Hi all, I've been looking around the interwebs for some guidance on this, and I've not had much success; hoping folks here will be able to help!
I love the evolutionary nature of the Vestiges of Divergence from the Wildemount book, and I'm sure my players would really love a magic item tailored to them, so I had a crack at home-brewing my own.
I've got a WarHammer which is basically a Fire-based Mjolnir. Elemental Damage scales d4/d6/d8. At Awakened you can throw the hammer (see Javelin of Lightning for mechanics). At Exalted, the weapon culminates with being able to cast Meteor Swarm once - the charge for which has a 25% chance to recharge at Dawn.
In terms of evoking this mythical hammer of fire, I feel like this is hitting the nail on the head (excuse the pun). Especially with this "Ultimate" ability to rain fire down on the battlefield. HOWEVER, I can't help but feel like this might be too powerful?
So, are there any "rules of thumb" for balancing these things? For instance, items should be a combination of offensive/defensive/utility buffs? Spells shouldn't exceed x Level? I feel I could go overboard with these god-like items, and feel that some sort of framework to work within would help focus the theme of the item, but also help balance them too.
So, any advice or indeed any frameworks/"rules of thumb" you guys have used to homebrew these for yourselves, I'd love to hear them!
From briefly looking over the artifacts, it appears that in a dormant state they're about equivalent to a rare magic item, and they upgrade to very rare when awakened and legendary when exalted. I guess just use that as a reference when making them?
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"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
From briefly looking over the artifacts, it appears that in a dormant state they're about equivalent to a rare magic item, and they upgrade to very rare when awakened and legendary when exalted. I guess just use that as a reference when making them?
Thanks. Even those seem fairly inconsistent though; just a flick through Rare items looks like bonus damage ranges from 1d4 to 1d10.
I'll have another look at the DMs Guide and see if there's any general guidelines in there I can crib from
One of the good things about the vestiges is that it's up to the DM to decide if players do the thing to let them hit the next tier of power. So if something is looking too strong, you can always dial back how quickly you let the item level up.
Also, you could always not tell the player exactly what it does, just rumors and legends, so if in play it seems too strong, you can adjust the later powers. So maybe they know it can call forth great fiery power, and there's stories about it unleashing great explosions when the greatest warriors wield it. But if as you play, you realize the meteor swarm will bit a bit much, you can dial it back to a delayed blast fireball (or even just a regular fireball three/day, or something). They'll still get a cool trick, and won't feel cheated.
I have a high powered campaign I'm running in one of my games where EVERYthing is over the top powerful. The group started off as emissaries of the Elven people, so went out with blessings (and quests). Each had a bag of holding... largely to carry all the things they were delivering to other nations. They had boots of elvenkind. They had moon-touched swords (as a badge of office). I pulled some Shiftweave from Eberron so the ladies could have "formal" wear for different court settings and be regular travel apparel too. Even at level 3 they were heavily geared. In the future, I already have plans for them working with a Silver Dragon and earning their Master Rings of Elemental Command (talk about a painful item to create!... combining all the rings into one took a lot longer than I expected... they will have to kill one of each of the elementals to activate each subsection, but these rings are Super OP), and then they will be acquiring their Moonblades and activating the runes on them.
I do really like the stages of the Vestiges, but I opted not to do that for this campaign. The hardest thing I have dealt with so far is balancing encounters. You start at Deadly and add some... it's a balancing act, but is turning out to be a lot of fun in a high-magic, high-powered campaign. One of these days I'll have it dialed in that these 4 Super Elves are equivalent to X Party Members of the same level. Then it will help me better plan some of the big bad things they will fight down the road.
I have a player with Silken Spite they got it at 3rd level they just didn’t find out at third level. It was just a +1 rapier. Slowly over many levels the sword reached out to the player in key moments, just failed a clutch attack role, would you like advantage? Just taken poison damage, would you like to halve that? Etc. So it built a relationship between the player and the weapon, when they found out at level 7 it was a dormant sentient weapon that housed the soul of a demon it was more meaningful than just getting a good sword.
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Hi all, I've been looking around the interwebs for some guidance on this, and I've not had much success; hoping folks here will be able to help!
I love the evolutionary nature of the Vestiges of Divergence from the Wildemount book, and I'm sure my players would really love a magic item tailored to them, so I had a crack at home-brewing my own.
I've got a WarHammer which is basically a Fire-based Mjolnir. Elemental Damage scales d4/d6/d8. At Awakened you can throw the hammer (see Javelin of Lightning for mechanics). At Exalted, the weapon culminates with being able to cast Meteor Swarm once - the charge for which has a 25% chance to recharge at Dawn.
In terms of evoking this mythical hammer of fire, I feel like this is hitting the nail on the head (excuse the pun). Especially with this "Ultimate" ability to rain fire down on the battlefield. HOWEVER, I can't help but feel like this might be too powerful?
So, are there any "rules of thumb" for balancing these things? For instance, items should be a combination of offensive/defensive/utility buffs? Spells shouldn't exceed x Level? I feel I could go overboard with these god-like items, and feel that some sort of framework to work within would help focus the theme of the item, but also help balance them too.
So, any advice or indeed any frameworks/"rules of thumb" you guys have used to homebrew these for yourselves, I'd love to hear them!
Thanks in advance,
D
From briefly looking over the artifacts, it appears that in a dormant state they're about equivalent to a rare magic item, and they upgrade to very rare when awakened and legendary when exalted. I guess just use that as a reference when making them?
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Thanks. Even those seem fairly inconsistent though; just a flick through Rare items looks like bonus damage ranges from 1d4 to 1d10.
I'll have another look at the DMs Guide and see if there's any general guidelines in there I can crib from
One of the good things about the vestiges is that it's up to the DM to decide if players do the thing to let them hit the next tier of power. So if something is looking too strong, you can always dial back how quickly you let the item level up.
Also, you could always not tell the player exactly what it does, just rumors and legends, so if in play it seems too strong, you can adjust the later powers. So maybe they know it can call forth great fiery power, and there's stories about it unleashing great explosions when the greatest warriors wield it. But if as you play, you realize the meteor swarm will bit a bit much, you can dial it back to a delayed blast fireball (or even just a regular fireball three/day, or something). They'll still get a cool trick, and won't feel cheated.
I have a high powered campaign I'm running in one of my games where EVERYthing is over the top powerful. The group started off as emissaries of the Elven people, so went out with blessings (and quests). Each had a bag of holding... largely to carry all the things they were delivering to other nations. They had boots of elvenkind. They had moon-touched swords (as a badge of office). I pulled some Shiftweave from Eberron so the ladies could have "formal" wear for different court settings and be regular travel apparel too. Even at level 3 they were heavily geared. In the future, I already have plans for them working with a Silver Dragon and earning their Master Rings of Elemental Command (talk about a painful item to create!... combining all the rings into one took a lot longer than I expected... they will have to kill one of each of the elementals to activate each subsection, but these rings are Super OP), and then they will be acquiring their Moonblades and activating the runes on them.
I do really like the stages of the Vestiges, but I opted not to do that for this campaign. The hardest thing I have dealt with so far is balancing encounters. You start at Deadly and add some... it's a balancing act, but is turning out to be a lot of fun in a high-magic, high-powered campaign. One of these days I'll have it dialed in that these 4 Super Elves are equivalent to X Party Members of the same level. Then it will help me better plan some of the big bad things they will fight down the road.
I have a player with Silken Spite they got it at 3rd level they just didn’t find out at third level. It was just a +1 rapier. Slowly over many levels the sword reached out to the player in key moments, just failed a clutch attack role, would you like advantage? Just taken poison damage, would you like to halve that? Etc. So it built a relationship between the player and the weapon, when they found out at level 7 it was a dormant sentient weapon that housed the soul of a demon it was more meaningful than just getting a good sword.