Rod of the Path

This rod serves as an aid to trailblazing and travel. It grants the wielder a +30 enhancement bonus on Survival checks for tracking and determining direction. The handle of the rod is hollow, functioning like a telescope. When the wielder peers through it, the limits of vision are three times normal (and spotting distances for encounters are tripled). In addition, the telescoping handle enables the wielder to view things as though affected by a true seeing spell.

The rod also has the following powers.

Map: Three times per day a section of the rod unrolls like a scroll from a tube, revealing a map of the surrounding area, centered on the location of the rod. The area shown on the map covers an area as small as 50 feet in radius to as large as 24 miles in radius, zooming in or out with a set of command words. The map reveals natural topography and all types of structures (even hidden ones), but it will not show the location of creatures.

Passage: Three times per day, this power allows the wielder and up to five others in a 20-foot radius to move unhindered through natural plant growth or bodies of water (as per the freedom of movement spell).

Bridge: Once per day, this power allows the user to create a 5-foot-wide, 40-foot-long stone causeway across chasms and canyons. The bridge created lasts for 1 hour.

Pass without Trace: Once per day, this power can be used on the wielder and twenty others, for 21 minutes. It is otherwise as the spell of the same name (caster level 24th).

Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Rod, Craft Epic Rod, find the path, freedom of movement, pass without trace, true seeing, wall of stone.

Cost to Create: 153,435 gp, 13,069 XP, 307 days.

Source: Standard Reference Document under Open Game License v1.0a, which updated this item originally published in the Epic Level Handbook, page 139. Replaced references in the descriptive text to Wilderness Lore with Survival and the removed reference to Intuit Direction, since that skill was rolled into Survival in D&D version 3.5. Added true seeing to the Prerequisites entry.