Immortals Handbook - Grimoire (Artifacts, Epic Magic discussion)

[Pssthpok]

Hi Pssthpok mate!

Meant to add before, if you are checking out Doctor Who episodes you should check out Blake's Seven (that show is fantastic). Only 52 episodes (4 seasons of 13), but virtually everyone is a gem. Make sure you watch them in order though.

Okay, I'll look into that. Thanks for the lead!

 

[Kerrick]

Since this is a thread about epic magic and such, I have a question about epic item creation: what do you think about the epic item creation feats? Are they necessary or not? I didn't see anything about them on the site, so I thought I'd post it here.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

Since this is a thread about epic magic and such, I have a question about epic item creation: what do you think about the epic item creation feats? Are they necessary or not? I didn't see anything about them on the site, so I thought I'd post it here.

I think Upper_Krust was going to cover all that stuff in Grimoire.
I would assume you would need them to make artifacts, since Ascension does say "for all intents and purposes, artifact means epic magic item" or some-such.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Kerrick mate!

Since this is a thread about epic magic and such, I have a question about epic item creation: what do you think about the epic item creation feats? Are they necessary or not? I didn't see anything about them on the site, so I thought I'd post it here.

Those feats are a total waste of time - get rid of them. Bad design if you ask me, feats for the sake of feats.

 

[paradox42]

It's not IH-approved, unless Krust and I have really convergent thinking, but for my own game I ditched the existing Epic Item Creation feats and instead made two for artifact-level items, both of which act like meta-feats- they add capabilities to your existing feats rather than standing on their own.

Craft Minor Artifact allows the crafter to break the usual limits on item creation, such as the +5 cap on an enhancement bonus, or the 200,000 gp limit on item market value in general- essentially, it allows creation of all the Epic items listed in the ELH and anything of similar power.

Craft Major Artifact goes beyond that, and lets the crafter imbue actual Epic spells/powers into an item- additionally making the item at least somewhat sentient, and virtually indestructible, in the process. It allows PCs (potentially) to make things like an amulet that can create a nuclear explosion (which the wearer is rendered immune to), a summoning portal which can call up a whole army of elementals or outsiders, ...stuff like that. I also mandated a soft cap on weapon and armor abilities, to the effect that any weapon or armor ability that costs more than +10 requires Craft Major Artifact to do, but so far that hasn't really come up.

My Epic game has seen PCs create several Minor Artifacts (mostly skill-increasing trinkets like the party crafter's favorite gloves- they grant him a +30 to all his Craft checks), but no Major Artifacts as yet- mostly I suspect because the players are allergic to down time, and Major Artifacts take a lot of down time to create. The party item crafter does have the Major Artifact feat, but that's mainly because he wanted it as a prerequisite to certain other cool feats he had his eye on, and because most of his levels are in a homebrew prestige class focused on item creation (so, he actually picked it up as a bonus feat).

 

[Kerrick]

Those feats are a total waste of time - get rid of them. Bad design if you ask me, feats for the sake of feats.

Yeah, that's what I thought too. What about the x10 multiplier? Popular consensus (mine included) holds that it was put in to keep items out of the hands of lower-level PCs. Someone on another board pointed out that the magic items effectively undergo a "reset" where, once you hit epic, you have scads of normal magic items and only a few epic items, just like at low (single-digit) levels you have scads of normal/MW items and only a few magic items. I know from reading the Immortals threads that you do much the same thing, but is pricing the best way to control it?

Craft Major Artifact goes beyond that, and lets the crafter imbue actual Epic spells/powers into an item...

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. 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.

 

[Cheiromancer]

I think *one* epic item crafting feat might be a good idea; one that lets you craft items faster (50 000 gp per day, say) and using a different xp formula. 6000 xp + gp/100 or something. (So a 200K item would cost 8000 xp no matter what formula you use; but epic items would be cheaper, and much faster, than other items).

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey paradox!

Your idea is certainly better than the official rules.

Hi kerrick dude!

Yeah, that's what I thought too. What about the x10 multiplier? Popular consensus (mine included) holds that it was put in to keep items out of the hands of lower-level PCs. Someone on another board pointed out that the magic items effectively undergo a "reset" where, once you hit epic, you have scads of normal magic items and only a few epic items, just like at low (single-digit) levels you have scads of normal/MW items and only a few magic items. I know from reading the Immortals threads that you do much the same thing, but is pricing the best way to control it?

No. The best way to nerf it is to only allow 4 epic items in total (under the rules I outline in Ascension), although these rules seem to work better from 40th-level upward.

One of the problems with wealth is that there is no real way to keep a handle on it in a freeform game.

The problem with scrapping the x10 multiplier is that the projected wealth tables suggest you will have +57 armour and +40 weapons at 40th-level. That sort of rapid inflation just destroys the game balance.

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. 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.

In my mind there is no difference from an artifact and an epic magic item...except the amount of fluff.

 

[paradox42]

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.

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.

In my mind there is no difference from an artifact and an epic magic item...except the amount of fluff.

Mine too.

 

[Kerrick]

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.

Some time back, I came up with rules for creating artifacts (for the DM, not the PCs). I split them into three levels (like the 1E/2E artifacts - d20 artifacts suck), and gave each level specific prereqs. For example,

All artifacts, regardless of type, have the following characteristics:
Caster level 21+;
Radiates overwhelming magic (see the detect magic spell);
If aligned, radiates overwhelming energy of that type to detection spells/effects;
...

[Minor artifacts] have the following characteristics:

Caster level 21-30;
No special powers (but see below);
Can be destroyed via disjunction;
If a weapon or armor, has a +4 to +6 bonus (but must qualify as epic in terms of bonuses).

And then I borrowed some powers and abilities from the 1E DMG and extrapolated from the old artifacts how many an artifact of a given level (minor/moderate/major) would have. It's a pretty interesting system, if I do say so myself, but it got pooh-poohed when I posted it - people said "You shouldn't be able to create artifacts" because they didn't see that it was for the DM, not the PCs, and I dropped it. If you're interested, I can send you a copy - it's not really complete, but you can use what I have.

I think *one* epic item crafting feat might be a good idea; one that lets you craft items faster (50 000 gp per day, say) and using a different xp formula. 6000 xp + gp/100 or something. (So a 200K item would cost 8000 xp no matter what formula you use; but epic items would be cheaper, and much faster, than other items).

I'm working on a skill-based system (artificing) over in House Rules if you're interested. I'm also working on the formulas, trying to figure out a different system. As UK pointed out, it's far too easy to get items with ridiculous bonuses, which leads me to think that the formulas they used are wrong.

No. The best way to nerf it is to only allow 4 epic items in total (under the rules I outline in Ascension), although these rules seem to work better from 40th-level upward.

Seems a little... artificial to me (i.e., a rule specifically put in place to limit the PCs). I'd prefer to do it more organically (through the limits of the wealth system) if possible, but... it may not be. I recently devised a new wealth system whereby it follows a clear progression and gives a flatter wealth curve, but you still end up with 12 million at 40th level.

I think fixing the pricing formulas for bonuses will help a lot, and I'll be working on that (I just came up with the idea last night). I'd like to make it so +6 and up applies to ALL weapons and armor, not just epic - IMO, a PC shouldn't be able to have a +10 market value weapon AND a +10 market value armor at 20th level. They shouldn't be able to afford anything greater than market value equal to their level (i.e., a 14th level PC shouldn't have more than +4 market value armor and +4 weapon, since the CL for +5 weapons is 15th).

The problem with scrapping the x10 multiplier is that the projected wealth tables suggest you will have +57 armour and +40 weapons at 40th-level. That sort of rapid inflation just destroys the game balance.

Yeah, I found that out last night, crunching numbers in Excel.

In my mind there is no difference from an artifact and an epic magic item...except the amount of fluff.

Fair enough.. but I like the idea of the 1E artifacts, where they had drawbacks and minor and major powers, instead of just a laundry list of beneficial powers like the d20 artifacts.