Chapter 2 - Magic Items - Appendix B
Other Magic Items
Other Items
This broad category includes all other types of magical items, including rings, wands, staves, rods, miscellaneous magical items, and weapons and armor.
Magical items are divided into several loose classes that are based on the nature of the enchantment: single use, limited use, single function, and multiple function.
Single use items are depleted after a single usage. Single use magical items include such things as beads of force, incense of meditation, or any of Quaal’s feather tokens.
Limited use items have a set or variable number of charges that may be used before it is expended. Some limited use items can be recharged, but only if they are recharged before their last charge has been expended. Other limited use items may have multiple functions (see below). Most wands and staves are limited use items. Other limited use items include such devices as a ring of wishes, bag of beans, scarab of protection, or the special properties of armor of fear.
Single function items have only one power, which functions continuously or on demand. Some single function items have time limitations, after which they cannot be used until they replenish their magical energy. Some single function items may feature a limited use feature, in addition to the persistent powers. Items such as a ring of shocking grasp, amulet of life protection, boots of speed, and wings of flying are good examples of single function items.
Multiple function items have more than one power and may also feature additional limited use powers. Good examples include the rod of alertness, ring of elemental command, cloak of arachnida, or the helm of brilliance.
Research
Before a character can begin work on a magical item, he must first discover the steps necessary to create it. A character must spend 1d6+1 weeks and 200 gp per week in order to find out how to build the item; although the DM may rule that exceptionally powerful items (5,000 XP value or greater, or any item such as a girdle of giant strength that imparts drastic and persistent bonuses to a character) requires consultation with a sage or some special effort on the part of the character to research.
Contact other plane and commune spells are particularly useful in this step of item creation, since the successful use of one of these divinations reduces the research time to the minimum required.
Processes and Materials
The exact nature of the processes and materials required varies from item to item depending on its category and type. However, all items require an enchant an item spell (or the equivalent priestly ceremony), and many also require a permanency spell.
Rings
Any ring requires one common process in addition to any extra materials or processes needed for multiple functions or limited use. Discovering all the steps required to make a ring requires 1d6+1 weeks of research and costs 200 gp a week.
Rings created by wizards must be prepared with an enchant an item spell and finished with a permanency spell, although charged rings such as the ring of the ram do not require the permanency spell, since it can be recharged. Naturally, the character must also cast any spells required for spell like functions. Multiple use rings require one spell per use, and multiple function rings need one set of spells for each function.
Priests, though they do not actually cast any spells, still suffer the penalty for spells. The more complex the enchantment, the more difficult it is to successfully petition the deity to imbue the item with power.
Rods, Staves, and Wands
These items require enchant an item spells—or the equivalent priest ceremonies—and whatever spells are needed to create their powers. Multiple function rods, staves, and wands need one spell (or set of spells) for each function.
If the item is rechargeable, it is created with one charge and then additional charges are added using the recharging procedure.
A rod, staff, or wand loses all its magical properties if it is ever drained of all its charges, even if it is normally rechargeable.
Materials for these devices could include the actual shaft or handle, a special headpiece or crystal, or special heels or caps for the ends. Processes might include carving, engraving, painting, or tempering.
Miscellaneous Magic, Armor, and Weapons
These items require enchant an item spells (or the equivalent priest ceremonies) and whatever spells are needed to create their powers. Each plus for a weapon or protective device requires a separate spell. Single use and limited use items do not require permanency spells, but other items do. Weapons and armor that have no special properties except for conferring combat bonuses are considered single function items; items with blending, command, disruption, throwing, hurling, accuracy, speed, distance, venom, homing, lightning, piercing, sharpness, wounding, or vorpal properties are considered multiple function items. Armors that have special but expendable properties (fear and etherealness) are limited use items; and expendable items such as magical arrows or javelins are single use items.
Rechargeable items are created with one charge.
Success and Failure
The chance to successfully create an item is 60%, +1% for every level of the creator, and –1% for each spell and special process required (except for the enchant an item or finishing permanency). While specialist wizards receive a 5% bonus to their success chance when creating an item using abilities from their school of specialization, artificers gain a special 10% bonus to their success chance due to their superior item crafting skills.
No matter how many times a character has created a particular magical item, the chances for success remain the same. At the DM’s option, characters who display exceptional ingenuity or go to extreme lengths to create an item from the very best, most appropriate materials and processes available may receive an additional bonus of +5% to +15% on their success chance.
Most failed attempts ruin the item, melting it into useless slag or destroying it in some other dramatic fashion. If the character rolls a 96 or higher on his success check, the item is cursed in some way. For example, a character attempting to produce a cloak of displacement might create a cloak of poisonousness instead. If for some reason the character was trying to create a cursed item, a roll of 96 or higher is a simple failure—he doesn’t create a beneficial device instead!
Notes to Chart 10
Item: The type of item being created. These are divided into the same general categories as used in Appendix 3 of the Dungeon Master Guide and are further subdivided by how they can be used.
Single use: Using the item once completely consumes its magic, often consuming the item itself. Examples include virtually all potions, scrolls, dusts, oils, and elixirs.
Limited use: The item can be used a fixed number of times before it is consumed. Some limited use items can be recharged, and some have multiple functions (see the Item Details section). This includes most rods, staves, and wands as well as some rings and miscellaneous magical items.
Single Function: The item has only one power, which usually functions continuously or on demand. Some single function items expend charges when used. An amulet of proof against detection and location, cloak of displacement, and ring of multiple wishes are all examples of this type of magic.
Multiple Function: The item has more than one power. Some multiple function items are charged (and also are limited use items) and some are not. Noncharged items of this nature include scarabs of protection, crystal balls, and hammers of thunderbolts.
Material: Materials may actually represent physical components of the item in question the metal used to forge a ring or a rod, the wool from which a cloak is woven. Materials might be additives or refinements, such as a handful of pixie dust for a potion of flying, or the scales of a giant snake that are incorporated in a phylactery of proof against poison.
Materials can be completely nonmaterial, metaphorical ingredients as well as tangible substances. The courage of a knight, the spirit of a mountain, or the breath of a butterfly are all examples of this type of ingredient. A player character may have to exercise quite a bit of ingenuity and inventiveness to capture these rare qualities or essences!
Materials are divided into three general categories: common, rare, and exotic. The more powerful the item, the more unusual the material from which it is made.
Processes
A process is a prescribed method for accomplishing a specific task that is performed in addition to the normal steps necessary for making the item. Like materials, processes are classified according to rarity. For example, making a mold to cast a ring is not a process because creating a mold is a typical step in ring making. However, making the ring’s mold from a wax model fashioned from beeswax taken from a hive of giant bees is a process because it is unusual. It’s not always easy to distinguish processes from materials, but the distinction is not important as long as the item is created using the required number of special elements. Almost anything that alters, changes, decorates, or aids in the production of an item without becoming part of the final piece is a process. Naturally, the exact nature of the process varies with the physical form of the item; potions might be mixed or brewed in a special retort, boiled over a fire fueled by an unusual substance, stirred in a special fashion, distilled, evaporated, infused, fermented, separated, or purified.
Other processes appropriate for various types of item include the following:
Ink for scrolls can be brewed much like a potion.
The alloy for metallic rings must be mined, smelted, and then cast in some kind of mold, extruded as wire, or cold worked. Setting stones, polishing, tempering, inscribing, or etching could finish the ring. Rings can also be made from nonmetallic substances; carefully carved stone, wood, or bone would work.
Wands and rods can be made of wood, iron, bone, crystal, stone, or almost anything imaginable. These items might require lathing, steeping, tooling, sanding, carving, polishing, enamelling, etching, or inlaying.
Staves are almost always made of wood, but a staff’s heels—metal bands that cap the ends—could be made from any number of substances. Staves can be lathed, carved, steeped, tooled, sanded, inlaid, or set with crystals or stones.
Functional weapons and armor can be made from iron, bronze, steel, or any of a variety of fantastic alloys. Arms of +3 value are usually made from special meteoric steel, +4 weapons or armor are made from mithral alloyed steel, and +5 arms are of adamantite alloyed steel. Processes used to make these items include mining, smelting, refining, forging, casting, tempering, cooling, etching, inlaying, sharpening, and enamelling or painting.
Other items could be beaten, boiled, embroidered, engraved, carved, painted, smoked, cured, glazed, decorated, upholstered, tempered, lacquered, cooled, or heated in some way. Take a look at the appropriate proficiency descriptions for an idea of some of the processes involved.
Cost
This is what the character must spend for unusual fuels and other supplies when making the item. This cost is in addition to whatever the character spends on workers’ salaries, travel, professional fees, and purchasing the materials and processes necessary for making the item.
Time
This is the time required to actually manufacture the item once the material components have been gathered. It does not include time spent acquiring the materials and placing enchantments on the item. Hiring extra workers, getting help from another character, or spending additional money cannot reduce time.
Values for Cursed & Nonstandard Items
If a character decides to create a cursed item, the DM should determine the cost and difficulty by comparing the cursed creation to useful items of similar power. A cursed sword –2, for example, is as difficult to make as a sword +2. If an attempt to create a cursed item fails, it is destroyed. If the attempt fails on a roll of 96–00, a curse of the DM’s choice falls on the creator—the character does not wind up with a useful item instead.
If a character attempts to create an item not found in any rulebook, the DM should assign it an experience point value by comparing it to similar items that already exist. Like choosing materials and processes for items, this task requires imagination and common sense. If difficulties arise, stop to consider what spells are needed to make a scroll with the same powers. Chart 8 gives the typical range of experience values for items. If the maximum value for the category seems too low for the proposed item, the item probably is too powerful. When in doubt, try to err on the high side; characters attempting to create items no one else has heard of are entering uncharted territory and are more likely to fail than characters who stick to standard items.
Examples of Magical Item Creation
Misc. Magic Items
To create a sword (long sword +1, +3 vs. regenerating creatures), Rozmare needs the enchant an item spell (which she knows), a permanency spell, and a list of the required materials and processes. After three weeks (and a cost of 600 gp), she discovers that the sword must be forged of metal taken from a blazing fallen star and nails from a slumbering vampire’s coffin (two exotic materials). The sword must be heated in coals strewn with a troll’s ashes (rare process), quenched in acid (common process), set with a gem wrested from an ogre magi’s hand (exotic process), and polished with a tooth from a living lernaean hydra (exotic process). Additional materials for the task cost 1,600 gp (double the sword’s 800 experience point value) and preparations took eight weeks (four weeks per 1,000 gp of cost, rounded up to the nearest 1,000).
With the sword made, all that remains is to enchant the weapon. This task requires the enchant an item, enchanted weapon (for the sword’s basic bonus—the DM decides the extra steps required for the sword’s multiple functions make additional enchant an item spells unnecessary) and permanency spells. Since Rozmare does not have access to the permanency spell, she uses a wish from a ring of wishes for a substitute.
Rozmare has a 65% chance to succeed (base 60% +13% for her level –8% for processes and spells).
Thedaric is a 14th level fire mage who decides to create a wand of fire for those times when he’s low on memorized spells. Thedaric uses a contact other plane spell to minimize his research effort, so he only requires two weeks and 400 gp to learn how to create the wand.
As per the DMG, the wand of fire is a multiple function item (it has four separate uses), and a limited use item, since it uses charges. The DM decides that the wand requires one exotic material, and four exotic processes, in addition to the necessary spells, cost, and time. Thedaric discovers that the wand must be forged by a master smith of the azer (a race of fire dwarves from the Elemental Plane of Fire), from brass smelted in the efreeti City of Brass, tempered by the fiery breath of an adult red dragon, graven while still soft with runes of power, using a fire sapphire (a mythical gemstone), and finally polished with a mixture containing the ash of a thousand year old tree destroyed by fire.
Several months later, everything’s ready. Thedaric journeys to the elemental plane of fire, obtains the efreeti brass, gets the azer smith to work it into a wand, engraves it with the fire sapphire, tricks a dragon into tempering it, and finally polishes and finishes the item in his own workshop with his special mixture of ash. The construction of the item required an amount of gold equal to one fifth the wand’s XP value (900 gp in this case) and 4 weeks per 100 gp, for a total of 36 weeks of forging, tempering, and polishing!
Thedaric is satisfied with his work of creating the wand, but now he has to make the wand magical. First, he’ll need to use enchant an item in order to prepare the wand to receive spells. After four days, the enchant an item is finished, and Thedaric attempts a saving throw vs. spell to see if it succeeded. His elementalist bonuses to saving throws vs. fire apply, and Thedaric passes. He then casts burning hands, pyrotechnics, fireball, and wall of fire into the wand. Each spell requires 2d4 hours per spell level, so this ends up taking several days. Because he must check the success of each enchantment and doesn’t know if any one spell will take, Thedaric casts another battery of the same spells into the wand, just to make sure that he gets all the functions desired (at worst, the wand will have a few extra charges on it, so this is a reasonable precaution against the possibility of failing in one of these steps). Since the wand of fire is a limited use item, it does not require a permanency spell to complete it; after his second round of spells, Thedaric declares that he is finished
The DM rolled saving throws vs. spells for each spell Thedaric placed into the wand, and as it turns out, the extra four spells were an unnecessary precaution; he succeeded the first time around. The base chance of success for a wand is 60%, plus 14% for Thedaric’s level, –12% for spells and special processes. The DM decides that Thedaric was particularly resourceful, and gives him a +10% bonus, and since he is a fire specialist, he gains an additional +5% bonus, for a total success chance of 77%. Thedaric succeeds and now has a wand of fire; the DM decides that the spells he placed into the wand became its first 8 charges (each spell was cast into the wand twice).
Now, Thedaric will probably seek to recharge the wand. Recharging items requires another enchant an item spell, but this one is automatically successful. He can then begin to place spells into the wand to increase the number of charges, up to its maximum of 50.
