Inchoroi
Adventurer
In response to my annoyance at the DMG being delayed, and my desire to hurry up and start running a full campaign, rather than just an adventure, I decided to make my own quick and dirty magic item crafting rules. I've provided notes on my thought processes and intentions, as well as attempts to mitigate certain eventualities that always come up in crafting rules (i.e. Craft Mules). I'd appreciate any feedback; my own playtesting (made almost a dozen magic items so far) doesn't present any real problems, even in the far-edge cases where there's a year timeskip or something.
(Yes, also posted this on RPG.net. Wanted to expose it to critique as much as possible!)
Any changes are in blue.
Changelog:
1. Original Post
Magic Item Crafting Rules
Part I: Planning
Crafting a Magic Item
Crafting a magic item has a few requirements. To craft a potion, one requires proficiency and possession of Alchemist's supplies or a Herbalism kit. Crafting a scroll requires both proficiency and possession of Calligrapher's supplies. Crafting an arrow, a permanent item, or a weapon requires proficiency and possession of Smith's tools.
Once you possess the required tools, you must plan your magic item. This is the first of two rolls required to complete your project. You must, once you decide on what item you wish to craft, determine the difficulty class of your project. This is easily done using the tables provided above, with the rules below.
However, the first thing required to create a magic item is the ability to cast the spell enchant magic item. The spell is a 3rd-level transmutation spell and possesses both the verbal, somatic, and material component requirements; in addition, enchant magic item explicitly may not be enchanted upon a magic item. The creator of a magic item must possess the spell and have it prepared in order to create a magic item. All magic classes and half-casters add the new spell to their spell lists, however.
Creating a magic item falls into two stages, a Planning Stage, and a Creating Stage. To begin the Planning stage, a player merely decides what kind of item he or she wants to make, and then begins their plans. These rules are intentionally crafted that the DC for their eventual Arcana checks can be modified by their detail in the Planning stage, and clever players should be rewarded for clever ideas. Calculating the DC is fairly easy, using the following calculation:
Once the final DC has been calculated, there are two Arcana checks to make, firstly to complete the Plans for an item, and then in the use of the enchant magic item spell.
Spell Level Modifier
The modifiers to your difficulty class begins with the spell you desire your item to possess. The base modifier for this part is the spell slot used to cast such a spell; for example, if you wish to create an amulet of cure wounds that casts cure wounds at the 3rd level a certain number of times per day, your base modifier for the spell level would be as a 3rd-level spell, or +5 to base DC.
In order to choose a spell for a project, you must possess the ability to cast such a spell and have it prepared, meaning, for example, a wizard would have a more difficult time creating the above amulet of cure wounds than a cleric might, as wizards do not natively possess cure wounds on their spell list.
In addition, a spell that is cast via a magic item never benefits from class features, either the creators or the eventual users. If crafting an item that possesses no spells, such as a weapon that is simply a +1 item, this modifier is +0.
Magic Item Type Modifier
The next modifier to determine is based upon the type of magic item desired. A lowly potion is a +3, while a weapon is a +6 modifier to the eventual difficulty class. Continuing our example, our amulet of cure wounds would qualify as a permanent item, meaning that its difficulty modifier would be +5.
Weapons and Arrows are both permanent items, as well, but fall into separate categories because of their bonuses to attack and damage rolls.
Charges Modifier
A magic item that can cast a spell always possesses a number of charges, determined by your chosen difficulty class as detailed above, simply twice the number of desired charges. A magic weapon, for example, that does not cast a spell but rather just provides a bonus to attack and damage rolls possesses no charges, and therefore has a DC of +0 for this modifier. A potion or a scroll do not contain charges and are only single use, therefore have a modifier of +0 to their difficulty class for this category (by default, if an item possess a +0 modifier for this category, they will have a +0 modifier for Charge Regeneration as well).
To continue our example, we decide our amulet of cure wounds should have 5 charges, which adds a +10 to our eventual difficulty class.
Charge Regeneration Modifier
The majority of magic items possess the ability to regain charges once per day, usually by rolling an associated die. Both allowing regeneration of charges via a die roll and a flat modifier can increase the difficulty class, as listed above. A potion, scroll, and magic arrow do not contain charges and are only single use, therefore have a modifier of +0 to their difficulty class; as with the Charges Modifier, if a magic item possesses no spells to cast, this modifier is +0.
At the DM's descretion, he or she may allow a magic item to possess charges but not regain them, meaning that a magic item will eventually run out, and no longer be usable after that point. In addition, all magic items created using these rules explicitly possess the following caveat:
"If you expend the magic item's last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the magic item crumbles into ashes and is destroyed."
To further our planned amulet of cure wounds, we would like to regain 1d4+1 charges per day, increasing our difficulty class by +6.
Timing Modifiers
Spending more time planning makes the eventual act of creating a magic item far easier, reducing the eventual difficult class based on how long one takes.
A very patient person can spend a year (he or she gains no further benefit from taking longer; there is only so much time one can tweak a plan before it becomes detrimental to continue) to reduce their eventual difficulty by -10, an enormous benefit for the time invested. Let us say, then, that our hypothetical level 5 cleric who wishes to craft the amulet of cure wounds possesses such time, and spends the entire year planning out his or her magic item, and reduces their difficulty by -15, making it much more feasible, he or she believes.
Author's Note: It is assumed in these rules that the character, NPC or PC, who attempts to plan a magic item out spends at least 8 hours per day on it, expending living expenses normally.
Cost Modifiers
Depending on the quality of your chosen ingredients, it can be easier to enchant; a fine or high quality item has less impurities to account for, fewer flaws in its make up that may or may not interfere. These modifiers present no mechanical changes beyond the scope of the difficulty class (unless the DM wishes it to be so, of course).
In the absence of detailed item lists, the DM may assign a base value to a type of item (for example, a mundane amulet). As the author, we shall declare that a mundane amulet costs 20gp, a simple silver amulet. Taking it further into the extreme, our hypothetical cleric is also be very, very rich, and is willing to expend the amount for a masterwork amulet. This would cost him 2,560gp for the amulet itself, and a further 5,120gp in materials (for the purposes of these rules, all materials are consumed upon completion of the spell, successfully, or not). This reduces our eventual difficulty by -10.
Attunement Modifier
You may, when designing the item, require Attunement to it to gain it's benefits. Doing so further reduces your difficulty class by -5.
Putting It Together
To create our above item, then, our base DC would be as follows:
Or, to put it another way, our DC would be 9, a very likely to succeed roll for our hypothetical 5th-level cleric. Of course, this is a very extreme, nigh impossible example. No 5th-level player character will have 7,680gp to spend on this item, plus his living expenses for an entire year, to complete this project, meaning it would be impossible to create this item alone at such a low level.
You may benefit from the Help action, granting your advantage normally, but only if your assistant is proficient in Arcana. A person attempting to assist you that is not proficient in Arcana imposes disadvantage on any roll you make as part of your project.
Creating Your Plans
At this point, you may be prepared to make your Arcana check at your calculated difficulty class. You may roll it, and, if successful, you have your created plans--but not your item yet. There is one final step to take, casting enchant magic item.
Failing your planning roll means that the time spent in the planning is lost forever; you must begin again, expending the time necessary; you do not, however, lose any of your accumulated items, and may continue to benefit from that difficulty class reduction. At the DM's descretion, a natural 1 on the planning roll provides plans that appear to be correct, but will produce a cursed item, of which you are completely unaware.
Finally, you may not use another person's developed plans; individual idiosyncracies mean that each person's plans are illegible messes to another person.
Part II: Creating
This is the part where all your planning will come to fruition, when you cast enchant magic item. It is, therefore, a creator's most fraught few days. If you have enchant magic item prepared, you may then begin casting. To determine how long your casting of enchant magic item requires, divide your difficulty class by 5, which provides the number of days it requires to create your item successfully.
As a concentration spell, if attacked or interrupted, you may end the spell--however, ending the spell early for any reason costs you all your work and materials, including the intended item. You must begin again with the planning stage if such an event occurs. Most crafters spend additional time preparing wards, bodyguards, even specially prepared locations for the casting of this spell.
Unlike your planning stage, during the time you cast enchant magic item, you may not rest, nor cast any other spells, nor take any other actions nor bonus actions or magic items. You may continue this spell a number of days equal to your Constitution modifier. After these days have passed, you take one level of exhaustion for each day you continue to concentrate on this spell. This becomes difficult, and intentionally so; some very assiduous crafters have assistants cast lesser restoration on them so they may continue without having to worry about their exhaustion.
At the end of the number of days you must concentrate this spell, you may then make your final Arcana check at your calculated difficulty. You do not know if you succeed until you activate the magic item (you are aware of all that is required to do so, since you designed it), or you cast the Identify spell upon the item. As for the planning stage, a natural 1 on your Arcana check should produce a cursed item.
(Yes, also posted this on RPG.net. Wanted to expose it to critique as much as possible!)
Any changes are in blue.
Changelog:
1. Original Post
Magic Item Crafting Rules
Part I: Planning
Crafting a Magic Item
Crafting a magic item has a few requirements. To craft a potion, one requires proficiency and possession of Alchemist's supplies or a Herbalism kit. Crafting a scroll requires both proficiency and possession of Calligrapher's supplies. Crafting an arrow, a permanent item, or a weapon requires proficiency and possession of Smith's tools.
Once you possess the required tools, you must plan your magic item. This is the first of two rolls required to complete your project. You must, once you decide on what item you wish to craft, determine the difficulty class of your project. This is easily done using the tables provided above, with the rules below.
However, the first thing required to create a magic item is the ability to cast the spell enchant magic item. The spell is a 3rd-level transmutation spell and possesses both the verbal, somatic, and material component requirements; in addition, enchant magic item explicitly may not be enchanted upon a magic item. The creator of a magic item must possess the spell and have it prepared in order to create a magic item. All magic classes and half-casters add the new spell to their spell lists, however.
Creating a magic item falls into two stages, a Planning Stage, and a Creating Stage. To begin the Planning stage, a player merely decides what kind of item he or she wants to make, and then begins their plans. These rules are intentionally crafted that the DC for their eventual Arcana checks can be modified by their detail in the Planning stage, and clever players should be rewarded for clever ideas. Calculating the DC is fairly easy, using the following calculation:
Code:
DC = 8 + Spell level modifier + magic item type modifier + Charges modifier + Charge Regeneration Modifier + Timing Modifier + Cost Modifier + Attunement ModifierOnce the final DC has been calculated, there are two Arcana checks to make, firstly to complete the Plans for an item, and then in the use of the enchant magic item spell.
Spell Level Modifier
The modifiers to your difficulty class begins with the spell you desire your item to possess. The base modifier for this part is the spell slot used to cast such a spell; for example, if you wish to create an amulet of cure wounds that casts cure wounds at the 3rd level a certain number of times per day, your base modifier for the spell level would be as a 3rd-level spell, or +5 to base DC.
In order to choose a spell for a project, you must possess the ability to cast such a spell and have it prepared, meaning, for example, a wizard would have a more difficult time creating the above amulet of cure wounds than a cleric might, as wizards do not natively possess cure wounds on their spell list.
In addition, a spell that is cast via a magic item never benefits from class features, either the creators or the eventual users. If crafting an item that possesses no spells, such as a weapon that is simply a +1 item, this modifier is +0.
Code:
Spell Level Modifier
0-level Spells: +2
1st-level Spells: +3
2nd-level Spells: +4
3rd-level Spells: +5
4th-level Spells: +6
5th-level Spells: +7
6th-level Spells: +8
7th-level Spells: +9
8th-level Spells: +10
9th-level Spells: +11Magic Item Type Modifier
The next modifier to determine is based upon the type of magic item desired. A lowly potion is a +3, while a weapon is a +6 modifier to the eventual difficulty class. Continuing our example, our amulet of cure wounds would qualify as a permanent item, meaning that its difficulty modifier would be +5.
Weapons and Arrows are both permanent items, as well, but fall into separate categories because of their bonuses to attack and damage rolls.
Code:
Magic Item Type Modifier
Potion: +3
Scroll: +3
Permanent item (necklace, belt, boots, wands, staffs, etc; anything without modifiers to ability, saving throw, attack rolls, or damage rolls): +5
Weapon, Armor & Arrows (+1): +6
Weapon, Armor & Arrows (+2): +8
Weapon, Armor & Arrows (+3): +10Charges Modifier
A magic item that can cast a spell always possesses a number of charges, determined by your chosen difficulty class as detailed above, simply twice the number of desired charges. A magic weapon, for example, that does not cast a spell but rather just provides a bonus to attack and damage rolls possesses no charges, and therefore has a DC of +0 for this modifier. A potion or a scroll do not contain charges and are only single use, therefore have a modifier of +0 to their difficulty class for this category (by default, if an item possess a +0 modifier for this category, they will have a +0 modifier for Charge Regeneration as well).
To continue our example, we decide our amulet of cure wounds should have 5 charges, which adds a +10 to our eventual difficulty class.
Code:
Charges Modifier
(Number of charges x 2)Charge Regeneration Modifier
The majority of magic items possess the ability to regain charges once per day, usually by rolling an associated die. Both allowing regeneration of charges via a die roll and a flat modifier can increase the difficulty class, as listed above. A potion, scroll, and magic arrow do not contain charges and are only single use, therefore have a modifier of +0 to their difficulty class; as with the Charges Modifier, if a magic item possesses no spells to cast, this modifier is +0.
At the DM's descretion, he or she may allow a magic item to possess charges but not regain them, meaning that a magic item will eventually run out, and no longer be usable after that point. In addition, all magic items created using these rules explicitly possess the following caveat:
"If you expend the magic item's last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the magic item crumbles into ashes and is destroyed."
To further our planned amulet of cure wounds, we would like to regain 1d4+1 charges per day, increasing our difficulty class by +6.
Code:
Charge Regeneration Modifier
Rolled Modifiers:
1d4: +3
1d6: +4
1d8: +5
1d10: +6
1d12: +7
Flat Modifiers:
+1: +3 DC
+2: +4 DC
+3: +5 DCTiming Modifiers
Spending more time planning makes the eventual act of creating a magic item far easier, reducing the eventual difficult class based on how long one takes.
A very patient person can spend a year (he or she gains no further benefit from taking longer; there is only so much time one can tweak a plan before it becomes detrimental to continue) to reduce their eventual difficulty by -10, an enormous benefit for the time invested. Let us say, then, that our hypothetical level 5 cleric who wishes to craft the amulet of cure wounds possesses such time, and spends the entire year planning out his or her magic item, and reduces their difficulty by -15, making it much more feasible, he or she believes.
Author's Note: It is assumed in these rules that the character, NPC or PC, who attempts to plan a magic item out spends at least 8 hours per day on it, expending living expenses normally.
Code:
Timing Modifiers:
One Week: +0
Two Weeks: -1
Three Weeks: -2
One Month: -3
Two Months: -5
Three Months: -6
Four Months: -8
Six Months: -10
One Year: -15Cost Modifiers
Depending on the quality of your chosen ingredients, it can be easier to enchant; a fine or high quality item has less impurities to account for, fewer flaws in its make up that may or may not interfere. These modifiers present no mechanical changes beyond the scope of the difficulty class (unless the DM wishes it to be so, of course).
In the absence of detailed item lists, the DM may assign a base value to a type of item (for example, a mundane amulet). As the author, we shall declare that a mundane amulet costs 20gp, a simple silver amulet. Taking it further into the extreme, our hypothetical cleric is also be very, very rich, and is willing to expend the amount for a masterwork amulet. This would cost him 2,560gp for the amulet itself, and a further 5,120gp in materials (for the purposes of these rules, all materials are consumed upon completion of the spell, successfully, or not). This reduces our eventual difficulty by -10.
Code:
Cost Modifiers:
Quality Level of Item to be Enchanted:
Mundane Item: +0
Fine Item: -2
High Quality Item: -4
Exquisite Item: -6
Masterwork Item: -8
Code:
Gold Cost: Four times the cost of the previous level of quality item.
Code:
Materials Cost: Twice the amount of the item.Attunement Modifier
You may, when designing the item, require Attunement to it to gain it's benefits. Doing so further reduces your difficulty class by -5.
Putting It Together
To create our above item, then, our base DC would be as follows:
Code:
DC = 8 + 5 + 5 + 10 + 6 + -10 + -15Or, to put it another way, our DC would be 9, a very likely to succeed roll for our hypothetical 5th-level cleric. Of course, this is a very extreme, nigh impossible example. No 5th-level player character will have 7,680gp to spend on this item, plus his living expenses for an entire year, to complete this project, meaning it would be impossible to create this item alone at such a low level.
You may benefit from the Help action, granting your advantage normally, but only if your assistant is proficient in Arcana. A person attempting to assist you that is not proficient in Arcana imposes disadvantage on any roll you make as part of your project.
Creating Your Plans
At this point, you may be prepared to make your Arcana check at your calculated difficulty class. You may roll it, and, if successful, you have your created plans--but not your item yet. There is one final step to take, casting enchant magic item.
Failing your planning roll means that the time spent in the planning is lost forever; you must begin again, expending the time necessary; you do not, however, lose any of your accumulated items, and may continue to benefit from that difficulty class reduction. At the DM's descretion, a natural 1 on the planning roll provides plans that appear to be correct, but will produce a cursed item, of which you are completely unaware.
Finally, you may not use another person's developed plans; individual idiosyncracies mean that each person's plans are illegible messes to another person.
Part II: Creating
This is the part where all your planning will come to fruition, when you cast enchant magic item. It is, therefore, a creator's most fraught few days. If you have enchant magic item prepared, you may then begin casting. To determine how long your casting of enchant magic item requires, divide your difficulty class by 5, which provides the number of days it requires to create your item successfully.
As a concentration spell, if attacked or interrupted, you may end the spell--however, ending the spell early for any reason costs you all your work and materials, including the intended item. You must begin again with the planning stage if such an event occurs. Most crafters spend additional time preparing wards, bodyguards, even specially prepared locations for the casting of this spell.
Unlike your planning stage, during the time you cast enchant magic item, you may not rest, nor cast any other spells, nor take any other actions nor bonus actions or magic items. You may continue this spell a number of days equal to your Constitution modifier. After these days have passed, you take one level of exhaustion for each day you continue to concentrate on this spell. This becomes difficult, and intentionally so; some very assiduous crafters have assistants cast lesser restoration on them so they may continue without having to worry about their exhaustion.
At the end of the number of days you must concentrate this spell, you may then make your final Arcana check at your calculated difficulty. You do not know if you succeed until you activate the magic item (you are aware of all that is required to do so, since you designed it), or you cast the Identify spell upon the item. As for the planning stage, a natural 1 on your Arcana check should produce a cursed item.
