In this Sentient Artifact example and all the others I have found, I see they have three states: Dormant Awakened and Exalted. In DMG 214-221 where it talks about creating a sentient item and creating an artifact, I haven't found where it references these states. So I am left with the of questions where did these states comes from and how does a character cause a progression between the states?
Secondly, I am supposed to include them when designing a sentient artifact?
I think those states are part of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount rather than the DMG. I don't have that sourcebook myself so can't tell you any more about it sorry, but you might find more info in there.
As gruntler said, those are from wildemount, and are called vestiges of divergence. The idea behind them is they start off weak(er) and gain power as the character using them does certain things — like overcoming some personal challenge. So you can give a low-level character one and not worry about it wrecking your game. The DM is in complete control over when the item gains powers, (deciding if the personal challenge was important enough to merit the item getting stronger), though there are guidelines:
A Vestige of Divergence typically remains dormant until its wielder achieves 9th level. It becomes awakened between levels 9 and 15, and achieves an exalted state between levels 16 and 20. Ultimately, though, this progression is determined by the Dungeon Master.
To answer your question, you don’t have to mess with them at all if you are creating an artifact. You can make a standard DMG-style artifact and just have it just work. Vestiges are just another option.
We've actually been taking that approach to a variety of items, having them scale along with the four tiers of character progression. It makes for a nice character/item arc... suddenly, that cool magic dagger you found at 3rd level stops being a throw-away by 6th... it progresses right along with you, growing as your character grows. It's a fabulous mechanism.
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In this Sentient Artifact example and all the others I have found, I see they have three states: Dormant Awakened and Exalted. In DMG 214-221 where it talks about creating a sentient item and creating an artifact, I haven't found where it references these states. So I am left with the of questions where did these states comes from and how does a character cause a progression between the states?
Secondly, I am supposed to include them when designing a sentient artifact?
I think those states are part of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount rather than the DMG. I don't have that sourcebook myself so can't tell you any more about it sorry, but you might find more info in there.
As gruntler said, those are from wildemount, and are called vestiges of divergence. The idea behind them is they start off weak(er) and gain power as the character using them does certain things — like overcoming some personal challenge. So you can give a low-level character one and not worry about it wrecking your game. The DM is in complete control over when the item gains powers, (deciding if the personal challenge was important enough to merit the item getting stronger), though there are guidelines:
A Vestige of Divergence typically remains dormant until its wielder achieves 9th level. It becomes awakened between levels 9 and 15, and achieves an exalted state between levels 16 and 20. Ultimately, though, this progression is determined by the Dungeon Master.
To answer your question, you don’t have to mess with them at all if you are creating an artifact. You can make a standard DMG-style artifact and just have it just work. Vestiges are just another option.
I find Vestige of Divergence brilliant and like it's implementation a lot
Thank you everyone, that makes a lot more sense.
We've actually been taking that approach to a variety of items, having them scale along with the four tiers of character progression. It makes for a nice character/item arc... suddenly, that cool magic dagger you found at 3rd level stops being a throw-away by 6th... it progresses right along with you, growing as your character grows. It's a fabulous mechanism.