I wrote previously about using puzzles and about playground rooms. This is another playground for fantasy heroes to explore.

The city of Doniver boasts an ornate fountain that features a motif of roses, nautical rope, and animal figures carved in stone: the Rose & Coil Fountain. Locals say that good luck can be had by those who toss a coin in it.

Playing Its Game

A Chance of Good Luck

Specifically, you must toss a coin at a certain rose figure. If the coin lands in the stone figure’s petals (19+ on 1d20), you gain good luck (+1 point of luck). Characters who regularly use thrown weapons get +2.

The coin may be copper, silver, or gold. It is traditional to toss the most valuable sort you can afford, but this has no actual effect. Some locals swear by tossing the coin backwards over the shoulder without looking, but this only lowers the chances to 20 on 1d20.

A Chance of Bad Luck

However, as some kind soul might point out, if your toss goes particularly astray and lands in the mouth of a certain fish figure (natural 1), you are cursed with bad luck until the next full moon (or lifted as a curse):

• You lose all your current luck.
• You get -1 to all skill checks and attack rolls.
• You cannot achieve a critical attack/success. It is merely an ordinary hit/success.

Repeated Attempts

Each coin you toss negates the results of the last coin–except for natural 1. Thus, you can never gain more than 1 point of luck in a day, but you can gain a point and then lose it. You can also suffer bad luck and then gain a point of luck.

If you climb into the fountain, your attempts to toss or place a coin have no effect. If you climb something, levitate, fly, or otherwise make your toss from somewhere other than standing on the ground in front of the fountain, your attempts likewise have no effect.

Stealing

Periodically, the coins in the fountain are collected by a druid who applies them to good causes. At any given time, there is 2d20 gp worth of coins in the fountain. Anyone who steals a coin from the fountain suffers bad luck, as above.

Variations

You may say that tossing any coin gives a point of luck (1 per day), and what is actually at stake with the toss at the rose is a wish. However, that wish is a twisted one. The wish will come true in such a way that something terrible happens (to the character, someone close to the character, or innocents nearby). Generally, the results should be more good than bad, but the bad results should be impactful.

• A tower collapses, killing an innocent, but revealing the thing the character wanted.
• A popular noble or official chokes to death, putting someone else in charge who is more amenable to the character’s desires.
• The town burns down, somehow resulting in the king giving the land to the character.
• The character’s magic weapon shatters in the next combat, but a magical amulet (he or she wished for) falls out.
• A friend returns from the dead… as a wight.

You may foreshadow this by having an NPC explain that her mother wished for and received a calf… altho her lamb then died or some similar story.

Only one attempt may succeed. Subsequent tries after a success curse the character with bad luck. Multiple attempts resulting in bad luck have no effect.