Gritty Realism and High Magic; Magic Items

[Asmotherion]

Gritty Realism and High Magic: Most DMs prefear not to mix those two together. I however played in a campain were it worked nicelly, and made up my own system for my own campain.

Now next session the players will be introduced to their first Magic Item. Since it's a High Magic world, I expect those to exist more or less around every corner; however, I was thinking on how to push the Gritty Realism of this. The solution I found was quite simple.

Wile a lot of magic items exist, most are not "mastercrafted". Those that have a set use per day, will recharge less slots each day, and have a 50% chance of loosing all magic when using the last slot. Other items, depending on who they were designed for, will malfunction on certain circumstances (inspiration for this was the Draw Elf Magical items).

Practically, when they find a magic item, I roll %. On a 90-100 the item is indeed a masterpiece; on a 80-90, it is a masterpiece, but also has a curse attached (including the possibility of being possesed by a Ghost etc). 01-10 it is a cursed item (could be refluffed as poorly crafted), and gives no benefits. Any other result gives a mediocre magic item.

Magic is supposed to have unstable and sometimes unpredictable results, so I try to include more magic items into the campain, without having players "forget" about their abilities. At the same time, I want to emphasise that, just because magic is an everyday thing, it doesn't mean an Utopian world.

Thoughts on this approach?

[Anymage]

That much overhead makes magic items into a lot more bookkeeping. You don't need curses or major drawbacks to make magic compatible with gritty realism. Just require conditions for them to be effective and/or have a daily limit. (Ideally making the daily charge limit intrinsic to the character instead of the item, so there's no point to carrying around a golf bag of items.)

Related to the last idea, in addition to some vague daily charge energy that magic items can draw upon, other costs can also be appropriately gritty. Hit points are simple and relatively cheap for minor effects, while fatigue levels can power bigger effects. In addition to magic items that only work when conditions are met, those should make flavorful items that don't feel too high fantasy.

[Asmotherion]

That much overhead makes magic items into a lot more bookkeeping. You don't need curses or major drawbacks to make magic compatible with gritty realism. Just require conditions for them to be effective and/or have a daily limit. (Ideally making the daily charge limit intrinsic to the character instead of the item, so there's no point to carrying around a golf bag of items.)

Related to the last idea, in addition to some vague daily charge energy that magic items can draw upon, other costs can also be appropriately gritty. Hit points are simple and relatively cheap for minor effects, while fatigue levels can power bigger effects. In addition to magic items that only work when conditions are met, those should make flavorful items that don't feel too high fantasy.

I like this concept. So basically:

A) "Charges" magic items don't recharge themselves; spellcasters need to use spell slots to recharge them.

B) Non-charges magic items or those with limited charges require something else to be charged. For example, a sword could require the wielder to willingly cut himself with it and put his blood on the blades runes to activate the +1 property, requiring a minimum of 1d8 (or size of dice the sword in question uses) of damage as "blood offering" to activate for 24 hours.

C) Major abilities drain the caster, and give him a level of fatigue.

D) Some other items to work only under specific conditions. For example, a Sun Blade can only be activated when the hilt is under dirrect sunlight or exposed to Magical light of a spell of 3rd level or higher.

Does this sum it up?

[Knaight]

If you're just looking to get the setting across you could have enchantments generally be temporary - a magic sword might only last for a few months before the magic fades away, a decanter of endless water turns out to not actually be truly endless, the flight ceiling of a magic carpet slowly goes down over time, etc. That plus severe restrictions on when magic items work (think "in a full moon" more than "at night") which fit in setting magical traditions can really work.