Creating a Major Artifact or two

[Silus]

So I'm working on an Artifact for the setting I'm building but I'm a little unsure if said Artifact is powerful enough to qualify as a Major Artifact.

The full name is "Regina Red-Rook's Robe of Roses", though we'll shorten it down to RoR for here. Basically Regina was the closest thing Harpies in the setting have to a Goddess, elevating Regina to the level Chuck Norris was during the height of the meme (Of the "Chuck Norris counted to Infinity Twice" way). She's known for 1) Being the fastest Harpy ever (Or at least the most famous), 2) for always having a red scarf (Well it WAS a robe at one point) and 3) For "Breaking the Sky" (She flew so fast she sort of broke through reality).

Anyway, the idea is that the scarf does the following:

1) Haste 3/Day at CL 10 (So a solid minute of Haste per use)
2) 1/Day, may charge as if you had Pounce (Alternatively, may be considered to have Pounce while wearing)
3) The wearer counts as having Wind Stance and Lightning Stance feats while wearing it (20% miss chance from missile weapons when moving and 50% concealment when doing a double move/withdraw)

Destruction: You must locate and bind Regina with the scarf and have her use her wings to break the scarf.

I'm not even sure if there's anything I can add to this to make this a Major Artifact, so I'd appreciate some input. Attempting to make something for Fragile Speedster and Lightning Bruiser type characters.

[Chronos]

Give it some abilities that don't match any existing spell, and give it some continual abilities like a permanent increase to fly speed. If you intend for your players to get ahold of it and don't want it to be too overpowered, say that the overpowered abilities need to be unlocked in some way.

[Glimbur]

If you're looking to make it crazy powerful, you have fallen short. Maybe it grants an extra move action 1/combat (or always on). A permanent boost to fly speed is good; Chronos suggested it and I agree. You could give a bonus to weapon damage based on how far you moved in the round; D&D doesn't support the idea of characters moving fast and gaining combat advantages from it, at least it is not very good support.

Are there other things unique to Harpies in you world which the RoR might help with? Flying archery, for example.

Breaking the Sky sounds like an ability that should be powerful yet dangerous and limited. Perhaps it's a 1/day or 1/week sort of thing which comes with a Fort save for the user but also.... what?

[Silus]

Give it some abilities that don't match any existing spell, and give it some continual abilities like a permanent increase to fly speed. If you intend for your players to get ahold of it and don't want it to be too overpowered, say that the overpowered abilities need to be unlocked in some way.

If this were a video game where things were automatically tracked, I'd say "Your flight speed increases by +5 for every 20ft you move. The +5 gained that round does not kick in until next round." And make the cap like....120ft or something. No Fort saves for using a Run action while flying maybe.


If you're looking to make it crazy powerful, you have fallen short. Maybe it grants an extra move action 1/combat (or always on). A permanent boost to fly speed is good; Chronos suggested it and I agree. You could give a bonus to weapon damage based on how far you moved in the round; D&D doesn't support the idea of characters moving fast and gaining combat advantages from it, at least it is not very good support.

Are there other things unique to Harpies in you world which the RoR might help with? Flying archery, for example.

Breaking the Sky sounds like an ability that should be powerful yet dangerous and limited. Perhaps it's a 1/day or 1/week sort of thing which comes with a Fort save for the user but also.... what?

So may take two movement equivalent actions?

What about an ability that, should you move, move and action, you count as flanking should your first movement and second movements put you in flaking position with either yourself or someone else (Like you move so fast that there's a distracting after-image).

For the movement = damage, possibly have something like +2-5 damage for every 20-30ft moved that round?

For Harpies, race abilities are as follows: Flight 30ft (Average), +2 Fly and Acrobatics, -2 CMD (Hollow bones), +2 DC on spells with the [Sonic] Descriptor, 1d6 Talon damage.

I'd really like this artifact to be one that, while totally bonkers in the hands (talons?) of a Harpy, can be used to great effect by anyone else.

The Breaking the Sky thing may work to a lesser degree. (The original was a sort of involuntary, speed induced Disjunction + Plane Shift to get through the planar barrier thing that locked the world in a side-dimension. It's...a little complicated) Maybe a form of teleport where, at the end of a Run you activate a free Greater Teleport (or something) but are limited to outdoor locations?

[Psyren]

As presented in the OP I'd say it's a minor artifact. You could stand to pump it up a bit if that is your goal.

[Silus]

As presented in the OP I'd say it's a minor artifact. You could stand to pump it up a bit if that is your goal.

Aye, was looking for suggestions on ways to boost the artifact to Major status. Currently we're looking at:


Haste 3/Day at CL 10 (So a solid minute of Haste per use)
1/Day, may charge as if you had Pounce (Alternatively, may be considered to have Pounce while wearing)
The wearer counts as having Wind Stance and Lightning Stance feats while wearing it (20% miss chance from missile weapons when moving and 50% concealment when doing a double move/withdraw)
Increase Speed by 30ft
Double your Con Score for determining Run duration
+5 Damage per 20ft moved (rounded down)
Allowed an additional movement action each turn.
Your movement allows for flanking both from allies and yourself. If, for example, you move to the square directly to the right of an enemy, then use the second movement to move to the square directly to the left, you count as flanking with yourself.


Edit: After crunching some numbers, I found that with a semi-optimised build for a Harpy, they can reach up to (at least without magic items) 200ft movement per move action (400ft with a double move). This translates to about 45.45 miles per hour, or 181.8 MPH at a x4 run.

[Chronos]

The difference between a minor and major artifact isn't actually power level. It's that major artifacts are unique, but there are multiples of minor artifacts. As it stands right now, this thing definitely isn't a minor artifact, because with what it has now, if there were more than one, it would just be an ordinary magic item.

[Silus]

The difference between a minor and major artifact isn't actually power level. It's that major artifacts are unique, but there are multiples of minor artifacts. As it stands right now, this thing definitely isn't a minor artifact, because with what it has now, if there were more than one, it would just be an ordinary magic item.

Well what can I do to raise it to Major Artifact level?

[Slipperychicken]

Maybe for "breaking the sky", it could instantly transport the wearer to any location she could normally fly to? That isn't a teleportation effect because the wearer is actually moving the distance, only really fast. It can be used as part of a charge action (no pounce), adding +8 to hit (instead of the normal +2 for charging) and multiplying the damage by x2.

[Raven777]

Haste 3/Day at CL 10 (So a solid minute of Haste per use)
1/Day, may charge as if you had Pounce (Alternatively, may be considered to have Pounce while wearing)
The wearer counts as having Wind Stance and Lightning Stance feats while wearing it (20% miss chance from missile weapons when moving and 50% concealment when doing a double move/withdraw)
Increase Speed by 30ft
Double your Con Score for determining Run duration
+5 Damage per 20ft moved (rounded down)
Allowed an additional movement action each turn.
Your movement allows for flanking both from allies and yourself. If, for example, you move to the square directly to the right of an enemy, then use the second movement to move to the square directly to the left, you count as flanking with yourself.
You are 20% cooler.


I think that to capture Regina's spirit, that item needed to be about 20% cooler.

[Silus]

I think that to capture Regina's spirit, that item needed to be about 20% cooler.

Hehe, I actually crunched more numbers and at Mythic with the right things (Mythic Fly and Mythic Haste) you can break the speed of sound at a Mythic Run. Like +900MPH easy. But granted that's like...spooky levels of optimization.

How to Harpy:
Base: 30
Wing Arms (Harpy racial substitution trait): +30
Mythic Haste: +50
Mythic Fly: +90
Scarf: 30
Night Witch (Homebrew class built around flying. Basically a fly version of the Dervish PrC from 3.5): +50
Mythic ability (Impossible Speed, speed at at Mythic Tier 10): +130
=
410
Movement x3 (2 from double move, 1 from Mythic Haste): 1230
x
Mythic Run x7: 8610ft/round
/6 =
1435ft/s =
978.4 MPH

The speed of sound is 767 mph (1,125 ft/s)