removing magic item abilities

[MykulFrost]

And another question. Does anyone know of rules that would allow a character to remove certain abilities from a magical item?

[Beni-Kujaku]

I mean, Mordenkainen's Disjunction does that, but I imagine you'd like something a bit lower level.
Simply Sundering the item should remove its magical properties, but I assume you want to reuse the item later.

I don't know of any way to remove only certain magical properties of an item while keeping the others.

[Jack_Simth]

And another question. Does anyone know of rules that would allow a character to remove certain abilities from a magical item?

I am guessing you have a nice item in hand that has an inconvenient drawback?

Sorry, no, not really. Custom item creation guidelines can give the DM a starting point for the cost of the item you are after, but those are far from hard and fast rules, and don't really address removing abilities from an existing item.

[Cruiser1]

And another question. Does anyone know of rules that would allow a character to remove certain abilities from a magical item?
Perhaps it's possible to do something like first make the magic item intelligent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/intelligentItems.htm) so it's a creature, and then cast the spell Ability Rip (SK) on it, which can permanently remove a Supernatural Ability (Su) from a creature?

[Tzardok]

I vaguely remember something like that in the Ravenloft sourcebooks, but I don't know where exactly...

[MykulFrost]

I mean, Mordenkainen's Disjunction does that, but I imagine you'd like something a bit lower level.
Simply Sundering the item should remove its magical properties, but I assume you want to reuse the item later.

I don't know of any way to remove only certain magical properties of an item while keeping the others.

Yes, I am looking to remove abilities but still keep the item for use later.

[Seward]

Simply Sundering the item should remove its magical properties, but I assume you want to reuse the item later.

I don't know of any way to remove only certain magical properties of an item while keeping the others.

Yep. Sunder+Make Whole lets you reuse that Unholy Adamantine Sword as a masterwork Adamantine sword that you can enchant for new purposes, but if it is a +1 flaming unholy sword you can't really just remove the Unholy part.

If the GM is inclined, as a house rule I'd probably allow Craft Magic Arms and Armor to repurpose an existing enchantment on a weapon, possibly with additional cost (but not as much as adding an additional +2 or whatever to it) but that is entirely up to your GM. If it was me I'd make it easier if you are doing something related.

Eg, turning Unholy to Vicious+Celestial Bane would be fairly easy since it would have a similar effect on celestials (4d6+2 is similar to 2d6 and eliminating 10 points of damage reduction) while generalizing unholy to "negative energy damage". Likewise Holy to Merciful+Sacred, say. But turning Unholy into Holy would be expensive, probably better to just sell the unholy weapon and use the cash to get raw materials to build a holy weapon from scratch.

[MykulFrost]

I vaguely remember something like that in the Ravenloft sourcebooks, but I don't know where exactly...

Thank you. I will look there.

[AsuraKyoko]

Perhaps it's possible to do something like first make the magic item intelligent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/intelligentItems.htm) so it's a creature, and then cast the spell Ability Rip (SK) on it, which can permanently remove a Supernatural Ability (Su) from a creature?

Good old Ability Rip, almost never used for what (I presume) its intended purpose is, and instead for what is (presumably) the cost.

Actually, thinking about it, if a magic item is a creature, then what are it's abilities? are weapon enhancements (Su) abilities if the weapon is a creature? That certainly makes sense, but I'm not sure how the rules actually handle it (if they do at all).

[Jack_Simth]

Good old Ability Rip, almost never used for what (I presume) its intended purpose is, and instead for what is (presumably) the cost.

Actually, thinking about it, if a magic item is a creature, then what are it's abilities? are weapon enhancements (Su) abilities if the weapon is a creature? That certainly makes sense, but I'm not sure how the rules actually handle it (if they do at all).

Looks like they do define it... under the saving throw section:
"Magic items produce spells or spell-like effects. For a saving throw against a spell or spell-like effect from a magic item, the DC is 10 + the level of the spell or effect + the ability modifier of the minimum ability score needed to cast that level of spell."

[Cruiser1]

If the GM is inclined, as a house rule I'd probably allow Craft Magic Arms and Armor to repurpose an existing enchantment on a weapon, possibly with additional cost (but not as much as adding an additional +2 or whatever to it) but that is entirely up to your GM. If it was me I'd make it easier if you are doing something related.
There are rules for things like this. :smallbiggrin: BoED has a "Redeeming Magic Items" section, which allows one to translate evil properties of a magic item to good ones, e.g. convert an unholy weapon to a holy weapon, convert a Rod of the Viper (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rods.htm#viper) to a Rod of the Python (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rods.htm#python), etc.

Another idea is to use the Ancestral Relic feat (also from BoED) to make the item your Ancestral Relic, which arguably allows you to swap the item's magic properties for ones of equivalent value for free.

[Jervis]

Not hard RAW but personally I would allow limited wish for this purpose.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Could crafting a curse to negate the effect you don't want work?


Good old Ability Rip, almost never used for what (I presume) its intended purpose is, and instead for what is (presumably) the cost.Well, given that you're inflicting a permanent effect forever in exchange for a weak temporary effect, of course people are going to look for ways to use the "negative" effect instead of the crappy "positive" one. That just seems sensible, honestly.

And could you use a temporary HD-booster to negate ability rip's supposed downside if you don't have any [Su] abilities to get rid of? Say, the curse of lycanthropy spell or the bard's Inspire Greatness?

[Tzardok]

There are rules for things like this. :smallbiggrin: BoED has a "Redeeming Magic Items" section, which allows one to translate evil properties of a magic item to good ones, e.g. convert an unholy weapon to a holy weapon, convert a Rod of the Viper (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rods.htm#viper) to a Rod of the Python (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rods.htm#python), etc.

Another idea is to use the Ancestral Relic feat (also from BoED) to make the item your Ancestral Relic, which arguably allows you to swap the item's magic properties for ones of equivalent value for free.

Right, that was it what I was remembering. For some reason I thought it was in a Ravenloft book, but I may have mixed it up with the rules for breaking curses of cursed items.

[Jack_Simth]

Could crafting a curse to negate the effect you don't want work?

Well, given that you're inflicting a permanent effect forever in exchange for a weak temporary effect, of course people are going to look for ways to use the "negative" effect instead of the crappy "positive" one. That just seems sensible, honestly.

And could you use a temporary HD-booster to negate ability rip's supposed downside if you don't have any [Su] abilities to get rid of? Say, the curse of lycanthropy spell or the bard's Inspire Greatness?

Fiendform will also do the job (by explicitly letting you nab supernatural abilities).

[Seward]

Not hard RAW but personally I would allow limited wish for this purpose.

Hm. AD&D or 2nd edition limited wish was open ended enough for that. Wish itself in 3.x allows for magic item creation so yeah, that would work.

With only a 250xp cost, with traditional mic you could make a 6250gp item. So maybe it could affect a +1 on a weapon enchantment (say flaming to frost) (the first +1 after the initial enchantment is 6k) or things like shifting the energy type of an armor enhancement, but you are stepping on MIC feats to allow it.

In combination with a MIC feat paying the gold/xp somehow and an extra 250xp for the limited wish, I could see it being used that way for a lot of things. I'd still be inclined to allow a bigger shift if the change was to something thematically similar, but there would probably be a threshold below where I'd allow most anything, keyed to that 250xp limited wish cost, maybe allowing more if you paid more xp, but the cap would have to be well below what Wish allows.

[aglondier]

Talk to your DM about it. In one campaign I played in the DM let us create a feat that allowed us to ritually transfer magic item properties from the item to a masterwork receptacle for 1/10th of the items gpv in components and stuff. Really, all it meant was that items like the +2 Manriki Gusari of Speed we found weren't just sold off fot half their gpv...

[nedz]

You could have an Artificer us their 5th level Retain Essence ability to recover the xp for use in further crafting, assuming you can find such an individual in the setting.

[Jay R]

This appears to be a specific question about a specific item. We might be able to give better answers if you told us what the actual question is.