Would someone help with understanding my DM's homebrewed magic item? [closed]

Question

As the title states, my DM made the whole party custom magic items according to our character's class, history, and other details, which is crazy awesome. My character is a Bard that plays a drum for his instrument, so he gave my character a magical drum, but its scope is kinda large, so I'm having trouble grasping its capabilities. I get the feeling that there's something kinda crazy that I can do with it, but, since I'm new to playing DnD, I don't know what that would be. I understand theory and whatnot, and I've played with character creation often, but practice and theory are different. These are the details:

Can attempt to cast any spell on the bard spell list by playing the drum. Make a performance check of DC10+(spell level x2)(ex. to cast a level 2 spell you have to succeed on a DC14 performance check) Casting this way still uses a spell slot, so you can only attempt to cast spells of levels that you have slots for. On a success, the spell is cast as normal. On a failure, roll on the respective table below, targeting the creature you were originally targeting. If trying to cast a cantrip, nothing happens on a failure. If failing to cast a spell above 5th level, roll on the 5th level table.

1st level: 1d6 -

1. Healing Word
2. Charm Person
3. Faerie Fire
4. Sleep
5. Tasha's Hideous Laughter
6. Thunderwave

2nd Level: 1d6 -

1. Kinetic Jaunt
2. Zone of Truth
3. Crown of Madness
4. Deafness
5. Hold Person
6. Shatter

3rd Level: 1d6 -

1. Stinking Cloud
2. Hypnotic Pattern
3. Dispel Magic
4. Major Image
5. Plant Growth
6. Fear

4th Level: 1d4 -

1. Confusion
2. Freedom of Movement
3. Dimension Door
4. Raulothim's Psychic Lance

5th Level: 1d4 -

1. Modify Memory
2. Dominate Person
3. Mislead
4. Seeming

As a side note, I've clarified with my DM beforehand that expertise will guarantee the success of 1st level spells and cantrips, if I recall correctly. My character has 20 Charisma, with proficiency in Performance, and I'll take expertise in Performance when I reach level 3 and get the Bardic Expertise feature.

Answer 1

You've written:

its scope is kinda large, so I'm having trouble grasping its capabilities. I get the feeling that there's something kinda crazy that I can do with it, but, since I'm new to playing DnD, I don't know what that would be.

The benefit of this item is that you have access to all of the bard spells (once you can cast them reliably). You don't have to choose which two or three are most likely to be useful. You don't have to say "well, this spell is only situationally useful so I'll skip it". You have them all.

For example, at the cantrip level you have access to:

• prestidigitation
• mending
• minor illusion
• mage hand
• message

At first level you have access to:

• comprehend languages
• disguise self
• faerie fire
• featherfall (possibly)
• identify
• silvery barbs
• sleep
• unseen servant

To get the most use out of this magic item, you need to go read through the bard spell list, and make notes about when you would want to use each spell. eg:

• "if someone scores a critical hit on a party member, use silvery barbs to negate it"
• "if someone is falling a long distance, use featherfall"
• "if I need to hide, hide behind minor illusion"
• "if attacked by lots of enemies with low hp, use sleep"
• "if someone is down, use healing word"
• "if I need to distract a big enemy, use dissonant whispers"
• "if something is dirty, use prestidigitation"

For the spells you actually choose for your character, consider giving priority to the ones with the Ritual tag (including comprehend languages and detect magic and identify) because you can cast those for free if you actually know them, but you'd still need a spell slot to cast them through your drum. These spells are normally bad picks because you won't use them very often, but that doesn't matter to you because you have access to all the spells.

If there are spells that you absolutely can't afford to fail to cast, you might prioritize those as well. The only example I can think of is healing word. This spell is often used on characters who are at 0 hp, and you'd feel really bad if you got a miscast and hit them with a damage spell instead.

Answer 2

Essentially this item allows your Bard to cast spells other than those you have added to the character due to Spells Known. There is no point using it to cast spells your character already knows, due to the risk of not getting what you want. So you are likely to be using it in a situation where you are saying to yourself "We could really do with a Lesser Restoration to fix this problem, but I haven't learnt it yet."

To be asking yourself that kind of question, you will need to become familiar with all the Bard spells at levels you can cast.

One limitation is that the drum spells must still be from the Bard list. A second limitation is the risk of casting an unwanted spell, and some of those results could be counter-productive. So you also need to be figuring out the risk - a one in 20 chance of casting Cloudkill in a village shop may not be worth it to get some clue to a mystery.

Interestingly enough, a lot of the higher level spells like Modify Memory give you a lot of choice in theory (what memory to change in that case), so that you should be able to react and make choices that still make best use of what you rolled.

This item is powerful, because spell choice flexibility is a big part of what makes a spellcaster character useful. However, to make use of it, you need to be paying attention to far more possible action choices than you typically would as a beginner player. So the DM has inadvertently given you some homework if you want to make good use of the drum.

Answer 3

Here is some very practical math.

• At level 3 your modifier is +9. Your min roll is 10 - L 0 spells, or cantrips.
• L 5 it is +11 - L 1 spells pass. L 2 fail 10%, L 3 fail 20%.
• L 9 it is +13 - L 2 spells pass. L 3 fail 10%, L 4 20%, L 5 30%.
• L 13 it is +15 - L 3 spells pass. L 4 10%, L 5 20%, L 6 30%, L 7 40%.
• L 17 it is +17 - L 4 spells pass. L 5 10%, L 6 20%, L 7 30%, L 8 40%, L 9 50%.

(This assumes natural 1 isn't an auto-failure).

Next, on failure, look at the consequences.

If you cast it on a target in a combat-like situation, are they hurt (-) or helped (+)? Spells with little impact in such a situation are NA.

• Healing Word (+)
• Charm Person (NA)
• Faerie Fire (-)
• Sleep (-)
• Tasha's Hideous Laughter (-)
• Thunderwave (-)

So don't use 1st level spells on friendlies if you can fail the check. This seems generally true -- a good percent of the rolls are "hurt the target".

You should look over the list for "help the target" stuff. Mislead, Freedom of Movement and Healing Word look like the 3 biggest ones. So using it for attack spells is (relatively) safe, as none of them massively boost the target.

You should speak to your DM about concentration from the wild magic component of this spell. If you are forced to concentrate, that sucks - and if you can drop concentration, it makes Kinetic Jaunt pointless on a hostile foe. Do the wild random spells end up concentration free?

The item is powerful because you have access to the entire bard spell list. It might even be worth finding a Luckstone for the +1 to your skill checks to make it slightly more reliable.

The level of spells you know will outpace the spells this lets you reliably cast, with the lack of reliability growing as you gain levels. For low level spells, bias towards rituals and friendly buffs and spells that must go off without failure.

Most spells you'll cast on a foe the risk of it being some other debuff isn't that great of a risk, and when it happens it will be fun anyhow.

I might also bias my spells known towards higher level ones. Lower level ones you can just drum up with a high (approaching 100%) chance of success. As someone who has played a bard, you have a great shortage of spells known -- this will massively relieve the pressure.

The only risk is ... what if you lose the drum?