The Sands of Madness - Your Hopes and Sanity Run Away

In the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons, there are many strange and wondrous magical items that an adventurer can come across. Some are classic, some are bizarre, and some are even cursed. Each can be used by Game Masters to advance their story, or more fun, bamboozle and trip up their players.

With magic items, I like to turn the familiar and shift its use. Paying for something with a coin that takes the item's value, but the coin returns to its owner will be pretty damning on the economy. On a similar axis, something that tells time that takes time away is a particularly fun and terrifying idea.

Sands of Madness

To the untrained eye, this hourglass looks like any other. It is a little over fifteen inches tall and is set in very dense, heavy glass. If dropped or thrown on the ground, the glass will not shatter, behaving more like metal. At any given moment, there may be no sand in it, or the sand is in either of the two chambers, floating suspended in nothing.

A creature can attune to the Sands of Madness, thus making them and creatures they choose immune to its effects. For those who spend a period longer than 24 hours within 120 feet of the hourglass must make a DC 10 Saving throw. On a successful save, they're immune to the effects for the 24 hours, and the DC goes up by 1. On a failed save, the sand in the hourglass slowly begins to flow. They're afflicted with a permanent madness: 'I am convinced that my life will end when the sands run out.' The attuned creature can end this effect as an action.

The lustrous past of Sands of Madness features tyrants and heads of thieves' guilds using it to manipulate the viewers to bend to their will, fearing for their lives. An adventurer may arrive in the kingdom of a noble, beloved ruler driven mad with paranoia as their court advisor whispers encouraging words and turning the sands.

Now we want to hear from you. Where would you put Sands of Madness in your game? What other items have you dreamt up for your games? Let us know in our discord server or in the comments below.

Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, they write about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out themselves. On Youtube, they can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Find where they dwell by climbing their Linktree.