Help Needed: Crown of Ioun (custom artifact) (5e)

[Misticwalker]

Hey all, been awhile since I've posted on here but I'm needing some help with a magic item im building for a player of mine.

background: player is a wizard that worships ioun, in their dreams ioun has given them the tools to rebuild the Crown of Ioun, which essentially is just a crown with a slot for one of each ioun stone.

I need a process the craft this item, and some functionality tips. I'm stumped on ideas. I currently have the following ideas.

The crown holds as many unique stones as the player can acquire, however the player must pick and attune to individual stones following normal attunement rules, any additional stones will be inactive. the stones can be swapped out just like any other attuned item.

what i need help with - any additional effects of the crown & how to build it. (player is hoping for a long term crafting side thing to work on so iron blessed in x lake and things like that work amazingly) the player currently has access to knowledge in how to make a 'wild magic potion' and i thought that could make a fun cailyst potentially.

sorry if that sounds a bit scatterbrained that's just how stumped on this item i am. and thoughts or advice is welcome.

Thanks!

[ezekielraiden]

I would suggest allowing either fast or temporary attunement a number of times each day. That is, either an ability to hot-swap to a new set of attuned stones in a short period of time (say, 5 minutes), or the ability to temporarily get a "bonus" attuned stone for a few minutes once a day. The latter makes it worthwhile to keep "niche" stones socketed into the crown, while the former is good for flexibility; both encourage having more stones than, y'know, the ones that are most blanket-generically useful.

Another possible option is to give the crown passive bonuses that increase/become more interesting the more distinct/powerful stones are socketed into it. Perhaps go for a rainbow option (e.g. having one stone of each of the seven colors + white/transparent/etc. unlocks the full power of the crown), or for something simpler, just the raw number of stones.

As for the crown's materials, Ioun is a relatively austere goddess, but I doubt she would want a crown that is heavy and bulky. I'm imagining something lithe, but far stronger than it looks, something that (as C.S. Lewis put it) "light, delicate, beautifully shaped circles that you could really wear and look nicer by wearing." So I think a significant portion of the creation process will be less about gathering the important raw materials, but working them into the desired form. You don't just need mithril, you don't just need mithril quenched in water from a sacred spring, you need mithril smelted with flux mined from the cumulonimbus mines of the cloud giants; you don't just need a casting mold carved in the right shape, it has to be made from astral sandstone; the metal doesn't just need to be polished, it has to be polished with the essential oils of the peaches of immortality, etc. Perhaps elements require lacquer made from fancy alchemical resins, or silks woven by spiders living in a heavily air-aspected part of the Elemental Chaos.