There's no official method of creating a Shield Guardian. Ultimately, it's up to you. On the one hand, having a CR 6 creature under your control is very powerful, so you might want to make it very expensive and time-consuming (compare with Manual of Golems). On the other hand, if you think your player will get a lot of enjoyment out of it, you don't want to put it so far out of their reach it takes months or years of real-world time to get.
My suggestion is to take a page out of Xanathar's Guide to Everything's magic item creation rules and make a quest out of researching how they're constructed, and obtaining the materials required. That's a lot more personal and fun than "Get 60,000 gold and spend a month working on it."
Given that a Shield Guardian is dab in the middle between the Clay Golem and the Flesh Golem with CR (it's 7 not 6) , the easiest way is to meet those in the middle (57500 gp and 45 days crafting).
If you're willing and the party enjoys such things, you might want to make it a story hook to truly craft it. Perhaps you need something that gives it a spark of life or something else that animates it. This can be a very interesting story.
To balance it afterward, though, I would recommend to treat it as a character to determine encounter difficulty and perhaps even xp distribution, but this would depend on the level the characters are and how they use it. Since it is large it is quite possible for certain (parts of) dungeons to be off-limits due to its size or weight.
According to 3.5 rules a Shield Guardian was constructed as follows:
A shield guardian was constructed from at least 5,000-gold pieces-worth of bronze, stone, steel, and wood and required skill in blacksmithing and carpentry. The magical amulet through which the construct was controlled usually cost around 20,000 gold pieces. The shield guardian could only be animated in the presence of the amulet, and the process required a special laboratory, knowledge of the art of crafting constructs, and an extended ritual that involved the casting of the spells discern location, limited wish, shield, and shield other.
5e lacks certain of the required spells such as Limited Wish. Fix things as you wish to bring it up to 5e snuff.
If you're going to use 3.5e as a guide, keep in mind 3.5e adventures handed out tons of treasure and expected players to continuously invest large amounts of money into more and better magic items to keep up with the ever-increasing stats of monsters.
5e is built around around a very different set of assumptions; magic items are completely optional and if the DM decides they exist in their world, they should be hard to come by and difficult to destroy. Additionally, the designers have realized that adding more creatures to the party is extremely powerful, since they can be given magic items, buffed with spells, or simply exploited for additional shove actions or advantage on attacks. With that in mind, it makes sense the shield guardian is priceless (the DM is in the best position to judge how hard or easy it should be to get in their world), but the amulet is much cheaper to replace (your magic toys shouldn't be easy to take away.)
Shield Guardians require 1000 gp and 1 full weak to build or replace an amulet, in which to control it. If the amulet is destroyed, the guardian limps over, inanimate. Wizards can collect pricey sums of gold from wealthy aristocrats who want a loyal guardian. I would recommend that you have them go to a very large, wealthy city, for you are unlikely to find the rare materials in a small, lowly farming village. Once they get there, they can attempt to ask the court wizard (if there is one) or the librarian. Of course, this is all up to you. You can make the prices 1000000 gp or 100 gp. Up to you. 5e.
As a quick aside, in the Tomb of Annihilation adventure book, there is a small side adventure where the party can just run across an inactive Shield Guardian in the jungle and, if they later (or previously) beat up a goblin boss and some goblins, then they get the control amulet for the guardian as treasure. So it's not that hard to get your hands on one if the adventure needs you to in 5th Ed.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
one of my players wants to build a shield guardian. How is one built? I can’t find anything in the DMG or the MM.
There's no official method of creating a Shield Guardian. Ultimately, it's up to you. On the one hand, having a CR 6 creature under your control is very powerful, so you might want to make it very expensive and time-consuming (compare with Manual of Golems). On the other hand, if you think your player will get a lot of enjoyment out of it, you don't want to put it so far out of their reach it takes months or years of real-world time to get.
My suggestion is to take a page out of Xanathar's Guide to Everything's magic item creation rules and make a quest out of researching how they're constructed, and obtaining the materials required. That's a lot more personal and fun than "Get 60,000 gold and spend a month working on it."
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Given that a Shield Guardian is dab in the middle between the Clay Golem and the Flesh Golem with CR (it's 7 not 6) , the easiest way is to meet those in the middle (57500 gp and 45 days crafting).
If you're willing and the party enjoys such things, you might want to make it a story hook to truly craft it. Perhaps you need something that gives it a spark of life or something else that animates it. This can be a very interesting story.
To balance it afterward, though, I would recommend to treat it as a character to determine encounter difficulty and perhaps even xp distribution, but this would depend on the level the characters are and how they use it. Since it is large it is quite possible for certain (parts of) dungeons to be off-limits due to its size or weight.
Subclass: Dwarven Defender - Dragonborn Paragon
Feats: Artificer Apprentice
Monsters: Sheep - Spellbreaker Warforged Titan
Magic Items: Whipier - Ring of Secret Storage - Collar of the Guardian
Monster template: Skeletal Creature
Thanks to both of you.
Hi,
According to 3.5 rules a Shield Guardian was constructed as follows:
A shield guardian was constructed from at least 5,000-gold pieces-worth of bronze, stone, steel, and wood and required skill in blacksmithing and carpentry. The magical amulet through which the construct was controlled usually cost around 20,000 gold pieces. The shield guardian could only be animated in the presence of the amulet, and the process required a special laboratory, knowledge of the art of crafting constructs, and an extended ritual that involved the casting of the spells discern location, limited wish, shield, and shield other.
5e lacks certain of the required spells such as Limited Wish. Fix things as you wish to bring it up to 5e snuff.
If you're going to use 3.5e as a guide, keep in mind 3.5e adventures handed out tons of treasure and expected players to continuously invest large amounts of money into more and better magic items to keep up with the ever-increasing stats of monsters.
5e is built around around a very different set of assumptions; magic items are completely optional and if the DM decides they exist in their world, they should be hard to come by and difficult to destroy. Additionally, the designers have realized that adding more creatures to the party is extremely powerful, since they can be given magic items, buffed with spells, or simply exploited for additional shove actions or advantage on attacks. With that in mind, it makes sense the shield guardian is priceless (the DM is in the best position to judge how hard or easy it should be to get in their world), but the amulet is much cheaper to replace (your magic toys shouldn't be easy to take away.)
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Shield Guardians require 1000 gp and 1 full weak to build or replace an amulet, in which to control it. If the amulet is destroyed, the guardian limps over, inanimate. Wizards can collect pricey sums of gold from wealthy aristocrats who want a loyal guardian. I would recommend that you have them go to a very large, wealthy city, for you are unlikely to find the rare materials in a small, lowly farming village. Once they get there, they can attempt to ask the court wizard (if there is one) or the librarian. Of course, this is all up to you. You can make the prices 1000000 gp or 100 gp. Up to you. 5e.
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As a quick aside, in the Tomb of Annihilation adventure book, there is a small side adventure where the party can just run across an inactive Shield Guardian in the jungle and, if they later (or previously) beat up a goblin boss and some goblins, then they get the control amulet for the guardian as treasure. So it's not that hard to get your hands on one if the adventure needs you to in 5th Ed.
Craft a shield guardians body and then cast awaken
Proabably also a lot of shield spells and a high level command spell cast on a amulet, along with sending