We’re back this week with another magic item for Dungeons and Dragons 5e based on Magic: The Gathering cards. This time we’re looking at a release from a newer set by looking at the Poet’s Quill from the Strixhaven block released earlier this year.
The original Poet’s Quills were created by a noted historian and chronicler of famous stories, a bard who retired from his adventuring days into a role, giving them to his students he sent out into the field to help him collect stories for his books in order to help keep them safe and inspire their fellows to higher heroics and create stories of their own. Several of them were lost when these students fell and have resurfaced from time to time, and others have been crafted by bard colleges that managed to get their hands on one long enough to study. Finding one of these usually means that a previous adventuring party fell in some great battle nearby in the past, and they should mind their surroundings a little bit closer.
When I saw this card I immediately knew that I wanted to make something for the bard class that would play with their Bardic Inspiration ability. Giving them one more use a day and letting them step up the power of the ability a handful of times each day seemed like the no brainer way to make that happen. The secondary effect was something that I threw on to give the item a little bit of versatility – I could easily see a group carrying an important missive using this item to make it appear like a blank sheet of paper until they delivered it or using it to keep important knowledge out of the hands of an enemy. I’m sure there are many more ways that a crafty adventuring party could use this power to great effect.
Ben Erickson
