Surprise Nesting Dolls (Patreon)

Wondrous item, uncommon

When found, there are four wooden nesting dolls in this set, which weighs 1 pound. The largest and outermost doll is of a nondescript humanoid wearing a hood and dark trench coat. The three dolls within it are of goblins, each of which carries a drawn dagger. You can split apart or nestle the dolls using an action.

While holding the nested dolls, you can speak their command word using an action. When you do, the dolls disappear, and a tall, nondescript humanoid in a trench coat appears in an unoccupied space of your choice that you can see within 30 feet of you. Treat the humanoid as a commoner, which immediately follows a mental command you give it as part of speaking its command word. If the commoner attacks or is attacked, it immediately splits apart into one goblin for each nested doll, which appear in the nearest unoccupied spaces; a DC 15 Intelligence (Investigation) check reveals that the commoner is actually one or more goblins in the coat. The commoner and goblins are friendly to you and your companions, and they take their turns immediately after you. You can use a bonus action on each of your subsequent turns to verbally give the creatures a new command, provided the creatures can hear you. The goblins use daggers, instead of their normal weapons, and if a goblin makes an attack roll against a target that's within 5 feet of another goblin, it makes the roll with advantage.

Each creature remains for 1 hour, until it's reduced to 0 hit points, or until you use a bonus action to end the effect. When the effect ends, the creatures revert to their doll forms in a nested stack in one of the creature's spaces. If a goblin is reduced to 0 hit points, roll a d20. On a 1, the doll is destroyed and doesn't reappear when the effect ends. If you're holding the nested dolls without the outer one around them, speaking the command word instead destroys the existing outermost doll and creates a new one around the nested inner dolls.

Once the dolls have been used to summon the creatures, they can't be used again until the next dawn.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.