u/911224s

hello you all i need help! i need my party to destroy an object that is harmless and i don’t know how to get them there. i’ll try to make this short and leave out unimportant details, because if i explain the whole plot it’s gonna be an essay. basically the plot of the campaign is that there is a very powerful artifact that can be cast magic through, the bbeg is trying to destroy the object. the artifact is somewhat unexplored and introduced a fairly new type of magic, so the world it plays in doesn’t know a lot about the artifact. the players suddenly feel a powerful wave and other stuff. for like 10 seconds. this wave happens when the bbeg is trying to destroy the object for the first time. since the object is so unexplored people who have studied the object don’t think it had anything to do with it because it should be impossible to cast a spell that powerful through the object. the point is, when destroying the artifact it releases a big wave of power - the party has to figure that out. so: party feels strong magical wave party tries to figure out what it is think it’s related to artifact research shows it can’t be related to artifact since spell that strong can’t be cast party has to figure out WAY LATER that it’s related to the artifact, but it’s caused by bbeg who is trying to destroy artifact.

my idea is: the party finds an object, i wanna make an example, i am not set on the object and maybe you have ideas for that aswell: „a shard of illusion“ with which you can cast level one spells of the school of illusion, then they have to destroy the object FOR SOME REASON and a way more powerful spell gets released

long story short: i need an object that holds some sort of magic, it HAS to be related to being able to cast spells and the party HAS to destroy it. what object and how do i get them to?

i was thinking something like after casting 10 spells through it the object plays a loud sound and that’s where they try to destroy it but what if they rather think the object was cursed ? and think the powerful spell that gets released then is related to a curse and not to the fact that destroying it released a lot of magic?

i’m really at a loss here and i need a dnd party full of creative people fool proof plan to get my players to destroy this object and also come to the conclusion that destroying a magical thing you can cast spells through WILL release a more powerful spell (and then they hopefully connect the dots lmao)

thanks in advance and i’m sorry this still has gotten so very long