Hello everyone. I'm running a game right now consisting of five players with a bit of a range of experience. In my game a common theme is hitting the game in angles that aren't explored often or at least in the case of what we see at the shop. I'm at a point in my game where magical items are starting to become on their radar or at least in vision. Were about 7 sessions deep. They are at level 2 mostly but their about to level up probably in Session 8. In my game I'm having them go after a sun stone, a made up item made every 100 years by an abandon temple of various sun gods. They're chasing the stone because its going to help them make an item that will help out in their campaign (A Sun Blade). Once they get the stone and bring it back, the guy who can do something with it is going to break it down into 4 parts. The inner workings which can be simply bought by the gnome tinkers, special lenses that a lens crafter will have to make to focus the beam of light, the sun stone itself, and finally the hilt. (yeah its practically a light saber which is part of the fun)
So the hilt can be made with 6 different materials and each basically change the way the sun blade comes out. As it is now if they just rush it and make it, you know, a steel handle? It'll be a sun blade without the +2 to it. So radiant damage. They are running into a lot of stuff that is vulnerable to Radiant and even with just that it'll go far but the other materials can add to it in different ways. They don't really get the benefit of the special modifications until the item attunes to them and the ways to attune can vary depending on the item and the will of the holder.
So ultimately what I'm trying to get at is, if players were to create magical items and I mean not the way where they simply spend the gold and days to produce it but were to travel out for materials to make it, what sort of gimmicks would you have running? What sort of material would you use to make various things from your experience of the game itself. Like a Periapt of Health was made with Targath, a metal that even when touching benefits the beholder. I feel like a lot of this sort of stuff may have been mentioned in 4e or older editions but I only really had 3.5 stuff handy. Does anyone know any online sources people use to use to figure out this kind of crafting? I could use any ideas for future items. Since they're primary focus is fighting monsters in my own version of the Shadowfell and in between, their is a lot less running into humanoid bad asses with magic gear to take when you kill them and to be honest I like it that way. Its a mid to high magic campaign but I want to bask in their low resources for now to better remember their roots.
Do you want a list of mundane materials used in DnD that will be readily availible to anyone with coin or pickaxe? If so, then metal and gemstones are the way to go. Gemstones especially are usually associated with a variety of "aspects" and "auras" that tend to play well with magic item creation. Things like Onyx, Cat's Eye, Bloodstone, Dragonstone, Moonstone, Citrine, Zircon and Dolomite are all very evocative and tend to imbue mundane objects with interesting properties.
Or are you looking for a list of Macguffins like your sun-stone "created as liquified sunlight drips upon a shrine for a hundred years, bathed in the radiance of the gods?"
Things such as
Rare flowers and herbs (the midnight violet, the 100 year rose)
Rare metals and minerals (Unobtanium, star-metal, meteor fragments, vibranium, etc)
Rare tropies such as the horn of a FYR, the Vorpal Teeth of a slicer beetle, the gallbladder of a fen witch or the pearl from a giant clam?
Ha, Macguffin! I like that. There was a gentleman I use to play with some time ago who's played table top longer than a lot of my friends have been alive and he would talk about how some magic items were made. Basically part of the incentive of hunting monsters was being able to craft gear out of them and I was hoping to follow that thought process and see if there was ever an official or even an unofficial resource people defaulted to in older editions.
I did want to leave it lose enough to say that I would have liked to hear how other people would "Macguffin" some items of their own. I'm curious as to how people would explain the creation process of say, gauntlets of ogre power, an immovable rod, or even a bag of holding. Like a drift globe. A glass bauble you simply need to imbue with levitation, Daylight, and the light cantrip. I like where your going with the Rare Flowers though. That's an idea I didn't think enough on.
Ok, so for a really, really basic system then, I'd Identify some categories of items. For the purposes of this system, lets use the rarity scale used by 5e so we have mundane -> legendary on a sliding scale. A legendary magic item is usually entirely unique. There is only one, and if you want it, you have to go fetch. Mundane items, I would classify as any item that duplicates the effect of a commonly known spell, or is well enough understood that you can craft it via the basic PHB rules...
So lets look at "special" items that might fall in-between
A Bag of holding is an ordinary bag, usually of fine quality, that has been attached to an inter-dimensional space. In order to craft one, I would require the following: A Bag of fine quality (sewn from the mien of a unicorn?), the ability to cast the spell "rope trick" or something similar (which is a 2nd level spell) a custom designed permanency spell (which is a ritual spell that requires multiple successful castings to take effect, based on the spell in question level 5-9). From there, I would probably say that in order to create a bag of holding, you must cast the permanency ritual each day as well as casting the rope-trick equivalent spell, until you succeeded 10 times. (meaning that the total cost would be 10 lvl 5 spell slots, 10 lvl 2 spell slots and a fine bag. You can assign whatever components you'd like to the permanency ritual, but 125GP worth of gems (x10 castings) is equivalent to the PHB's 1250gp. Furthermore if you'd like to introduce a chance that the ritual could fail, you could have a DC of 8 + the level of the spell you are trying to affix (to succeed for the day) and double that to immediately complete the endeavor. A roll of 8 or less would have a 10% chance of destroying the attempt permanently and forcing the player to start over. P.S. Don't forget that rope trick has it's own components (Powdered corn extract and a twisted loop of parchment)
This gives you a decent idea about how one goes about crafting any magical item who's effect is loosely based on some spell or other... but what about spells that don't exist, or feats?
A Mantle of the Dungeon Delver is a cloak worn about the shoulders, usually of fine quality, that has been attached to an non-descript bit of magic that imbues it with special properties. In order to craft one, I would require the following: A 1/2 cloak/mantel of fine quality (made from the pelt of a giant badger from the underdark?). Because this spell does not appear in the PC's spell list, he will need to acquire (or produce if he has the template) 10 copies of the spell scroll for the Dungeon Delver feat, which for argument's sake, we'll say is a 1st level spell. You'll also need our custom designed permanency spell (See above). From there, I would again say that in order to create a Mantel of the Dungeon Delver, you must cast the permanency ritual each day as well as casting the new Dungeon Delver spell, until you succeeded 10 times. (Meaning that the total cost would be 10 lvl 5 spell slots, 10 lvl 1 spell slots and a Mantel of fine quality.)
As you can see, MOST magical items generally won't require you to go on some special adventure to do them. You just need access to the base components which are about as easy or difficult as you want them to be... but there are 3 exceptions to this:
Magic items that DO something. Alchemy jug, Decanter of endless water, staff of the woodlands...your sun blade^_)^ For these, like before you have the mundane componants, the ritual spell, the level 3 create food and water spell... but you're also going to need something extra... or more likely, a magical macguffin that you can find and say "hey, isnt this that thing I need in order to build a decanter of endless water? A damp stone that seems wet to the touch no matter what (for instance.)
Cursed/Sentient magical items Once again, you need the object, the permanency spell... and likely some other component (likely a summoning/sacrifice)
Any particular magical item that you would like to call out as impossible to do without some special component (vorpal swords come to mind). And here we are.
This is how I would construct a 5e based crafting system, if I wanted to ditch the PHB version. It's simple, it's scalable and any time you think that your players are trying to break the game, you can swat their hands down without actually telling them that they can't do it.
Some things in my head that I didn't include for brevity and simplicity's sake
Scaling the number of times the permanence spell needs to be cast to the spell level of the item being created. Spell level 5 spells will take more castings of the permanancy spells than lower levels (optional) Edit: BUT, if you don't want to adjust the TIME that it takes to create more powerful magical items, DO remember to adjust the COST of the ritual per the PHB.
The permanency ritual needs to be scaled to be at least 1 level greater than the spell it's trying to fix. (optional)
The actual spell could also require it to be upcast 1-2 levels (so rope trick would need to be cast as a level 4 spell, instead of level 2) (optional)
There is a ton to mull over and I been thinking about what you've said since lunch earlier today. I've made it very clear in my game that the players may be prone to coming into possession magic items that simply weren't crafted right. An identify spell proclaims the intent but the wiring and programming went wrong somewhere. The suggested ritual+failure chances meshes correctly in the world. I think if I was to incorporate a page from pathfinder in reference to sentient weapons in craft, what I could do is make it a few checks here and there in the crafting of item gain a sentient or a cursed property after a number of hard botches or very successful pulls. I mean a cursed item doesn't have to be a awful just as a sentient weapon doesn't have to be really... smart or particularly useful. That's going to be a ways away before practical use in the game through the player's own resources, in the mean time I'm liking where your going with the alchemical jug sort of talk.
I been talking with a player of mine and recently came to the conclusion that we need to spend more time in the journey from point A to Point B actually doing something besides fighting. More than just rolling combat encounters, having scenery and land marks to stumble upon that could trigger an encounter if the players go seeking for it. I think taking a note from the damp stone, having little oddities in nature players could stumble upon could be the incentive I need for them to get off the beaten path and explore, so I like that a lot. Good, good suggestions so far.
You can do some really weird things as far as magic items. Recently I decided to try and give the payers a sort of "mini bag of holding" but didn't want to just give them a bag of holding. They were in a dungeon, and came across a Door Mimic. I reasoned that mimics have to be able to move somehow. How else would they decide where would be the best place to get food? So I decided once the mimic was down pretty far in HP that it just sort of... sloughs off the door in a small oozy puddle. I rolled a stealth check, no one was able to follow it, and it crawled up one of the players legs and mimicked a pouch. I decided that they could use the mimic as a sort of pet that would get bigger if they fed it and took care of it, and would work as a bag of holding/devouring (small percent chance the mimic would just eat an item). They realized what happened and killed it when the player found he had an unknown second pouch on his belt. I was a little sad. But it was hilarious when the player put coins in his pouch, the pouch burps, and everyone freaked out.
I also tend not to make too many requirements on what materials are required to make items. I let the players decide what they want to make and what they want to try and use to make it. Then I adjust a DC depending on how the materials they decide to use and the skills and spells they want to use make sense to me. Of course, there are exceptions. If they want to create a ring of wishes, good luck finding a Djinn who is willing to donate part of it's essence...
In short, do what makes sense or is fun... or both.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
You can do some really weird things as far as magic items. Recently I decided to try and give the payers a sort of "mini bag of holding" but didn't want to just give them a bag of holding.
Bag of many colors: This bag contains an extradimensional space that can hold the following, so long as any particular item does not break the following rules. 1) The opening of the bag is 8" across. Nothing bigger than 8" will fit. 2) No two items in the bag may be the same color (DM's discression)
Bag of useful items: This bag produces 1 object each day (ala the robe of wonders) each day there is a chance that it will produce, a sack, battering ram, foldable boat, dagger, portable hole, 24 ft long wooden ladder, Assorted gems, a small sack of gold, a riding horse with saddle bags, 4 potions of the DMs choice, a 12'ft long row boat, a spell scroll containing a 1st to 3rd level spell, 50'ft of hempen rope, hostile monsters, a 2000lb stone door of dwarven make, a sack of caltrops... and more! these objects will all disappear after 24 hrs.
Bag of Recycling: When you put an object (or collection of objects) into this bag, it will destroy those objects and produce something of similar approximate value over the course of a long rest. This bag can only hold 20lbs of weight at any given time.
Bag of bags: As an action you can produce a 6" bag from within this bag. This bag is made of all natural fibers.
Bag of manliness: Any creature wearing the bag of manliness visibly will have advantage on persuasion checks vs women (reguardless of character gender) as long as they behave in a flirtatious manner... however if the creature removes the bag, or turns his back on a female under the spell of the bag, she will become enraged.
Hello everyone. I'm running a game right now consisting of five players with a bit of a range of experience. In my game a common theme is hitting the game in angles that aren't explored often or at least in the case of what we see at the shop. I'm at a point in my game where magical items are starting to become on their radar or at least in vision. Were about 7 sessions deep. They are at level 2 mostly but their about to level up probably in Session 8. In my game I'm having them go after a sun stone, a made up item made every 100 years by an abandon temple of various sun gods. They're chasing the stone because its going to help them make an item that will help out in their campaign (A Sun Blade). Once they get the stone and bring it back, the guy who can do something with it is going to break it down into 4 parts. The inner workings which can be simply bought by the gnome tinkers, special lenses that a lens crafter will have to make to focus the beam of light, the sun stone itself, and finally the hilt. (yeah its practically a light saber which is part of the fun)
So the hilt can be made with 6 different materials and each basically change the way the sun blade comes out. As it is now if they just rush it and make it, you know, a steel handle? It'll be a sun blade without the +2 to it. So radiant damage. They are running into a lot of stuff that is vulnerable to Radiant and even with just that it'll go far but the other materials can add to it in different ways. They don't really get the benefit of the special modifications until the item attunes to them and the ways to attune can vary depending on the item and the will of the holder.
So ultimately what I'm trying to get at is, if players were to create magical items and I mean not the way where they simply spend the gold and days to produce it but were to travel out for materials to make it, what sort of gimmicks would you have running? What sort of material would you use to make various things from your experience of the game itself. Like a Periapt of Health was made with Targath, a metal that even when touching benefits the beholder. I feel like a lot of this sort of stuff may have been mentioned in 4e or older editions but I only really had 3.5 stuff handy. Does anyone know any online sources people use to use to figure out this kind of crafting? I could use any ideas for future items. Since they're primary focus is fighting monsters in my own version of the Shadowfell and in between, their is a lot less running into humanoid bad asses with magic gear to take when you kill them and to be honest I like it that way. Its a mid to high magic campaign but I want to bask in their low resources for now to better remember their roots.
So, I'm a little confused:
Do you want a list of mundane materials used in DnD that will be readily availible to anyone with coin or pickaxe? If so, then metal and gemstones are the way to go. Gemstones especially are usually associated with a variety of "aspects" and "auras" that tend to play well with magic item creation. Things like Onyx, Cat's Eye, Bloodstone, Dragonstone, Moonstone, Citrine, Zircon and Dolomite are all very evocative and tend to imbue mundane objects with interesting properties.
Or are you looking for a list of Macguffins like your sun-stone "created as liquified sunlight drips upon a shrine for a hundred years, bathed in the radiance of the gods?"
Things such as
Ha, Macguffin! I like that. There was a gentleman I use to play with some time ago who's played table top longer than a lot of my friends have been alive and he would talk about how some magic items were made. Basically part of the incentive of hunting monsters was being able to craft gear out of them and I was hoping to follow that thought process and see if there was ever an official or even an unofficial resource people defaulted to in older editions.
I did want to leave it lose enough to say that I would have liked to hear how other people would "Macguffin" some items of their own. I'm curious as to how people would explain the creation process of say, gauntlets of ogre power, an immovable rod, or even a bag of holding. Like a drift globe. A glass bauble you simply need to imbue with levitation, Daylight, and the light cantrip. I like where your going with the Rare Flowers though. That's an idea I didn't think enough on.
{whoops double post}
Ok, so for a really, really basic system then, I'd Identify some categories of items. For the purposes of this system, lets use the rarity scale used by 5e so we have mundane -> legendary on a sliding scale. A legendary magic item is usually entirely unique. There is only one, and if you want it, you have to go fetch. Mundane items, I would classify as any item that duplicates the effect of a commonly known spell, or is well enough understood that you can craft it via the basic PHB rules...
So lets look at "special" items that might fall in-between
This gives you a decent idea about how one goes about crafting any magical item who's effect is loosely based on some spell or other... but what about spells that don't exist, or feats?
A Mantle of the Dungeon Delver is a cloak worn about the shoulders, usually of fine quality, that has been attached to an non-descript bit of magic that imbues it with special properties. In order to craft one, I would require the following: A 1/2 cloak/mantel of fine quality (made from the pelt of a giant badger from the underdark?). Because this spell does not appear in the PC's spell list, he will need to acquire (or produce if he has the template) 10 copies of the spell scroll for the Dungeon Delver feat, which for argument's sake, we'll say is a 1st level spell. You'll also need our custom designed permanency spell (See above). From there, I would again say that in order to create a Mantel of the Dungeon Delver, you must cast the permanency ritual each day as well as casting the new Dungeon Delver spell, until you succeeded 10 times. (Meaning that the total cost would be 10 lvl 5 spell slots, 10 lvl 1 spell slots and a Mantel of fine quality.)
As you can see, MOST magical items generally won't require you to go on some special adventure to do them. You just need access to the base components which are about as easy or difficult as you want them to be... but there are 3 exceptions to this:
This is how I would construct a 5e based crafting system, if I wanted to ditch the PHB version. It's simple, it's scalable and any time you think that your players are trying to break the game, you can swat their hands down without actually telling them that they can't do it.
Some things in my head that I didn't include for brevity and simplicity's sake
There is a ton to mull over and I been thinking about what you've said since lunch earlier today. I've made it very clear in my game that the players may be prone to coming into possession magic items that simply weren't crafted right. An identify spell proclaims the intent but the wiring and programming went wrong somewhere. The suggested ritual+failure chances meshes correctly in the world. I think if I was to incorporate a page from pathfinder in reference to sentient weapons in craft, what I could do is make it a few checks here and there in the crafting of item gain a sentient or a cursed property after a number of hard botches or very successful pulls. I mean a cursed item doesn't have to be a awful just as a sentient weapon doesn't have to be really... smart or particularly useful. That's going to be a ways away before practical use in the game through the player's own resources, in the mean time I'm liking where your going with the alchemical jug sort of talk.
I been talking with a player of mine and recently came to the conclusion that we need to spend more time in the journey from point A to Point B actually doing something besides fighting. More than just rolling combat encounters, having scenery and land marks to stumble upon that could trigger an encounter if the players go seeking for it. I think taking a note from the damp stone, having little oddities in nature players could stumble upon could be the incentive I need for them to get off the beaten path and explore, so I like that a lot. Good, good suggestions so far.
You can do some really weird things as far as magic items. Recently I decided to try and give the payers a sort of "mini bag of holding" but didn't want to just give them a bag of holding. They were in a dungeon, and came across a Door Mimic. I reasoned that mimics have to be able to move somehow. How else would they decide where would be the best place to get food? So I decided once the mimic was down pretty far in HP that it just sort of... sloughs off the door in a small oozy puddle. I rolled a stealth check, no one was able to follow it, and it crawled up one of the players legs and mimicked a pouch. I decided that they could use the mimic as a sort of pet that would get bigger if they fed it and took care of it, and would work as a bag of holding/devouring (small percent chance the mimic would just eat an item). They realized what happened and killed it when the player found he had an unknown second pouch on his belt. I was a little sad. But it was hilarious when the player put coins in his pouch, the pouch burps, and everyone freaked out.
I also tend not to make too many requirements on what materials are required to make items. I let the players decide what they want to make and what they want to try and use to make it. Then I adjust a DC depending on how the materials they decide to use and the skills and spells they want to use make sense to me. Of course, there are exceptions. If they want to create a ring of wishes, good luck finding a Djinn who is willing to donate part of it's essence...
In short, do what makes sense or is fun... or both.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
Bag of many colors: This bag contains an extradimensional space that can hold the following, so long as any particular item does not break the following rules. 1) The opening of the bag is 8" across. Nothing bigger than 8" will fit. 2) No two items in the bag may be the same color (DM's discression)
Bag of useful items: This bag produces 1 object each day (ala the robe of wonders) each day there is a chance that it will produce, a sack, battering ram, foldable boat, dagger, portable hole, 24 ft long wooden ladder, Assorted gems, a small sack of gold, a riding horse with saddle bags, 4 potions of the DMs choice, a 12'ft long row boat, a spell scroll containing a 1st to 3rd level spell, 50'ft of hempen rope, hostile monsters, a 2000lb stone door of dwarven make, a sack of caltrops... and more! these objects will all disappear after 24 hrs.
Bag of Recycling: When you put an object (or collection of objects) into this bag, it will destroy those objects and produce something of similar approximate value over the course of a long rest. This bag can only hold 20lbs of weight at any given time.
Bag of bags: As an action you can produce a 6" bag from within this bag. This bag is made of all natural fibers.
Bag of manliness: Any creature wearing the bag of manliness visibly will have advantage on persuasion checks vs women (reguardless of character gender) as long as they behave in a flirtatious manner... however if the creature removes the bag, or turns his back on a female under the spell of the bag, she will become enraged.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
Should do well next to your cape of billowing, instrument of scribing and pipe of smoke monsters.... and don't forget your staff of bird-calls.
P.S. Sorry for hijacking the thread.