Can you make living creatures into magic items?

[Segev]

Magic item rules assume you're starting with a form factor of an object. But do they require it?

As a simple example, what if, instead of a silver raven figurine of ndrous power, you instead enchanted an actual raven to have animal messenger, created using the rules for slotless magic items?

The rules certainly would allow a magic bird anklet that cast animal messenger on the bird it is put on. But would they allow it to be a specially-enchanted bird, directly, instead?

What about enchanting a horse or mastiff to have the effect of a set of horseshoes of a zephyr as a living magic item, itself, rather than having to have a set of horseshoes placed on it?

What about a parrot enchanted with tongues, using the slotless item continuous activity rules? You could make a statue of a parrot that translated whatever it heard into the owner's native language; could a live parrot be enchanted that way?

[Rebel7284]

While you can homebrew anything, of course, the game makes some distinctions between objects and creatures, even if intelligent magic items and golem blur it sometimes.

Some approaches:

Sculpt Self feat from dragon magazine does allow for something similar, sort of like a spotless magic item that is part of the creature itself.

Polymorph any object-> Fusion -> Astral Seed shenanigans might allow someone to combine a creature and an object into one body. Or just PAO that intelligent enchanted sword into a metal bird?

Of course developing custom spells via spell research, possibly combined with permanency and/or supernatural spell can end up with magic item effects.

Incarnate Construct spell/template turns constructs into real creatures so that might work too, but also the template removes most abilities so not sure if it ultimately is helpful.

There is always manipulate form from Sarrukh that can give any ability to a living creature with the correct subtype.

[Gruftzwerg]

Magic item rules assume you're starting with a form factor of an object. But do they require it?
First, let me point you to an older discussion I started here:
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?615897-Can-Polymorph-any-Object-make-Magic-Items
It seems that a pure RAW interpretation leaves room to turn creatures into (intelligent) magic items via Polymorph any Object. You don't give em any special magical effects (no dagger +X; no ring of invisibility;..). It just turns into a (intelligent) magic item. Anything else must be applied due to other means. (see below)







As a simple example, what if, instead of a silver raven figurine of ndrous power, you instead enchanted an actual raven to have animal messenger, created using the rules for slotless magic items?

The rules certainly would allow a magic bird anklet that cast animal messenger on the bird it is put on. But would they allow it to be a specially-enchanted bird, directly, instead?

What about enchanting a horse or mastiff to have the effect of a set of horseshoes of a zephyr as a living magic item, itself, rather than having to have a set of horseshoes placed on it?
Have a look at the Sculpt Self feat. The rules allow you to create your own custom Prestige Race stuff based on magic item rules. I abused this with my Orochimaru build, who can possess others and then modify those via Sculpt Self.




What about a parrot enchanted with tongues, using the slotless item continuous activity rules? You could make a statue of a parrot that translated whatever it heard into the owner's native language; could a live parrot be enchanted that way?
Tongues is one of the spells that can be made permanent via Permanency (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm). Thus you could make your parrot-translator. The question is, why the parrot and not yourself?^^

[Troacctid]

Just cast Nybor's psychic imprint. Easy.

[Segev]

Thanks for the replies! They're roughly along the lines I thought they would be. To answer one particular question about "why the parrot and not yourself?" though, and what I perceive as some inferences about my intent being to enchant my own PC... the reason I'm asking is actually largely one of flavor. I have a PC who keeps ravens and trains them for message delivery (non-magically). It occurred to me that enchanting one or more of them as magic items could be more thematic than sculpting a raven-shaped bauble to enchant.


Just cast Nybor's psychic imprint. Easy.

I'd never heard of this one. I found it on a wiki, but I am curious: what book is it actually from?

Not sure it's that great of a spell, given that the material costs are actually greater than just building the intelligent item from scratch, but I guess getting the personality you specifically want is worth some extra effort. The perma-charm is pretty good.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I'd never heard of this one. I found it on a wiki, but I am curious: what book is it actually from?


It's from Nybor's Small Codex (https://web.archive.org/web/20150905201956/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mb/20041215a), one of the online articles from the Magic Books of Faerun series. There's quite a few gems in those like Bone Talisman or Guidance of the Avatar.