Kerrick said:
Interesting. I made epic spells into a level-based system with an eye toward being able to put them into epic items, but I hadn't thought about a feat like that. I'm not sure that PCs should be able to craft what are effectively artifacts (as opposed to epic magic items, which is what Craft Minor Artifact covers), though - these things are legendary, and should have long backstories, blah blah blah.
Essentially, I redefined the word 'artifact' from the core rules version- in the core rules, all artifacts are defined as "magic items that PCs are unable to create" (unless the DM Rule-Zeros something in of course). I redefined it to mean "magic items that break the limits of normal magic."
The difference there is that the core rules say nothing about the power level of the item, and essentially define 'artifact' as a flavor term; that's why 'Minor Artifact' is simply defined in the Core as "an artifact of which more than one example exists" and 'Major Artifact' is defined as "an artifact which is unique in the entire multiverse.' Neither definition says anything about the item's power level, and it is possible for even 1st-level PCs to get a Major Artifact appropriate to their level if the DM actually comes up with a weak magic item that happens to be something that could only be made once.
To me, that was unsatisfying- the legend about the item should (in my view) mean that the item can do some truly legendary things, and thus I redefined 'artifact' to mean items that are so powerful that non-Epic characters have no hope of creating them. Once you hit Epic, though- all bets are off, so as UK has said many times, it's not a question of if- just when. So I based my definitions on the item's power level- 'Minor Artifacts' are artifacts that break the basic rules of item creation, but don't go so far that they're clearly using deity-level power. 'Major Artifacts,' by contrast,
do clearly use power that is beyond that which mortals can reach without serious augmentation. One interesting consequence of this change is that Major Artifacts, in my game, are not necessarily unique- in fact it would be fairly easy (relatively, at any rate) to find more than one of, say, the Primal Elemental Gems (which do just what you're thinking they do, in comparison with ordinary Elemental Gems). In fact, my Epic party is aware of four such items- one for each of the four cardinal elements, all owned by the same NPC who was using them to help contain an Uvuudaum.
Kerrick said:
My DM has soft rules for artifact creation - if you have an item for a long time (say, from L1-2 until L20+), name it, give it special abilities, and use it during special circumstances (like to slay several dragons, or during a huge battle) then it has a chance of becoming an artifact.
Fair enough, and that's the way most books I've read which allow for PC creation of artifacts recommend you do it. I felt that was unsatisfying, and wanted to make artifact creation explicitly like creation of other items- at least in terms of how you go about it mechanically. Honestly, the average Major Artifact becomes so expensive as a consequence of how the rules mandate building them, that they become the work of years to create in any case. At least, they do if the crafter doesn't have some
serious shortcuts available, like Efficient Item Creation and whatever cousins the DM comes up with.
For example, that amulet I mentioned in my first post is an actual statted-up item in my setting, and one of my other campaigns featured a party that was questing to recover a complete one (the item is actually written as being unstable, so that it can shatter into five pieces if used to produce a
Nuke). They had three shards of the five and were going after two more, when we dropped the campaign due to player agitation for another Evil-aligned game. Sigh. Anyway, that amulet carries a creation cost of 14,600,000 gp and 1,169,000 XP. Even though a crafter could in theory have all the required spells and feats to create one by level 30, clearly it would take a ridiculously long time for even such a character as that to make a new nuke-amulet. I'd expect multiple years of questing to be involved, in between massive crafting sessions, unless a large cabal of extremely powerful spellcasters got together to make one- and in that case even getting such a cabal together would make a story for the ages in its own right.
Upper_Krust said:
In my mind there is no difference from an artifact and an epic magic item...except the amount of fluff.
Mine too.
