Rules for making weapons magical with exp

[Sqwonk]

I like the idea of a character being able to "give part of himself" to a weapon to make it more powerful. Seems like a nice alternative to - kill the bad guys-steal their "better" stuff. It also lets the player create the weapon that he wants - without having to rely on "magic stores" which I dislike.

Does anyone know which Dragon had the rules for pumping experience points into a weapon to create magical affects?

Any experience/stories using these rules?

Does someone have a good set of house rules for this?

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I think it was the Dragon issue about Oriental Adventures that talked about leveling your weapon... I'm at work, I'll try to get the actual number when I get home, but I'm sure there's a DRAGON index somewhere on the web... I think it was 289...

You could also rule that when a spellcaster makes a weapon, the XP may come from another source than said spellcaster (as long as it's from a willing target... or not... *evil grin*)

AR

 

[Beholder Bob]

I've got my homebrew rules I've been using, arcane inheritance. The item must have history (usually in your family), and it requires 1/4 the GP value in XP to imbue an item, at a rate of 100 XP a day. You can only have 3 such items - ever. Before you can start the above process, you must 'set it', costing 100 XP*LV to prepare it for developing. Once you 'set it', you must designate what the next 3 steps are in advance (normal to +1 sword, +1 sword to +2 sword, +2 sword to +2 flaming sword) - and as you progress you must describe the next stage (you can not suddenly develop a frost weapon when you find out you will soon encounter fire creatures). The idea being that you are awakening properties inherent in the item, not just making an item out of scratch.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

I like the idea of a character being able to "give part of himself" to a weapon to make it more powerful. Seems like a nice alternative to - kill the bad guys-steal their "better" stuff. It also lets the player create the weapon that he wants - without having to rely on "magic stores" which I dislike.

Does anyone know which Dragon had the rules for pumping experience points into a weapon to create magical affects?

Any experience/stories using these rules?

Does someone have a good set of house rules for this?

Issue 289 "Kung Fu".

BTW, I tried this in one campaign - I even went so far as to give the characters special weapons as a reward for rescuing some dwarves. Not a single player was willing to sacrifice xp for the weapons. Oh well...

 

[Trainz]

There's a feat in Book of Exalted Deeds that allows you to take a single item and do just that. The item has to be passed on to you by your ancestors (father whatever) and be masterwork-non-magical.

You don't have to sacrifice XP, just gold piece value of the power you want to imbue. The maximum DP value is limited by your level (but it gets purty high as you get high-level).

 

[Silveras]

The system in Dragon was inspired by the Samurai's Ancestral Daisho in Oriental Adventures.

The rules option described making "Leveled Items". The creator pays reduced cost to craft the item, because the eventual user must spend XP to "activate" the powers.

Note that the user does not CHOOSE the powers. The creator essentially makes a regular weapon or armor with abilities up to a total of +10 (only +5 can be actual combat enhancement bonuses, the other +5 must be from misc. abilities). When initially found, only the 1st +1 is active. The owner must spend XP to "activate" one other function at a time, in succession (example: +2, +3, keen, shocking burst, +4, bane, and finally +5). The creator can also specify conditions that must be met, AND you must be a certain level before a combined "effective +" can be activated.

For example, you have to be 5th level to have any combination of abilities that amount to +3 active. This is to avoid a character staying 3rd level but spending all kinds of XP to get a +5 vorpal demon bane sword.

I rather like this approach, and will be using it in future in my world. When I run again. Someday.

 

[hong]

I like the idea of a character being able to "give part of himself" to a weapon to make it more powerful. Seems like a nice alternative to - kill the bad guys-steal their "better" stuff. It also lets the player create the weapon that he wants - without having to rely on "magic stores" which I dislike.

Does anyone know which Dragon had the rules for pumping experience points into a weapon to create magical affects?

Any experience/stories using these rules?

Does someone have a good set of house rules for this?

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/imbued_magic.htm

Note that spending XP to make magic stuff can become prohibitively expensive at high levels, if you want to be close to the recommended wealth limits in the DMG, and you don't also give out "real" magic items. Spending 1 XP per 5 gp of market price works okay up to about 10th level. After that, you may want to reduce the cost, say to 1 XP per 10 gp.

 

[ichabod]

I tried somethin like this out in my campaign. All permanent items are partially intelligent. If you're alignment does not match the alignment of an item, you must make a saving throw each day in order to make it work. The DC for the save is 5, plus 5 per step in difference of alignments, plus 1 per 2,000 gp in the item cost.

I also introduced a 3rd level spell that allows a item crafter to use a willing creature's xp instead of their own for item creation. If you make an item with your own experience, you never have to save to use it, even if you change alignment (the item, being of the same outlook as you, changes alignment at the same time).

This worked pretty well. It definately made created items preferable to stolen ones. It gave a perfect rationale for magic shops only having temporary items like wands and potions (which don't require saves), and doing everything else on commission. I wouldn't recommend it for a tightly paced game where there isn't downtime for commissioning items.

The item cost modifier to the save DC did not work out at higher levels. At low levels it worked fine, they could use stolen items some of the time, but not always. However, a +5 flaming vorpal sword costs 200,000 gp. If you're NG and the sword is CG, thats a DC 110 save to use it. An extreme case, but it illustrates how things break down at high levels. The next time I use this rule, I plan on having the DC scale with the square of the cost of the item in 1,000's of gp, but I haven't analyzed the numbers yet to figure out the precise scale.

 

[Narkaious]

here is a link to a system for weapons that can grow if you like

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46690

 

[Jens]

Is there any particular reason why something like this should be restricted to weapons? Other types of items could be made magical too, especially if some 'mundane' enhancements were introduced. For example increases to HP/hardness/saves or an enhancement making the owner always aware of the item's location.

The simplest way to handle 'enchantment' cost (time, xp, gp, whatever) would probably be to make it a function of the standard GP price for the item.