[Collab] Item - Earthsong Robes

These robes belonged to a master earthbreaker, a legendary monastic who honed a preternatural instinct for listening to the earth and a celebrated hero said to have saved the realms. Also known as the MELO(N)DY LORD, she is well known for her wondrous performances: a blend of song, rhythmic dance, and patterned sand art.

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Earthsong Robes

Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement)

While you are not wearing armor and not wielding a shield, you have a +1 bonus to your AC while wearing these robes.

Stone Stance. While standing on earth or stone, you can’t be knocked prone or moved against your will and you have tremorsense* out to a range of 15 feet. You can’t have disadvantage on attacks against creatures you can detect using this tremorsense.

Earthworker. These robes have 4 charges and regain 1d4 expended charges daily at dawn. You can use a bonus action to expend the necessary charges to perform one of the following:

• Earthbreaker (1 charge). You strike a piece of nonmagical earth or stone that fits inside a 5-foot-cube, instantly cleaving, cracking, or shattering it (your choice).

• Listen (1 charge). You extend the range of these robes’ tremorsense out to 60 feet for 1 minute or until you lose concentration (as if it were a spell).

• Rock Barrier (2 charges). You cast the wall of stone spell (save DC 17) from these robes, creating only three 10-foot-by-10-foot panels rather than the wall options provided in the spell’s description.

• Stone Passage (2 charges). You step into earth or stone adjacent to you, move up to 30 feet inside it without provoking opportunity attacks, and re-emerge into an unoccupied space. The target earth or stone must be large enough for you during this movement.

• Tunnel (3 charges). You gain a burrow speed of 20 feet that only allows you to move through loose earth, mud, or sand, lasting for 1 minute. You can also burrow through solid earth and stone using this property, moving at half this burrow speed and leaving behind a tunnel of your size.

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Rare Variant. The rare version of these robes don’t grant tremorsense and its associated benefit regarding removing disadvantage. Its Earthworker property’s Listen option instead grants normal tremorsense out to a range of 30 feet; and the spell save DC for its Rock Barrier option is 15 instead of 17.

Legendary Variant. The legendary version of these robes grant a +2 bonus to AC instead of +1, and have 5 charges instead of 4, regaining 1d4 + 1 expended charges daily. The spell save DC for its Rock Barrier option is 18 instead of 17.

*Note: as of 2025, the rules have been clarified that tremorsense is a Sense and does not count as a form of Sight - it does not allow characters to bypass invisibility or locate creatures that have successfully Hidden. It mainly allows characters to sense other creatures behind obstacles

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DESIGN COMMENTARY

This item is one of three parts of a collaboration with the Jhamkul Forge, who had designed a fun Way of the Earthen Fist monk subclass. Taking inspiration from Avatar, I identified several criteria split between the three items: 1. relate to a character whenever possible; 2. get a decent mix of offensive, defensive, and utility capabilities among the items; 3. create at least one item that is monk-specific and one that best benefits the monk; and 4. complement the monk subclass in flavor and mechanics.

These robes accomplishes a majority of those goals, I think. This one is named and flavored for Toph, the blind tremorsense character; boasts a complement of utility options that don't overlap with those laid out in the monk subclass; and has a nice defensive bonus for unarmored characters (monk, of course).

• The +1 AC is similar to a +1 AC shield, down to some wielding/activation requirements: uncommon without attunement.

• Stone Stance's immunity to prone and movement is decent, as is the tremorsense, though limited by location. Additionally, now that Tremorsense has been cleared up to not be a form of sight, is not as strong as it used to be, but can still be treated as bypassing Hidden creatures. Hard to assign a rarity value to this, but higher Uncommon (attunement) would be acceptable.

• Earthworker has 4 charges, each charge being roughly equivalent to a 1st-level spell: Earthbreaker pretty much simulates mold earth cantrip; Listen sort of simulates a detect spell but with shorter range; Rock Barrier is one-third of wall of stone but as a bonus action, so 2/5 charges; Stone Passage is essentially misty step; and Tunnel is similar to any of the 3rd-level mobility spells like fly). So this property in all is 4 total spell levels, which is less than Uncommon (attunement) — compared to staffs or rare items like Helm of Mind Reading.

• In total, this just about reaches the Very Rare value of rarity.

The design of the robes borrows the color palette of the source material from which it is inspired from. For this, I paid close attention to the 60/30/10 rule, setting it mostly green, a little beige-yellow, and a dash of black. I also experimented with skipping the linework stage and working directly with solid colors - to some degree of success. It wasn't a good way to return to drawing after a short break and required some onboarding, but was still decent at saving some time. I'm still lacking an understanding of hue palettes and would like to experiment more with alternative colors in the future. What was more successful is more subtle/narrower range of values and more shapely shadows.