Custom Weapons - Exotic Materials

[Allyzedl]

I was thinking about adding in custom weapons to the campaign that I am DMing, they would be created by a NPC. It would require adventurers to bring him exotic materials from creatures in the world that they come across. Exotic materials, such as defining and unique features of specific monsters, such as the eye stalk of a beholder, or the quill from a howler, or even horn from a gorgon or unicorn.

I was wondering if anyone has done anything like this before, or would like to suggest items with their abilities that could be created from exotic materials from creatures. Assuming that the special abilities on the items would relate to the monster, like a sword made from a rust monster's antenna could have some variation of the rust ability.

I appreciate and welcome any suggestions.

[Azoth]

I have tried something like this in the past.

I did things like Darkmantle Leather which gave a hide bonus in underground areas and areas of shadowy illumination if brought to a normal leather tanner. If properly preserved and you had atleast a vial of its blood you could bring it to an alchemist and have it treated to either enhance the bonus or keep the darkness ability useable once a day. The armor was nonmagical.

Weapons made of enemie's bones kept their properties for overcoming DR, and the creature's DR as a bonus against being sundered. Again non magical.

If my players could hunt down a Pheonix and kill it, then collect the ashes before it rebirthed itself they could have an alchemist process the ashes into a potion of resurection or true resurection depending on how far I advanced the Pheonix's HD.

Killing and harvesting portions of creatures with elemental resistances could give them items that imparted those resistances. Blood/organs=potions. Hide=armor/shields.

Creature's who's blood did elemental damage were fun. Collect the blood for alchemical items to do that damage. Carve out and preserve the organ that gave them that ability to be used to enhance a weapon with a corresponding elemental enchantment.

Granted all of this was for a low magic homebrew game.

[RFLS]

What the above poster mentioned works really, really well for low level games, especially E6. I highly recommend rewarding out of the box thinking from your players on this front, with the understanding from them that you're rewarding them for their thinking, not for turning into blood-thirsty murder hobos. That's an opinion, though, and you should take it as such.

In answer to the actual question, I have used custom materials before, both from slain monsters and just random minerals. Generally, you should be careful in assigning properties to materials, and be sure to limit the supply if they have an incredibly powerful property. Try not to give out an ability that does more than a +1 or +2 enhancement bonus would; that can seriously throw the game out of whack.

Something I do recommend is allowing alloying. It can make for some fun item combos, and generally benefits melee far more than it benefits the casters.

For specific abilities, I don't have any particular recommendations, but when browsing monsters, ask yourself a few things-

Does this monster have an ability that is useful in some manner?
Is this ability tied to its physical form?
How incredibly stupid or unwieldy could this piece of monstrous anatomy be?
Can it be condensed/otherwise hidden to not be unwieldy?

If the answers are yes, yes, and not very or very but easily, you can probably justify allowing the players to acquire it as a weapon property.

[mattie_p]

Sounds an awful lot like the Alchemy Pot from Dragon Quest VIII or Item Creation in the Workshop in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.

But if you can pull it off (lots of homebrew needed) good on you.