Weekly 4e Homebrew: Mask of the Demon

Every Sunday, I'll have a completely homebrewed Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition element that you can use in your games. I do take requests so you can either post a comment here, email me at thatrobedguy@hotmail.com with the subject "Homebrew Request", or send me a tweet on Twitter (@brannonhutchins) with the hashtag #weekly4e.

From a land in the far East comes an item of power, constructed to take your opponents off guard and send them fleeing in sheer terror. I give you: The Mask of the Demon!
Mask of the Demon

Many ages past, the people feared the Demon Clan, masterful warriors who stole and killed without mercy. Village after village burned in their wake and the blood of innocents pooled at their feet. And then, in the middle of a raid, they all vanished. Some say a powerful mage sent them to the Nine Hells, to feel the same pain and fear they inflicted on others. Some also say that their evil grew so great, that they ascended to become demons themselves. Whatever the case, the equipment they left behind seemed to be infused with the same evil, striking the same fear into the hearts of those that look upon it.

Designer Notes: Before going into more detail, let me just say that I am rather confused by how to properly format attack type powers in magic items like this. I like how the formatting works in Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, but Power2ool is not able to properly recreate that just yet and I had trouble finding examples of attack powers in older material. Hopefully, I managed to get across to you how it works.

I wanted to do something with an oriental theme this week. It started with creating Gamera for last week's article. The creature was originally based on the Turtle of the North, one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. I thought about doing all four as high paragon level monsters but it just wasn't working out. Idea after idea came, all oriental based, but nothing stuck. Eventually I got to thinking about samurai and how the masks of their helmets look almost monstrous in nature sometimes. And voila! The Mask of the Demon was born.

And no, I have not seen the oriental articles from Dungeon or Dragon magazine from this past month.

The Mask of the Demon was created using Power2ool for the Wizards of the Coast Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition system.