Dire Panda
2013-05-08, 12:22 AM
What do the veteran gamers of the playground think of this little rules overhaul?
I have a problem with magic item creation in 3.5: it not only drives a further wedge between casters and mundanes, but it ironically can suck the "magic" out of the game. Ever played in a campaign where Bob the Poorly Roleplayed Wizard can disappear into his tower between adventures, spend a few thousand gp on unspecified ingredients, and walk out just before the next session with a gnarlier sword than the one with the epic backstory we just spent three games questing for? (And don't get me started on 'magic marts')
The better DMs can sometimes turn this sort of thing into an adventure hook ("You need a manticore's gallbladder to make the item, and as luck would have it there's one terrorizing a nearby village"), but lately I've been thinking about how to completely overhaul the system of item creation to involve the whole party and keep some of the flavor/mystery of magic items.
The solution I hit upon is this: Magic isn't something you can force into an object. The best a caster can do is prepare an item to absorb specific magic that it's exposed to, but then it's up to the party to get the item into the proper situation, and results can often be unpredictable. More powerful casters can squeeze more specific results out of the process, but there always has to be a triggering event beyond simply "I have a feat and some spare gold."
Example: Let's say the party fighter wants a sword that deals elemental damage. The wizard rubs various alchemical compounds over it, utters some incantations, and gives it back to the fighter. It's not quite magical yet, but the potential is there. If the fighter survives getting struck by lightning on a subsequent adventure, the next time he reaches for his sword he might find it's become a +1 shock weapon. Or if he manages to drive that sword into the heart of a red dragon, it could emerge as a flaming burst sword. Had he tried that with an ordinary blade, there might be some small chance that the dragonsblood would have gifted it with minor magic, but the wizard's preparations allowed it to better absorb what it was exposed to.
Of course, part of the fun is the unpredictability; items could absorb the wrong thing and backfire badly. A young nobleman, sent to the front lines to lead the charge against an orcish horde, is presented with a sword enchanted to absorb hatred; the mage who made it fully expects it to become an orc bane weapon when it is wielded against the kingdom's ancient enemies. But the nobleman is ambushed by a mob of peasants rebelling against his father's tyrannical rule, and when he draws it to defend himself he finds that it has become a cursed backbiter. Or the elemental sword, above, might never cool down from the forge's heat, remaining red-hot, soft, and useless.
On rare occasions, an item might become enchanted without preparations. A cloth sack that sits at the bottom of a guild's spell component dump might become a Bag of Unwanted Items with the power to produce a random piece of trash once per hour; a child's stuffed toy that watched its owner murdered by a madman might retain an imprint of his terror and have the power to release it into others' minds (single-use Cause Fear?).
Tying items' powers to character actions will hopefully make the PCs' equipment feel more like an organic part of their characters, while the preparations allow them to retain some degree of customization. And there's no reason the process can't be repeated; if you want your +2 breastplate to become a +3, you'd better accomplish some more heroic deeds while wearing it. Another nice result is that artifacts and legendary items emerge naturally from the setting - the axe that's been wielded by fifty generations of barbarian chieftains is probably a +6 vorpal weapon after severing its ten thousandth head.
Now for the sticking point - translating these ideas into actual rules. Preparing an item to absorb magic should be cheaper than the traditional method - maybe an eighth to a quarter of the market price, depending on how extensive the preparations are? My first idea is to classify existing magic items into "archetypes", each corresponding to some kind of triggering event. When the event happens, I'd roll on a table of possible resulting items for the base item and archetype, using the CR of the event and the CL of the spellcaster who prepared it as modifiers to the roll. If it falls below a certain threshold, the item doesn't get enchanted this time. Items which already have magic properties receive proportionate penalties on this roll. And of course if the event has some plot significance I'll tack on an additional modifier. Depending on the event, I might also make the caster roll a Spellcraft check to see if some subtle curse creeps in.
Of course, if any of you have better or more concrete ideas - or feedback on the concept itself - I'd love to hear them. Has anyone used a system like this in the past? How'd it work out?
I have a problem with magic item creation in 3.5: it not only drives a further wedge between casters and mundanes, but it ironically can suck the "magic" out of the game. Ever played in a campaign where Bob the Poorly Roleplayed Wizard can disappear into his tower between adventures, spend a few thousand gp on unspecified ingredients, and walk out just before the next session with a gnarlier sword than the one with the epic backstory we just spent three games questing for? (And don't get me started on 'magic marts')
The better DMs can sometimes turn this sort of thing into an adventure hook ("You need a manticore's gallbladder to make the item, and as luck would have it there's one terrorizing a nearby village"), but lately I've been thinking about how to completely overhaul the system of item creation to involve the whole party and keep some of the flavor/mystery of magic items.
The solution I hit upon is this: Magic isn't something you can force into an object. The best a caster can do is prepare an item to absorb specific magic that it's exposed to, but then it's up to the party to get the item into the proper situation, and results can often be unpredictable. More powerful casters can squeeze more specific results out of the process, but there always has to be a triggering event beyond simply "I have a feat and some spare gold."
Example: Let's say the party fighter wants a sword that deals elemental damage. The wizard rubs various alchemical compounds over it, utters some incantations, and gives it back to the fighter. It's not quite magical yet, but the potential is there. If the fighter survives getting struck by lightning on a subsequent adventure, the next time he reaches for his sword he might find it's become a +1 shock weapon. Or if he manages to drive that sword into the heart of a red dragon, it could emerge as a flaming burst sword. Had he tried that with an ordinary blade, there might be some small chance that the dragonsblood would have gifted it with minor magic, but the wizard's preparations allowed it to better absorb what it was exposed to.
Of course, part of the fun is the unpredictability; items could absorb the wrong thing and backfire badly. A young nobleman, sent to the front lines to lead the charge against an orcish horde, is presented with a sword enchanted to absorb hatred; the mage who made it fully expects it to become an orc bane weapon when it is wielded against the kingdom's ancient enemies. But the nobleman is ambushed by a mob of peasants rebelling against his father's tyrannical rule, and when he draws it to defend himself he finds that it has become a cursed backbiter. Or the elemental sword, above, might never cool down from the forge's heat, remaining red-hot, soft, and useless.
On rare occasions, an item might become enchanted without preparations. A cloth sack that sits at the bottom of a guild's spell component dump might become a Bag of Unwanted Items with the power to produce a random piece of trash once per hour; a child's stuffed toy that watched its owner murdered by a madman might retain an imprint of his terror and have the power to release it into others' minds (single-use Cause Fear?).
Tying items' powers to character actions will hopefully make the PCs' equipment feel more like an organic part of their characters, while the preparations allow them to retain some degree of customization. And there's no reason the process can't be repeated; if you want your +2 breastplate to become a +3, you'd better accomplish some more heroic deeds while wearing it. Another nice result is that artifacts and legendary items emerge naturally from the setting - the axe that's been wielded by fifty generations of barbarian chieftains is probably a +6 vorpal weapon after severing its ten thousandth head.
Now for the sticking point - translating these ideas into actual rules. Preparing an item to absorb magic should be cheaper than the traditional method - maybe an eighth to a quarter of the market price, depending on how extensive the preparations are? My first idea is to classify existing magic items into "archetypes", each corresponding to some kind of triggering event. When the event happens, I'd roll on a table of possible resulting items for the base item and archetype, using the CR of the event and the CL of the spellcaster who prepared it as modifiers to the roll. If it falls below a certain threshold, the item doesn't get enchanted this time. Items which already have magic properties receive proportionate penalties on this roll. And of course if the event has some plot significance I'll tack on an additional modifier. Depending on the event, I might also make the caster roll a Spellcraft check to see if some subtle curse creeps in.
Of course, if any of you have better or more concrete ideas - or feedback on the concept itself - I'd love to hear them. Has anyone used a system like this in the past? How'd it work out?