Treasure Trove
There are two forces that make the d20 world go ‘round, and those are XP and gold. For the most part, both of these resources come from the same place: killing things (and taking their stuff). But while only adventurers really deal in XP, gold is something that the average NPC can appreciate (and touch, and hold, for that matter), and it has a wide variety of uses. One of those uses is buying neat magical treasures, like the ones I’ve created for you, below.
Amulet of Midas Touch
This amulet, which dangles from a chain of large, golden links, resembles a hand, palm open, made entirely of gold. Oftentimes a single large ruby or emerald is placed in the center of the palm, and glows when the hand’s power is used, but just as often the palm is unadorned.
Once per day, the wearer of an amulet of Midas touch can turn a single touched creature or object into gold. If the target is an object, this functions as transmute mud to rock, except that it can transform objects of any material, and transforms them into gold. If the target is a creature, this functions as flesh to stone, except that the target is transformed to gold, instead of stone.
Regardless of whether the target is a creature or an object, the larger the target is, the less pure the gold, and the more it is mixed with other, baser metals. Though the resulting object always looks like pure gold, close examination reveals that it is not. The resulting gold object is never worth more than 500 gp.
Dice of Certain Fate
This pair of dice is painfully unremarkable in appearance, and came to be when a wizard with a gambling problem determined that there must be a better way to cheat with dice than trying to weight them. Whenever the dice are rolled, the roller can give a command word to determine what face they land on. Usually, this command is simply the result desired, ensuring that every time the user calls “Come on, give me a seven,” he will receive that result, but they can conceivably be set to anything, such that “blue” might result in snake eyes, while “red” would result in two 6’s, and so on.
While the dice appear perfectly normal and give no signs of being tampered with when examined with mundane means, a detect magic spell belies their enchantment.
Map of Many Treasures
These maps are beloved by thieves and scoundrels of all sorts, as well as archaeologists, adventurers, and other treasure-seekers. The map is enchanted to always display the area around its bearer, to a range of five miles. The map is technically accurate as far as terrain and buildings are concerned, but tends to be heavily stylized, making them more a guideline to navigating the area than a truly accurate depiction, and rendering the map useless for fine navigation, such as finding a way through a maze, or similar.
The real power of the map is that it displays the locations of any accumulations of wealth in the area it is displaying, including vaults, buried treasure, and so on. While still stylized, the depictions are larger and more brightly colored the more valuable the cache is, and give some idea of what its nature is (a pile of gold coins, a handful of fine jewelry, a magic item, and so on).
The map does not show the locations of creatures, or of anything that may be protecting the treasures.
Sebastien Dranko’s Shop In A Box
This large trunk is made of cheap, flimsy wood, but has been stained and painted to appear to be fine oak. It bears engraved, decorative metal trimming which appears at a glance to be silver, but is in fact just polished steel. The front of the chest carries a massive lock, which is all-but-impossible to open (Disable Device DC 40), and has no key. The top of the chest has a small slit, however, about an inch wide and four inches long. A plaque mounted on the back of the trunk explains the way that it functions.
By speaking the name of a mundane item and placing an amount of coin into the trunk worth at least as much as the market price of the named item, the user can open the trunk, revealing that its contents are not the coins (which are teleported away), but the item that was named. The next time the chest is closed again, it locks, and will not open until the next time an item is named and the appropriate number of coins are deposited. Any items that are in the box when an item is summoned this way (whether excess payment, or something that was placed in the trunk the last time it was opened) vanish.
Even items larger than the trunk can be summoned in this way. These items appear in the trunk in miniature, and grow rapidly to their appropriate size over the course of 1 minute after they are removed from the trunk.
Picking the lock on the box opens it, but immediately destroys the enchantment, though does allow access to whatever is currently held in the trunk.