A "Rare Magic" Idea

[Kid Charlemagne]

I've been mulling over ideas to try and recapture a little bit more flavor in magic in D&D, and have a couple of ideas I'd like some feedback on.

I want to make magical items more mysterious, dangerous - as well as useful. It's a hassle to try and do that for every +1 sword. In essence, my solution is to define the problem away by making a large number of the minor magical items (under 20,000 gp in value, perhaps - I'm brainstorming here) non-magical, but still basically identical in game mechanics.

I was inspired by the old 1st edition idea that certain magical weapons of X power were made of Y metal - for example, +3 weapons being made of meteoric iron. So instead of a fighter having a +3 longsword, they might have a non-magical sword made of meteoric iron - that does +3 to hit and +3 to damage. Instead of potions being magical, they'd be alchemical mixtures. Instead of a cloak of elvenkind giving bonuses from being magical, it'd be because it's made by master elven craftsmen. And so on and on.

This is a very nebulous idea at the moment, and I'm posting it to start up discussion. My goal is to try to add flavor to the game wherever possible - without adding complication.

Along the same lines - has anyone done any work on a "advantages/disadvantages" type of magical item creation system? For example, if your +4 sword occasionally causes you to go berserk, that would tend to reduce its value, but not negate it entirely like an ordinary cursed sword -2 might.


Thoughts?

 

[der_kluge]

My thought is that you should check out the Artificer's Handbook.

It has a concept called "instability" that allows for such things as "quirks" to be added to items. Things like "after 8 hours, 1d100 frogs and toads show up and just hang out around the magic item". Or "birds stop singing within 100 feet of this magic item".

There's actually a list of 100 of these things. Some actually incur modifiers to various things, but many are just flavorful things.

There's also a history generator. So you can give every item an actual history about where it was used, who created it, why it was created, and how it was lost, etc.


It might be just the thing you're looking for.

 

[Land Outcast]

Yes: do it

Create feats which allow to work correctly the Material, feats which allow to create Items from special Materials, and feats which allow to create Items with certain Style. And finally: Master Style, for really powerful items.

Example (Implies a much more focused Craft skill For Special items Crafters; also implies that magic items will be really rare, at least powerful ones):

New Skill: Craft Item (Sword, Mace, Axe, Bow, Polearm, Clothing, Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, etc)
note: Sword includes any slashing weapon except axes and polearms
note: Axe includes Handaxe, Throwing Axe, Battleaxe, Waraxe, Greataxe, Double-Axe
note: Mace includes any bludgeoning weapon (except quartertaffs and gauntlets)
note: Bow includes Longbows, Shortbows, and the Composite versions of these
note: Polearm includes all piercing and/or slashing polearms
note: Clothing includes Robes, Hats, Cloaks, Gloves, Boots, Belts
note: Light Armor includes Caps, Bucklers, and Light Shields
note: Medium Armor includes Helms, Heavy Shields, and Gauntlets
note: Light Armor includes Helmets, Tower Shields, and Gauntlets

Meteoric Iron Worker [Material Working]
Prerequisite: Craft (Meteoric Iron) 4 Ranks
Benefit: You can adequately craft Items made of meteoric iron and allow the Meteoric Iron to retain its mistical qualities.

Swordcrafter [Item Crafting]
Prerequisite: Craft Item (Sword) 7 Ranks
Benefit: You can adequately craft swords with certain Style and/or Material and allow the Sword to be benefitted by the Style's and/or Material's mystical qualities.

Elvencraft [Craft Style]
Prerequisite: Craft Item (Any) 7 Ranks, must have been under the teaching of someone with this feat and at least 13 Ranks in any Craft skill.
Benefit: You can adequately create Elvencraft Items.

Master Elvencraft [Master Craft Style]
Prerequisite: Elvencraft, Craft Item (Any) 12 Ranks.
Benefit: You can adequately create Master Elvencraft Items.


Meteoric Iron:
To Melee Weapons: +1 to +3 Enhancement Bonus (Depends on degree of success by the crafter and on the quality of the Meteoric Iron)

Elvencraft:
To Melee Slashing Weapons: Bane (Aberration, Dragon, Orc, Goblinoid, Magical beast, Monstrous Humanoid, Evil Outsiders),Keen, Shocking, Spell Storing (Depends on the degree of success and the intention of the crafter).

Master Elvencraft:
To Melee Slashing Weapons: Shocking Burst, Dancing, Brilliant Energy (Depends on the degree of success and the intention of the crafter).

 

[harmyn]

Yes: do it

Create feats which allow to work correctly the Material, feats which allow to create Items from special Materials, and feats which allow to create Items with certain Style.

Example:

Meteoric Iron Worker [Material Working]
Prerequisite: Craft (Meteoric Iron) 6 Ranks
Benefit: You can adequately craft Items made of meteoric iron and allow the Meteoric Iron to retain its mistical qualities.

Swordcrafter [Item Crafting]
Prerequisite: Craft Item (Sword) 6 Ranks
Benefit: You can adequately craft swords with certain Style and/or Material and allow the Sword to be benefitted by the Style's and/or Material's mystical qualities.

Elven Crafter [Craft Style]
Prerequisite: Craft (Any) 6 Ranks, must have been under the teaching of someone with this feat and at least 13 Ranks in any Craft skill.
Benefit: You can adequately craft Items with Elven Style and allow those Items to be benefitted by the mystical qualities of elvencraft.

This is a very good idea.

Defining various styles and elements to make high quality, masterwork items is a great idea. You can group various effects and bonuses under differing techniques and create a situation where you get things like, "That's no militiaman's blade. That sword was forged by the Master from the Lonely Mountain use iron from the gods. No other sword will hold such a sharp edge or be so lethal with a true blow, "Armor mail so fine that it feels light as cotton but strong as a knight's breastplate."

Don't know if this was a quickie idea or not mate, but it is a good one.

 

[Land Outcast]

Look at the Edit up there in the post.

I'm totally caught up, I saw this initially in the Rules forum but hesitated to comment.... I hope this is the kind of thing Charlemagne is searching for...

EDIT: if he doesn't like them, I'll create a thread of my own

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I like it, Land Outcast. My own initial thoughts would be to seperate the materials and the "effects" - so you might use an alchemical compound to get a flaming burst sword - but I'm mostly fishing for ideas right now that can then be used to narrow things down in a manner that works for my own campaign.

I tend to not want to have too many feats for item creation, myself. I'd allow a certain number of these kinds of things to be created by any person with a certain number of ranks in Craft: Weaponsmithing (or whatever applicable skill). I like the idea of allowing Crafters to specialize in a particular form - swords, bows, etc. I bet I could tie this in with another thing I have in mind - either eliminating NPC classes or boosting them up to be on a par with PC classes. I know there's at least one "expert" book out there, and I've worked up an aristocrat class for my game. Perhaps a feature of a boosted expert class would be the ability to specialize in a form or material (or eventually, both), allowing them to do things another class couldn't, even with the same ranks in Craft.

Food for thought...

 

[Land Outcast]

Alchemy Amalgamation [Craft Style]
Prerequisites: Craft (Alchemy) 8 ranks, Craft Item (Any) 8
Benefit: You can adequately combine alchemical reactives to allow Items created by you to be benefitted from the reactive's qualities.

Alchemy Amalgamation:
To non-wooden Weapons or Ammunition: Acidic, Flaming, Frost, Shocking, Acidic Burst, Flaming Burst, Icy Burst, Shocking Burst (Depends on the degree of success and the intention of the crafter).

 

[Paraxis]

This is what I've done for over a year now and it works ok for my group. Any person with the craft(weapons) or craft(armor) skill use those ranks to gain craft magic arms and armor.
At 8 ranks +1 weapons, 9 ranks +2, 12 ranks +3, 15 ranks +4, and 18 ranks +5. Also, anyone helping with the creation can spend xp to cover the cost. Once you have an item creation feat you get 1% per such feat of earned xp as craft points in a pool, similar to whats in AU. I like your idea of certain metals being used instead of magic, never went into it but i guess thats what i was doing in background as far as the gold cost for the blacksmith to creat such items, without a wizards lab. Alchemy is used in a similar way for potions and some wonderus items like powders and other expendable things. This is how I justified +1 weapons in my game without much of a history to them besides a makers mark.
I realy like the idea of elven craft and dwarf craft feats mentioned above I will tinker with them and use them in my game. Note for exceptional items (all major items and most medium) I require hard to get components wich the player needs to get or spend time, good role playing, and sometimes exta gold in order to obtain.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

You're thinking along the same lines as I am, Paraxis. In my case, I want the flavor of teh minor items to come from the materials - for example, meteoric iron might have the properties of cold iron, and therefore be especially useful against Fey.

Another thing I'm toying with is the idea of spontaneously enchanted weapons - for example, a sword might become magical spontaneously, due to being used in some major battle, or being wielded for a long time by a famous warrior. I don't have much of an idea of how I'd work that, though. Perhaps it can be extrapolated from some of the "levelling-up" magic items, where items become more powerful as the PC grows in power.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Weapons of Legacy and Mastering Iron Heroes have a few things about advancing magical items and items with drawbacks.

For Item-Creation without magic:
Allow to fulfill the prerequisites for Item-Creation feats (other than scroll, wand and staff, probably) with Craft Ranks. If you want non-spellcasters to get the feats at the same time than spellcasters, the prerequisite ranks should probably be Caster Level +3.
Craft (Weaponsmithing) or Craft (Armorsmithing) would be used for Magical Arms and Armor.
Craft (Goldsmithing) would be used for Wondrous Items and Rings.
Spell Prerequisites could be replaced by minimum rank prerequisites (Formula for required ranks might be (Spell Level x 2 +2). (Though this isn't entirely the same.)

If you want to use slowly advancing weapons, you will probably need to remove standard treasure and check the wealth by level guidelines to determine when and how the weapon or armor (or whatever item you have in mind) will advance.
If the player has the weapon for the required time, instead of finding a better weapon (or being able to buy a better one from selling loot), the weapon simply improves to still fit the wealth-by-level guidelines. You might require a Skill Check or special activity of the player to "activate" this new powers. It might also be wise to have weapons lose their new powers if used by someone else than the original owner (or to slowly degrade). This severaly reduces the market for such weapons.

The take of "self-improving" items might also remove the logical problem of gold inflation in D&D worlds. Characters don't get so much gold pieces, but still have the same power as standard characters. If any masterwork weapon has the potential to "grow", it gives a very different feel as if you buy new magic items in a magic item shop (Where the owner might have valuables worth more than that of some kingdoms).
(Which is exactly what you are going for, I assume )