Vexing Cube (Patreon)

Greetings adventurers!

I’ve been a, well I wouldn’t call her a friend, let’s just say colleague of a notorious puzzle maker for some time now. She delights in sending me brain teasers and obscure contraptions for me to waste my time on and, well I delight in wasting time on them. That is until one particular one arrived at my door, hand delivered no doubt. Typically, they arrive by courier, so I was a bit suspicious. I found myself obsessed with solving this one, much more so than my previous idle fiddling. I couldn’t understand why it occupied my brain so much until I had a notion. A bit of detect magic and what do you know? It’s enchanted… Clever. I hate it.

Our patrons get early access to all of these items as well as additional formats that are easily usable in both physical and online play for D&D and Pathfinder 2E. Additionally they get high-res art exports, easy to use text exports, behind the scenes updates, and a lot more.

If that strikes your fancy, consider becoming a Patron

Design notes from Matthew:

When approaching lower level magic items, I often talk about the difficulties presented within. You have to be more clever than a typical powerful item. In this case, I thought an interesting way to create a diversion or keep someone busy for a time would be in order. Sure there’s the old school classic idea of a puzzle box, ah but we can definitely add a bit of magical flare to it, I thought.

My initial idea was for it to just be a puzzle cypher, but with the addition of a few more elements, it gave me the idea for stacking checks that made it more and more difficult to solve. Once that was in, I knew we could add some enchantment magic to really make this thing as annoying as possible for the person it’s handed to. I can only imagine how easy it would be to slip through and take what you need when someone is so enamored with the puzzle.

The actual “reward” inside being a single piece of cheese came from Fernando. It seems a fitting reward for someone so enamored with solving a simple puzzle. You get a little treat at the end. That said, I can fully imagine the disappointment when someone does open the box for the first time.

We’re working towards filling out our lower level item offerings in anticipation of bringing you a much fuller shop of magical items to select from. Hopefully you find some joy in these more creative stylings and can find some ways to implement them into your games in unexpected ways!

We highly encourage you to join our Discord server where you’ll get access to exclusive channels that have sneak peeks, behind the scenes chatter, and more.

Rewards for Patrons!

Kraken's Kohorts ($3 tier)

Kraken's Kompanions ($6 tier)

Kraken's Kollaborators ($10 Tier)

How do I open this damn thing?!,

- Fernando & Matthew