Making Tools Useful in 5e: Potter's Tools
Today’s tools are the Potter’s Tools, and… well, this wasn’t one I knew what I was going to do with, so it got dropped to the end of the list. When you think of pottery, you probably just picture those pottery wheels that spin in a circle, and a ghost comes along and guides your hands… but pottery is more than sensual clay massaging, it’s about crafting objects out of clay, whether they are circular like a pot, or in the complicated shapes of clay warriors like the terracotta army found in the Chinese tomb Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. Anything made out of clay or ceramics is typically under the purview of the potter’s tools.
Potter’s Tools
Oh, Xanathar, you float through the air with your 10 eyes looking all about you. Please give us your wisdom and let us read from page 84 of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.
Potter's tools are used to create a variety of ceramic objects, most typically pots and similar vessels.
Components. Potter's tools include potter's needles, ribs, scrapers, a knife, and calipers.
History. Your expertise aids you in identifying ceramic objects, including when they were created and their likely place or culture of origin.
Investigation, Perception. You gain additional insight when inspecting ceramics, uncovering clues others would overlook by spotting minor irregularities.
Reconstruction. By examining pottery shards, you can determine an object's original, intact form and its likely purpose.
As I keep doing more and more of these tools, I find myself unsure how other tables use these tools. Maybe I’m not baking enough mystery into my old ceramic vessels, or maybe I’m not putting enough ceramic objects throughout my dungeons for my players to marvel at before they ultimately throw it on the ground.
I suppose a right and proper DM would figure out everyone’s tool proficiency before the campaign starts and work on ways of incorporating it into the stories they weave. But that sounds like more work than just me complaining about Xanathar’s and what information they provide and then making my own version of the tools.
For those that don’t care about the how of my tool:
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New & Improved
So, what does my version of this tool do? Well, you can use it to create vessels and tablets and terracotta with arcane runes carved into them. Each of these vessels, and I only provide a few, have different things they can do. One pot can purify water; another jug can produce wine, and a third one allows you to breathe fire. Or maybe you want a terracotta warrior to protect you.
These pottery skills aren’t available to the wide world at large. Rather, they are an ancient type of magic that you stumbled upon. Starting out, you know three Potter’s Runes that you can build. A Potter’s Rune isn’t just a single rune you can slap onto anything, rather it is a variety of runes and sigils that form a pattern around the jug, pitcher, terracotta figurine, etc. These runes invoke the magic of your world, infusing the object with special powers and effects.
Due to the nature of these types of pots and how cheap they are produced, they have a few limiters. First, you need to find rare materials throughout the world and incorporate them into your clay before you can begin building your vessels.
Second, you can only have so many active vessels equal to your intelligence or wisdom score. This is to signify that you put a piece of yourself in every vessel you create and keep someone from having 30,000 vessels turning water into wine and disrupting the entire global economy… I worry about weird things in my games.
Third, everything takes time. You can’t just pour water into a jug and then immediately expect results; this is finer magic that works over the course of hours. While some of these mimic some spells, like purify food and drink, those spells can be cast instantly. These pitchers take up to 8 hours to purify your water; that’s the trade-off.
In Action
You are a potter, and you want to make one of these pots. What’s the first thing to do?
You need to gather your materials, which may even mean going on a small quest. Most magical items require some weird things to work into your clay, and that just can’t be helped. Magic isn’t easy.
Let’s say you want to make a Theïkós Tablet. You like the idea of invoking the power of the divine and also that extra 1d4 radiant damage for 1 minute on your melee weapon attacks. You must first gather your supplies of clay, your potter’s tools and you need the ash of a celestial. How much ash? Well, you need a number of pounds of celestial ash equal to the days required to produce the tablet, which is 7 days so 7 lbs of celestial ash.
You have a few options here, maybe you go to one of those fancy Outer Planes you’ve heard so much about and go on a personal crusade to murder a few celestials and cremate them… or you ask nicely from a celestial, and they could potentially hook you up…. Or go to Sigil, they have everything there… for a price.
Now, you have your celestial ash, you work into your clay, and you spend 7 days, of at least 4 hours each, working on your tablet. You build the basics of the tablet and then carefully and slowly begin scrawling in the runes needed to tell of the celestials, invoking their power and infusing their magic into the tablet. Once you finish the 7 days of work, you then must succeed on a Potter’s Tools (Dexterity) check or realize you messed something up and must rework it for a quarter of the time before you can try the check again. Once you succeed, you then must find a kiln to toss into where it fires for a day, and it becomes a proper tablet ready to be invoked.
And that’s it. It's a pretty simple tool, with the most complicated part being finding your required materials.
Firing it up
Our Potter’s Tools is pretty simple, but I think this tool is more about the journey and the dead celestials you made along the way to creating your vessels. But you don’t use only celestial ash for your objects. I’ve offered a few other ideas, like the Fotiá Pitcher, which allows you to breathe fire, or the Krasí Jug, which turns water into wine.
Each of these vessels requires a different component, like the residue of a slain fire elemental or powdered grapes that the elves use in their wines. These materials should be strange and unusual. When you make your own vessels, and you want to match my naming convention, just use Google Translate to translate your words into Greek. Fotiá means fire, Krasí means wine, Theïkós means divine, Zoi means life.
Before I close this post, I chose undead remains for the Zoi Terracotta because they have a reanimating spirit in them. The terracotta construct must be animated, and adding in the ash of something that was once reanimated seems to make a lot of sense to me, though none of these materials are set in clay tablets. You can change these around to fit your world and what you think would make for a good quest.
Potter’s Tools
Hopefully, you can use this tool in your own campaigns, and it will prove to be a success. Creating vessels with small amounts of magic seems like a great use for the potter’s tools, and hopefully, you can go on a few epic quests to build some powerful vessels.
Special thanks to Aebele and his insights into pottery.
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Other tools: Climber’s Kit, Thieves’ Tools, Weaver’s Tools, Painter’s Supplies, Calligrapher’s Tools, Jeweler’s Tools, Carpenter’s Tools, Forgery Kit, Disguise Kit, Herbalism Kit, Glassblower’s Tools, Navigator’s Tools, Leatherworker’s Tools, Cobbler’s Tools, Poisoner’s Kit, Cartographer’s Tools, Alchemist’s Supplies, Mason’s Tools, Gaming Sets, Tinker’s Tools, Healer’s Kit, Brewer’s Supplies, Smith’s Tools & Cook’s Utensils.
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