complaining about it thought, Matilda is wanted for heresy in several countries and they could use a lower profile.
• The dragon Zorsass has is the greatest opera singer in the city. They achieved this by trading away most of their body for a smaller and sleeker human form, the best voice in the world, large powerful lungs, a fully staffed mansion and enought bribes to become a member in the most exclusive of clubs.
• If encounter someone with dragon organs in the city, they probably once belonged to Zorsass.
• Other dragons are baffled and disturbed by Zorsass's life choices. Best to avoid the topic.
• As a dragon Zorsass has not spent a penny of his or her horde, they say that it's hidden in the depths of the dungeon.
• Zorsass may look fairly human, but underneath they are still a dragon, and could easily tear you in half with elegant grace. Will also lounge around like a dragon when guests aren't over.
• PCs can sell the random mutations they receive from chaos magic and potions as treasure.
• Clever PCs can improve their stats with negotiations.
• Losing your humanity in the pursuit of power has never been so literal.
• On the flip side of the last point, beware the Cat with Hands.

You could have a story based around solving someone's gender dysphoria by going on a quest to find people to trade away the body parts with. However I'm not sure how to handle that respectfully. Depending on how you handle it, this spell could lead to some dark places or mythical tales or gonzo shenanigans with puns.

New Spell/Arcanum: Curse Flesh

Curse Flesh

Level 1 Spell

A needle (in item form)

Upon casting this spell, or inserting this needle into living tissue, a curse is hidden within.

• The curse will lie dormant in the tissue until the tissue is pierced or cut open. When this happens, the curse will inflict itself upon whoever open the wound for it. Roll a random curse table to see what the curse does.
• The spirits of objects can be cursed if there's no one else around to take it.
• Magical arts that rely on the body like muscle wizardry or stuff involving chakras are impeded by the curse like the spiritual blood clot. 
• Flesh that has curses within it becomes is corrupted in a variety of ways. If the curse is removed, and the tissue is still living, the corruption will slowly fade away. If it is dead, than there is close to no way of getting it out.
• Corrupted flesh becomes more sickly, and constantly irritated by something.
• Corrupted meat is spoiled, foul smelling and has all the nutritional value of food poisoning.
• Corrupted bone, hide and so forth becomes infuriating to work with. It will be too easy to rip, and to stubborn to cut somehow simultaneously. No matter how much it's ground there will always be uneven chunks. Any vessel or pouch it's made with will have holes and leaks that won't be noticed until it's too late.
• While it's not necessary, it's difficult to cast this spell without a huge amount of expletives if your in bad mood. You may need to make a Will save if that matters.
• Methods of cleansing, curse lifting and disenchanting all work against this spell as long as it's not done by the hands of someone who would willingly cast this spell upon themselves.

World-building implications based around this spell existing.

• Anti-relics: The exact opposite of saintly relics. Both are used in necromantic magics, while easier to find then relics, anti-relics can still be a hassle.
• It's common knowledge that wizards need to be beaten with sticks. The exact reason why isn't always clarified, but everyone knows that wizards need to be hit with sticks.
• Some believe that they need to be hit with their own staves, others say they need to be oak and wrapped in mistletoe, others yet say you need planks used in the construction of a gallows. It's all very confusing and wizards find it upsetting.
• There are treasures that everyone knows the location of but none is able to get because it's stuck inside the stomach of a madman who has cursed their stomach millions upon thousands of times.
• Vaults where the cursed dead are stored, far away from where they could do anyone any harm.
• Complex contraptions that are used to indirectly pierce open sorcerers and the blighted iron spike that result from this.
• It's possible to bullshit your way out of being eaten by claiming that you have a curse upon your flesh. 

Snarvels

The only reason this exists is because I thought "Suddenness" sounds like a funny name for an attribute. Following that, "Spikiness" and "Snarf-ability" also sound amusing. From that I extrapolated to the only logical conclusion for a game system. Be warned, this text has not been written with something so trivial as play-ability in mind. Rather, it is meant to amuse you for like a couple seconds or so.

Snarvels

So the stats rolled 1d20 across ares:

Suddenness(SudS): Roll under to do things suddenly. Roll over to not get shot when a police officer and/or highwaymen says “now don’t make any sudden movements”.

Spikiness(SpkS): The amount of damage done on full body contact with you. Reckless touchings cause half SpkS damage. Gentle touching causes like 1 or somethings.

Snarf-abilitys(SnfS): Roll under SnfS to end up in people’s mouths, stomachs or lungs. If you don’t want to be inside in someone’s mouth for some weird reason, roll overs.

Sarcasms(SarS): Roll under or people take what you say literally. There is no not rolling this.

SarS also serves the vital function prohibiting snarvels of low sarcasms rating from being too sarcastics. Sthus allowing potential players to argue about whether or not their characters are too sarcastic, instead of playing this.

Such when a snarvels takes damage, the damage goes to the snarvels favorite stat, for God hates.

So each sentence spoken in character must start with an s and end with an s. Sis the most important rules. Sif you don't follow this rule, then any enjoyment you gain from this game is badwrongfun, therefor not deposit-able in any fun banks.

Secretly the goal of all Snarvels is world dominations. Since ever, everyone who interacted with Snarvels, knows.

Snarvels do not get singular tenses. Sthey don’t deserve it’s.

Snarvels despise the letter S.