D&D General Processes to make Magical Items

[Achan hiArusa]

Everyone is using the search for exotic items as a way of manufacturing magic items. But I was looking at Player's Option: Spells and Magic (I have a huge A/D&D library), and it also talks about exotic processes. I know that Sauron made the One Ring in Mt. Doom, but locations are not what I'm looking for (that's easy enough, as well as times). I'm wondering about exotic crafting methods to make a magical item (I have taught Chemistry so I know more mundane processes). Just give me a list of what you think.

 

[the Jester]

I love the system in that book!

As far as special processes go- here are a few I've thought of or considered.

• The item must be concentrated on by an appropriate creature (e.g. a master swordsman for a vorpal sword) for a set length of time
• The item must be bathed in extraplanar vapors appropriate to the item (e.g. from the demiplane of time for boots of haste)
• Inks for a scroll must be aged in a special way
• The hammer used to forge magic arms or armor must be held in a magnetic field for an appropriate length of time (year and a day?)
• The tools used to create a protective item must be subjected to continuous antimagic or dispelling or other countermagical effects for a set length of time
• Something must be aged for a while before it can be used to make the item
• Something must be kept in a dragon's stomach for a time before it is ready to use
• Something must be egg washed with appropriate eggs (e.g. fire snake eggs for a fire related item)
• An ingredient must be bathed in moon dust

I'll see if I can come up with more for you at a later time, but am about to have lunch, so... food. (Hey, maybe something has to pass through a creature's digestive system!)

 

[aco175]

Mixing elements make other elements. Copper and a little tin make bronze. Most people see and know this to an extent. D&D has magic and magical elements such as dragons and pixies and such. Start by mixing common elements with fantastic. There was a list in an old Dragon Magazine with a list of parts to make items. I seem to recall giant fingernails for potions of giant strength and pixie sweat for potions of flying. Add these to common items and done.

 

[kigmatzomat]

You have the basic "quenched in the blood of a slave" but let's go more fantastic

• Forged in dragon breath/hands of a fire elemental/etc
• Cold forged by a giant/titan (bonus if frost giant)
• Eldritch-forged (Force damage)
• Engraved by a pixie/sprite/tiny fey
• Silk fabric woven by trained spiders
• Sky-hammer forge (use antigravity to hammer upwards)
• Formed without hands (telekinesis)
• Stone molded by demi-human hands (use Transmute Rock, mold, Dispel)

 

[GMMichael]

You have the basic "quenched in the blood of a slave" but let's go more fantastic

• Forged in dragon breath/hands of a fire elemental/etc
• Cold forged by a giant/titan (bonus if frost giant)
• Eldritch-forged (Force damage)
• Engraved by a pixie/sprite/tiny fey
• Silk fabric woven by trained spiders
• Sky-hammer forge (use antigravity to hammer upwards)
• Formed without hands (telekinesis)
• Stone molded by demi-human hands (use Transmute Rock, mold, Dispel)

Virgin blood seems like it would be a good choice. But I really like "forged without hands." How better to make psionic items than to use only one's mind?

Anyway, everyone knows that the best magic items must be completed on the winter solstice.

 

[Merlecory]

I'll throw a couple in

• An item struck by lightning as the final step
• The bough of a young tree from a sacred grove
  • Freely given, or stolen depending on what you like
• A sword forged from a thousand hands: each hammer blow must be done by a new person
• Instead on being cast in a sand mold, it is cast in
  • Ground bones
  • Gem dust

 

[Merlecory]

If you are trying to make the actual instructions seem more arcane/mystical, I might try looking at how older recipes (ie 1700s) were written.

For example: Take the stēle and put to it a peck of bone dust. Fold the metal well. Heat again with wyrm flame, then bathe the sword into good oils that are the temperature of blood. Sharpen against the back of a chlam picked freshly from the shore.

 

[Horwath]

Only real way to forge a magic sword, from iron in the blood.

For an average sword you will need blood of 600 people(or what passes for people in your setting)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Everyone is using the search for exotic items as a way of manufacturing magic items. But I was looking at Player's Option: Spells and Magic (I have a huge A/D&D library), and it also talks about exotic processes. I know that Sauron made the One Ring in Mt. Doom, but locations are not what I'm looking for (that's easy enough, as well as times). I'm wondering about exotic crafting methods to make a magical item (I have taught Chemistry so I know more mundane processes). Just give me a list of what you think.

Not to overly contradict the premise of the thread, but there's a reason why materials are the focus rather than processes.

A process is almost always repeatable. Unless it involves some kind of special sacrifice (as the One Ring did, or the Silmarils, or indeed pretty much any of the truly amazeballs artifacts of the Legendarium), you can do a process over and over. That means the players can just...do that process over and over again until everyone is outfitted with a certain baseline of amazing gear.

Now, this doesn't mean you can't still do it with processes. But if you don't want to open Pandora's box of magic-item crafting, you're probably going to need to include some special conditions, randomness, or very lengthy steps as part of these processes. Hence, some ideas:

• Forgeboon weapons and armor. These are randomly created from the mixed slag in a forge. Each forgeboon item is more or less unique. Roll on various tables to determine what special properties it may have. Not all of these properties will be what the players are looking for, so forgeboon is a gamble, but it's a gamble you can repeat if you want. You might allow an attempt to influence the results (e.g., allow to roll twice and take the preferred result) if they spend time calibrating the ratios of various materials intending to pursue a particular end--but the result is still always uncertain.
• Celestial phenomena. A sword first quenched under the "light" of a solar eclipse. Solar eclipses in general are actually quite common, but solar eclipses are rare in any single, specific place. This allows a process that can potentially even make multiple items (quenching can be done relatively quickly), but you have to time things just right.
• Tapping other unpredictable/uncontrollable phenomena. Perhaps wind-bound blades can only be produced if the Jinnistani script is enameled onto the blade while in the eye of a hurricane, or some kind of earth-related enchantment must have an earthquake occur during the forging process in order for the result to retain its magic permanently. Natural disasters, wars, coronations, and other "major" events could easily fill this role.
• Swearing a covenant. Promises in many traditions have sacred or magical power (consider the geas from Irish myth, or Samson's strength). Your first covenant item might require only a mild oath, but each successive one you make might require a greater, more difficult promise than you have made before--and if you break a covenant, the item itself breaks too.
• Dragonfire is often held to have special properties beyond the nature of normal fire. (After all, Gandalf genuinely believed that at least some of the great dragons of Middle Earth's history could've destroyed the Ring, even if the chance was remote.) This process has a built-in limiter, as it's unlikely that the party will have a pet dragon they can just squeeze a gout of flame out of every time they want to make a magic item.
• Semi-controllable/predictable natural phenomena. Lightning is a great example here, but tides, lunar phases, and seasons are all stuff that can be predicted or tracked, and which one could theoretically use as the power source, physical or magical, for creating a magic item.
• Rune magic. Pretty straightforward here, but just...putting magic words on objects is a common way to make that object magical. Here, the trick is getting the "grammar" right. An incorrect inscription should probably do nothing, and two magic swords, even if they're meant to do exactly the same thing, might need subtle differences in inscription. Two swords that actually do different things--to say nothing of, say, a suit of armor adorned with runes or a fine silk robe embroidered with them--should need distinct inscriptions, meaning the limitation is needing to learn to use the magical language effectively.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Only real way to forge a magic sword, from iron in the blood.

For an average sword you will need blood of 600 people(or what passes for people in your setting)

From what I'm seeing, even if you count muscle and all the other stuff, the average human has about 3.5-4 grams of iron in the whole body. Only some of that is in the blood; much of it is in the muscle cells as myoglobin.

Even if you could extract every gram, 600 people (assuming an average of 3.75g per person) is only 2250g, or 2.25 kg. You're gonna have to be real damn efficient with that iron, because a typical sword is going to need on the order of one, one and a half kilos of iron (=two to five pounds of metal for my fellow Unitedstatesians). And that's if you have perfect extraction rates. If you only get half the iron in the person's body on average, then even if you only pick tall men (who thus have the most iron), you're probably looking at a thousand or more just to make a single sword.

That said, arguably, this is more about the material (human blood) rather than the process.