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View Full Version : DM Help Making custom Artifacts for my game world



dantiesilva
2020-05-04, 09:54 AM
Hello everyone, I have been designing a homebrew world of my own for a while now and just started tackling one of the islands of this rather large world. I wanted it to feel very old and ancient, and make it very clear that most people simply didn't go there. So to start off I added a kraken kinda just patrolling around the island to sink any and all ships that got to close to said island. Then I decided dinosaurs would be the best bet for natives (as in my world they cannot be found anywhere else meaning druids who want to wild shape into one, or get one as an animal companion would purposely have to come here) as it fit the feel of an island that people simply didn't go to because of the monsters sinking your ships if you got to close. To make sure you couldn't teleport onto or off of the island I made it have a constant bubble like ability around it that so long as your in so many miles of the island you can only teleport to certain rings on said island, and using such magic without knowing this risks you be put in some very dangerous situations.

Drop a linnorem into a volcano later and you have the basics of Lost World type deal. Next I added six reptilian races to keep up with the theme and decided that somehow they at one point worked together to stop the linnorem or how would they all be alive. This made me come up with each tribe having a single piece of a march larger effigy that can control the linnorem and in the ancient past they forced it to go into the volcano and go to sleep. As I plan on this being an adventure for a group of players I wanted the items in question to be more then just you need to collect them all to stop this ancient monster and began thinking of ideas (in theme with the grey linnorem) of what would be a good idea however as I know many of the people here are great at this kind of thing I was hoping I could get a bit of help as I have a poor sense of balance most of the time when it comes to magic items (artifacts but still).

So far I was thinking
Kobolds get a helm (head of the effigy) that allows the wielder 3/day to use the linnorems breath weapon, as well as gives them continuous Blindsesene out to 120ft.

Blackscale lizarfolk gain a whipsword (forms lowerbody and tail of the effigy) when attacking with said weapon it secrets the same poison as the Grey Linnorem

Dracotaur would have a staff (forms the main body of the effigy) Increases the wielders Wis bonus by +8 and allows them to empower a total of 5 spells /day

Troglodyte would gain an amulet (forms the claws of the effigy) Grants a +8 enchantment bonus to NA

Firenewt Cloak (would form the skin of the effigy binding all other pieces together thus you can't put it together without this piece) DR 10/+1 and SR 12+ HD wearer posses

Pterafolk would gain a pair of rings (the two gems inside would form the eyes of the effigy) Each ring grants the wearer the ability to cast as a cleric 7 levels higher then they are, and give access to the destruction or evil domain (each ring is keyed to one domain)

With that out of the way is their anything you would suggest I change, add, modify, remove, etc. to said items (maybe even adding a seventh lost item from a tribe that went extinct) to make them balanced, fun to use, and artifact tier fun?

el minster
2020-05-20, 05:19 PM
I think the ftirenewt cloak should give better DR.

skunk3
2020-05-22, 01:17 PM
I think the ftirenewt cloak should give better DR.

I think that all of those items seem fairly underpowered for artifacts.

NigelWalmsley
2020-05-22, 05:10 PM
Technically, I think "artifact" just means "gets to ignore WBL". Since WBL is dumb and bad, I'm in favor of calling things artifacts so that people can get more interesting gear.

dantiesilva
2020-05-22, 10:28 PM
I think the ftirenewt cloak should give better DR.

Each item is based off of abilities a Grey Linnorem has so while the DR seems low, it is what the creature it is meant to represent has.


I think that all of those items seem fairly underpowered for artifacts.


Technically, I think "artifact" just means "gets to ignore WBL". Since WBL is dumb and bad, I'm in favor of calling things artifacts so that people can get more interesting gear.

Each item individually should be interesting however not all powerful. It is after all a bunch of pieces that form a much larger magic item (that lets you control a Grey Linnorem much like how the orbs of dragonkind let you control dragons).

I also placed this in the Homebrew thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611659-DM-seeking-help-balancing-Artifacts) as for the longest time I was getting no replies here until just now. The last post being what we came up with at the moment as no one else has commented or given ideas. I am interested in hearing what you think these individual items should have however to make them less underpowered with the goal in mind that no single item (or two items together) should outshine the artifact as a whole and should roughly be same powerlevel.