HP and the Nat 20 item craft shenanigans

[Noxangelo]

I'm going to preface this with a comment. If you are not familiar with "Harry Potter and the Natural 20" on AO3, go read it, it is hilarious. It, sadly, died during book 3 of the Harry Potter series, but books 1 and 2 were longer than books 1 and 2 of the Harry Potter series.

Anyway, among the many shenanigans in the series, one that caught my attention and wanted to run past you guys, was what he would do when he made magic items.
-all the amulets of protection he made were also holy symbols.
-the magic brooch he made his girlfriend was silver so it could be used as an improvised weapon against devils.
-he sewed holy symbols into his school robes in black thread so you couldn't see them when he thought vampires might be after him.
and so on.

but what really caught my attention was, i think, the nimble wright he made. it had mistletoe in it so it could be a druids DF. it was made of silver, once again, in case of devils. and like everything else he owned, had a holy symbol on it.

so two questions.
1. is that nimble wright actually rules legal?
2. do you guys ever play characters like that, who try and squeeze as much into and out of their items as they can. what sort of item related shenanigans do you guys get up to?

[AvatarVecna]

I'm going to preface this with a comment. If you are not familiar with "Harry Potter and the Natural 20" on AO3, go read it, it is hilarious. It, sadly, died during book 3 of the Harry Potter series, but books 1 and 2 were longer than books 1 and 2 of the Harry Potter series.

Anyway, among the many shenanigans in the series, one that caught my attention and wanted to run past you guys, was what he would do when he made magic items.
-all the amulets of protection he made were also holy symbols.
-the magic brooch he made his girlfriend was silver so it could be used as an improvised weapon against devils.
-he sewed holy symbols into his school robes in black thread so you couldn't see them when he thought vampires might be after him.
and so on.

but what really caught my attention was, i think, the nimble wright he made. it had mistletoe in it so it could be a druids DF. it was made of silver, once again, in case of devils. and like everything else he owned, had a holy symbol on it.

so two questions.
1. is that nimble wright actually rules legal?
2. do you guys ever play characters like that, who try and squeeze as much into and out of their items as they can. what sort of item related shenanigans do you guys get up to?

I don't feel like speaking to 1 very much, because a lot of that would probably come down to how any particular table might handle it.

2) No, characters like that aren't nearly as interesting to read about as in HP and the Natural 20, because the main character (and the world he comes from, that is presumably as rules-savvy as he is) isn't actually all that optimized. D&D 3.5 magic can go post-scarcity without really bending the rules - you can make items that can cast spells at-will, and those spells can be anything, including potentially "makes a permanent thing" spells, like Create Food And Water. If you're able to craft items, and abuse infinite money shenanigans, you can craft yourself into being a miniature god without much difficulty. You can craft the items that let you craft the items that let you summon up a genie to grant yourself wishes and from there you can do basically anything as long as the universe allows it.

Even if you're not going quite that far, the main character could easily get a ton of levels under his belt picking fights with (relatively) easy-to-defeat animals. And that's not even touching on how he could get XP from defeating HP magic beasts. There's been a number of "wizard IRL, but starts from lvl 1" threads, and my vague recollection is that you cap out at something like lvl 14, and reaching that point requires you to have basically hunted giant squids to extinction. But the existence of magical beasts in this particular "real world" setting, means that lvl 14 cap can be bypassed by fighting tougher creatures. Even if you're not using item crafting to get as much stats as you want in everything, the protagonist should still be pretty close to your typical OP!Harry or God!Harry fanfic, depending on exactly how hard he wants to cheat.

[Kalkra]

If nothing else, had he kept a level of Artificer, he could have done quite a lot that he complained about not being able to do. If he occasionally retrained all but one of his levels to Artificer, he could do almost anything he'd want to. That being said, he did have huge amounts of downtime with which to craft, make money, and occasionally farm for xp, which in many campaigns one wouldn't have. Also, the salt thing.

Also, he explicitly mentioned avoiding the Polymorph line, because it was too powerful, and he didn't seem to use web content, so no Guidance of the Avatar. Also, just to nitpick, the version of Master's Touch he was using was from Complete Mage, and it was updated in Spell Compendium to not give a bonus to skills.

[Melcar]

I'm going to preface this with a comment. If you are not familiar with "Harry Potter and the Natural 20" on AO3, go read it, it is hilarious. It, sadly, died during book 3 of the Harry Potter series, but books 1 and 2 were longer than books 1 and 2 of the Harry Potter series.

I just wanted to iterate how incredible well written, funny and just overall great fan fiction Harry Potter and the Natural 20 is!

[Gavinfoxx]

I've come up with a lot of item crafting shenanigans. I have a few handbooks dedicated to them:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aG4P3dU6WP3pq8mW9l1qztFeNfqQHyI22oJe09i8KWw/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14zilT4WGOyHM0AfpG4-GmD2FkgDg1HZ9HC1cTleQHds/edit?usp=sharing

That said, most of that kind of item crafting shenanigans requires the GM to specifically set up the game to account for it -- or, to dedicate the entire game to it. Which I've never had a GM actually willing to do!

[Quertus]

I just wanted to iterate how incredible well written, funny and just overall great fan fiction Harry Potter and the Natural 20 is!


I'm going to preface this with a comment. If you are not familiar with "Harry Potter and the Natural 20" on AO3, go read it, it is hilarious.

Hear, hear!

HPatN20 is one of the best… well, it's one of the best anything I've ever read.

It took me 5 or 6 times reading through it to catch the inconsistencies. (EDIT: which should tell the attentive reader several things: that the story was engaging and consistent enough that it took me that long to notice any issues, and that it was enjoyable enough that I read it that many times in the first place!)


Anyway, among the many shenanigans in the series, one that caught my attention and wanted to run past you guys, was what he would do when he made magic items.
-all the amulets of protection he made were also holy symbols.
-the magic brooch he made his girlfriend was silver so it could be used as an improvised weapon against devils.
-he sewed holy symbols into his school robes in black thread so you couldn't see them when he thought vampires might be after him.
and so on.

but what really caught my attention was, i think, the nimble wright he made. it had mistletoe in it so it could be a druids DF. it was made of silver, once again, in case of devils. and like everything else he owned, had a holy symbol on it.

so two questions.
1. is that nimble wright actually rules legal?
2. do you guys ever play characters like that, who try and squeeze as much into and out of their items as they can. what sort of item related shenanigans do you guys get up to?

So… hmmm…

No, my characters rarely get up to that kind of shenanigans.

As others have pointed out, there are far more… efficient… things that one might do in 3e. Milo feels very "penny wise and pound foolish".

Milo comes off as a big fish in a small pond. He's absolutely brilliant at min-maxing in several vectors - in fact, clearly the best in his world (tower shields). But he's got nothing on a Playground Determinator.

And that's awesome!

It makes him feel much more real than he would were he actually up to the level of the Playground's standards. So this isn't me naysaying Milo so much as naysaying his detractors.

However, while that level of micro-optimization may be fun to read about, in a game, it would, to many, feel like wasting time on ultimately unimportant details. Like caring about an NPC's feelings. Or the flavor of the food (when it isn't plot-relevant).

So, while I would enjoy gaming with Milo in the party at a table that would appreciate him, I fear such tables may well be a dieing breed.

Well, that was much more depressing than I had intended.

Anyway, I tend to "optimize" my items the exact opposite of the way that Milo does. Rather than crafting my items out of salt (ugh!), I'll rip the wings off flies mutated angels whose feathers have been replaced with tongues, to use to make my cloak. Or collect gold coins and soil samples (straight off the boots of natives) from various worlds, and combine them with sand from a moving island, dragon scales, a shard from a not!TARDIS, an angel's hair, freely given, and numerous other components collected throughout the campaign to craft a custom not-so-cubic Cubic Gate. (Used the sand & shavings from the gold coins to make the red glass base, used the (powdered) Dragon scales, soil samples, and Archmagi blood to focus the magic through the etched symbols for each world that adorned the faces, etc).

Living in a "world of wonders", I tend to try to have the items that my characters craft reflect the "coolness" of that fantasy world through the very materials of their items' creation whenever possible.

Tables where GMs put in such cool materials unprompted are, IME, also a dieing breed.

So, some day the world might be sufficiently disenchanting that I would be forced to scrounge for coolness points at Milo's level, but that is not this day. Some day there may be no tables left where custom creatures and cool locations spark my imagination in ways conducive to crafting memorable items, but that is not this day.

So, until then, unless I have good in-character reasons, I'll likely not put much effort into Milo-level item optimization.

EDIT: initially, I read the title as being about hit points, natural 20s, and item creation. I almost didn't check this thread out!

[Kalkra]

EDIT: initially, I read the title as being about hit points, natural 20s, and item creation. I almost didn't check this thread out!

Same. Also, it turns out there's a 10 character minimum which doesn't include quotes.

[Quertus]

I guess that the closest I've come is in creating Huptzeen that were inherently useful items: a climbing harness, several arrows, etc.

But I'm more of a "Winged Travel Cloak of Resistance +5" kind of guy than a "nail-clipping pocket knife of spooning" inventor.