Residuum: A Re-Fluffing

[Dausuul]

So, apparently the standard option for those who prefer not to have magic item shops in their games is to rely on the Disenchant ritual, which generates "residuum" from a magic item by stripping it of its magic. You can then use this residuum to enchant other stuff. (At least, that's how I read it.)

This bugs me.

Here, then, is my proposal to re-flavor this system in a way that I at least find more palatable:

Magic items cannot be "disenchanted" except by destruction. However, they can be given as offerings to powerful spirits. Such offerings are not usually destroyed--instead, they are left in a place sacred to the spirit in question. For example, your might take the sword of a defeated enemy and lay it in the tomb of your ancestors, thus increasing the power of those ancestral spirits.

When you go to create a magic item or improve an existing one, you are calling upon the spirits whom you have pleased and strengthened with your gifts. They yield back some of that strength to you and lay their blessings upon the item.

Of course, this means that these sacred places are likely to become troves of magical treasure. Whoever plunders such a trove earns the wrath of the spirits that dwell there; any treasure taken from that place bears a heavy curse--the nature of which is up to the DM, but it should be formidable--which can only be expiated by returning what was stolen and perhaps making some other atonement as well.

(In some cases, it's possible to get the curse taken off an item without having to give it back, but this takes quite a bit of work.)

And naturally, player characters are quite likely to stumble across these troves in the course of adventuring...

 

[jaelis]

I like the flavor, but it seems like it would be simpler to have the spirits actually consume the magic energy, so you don't have to deal with curses and people trying to find ways to get around them. (Don't forget, at epic levels PCs will be tackling gods, so they might well be able to kill one of your spirits and take their stuff.)

Though I think that for arcanists, plain old disenchanting makes a lot of sense. For divine types, sacrificing items to their gods sounds much better.

For martial types, I could see either ancestor/spirit worship like you say, or else maybe something like a ritual combat between a warrior with the old item and one with the new one, which the person with the new item wins by design and as a result draws the power out of the old item.

 

[Mort_Q]

Residuum isn't new.... only it was called essence in 3.5. All they did was make a ritual from an Artificer class ability. It works fine.

 

[im_robertb]

In the middle of a dungeon or in the middle of a fight, a magic item may save your life. Residium will only do this if you use it as payment for something, and the magic item can do that. Therefore, I wouldn't disenchant to get residium unless I'm about to make a new item with it, right the heck now. So reflavoring it to a sacrifice to a divine/arcane/primal/martial force could work pretty well.

 

[Gargazon]

I feel your idea kinda defeats the whole point of there being a disenchant ritual - to allow players to take enchantments from weapons they've gained and apply them to their favourite weapons (or atleast, that's how I've heard it goes). This is an idea I REALLY like.

Also, it seems rather setting-specific - the idea of spirits just doesn't sit well with me, nor do I like the idea of my players having to find a place of spirits to enchant their weaponry.

However, other people's mileages may differ.

 

[Dausuul]

I like the flavor, but it seems like it would be simpler to have the spirits actually consume the magic energy, so you don't have to deal with curses and people trying to find ways to get around them.

Well, the reason I wanted to reflavor this was because I hate the concept of magic items having some kind of "magic energy" (or essence, or residuum, or whatever you want to call it) that you can just suck out of them. I can tolerate the idea that possessing magic items makes a spirit stronger in some way, but "magic energy" gets on my nerves.

Except in certain special cases, I think that if you break a magic sword, all you should get is a broken magic sword. You can't suck the enchantment out of it any more than you could suck the blacksmithing out of it; it's integral to what it is.

(Don't forget, at epic levels PCs will be tackling gods, so they might well be able to kill one of your spirits and take their stuff.)

Sure, they might be able to. But the curse is still on the items, regardless--there are lots of examples of a curse living on long after the demise of whoever did the cursing. Curses are nasty that way. (In fact, destroying the spirits just means you no longer have the easy out of "put it back where you got it.")

 

[Gundark]

I'm just waiting for someone to make the "this is just so WoWish" claim

 

[Byronic]

I don't like the idea of disenchant that much, I mean it's ok for a videogame but in my campaign magical items have a history and meaning behind them. there are no +2 Swords but rather there are items with a history behind them with meaning behind them. Almost everyone of them is a religious icon, someones heritage, something made with painstaking work and with rare materials hard and often dangerous to find.

These magical treasures aren't things that one casually breaks down into its components because you decided that the 500 year old katana would look better as a chain mail bikini that provides +2 to saves.

It inevitably takes some of the magic out of the setting when you can manufacture items as if it were the end of January sales.

 

[deathdonut]

this is just so WoWish

 

[DreamChaser]

I'm just waiting for someone to make the "this is just so WoWish" claim

Already done (and rebuked) in the News post...

DC