Ok so, I want to make a Magic Item, so how to go about it, specifically it's CR, do I have to watch the CR of the Spells I put into the said item, and add there CR together to make the Magic Item, and I want to give that magic items to an Ancient Red Dragon, when I'm done making the magic item and give it to my Dragon, do I add there CR of them both together, also Fizban's Dragon Book said a tip that if doing this, it's best to not increase the CR to much of the dragon, so how do I watch that?
If you're asking "How does giving a monster a magic item affect it's CR", you need to look at how the item either affects it's defensive (AC, hit points, resistances, immunities, and vulnerabilities) or offensive stats (damage output, to hit modifier, and saving throw DC). If it doesn't affect those, it won't affect CR (generally speaking) but it's worth crossing referencing whatever ability it does against the chart in the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide.
Compare magic items to official ones for rarity and obviously don't let a common item cast Earthquake thrice a day. Use the level of the spell as a judge for rarity.
Some quick rules of thumb for monsters and magic items:
1) Increasing the AC of a monster by 2 or giving an item that causes PCs to have disadvantage trying to hit it - e.g. Cloak of Displacement, or Invisibility, or an item that causes Frightened or Poisoned, should increase its CR by 1. Or other defensive ability like Mirror Image.
2) Increasing the average damage per round of a monster by 25%, should increase its CR by 1. If you give a monster an AoE ability assume it hits half of the party when calculating damage, if you give a monster a Once per Combat ability divide the damage it does by 3.
3) Giving a monster one or two elemental damage resistances / immunities doesn't really affect its CR. Making it resistant/immune to any of the following does increase its CR: radiant, force, bludgeoning, slashing, piercing.
4) Giving a monster Magic Resistance increase its CR unless it already has Legendary Resistances.
Some quick rules of thumb for monsters and magic items:
1) Increasing the AC of a monster by 2 or giving an item that causes PCs to have disadvantage trying to hit it - e.g. Cloak of Displacement, or Invisibility, or an item that causes Frightened or Poisoned, should increase its CR by 1. Or other defensive ability like Mirror Image.
2) Increasing the average damage per round of a monster by 25%, should increase its CR by 1. If you give a monster an AoE ability assume it hits half of the party when calculating damage, if you give a monster a Once per Combat ability divide the damage it does by 3.
3) Giving a monster one or two elemental damage resistances / immunities doesn't really affect its CR. Making it resistant/immune to any of the following does increase its CR: radiant, force, bludgeoning, slashing, piercing.
4) Giving a monster Magic Resistance increase its CR unless it already has Legendary Resistances.
2 is wrong. If a monster goes from 100 to 125 damage, that is an increase of more than 1 Cr.
3 is also wrong. If radiant resistance increases CR fire and maybe cold or poison should.
3 is also wrong. If radiant resistance increases CR fire and maybe cold or poison should.
No, every character that deals fire, cold or poison also has many many options for other damage types they can deal. Sure they might not be as good at dealing other damage types but they have lots of options.
In contrast, the best damage cantrip for Bards is radiant-based, Pact of the Blade is radiant, True Strike is radiant, and Cleric and Paladins get hardly any damage choices other than radiant, Moon Druid beast strikes is radiant. Almost all the decent damage spells for Druids are radiant as well (though they will probably have a couple other options).
Fire is a favourite of Wizards and Sorcerers but they have many many other options, and Poison isn't a favourite of anyone.
Necrotic and Psychic arguably could be added to the "increase-cr list" as there can be characters highly dependent on those as well - warlocks and bards mostly - but usually those characters aren't built as pure DPR and there are far far fewer of them than those reliant on radiant/force/b/s/p.
It can be Radiant, Psychic, or Necrotic in 2024. While there might technically be an “optimal” selection among those 3, I expect most players just go with whichever vibes for their patron.
Ok so, the main reason I even made this topic was to make a Magic item that's similar to the "Rod of Rulership" and "Fraz'ueblu's Staff" but a little different.
Scepter or Staff of Royal Command (working progress name)
-Holder has Level 9 Command at will
-Cast lv:1 Charm Person/lv:4 Monster, 2 per day
-Cast lv:6 Mass Suggestion, & lv:5 Geas once per day
(tried to make it somewhat fair)
And as I believe I mentioned this, that I want to give this item to a 2024 (CR:24) Ancient Red Dragon specifically, so how would this item affect the CR of that Dragon, this is why I made this to start with, can someone help me out here plz?
Ok so, the main reason I even made this topic was to make a Magic item that's similar to the "Rod of Rulership" and "Fraz'ueblu's Staff" but a little different.
Scepter or Staff of Royal Command (working progress name)
-Holder has Level 9 Command at will
-Cast lv:1 Charm Person/lv:4 Monster, 2 per day
-Cast lv:6 Mass Suggestion, & lv:5 Geas once per day
Unclear, most of those spells are largely irrelevant / ineffectual at the kind of level where the party would be fighting an Ancient Red Dragon.
Geas has a 1 Minute casting time so is not usable in Combat.
Mass Suggestion completely depends on DM interpretation, it can make a combat completely impossible or do almost nothing. A Mass Suggestion of "Run, Run away as far as you can, and never return." Could easily cause half or more of the party to be simply removed from the combat thus would double the CR of the dragon. However, for certain party compositions Mass Suggestion is completely ineffectual - a single Devotion Paladin makes the entire party immune to Mass Suggestion.
Ancient Red Dragons already have Command as at-will and as a Legendary Action at level 2, increasing this to level 9 increases the number of targets, however the Ancient Red Dragon only has a +9 Constitution Saving Throw so it is pretty likely to get Counterspelled. All in all it would probably manage to incapacitate the entire party for 1 round on average rather than 1-2 characters, so that's effectively decreasing the party effectiveness by ~20% so would increase the dragon's CR to 29.
Charm Person/Charm Monster are irrelevant, Mass Suggestion is better in every way and the dragon is unlikely to last long enough to need to use the Charm Person/Charm Monster rather than using Mass Suggestion or its Breath Attack.
However, note that control spells / abilities are near impossible to ascribe CR to because they depend so much on DM tactics. An Ancient Red Dragon that uses Command to force the Paladin/Fighter to drop their swanky magic weapons & shields then smashes those items to pieces or grabs them and swallows them is completely different beast to one that just forces the Paladin/Fighter to grovel. A dragon that uses Mass Suggestion to force most of the party to run away or to fight their own allies for 24 hours, is completely different from a dragon that uses it to make the party members hand over their gold and jewels.
Ok so, the main reason I even made this topic was to make a Magic item that's similar to the "Rod of Rulership" and "Fraz'ueblu's Staff" but a little different.
Scepter or Staff of Royal Command (working progress name)
-Holder has Level 9 Command at will
-Cast lv:1 Charm Person/lv:4 Monster, 2 per day
-Cast lv:6 Mass Suggestion, & lv:5 Geas once per day
Unclear, most of those spells are largely irrelevant / ineffectual at the kind of level where the party would be fighting an Ancient Red Dragon.
Geas has a 1 Minute casting time so is not usable in Combat.
Mass Suggestion completely depends on DM interpretation, it can make a combat completely impossible or do almost nothing. A Mass Suggestion of "Run, Run away as far as you can, and never return." Could easily cause half or more of the party to be simply removed from the combat thus would double the CR of the dragon. However, for certain party compositions Mass Suggestion is completely ineffectual - a single Devotion Paladin makes the entire party immune to Mass Suggestion.
Ancient Red Dragons already have Command as at-will and as a Legendary Action at level 2, increasing this to level 9 increases the number of targets, however the Ancient Red Dragon only has a +9 Constitution Saving Throw so it is pretty likely to get Counterspelled. All in all it would probably manage to incapacitate the entire party for 1 round on average rather than 1-2 characters, so that's effectively decreasing the party effectiveness by ~20% so would increase the dragon's CR to 29.
Charm Person/Charm Monster are irrelevant, Mass Suggestion is better in every way and the dragon is unlikely to last long enough to need to use the Charm Person/Charm Monster rather than using Mass Suggestion or its Breath Attack.
However, note that control spells / abilities are near impossible to ascribe CR to because they depend so much on DM tactics. An Ancient Red Dragon that uses Command to force the Paladin/Fighter to drop their swanky magic weapons & shields then smashes those items to pieces or grabs them and swallows them is completely different beast to one that just forces the Paladin/Fighter to grovel. A dragon that uses Mass Suggestion to force most of the party to run away or to fight their own allies for 24 hours, is completely different from a dragon that uses it to make the party members hand over their gold and jewels.
All good points, very helpful, and informative, this help me as a newbie DM to make a challenging boss monster, now with that being said, all of this is for combat situations however, so how about a narrative perspective, like non-combat story actions with an item like this? Wat u said opened my eyes to combat relevancy, but wat antic's would it do outside of fighting?
Also you actually made fighting a Ancient Red seem like childs play, like it's a pushover.
Also I might as well ask this now, if an adult and ancient dragon has Lv:2 Command at will, does imply that very spell levels up overtime, or is it just a static lv:2 permanently, cuz if it can level up I highly doubt that an 600 yr old dragon would leave it at lv:2 for yrs before becoming ancient at 800 yrs, I would imagine that it would be at MAX lv:9 through out it's years cuz it worked on leveling it up in that timeframe, but that's just my head cannon
Non-combat story stuff doesn't need mechanical justification, and is often better off without specific mechanical justification - it makes the enemies more mysterious and scary if they are doing stuff not easily explained by known mechanics. Why would a 600 year old dragon be limited to the spells a player character can learn over a couple years of adventuring?
Dragons are kind of boring out of combat IME, either they are just pretending to the humans and infiltrating some power structure, or they are in their dragon form lording over other beings. Geas can be used to enslave people but that's about it. You could do the standard "ooh that NPC you thought was your ally is actually working for the dragon!" or "is secretly a dragon in disguise!" though they are a bit played out IMO.
What is the goal of your dragon? If it just wants riches there is only so much you can do with them, whereas dragons trying to cure themselves from a curse, or trying to become a liche have more diversity of things they might want/need to do.
That's wat I want to explore more of, I want my dragon to beyond the typical stuff, the diversity is wat I'm after, also again good points, and limited spells part really hit home to me, that's what I want to hear.
Especially for high-tier play, I highly recommend having additional goals to combat other than just "kill all the bad guys". Give your enemies something to do, and thus give your players something they are trying to stop other than by just killing the enemy.
For an ancient red dragon some examples could be:
Doomsday device : the dragon is trying to set off a massive volcano using some magical digging device or having a their cultists/servants dig into the volcano's cap - or by swimming around inside the magma pools inside the volcano and destroying some kind of magical device that is keeping the volcano dormant.
Chase/Escape : the dragon has been bound by a magical chain but has just found a way to break free, so is more interested in escaping from the vast cavern system or temple or dungeon where it has been locked up than in fighting the players - thus the players need to find a way to trap it / block it long enough to kill it.
Playing with Portals: the dragon has assembled magic rocks to form a portal to the plane of fire and the PCs need to shut down the portal before too many fire-elemental creatures get through.
Capture-the-Flag: the dragon secretly needs some powerful magic item in the possession of one of the players to complete some ritual that will make itself uber-powerful, the party must defeat the dragon while also preventing the dragon from getting hold of the item.
The Distraction: The dragon has set in motion some kind of ritual / machine that will cause some terrible thing to happen and just needs to keep the PCs busy fighting itself until the ritual/machine finishes its work.
Sacrificial Lambs: Classic cage full of innocent people slowly lowering into a pool of lava and if the innocents die the dragon achieves some goal and gets more powerful.
That's wat I'm say thanks for the pointers, also If u want (if u can that is), I made a post in the Homebrew forum about custom Demon Lords, if u want to help talk about that, appreciate it
Also I might as well ask this now, if an adult and ancient dragon has Lv:2 Command at will, does it imply that very spell can level up overtime like for player character, or is it just a static lv:2 permanently?
Ok so, the main reason I even made this topic was to make a Magic item that's similar to the "Rod of Rulership" and "Fraz'ueblu's Staff" but a little different.
Scepter or Staff of Royal Command (working progress name)
-Holder has Level 9 Command at will
-Cast lv:1 Charm Person/lv:4 Monster, 2 per day
-Cast lv:6 Mass Suggestion, & lv:5 Geas once per day
Unclear, most of those spells are largely irrelevant / ineffectual at the kind of level where the party would be fighting an Ancient Red Dragon.
Geas has a 1 Minute casting time so is not usable in Combat.
Mass Suggestion completely depends on DM interpretation, it can make a combat completely impossible or do almost nothing. A Mass Suggestion of "Run, Run away as far as you can, and never return." Could easily cause half or more of the party to be simply removed from the combat thus would double the CR of the dragon. However, for certain party compositions Mass Suggestion is completely ineffectual - a single Devotion Paladin makes the entire party immune to Mass Suggestion.
Ancient Red Dragons already have Command as at-will and as a Legendary Action at level 2, increasing this to level 9 increases the number of targets, however the Ancient Red Dragon only has a +9 Constitution Saving Throw so it is pretty likely to get Counterspelled. All in all it would probably manage to incapacitate the entire party for 1 round on average rather than 1-2 characters, so that's effectively decreasing the party effectiveness by ~20% so would increase the dragon's CR to 29.
Charm Person/Charm Monster are irrelevant, Mass Suggestion is better in every way and the dragon is unlikely to last long enough to need to use the Charm Person/Charm Monster rather than using Mass Suggestion or its Breath Attack.
However, note that control spells / abilities are near impossible to ascribe CR to because they depend so much on DM tactics. An Ancient Red Dragon that uses Command to force the Paladin/Fighter to drop their swanky magic weapons & shields then smashes those items to pieces or grabs them and swallows them is completely different beast to one that just forces the Paladin/Fighter to grovel. A dragon that uses Mass Suggestion to force most of the party to run away or to fight their own allies for 24 hours, is completely different from a dragon that uses it to make the party members hand over their gold and jewels.
Wait so, an magic item like this wouldn't really effect the CR, I read through this again, and all I got was it maybe raise its CR to 29, or not at all, so with that said, I could run an item like this? so want rarity should such an item be exactly? I'm quite eager to guess
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Ok so, I want to make a Magic Item, so how to go about it, specifically it's CR, do I have to watch the CR of the Spells I put into the said item, and add there CR together to make the Magic Item, and I want to give that magic items to an Ancient Red Dragon, when I'm done making the magic item and give it to my Dragon, do I add there CR of them both together, also Fizban's Dragon Book said a tip that if doing this, it's best to not increase the CR to much of the dragon, so how do I watch that?
A Challenge Rating summarizes the threat a monster poses, not typically found in spells or magic items.
Giving a monster combat-oriented magic items might alter the monster's CR so you must keep that in mind.
If you're asking "How does giving a monster a magic item affect it's CR", you need to look at how the item either affects it's defensive (AC, hit points, resistances, immunities, and vulnerabilities) or offensive stats (damage output, to hit modifier, and saving throw DC). If it doesn't affect those, it won't affect CR (generally speaking) but it's worth crossing referencing whatever ability it does against the chart in the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Compare magic items to official ones for rarity and obviously don't let a common item cast Earthquake thrice a day. Use the level of the spell as a judge for rarity.
The 2024 DMG has guidance on Creating/Modifying a Creature and Creating/Modifying a Magic Item.
Some quick rules of thumb for monsters and magic items:
1) Increasing the AC of a monster by 2 or giving an item that causes PCs to have disadvantage trying to hit it - e.g. Cloak of Displacement, or Invisibility, or an item that causes Frightened or Poisoned, should increase its CR by 1. Or other defensive ability like Mirror Image.
2) Increasing the average damage per round of a monster by 25%, should increase its CR by 1. If you give a monster an AoE ability assume it hits half of the party when calculating damage, if you give a monster a Once per Combat ability divide the damage it does by 3.
3) Giving a monster one or two elemental damage resistances / immunities doesn't really affect its CR. Making it resistant/immune to any of the following does increase its CR: radiant, force, bludgeoning, slashing, piercing.
4) Giving a monster Magic Resistance increase its CR unless it already has Legendary Resistances.
2 is wrong. If a monster goes from 100 to 125 damage, that is an increase of more than 1 Cr.
3 is also wrong. If radiant resistance increases CR fire and maybe cold or poison should.
No, every character that deals fire, cold or poison also has many many options for other damage types they can deal. Sure they might not be as good at dealing other damage types but they have lots of options.
In contrast, the best damage cantrip for Bards is radiant-based, Pact of the Blade is radiant, True Strike is radiant, and Cleric and Paladins get hardly any damage choices other than radiant, Moon Druid beast strikes is radiant. Almost all the decent damage spells for Druids are radiant as well (though they will probably have a couple other options).
Fire is a favourite of Wizards and Sorcerers but they have many many other options, and Poison isn't a favourite of anyone.
Necrotic and Psychic arguably could be added to the "increase-cr list" as there can be characters highly dependent on those as well - warlocks and bards mostly - but usually those characters aren't built as pure DPR and there are far far fewer of them than those reliant on radiant/force/b/s/p.
Since when is Pact of the Blade Radiant? I do get your point though.
Since 2024.
pronouns: he/she/they
It can be Radiant, Psychic, or Necrotic in 2024. While there might technically be an “optimal” selection among those 3, I expect most players just go with whichever vibes for their patron.
Ok so, the main reason I even made this topic was to make a Magic item that's similar to the "Rod of Rulership" and "Fraz'ueblu's Staff" but a little different.
Scepter or Staff of Royal Command (working progress name)
-Holder has Level 9 Command at will
-Cast lv:1 Charm Person/lv:4 Monster, 2 per day
-Cast lv:6 Mass Suggestion, & lv:5 Geas once per day
(tried to make it somewhat fair)
And as I believe I mentioned this, that I want to give this item to a 2024 (CR:24) Ancient Red Dragon specifically, so how would this item affect the CR of that Dragon, this is why I made this to start with, can someone help me out here plz?
Unclear, most of those spells are largely irrelevant / ineffectual at the kind of level where the party would be fighting an Ancient Red Dragon.
Geas has a 1 Minute casting time so is not usable in Combat.
Mass Suggestion completely depends on DM interpretation, it can make a combat completely impossible or do almost nothing. A Mass Suggestion of "Run, Run away as far as you can, and never return." Could easily cause half or more of the party to be simply removed from the combat thus would double the CR of the dragon. However, for certain party compositions Mass Suggestion is completely ineffectual - a single Devotion Paladin makes the entire party immune to Mass Suggestion.
Ancient Red Dragons already have Command as at-will and as a Legendary Action at level 2, increasing this to level 9 increases the number of targets, however the Ancient Red Dragon only has a +9 Constitution Saving Throw so it is pretty likely to get Counterspelled. All in all it would probably manage to incapacitate the entire party for 1 round on average rather than 1-2 characters, so that's effectively decreasing the party effectiveness by ~20% so would increase the dragon's CR to 29.
Charm Person/Charm Monster are irrelevant, Mass Suggestion is better in every way and the dragon is unlikely to last long enough to need to use the Charm Person/Charm Monster rather than using Mass Suggestion or its Breath Attack.
However, note that control spells / abilities are near impossible to ascribe CR to because they depend so much on DM tactics. An Ancient Red Dragon that uses Command to force the Paladin/Fighter to drop their swanky magic weapons & shields then smashes those items to pieces or grabs them and swallows them is completely different beast to one that just forces the Paladin/Fighter to grovel. A dragon that uses Mass Suggestion to force most of the party to run away or to fight their own allies for 24 hours, is completely different from a dragon that uses it to make the party members hand over their gold and jewels.
All good points, very helpful, and informative, this help me as a newbie DM to make a challenging boss monster, now with that being said, all of this is for combat situations however, so how about a narrative perspective, like non-combat story actions with an item like this? Wat u said opened my eyes to combat relevancy, but wat antic's would it do outside of fighting?
Also you actually made fighting a Ancient Red seem like childs play, like it's a pushover.
Also I might as well ask this now, if an adult and ancient dragon has Lv:2 Command at will, does imply that very spell levels up overtime, or is it just a static lv:2 permanently, cuz if it can level up I highly doubt that an 600 yr old dragon would leave it at lv:2 for yrs before becoming ancient at 800 yrs, I would imagine that it would be at MAX lv:9 through out it's years cuz it worked on leveling it up in that timeframe, but that's just my head cannon
Non-combat story stuff doesn't need mechanical justification, and is often better off without specific mechanical justification - it makes the enemies more mysterious and scary if they are doing stuff not easily explained by known mechanics. Why would a 600 year old dragon be limited to the spells a player character can learn over a couple years of adventuring?
Dragons are kind of boring out of combat IME, either they are just pretending to the humans and infiltrating some power structure, or they are in their dragon form lording over other beings. Geas can be used to enslave people but that's about it. You could do the standard "ooh that NPC you thought was your ally is actually working for the dragon!" or "is secretly a dragon in disguise!" though they are a bit played out IMO.
What is the goal of your dragon? If it just wants riches there is only so much you can do with them, whereas dragons trying to cure themselves from a curse, or trying to become a liche have more diversity of things they might want/need to do.
That's wat I want to explore more of, I want my dragon to beyond the typical stuff, the diversity is wat I'm after, also again good points, and limited spells part really hit home to me, that's what I want to hear.
Especially for high-tier play, I highly recommend having additional goals to combat other than just "kill all the bad guys". Give your enemies something to do, and thus give your players something they are trying to stop other than by just killing the enemy.
For an ancient red dragon some examples could be:
That's wat I'm say thanks for the pointers, also If u want (if u can that is), I made a post in the Homebrew forum about custom Demon Lords, if u want to help talk about that, appreciate it
Also I might as well ask this now, if an adult and ancient dragon has Lv:2 Command at will, does it imply that very spell can level up overtime like for player character, or is it just a static lv:2 permanently?
Wait so, an magic item like this wouldn't really effect the CR, I read through this again, and all I got was it maybe raise its CR to 29, or not at all, so with that said, I could run an item like this? so want rarity should such an item be exactly? I'm quite eager to guess