Dungeons and Dragons: Tasha's 5e Magic Item Showcase: Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle
Artifacts are among the most powerful magic items in 5e Dungeons and Dragons that players will encounter. Offering abilities far beyond simple effects like increasing damage or chances to hit, Artifacts often come with specific rules about their use and destroying them is often a complicated affair. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is the latest sourcebook to be released for 5e Dungeons and Dragons and offers a lot of new content throughout its 192 pages. It includes several new magical artifacts, and one of the most interesting is Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle.
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything offers many new artifacts for 5e like the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O and the Crook of Rao. Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle is one of the most interesting in the new book. As with many things in DnD, Baba Yaga is an adaption of older folklore into the popular RPG. Slavic folklore had references to a powerful hag named Baba Yaga, and much of that backstory finds its way into her DnD presentation. Interestingly, she is also the adopted mother of the titular Tasha who is a powerful witch in the DnD lore and "author" of TCoE. Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle are how the powerful hag can travel between different planes and dimensions throughout the DnD multiverse.
Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle follows the standard rules for Artifacts in 5e DnD, gaining both beneficial and detrimental properties at random. One interesting addition is that the two pieces of the Artifact exist as one item for the sake of attunement (saving space for other magic items) and can't be permanently separated. If a player loses either the mortar or the pestle, they will appear next to the other on the following morning, ensuring that PCs can't accidentally trap themselves in another plane of existence because they lost the pestle. That would be sure to derail any DnD campaign pretty quickly.
Both the mortar and the pestle can magically expand or shrink in size. The mortar can be increased to fit up to even a Large creature inside of it. Other properties of the mortar mean that this can help fit almost any of the weird DnD monsters they might want to use as part of some magical experimentation later. The pestle can extend from a regular sized instrument up into a quarterstaff that increases attack and spell attack rolls made with it by a healthy +3. The ability to change size is important for some of the other abilities the Artifact provides to players.
The Artifact is usable as a normal mortar and pestle for alchemy and other purposes in the game, but its use as a tool shines because of its ability to magically produce inexpensive amounts of any material the user might need. It also grants advantage on any crafting checks made while using the magic tools, making it even easier to create poisons or other mixtures. Creatures can also command Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle to grind whatever is inside on its own, and anything inside the mortar will eventually be ground into powder or paste. The aforementioned creatures unfortunate enough to be caught in the mortar can also be magically sorted into the separate components it was made from. Using the Artifact in this way definitely falls in line more with playing an evil campaign in DnD, as the archetypal hero would probably be adverse to grinding up a living creature for its parts.
One of the first things to know when playing DnD is that traveling between kingdoms and territories or between the different planes of existence can take a very long time in game. Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle help make that travel close to instant. While standing in the mortar and holding the pestle like an oar, players can use the Artifact to travel up to 1,000 miles way in an hour. The trick is that when traveling at night, that same thousand miles of travel happens inside of a minute. Creatures can travel between the different planes or even to other worlds by using remnants of creatures ground up in the mortar. If the material is from the other plane or world, the mortar can transport creatures across the multiverse to the original source of the material.
Standard among Artifacts in 5e DnD is how difficult it can be to destroy them. The mortar and pestle are no exception as they can only be destroyed by Baba Yaga herself or by being crushed under her giant Dancing Hut. Another adaptation of the folklore, Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut is a large shack in which she lives that walks around on gigantic chicken legs. Unlike other magic items in 5e, the artifacts can be hard to get rid of if players decide they don't want the temptation to use what are some nefarious abilities but don't want those same artifacts to fall into the wrong hands later on.
The world of Dungeons and Dragons is full of powerful Artifacts and magical items. The release of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything added many new items to 5e like Sorcerer Shards and Magic Tattoos. Interested DMs have even more powerful items to tantalize players with, and some of the items may even help a DM to test the moral resolve of the party at large. Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle is a great example of this. Even the most well-intentioned Wizard in a group would be tempted to make use of the evil hag's magical tools and it could be a fun way to introduce a moral quandary into a game. Otherwise righteous heroes might temporarily suspend their morality and grind up a creature who's home is in another plane if they have reason to travel there.
Powerful magic items are one of the lynchpins of any good RPG campaign. Rewarding players who accomplish great feats with even greater power is one of the most integral ways to keep them engaged and looking for more. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is the newest sourcebook until the release of Candlekeep Adventures on March 16, so for now it is the most recent compendium of items like Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle to help add some magical variety to a Dungeons and Dragons game.
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is available now both digitally and physically. Candlekeep Adventures releases March 16, 2021 both digitally and physically.
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