Craft Artifact. Does nothing?

[redking]

Craft Artifact
Prerequisites
Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Rod, Craft Staff, Craft Wand, Craft Wondrous Item, Forge Ring, Scribe Scroll.

Benefit
The deity can craft magic arms and armor, staffs, wands, wondrous items, rings, and scrolls that exceed the normal limits for such items

Suggested Portfolio Elements
Crafts, knowledge, magic.

Has craft artifact ever received any crunch anywhere, in terms of what kinds of artifacts you can create, what costs they are and so on? This is a divine salient ability. Has this ability been superseded by epic item creation? As written, this ability doesn't do anything.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Has craft artifact ever received any crunch anywhere, in terms of what kinds of artifacts you can create, what costs they are and so on? This is a divine salient ability. Has this ability been superseded by epic item creation? As written, this ability doesn't do anything.

Well, as written, it's Epic item creation (Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Wands, Craft Epic Scrolls, Rod, Staff, Rings and Wondrous Items) all as one salient ability. It even has exactly the same wording. That's not that bad. Basically, it all but confirms that artifacts are just Epic magic items and that "the secret to create artifacts has been lost to time" is meant in the same way that Epic Spells are supposedly not possible anymore but that Epic characters don't care and can just cast them anyway.

[KoDT69]

It's one Salient Ability that replaces 7 Epic feats, but honestly who would ever even take more than 2 of those even for a craft heavy campaign? Better Epic feats you could be taking and definitely better Salient Abilities you could take. Alter Reality, Divine Creation, Avatar... All much better bang for your buck IMO. A deity can task a high rank cleric in his following with tracking down the item he wants. Much more cost and time effective!

[Max Caysey]

Well, as written, it's Epic item creation (Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Wands, Craft Epic Scrolls, Rod, Staff, Rings and Wondrous Items) all as one salient ability. It even has exactly the same wording. That's not that bad. Basically, it all but confirms that artifacts are just Epic magic items and that "the secret to create artifacts has been lost to time" is meant in the same way that Epic Spells are supposedly not possible anymore but that Epic characters don't care and can just cast them anyway.

This is a legit question, why would a deity not just cast a supernatural wish to bring about any item of any power=?

[Telonius]

There are a few limitations to Epic magic items (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/basics.htm):

"Epic magic items are not artifacts. They are not unique, though they are certainly very rare, and anyone with the proper item creation feats can build them. Even an epic magic item can never grant a dodge bonus, and the maximum inherent bonus that can be applied to an ability score is +5. An epic magic item cannot be created that uses or mimics an epic spell. A major artifact might be able to mimic such a spell, however."

So a Deity with the Craft Artifact salient ability would be able to make artifacts that do grant a dodge bonus, give inherent bonuses over +5, or mimics an epic spell.

[hamishspence]

Artifacts also work in antimagic fields, where Epic Magic Items wouldn't.

And major artifacts have the "only one specific way to destroy them" property. Which could be agreed between the player and the DM.

[KoDT69]

There are a few limitations to Epic magic items (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/basics.htm):

"Epic magic items are not artifacts. They are not unique, though they are certainly very rare, and anyone with the proper item creation feats can build them. Even an epic magic item can never grant a dodge bonus, and the maximum inherent bonus that can be applied to an ability score is +5. An epic magic item cannot be created that uses or mimics an epic spell. A major artifact might be able to mimic such a spell, however."

So a Deity with the Craft Artifact salient ability would be able to make artifacts that do grant a dodge bonus, give inherent bonuses over +5, or mimics an epic spell.
I normally agree with your logic, I mean 99% of the time over many years, but I think you may be wrong about the Dodge bonus. The SRD entry you linked says:

"The following are typical characteristics of an epic magic item. In general, an item with even one of these characteristics is an epic magic item."

Notice the word "typical" being used. I think that they were just giving a bunch of examples in that entry and not a comprehensive list. I am open to being wrong here, which I'd accept, but my understanding after the last few years was that there is a table of craft formulas and Epic items just get that sweet x10 cost multiplier. Like 3 or 4 threads I started looking for clarification in the last few years and I never saw anything to the effect of Epic being limited only to certain bonus types. I figured Dodge was under the Armor Class Bonus (Other) heading.

I did forget about that being indestructible thing, and the Epic spells, but the effective Spell Level higher than 9th is still a lot of potential power.

[Darg]

Even artifacts are subject to disjunction, though there is only a 1% chance per caster level of actually affecting such powerful items. Additionally, if an artifact is destroyed, you must make a DC 25 Will save or permanently lose all spellcasting abilities. (These abilities cannot be recovered by mortal magic, not even miracle or wish.)

Note: Destroying artifacts is a dangerous business, and it is 95% likely to attract the attention of some powerful being who has an interest in or connection with the device.


Artifacts are harder to destroy and are more famous.

[Max Caysey]

Artifacts are harder to destroy and are more famous.

Every item gets a save against disjunction, so the 1% is either before a save is attempted, or after a failed save. I am of the opinion that the 1% risk is before a save is attempted. And disjunction is still "only" a level 9 spell. So it should be fairly doable for most of the characters actually wearing/ using artifacts.

Even if the artifact is unattended, and thus uses its own save, I believe Artifacts are a minimum CL level 20, so that helps... Point being, disjoining an artifact is not an easy feat to pull off... Also, its just a bad idea. More cool, to collect them :)

[Telonius]

I normally agree with your logic, I mean 99% of the time over many years, but I think you may be wrong about the Dodge bonus. The SRD entry you linked says:

"The following are typical characteristics of an epic magic item. In general, an item with even one of these characteristics is an epic magic item."

Notice the word "typical" being used. I think that they were just giving a bunch of examples in that entry and not a comprehensive list. I am open to being wrong here, which I'd accept, but my understanding after the last few years was that there is a table of craft formulas and Epic items just get that sweet x10 cost multiplier. Like 3 or 4 threads I started looking for clarification in the last few years and I never saw anything to the effect of Epic being limited only to certain bonus types. I figured Dodge was under the Armor Class Bonus (Other) heading.

I did forget about that being indestructible thing, and the Epic spells, but the effective Spell Level higher than 9th is still a lot of potential power.

Yeah, this was something I hadn't noticed until I looked it up for this specific question in the SRD, but it looks like there were a couple of key explanatory sentences that the SRD didn't copy over from Deities and Demigods:


Benefit: The deity can craft magic arms and armor, staffs,
wands, wondrous items, rings, and scrolls that exceed the normal
limits for such items (as stated in the DUNGEON MASTER’s Guide). For
instance, the deity could create a magic sword with an enhance-
ment bonus higher than +5, a staff that allows the use of spells of
higher than 9th level, a cloak of Charisma with an enhancement
bonus higher than +6, and so on. More information on such items
can be found in the Epic Level Handbook

So it does look like they were talking about the limitations for regular magic items, not the limitations for magic items, period. So yeah, looks like you're right about that.

There's also some text in Epic Level Handbook (page 4) that seems kind of throwaway, but:


The difference between epic magic items and artifacts is that artifacts are unique items generated by a one-of-a-kind event or forging. Many epic magic items are just as powerful as artifacts, but epic characters know how to make them, and such items have established prices in epic markets

So basically, an artifact is an Epic Item that you don't know how to make. The description of the Craft Artifact salient ability doesn't actually say you can craft artifacts (which is 100% silly but hey, Wizards editing). The salient ability will 100% certain allow the deity to craft any epic item without taking the usual feats for it.

[Biggus]

It's never spelled out exactly what, but artifacts have some kind of special quality to them which makes them different to epic items. As well as Antimagic Field and Disjunction, there's the spell Apocalypse From The Sky (BoVD) which requires an artifact as a material component.

The rules for how to craft artifacts are potentially available to mortals (in Forgotten Realms, at least) via the Nether Scrolls (LEoF p.156-157).

As for what artifacts can do, we have only the example artifacts in various books as a source for that. Some things artifacts can do which other items can't:

Grant XP

Transmute lead into gold

Grant the spellcasting powers of a 20th-level Paladin

Create new diseases and infect creatures with no save

Send a dead body beyond even the reach of greater gods to recover

[Jervis]

So a Deity with the Craft Artifact salient ability would be able to make artifacts that do grant a dodge bonus, give inherent bonuses over +5, or mimics an epic spell.

Somewhere a truenamer just started looking for a way to gain salient divine abilities so he could make a item giving a +5 dodge bonus to truenaming.

[Darg]

Somewhere a truenamer just started looking for a way to gain salient divine abilities so he could make a item giving a +5 dodge bonus to truenaming.

Custom artifact to simply give a typeless bonus to Truespeak equal to your HD.

[Bohandas]

Artifacts are harder to destroy and are more famous.

They also do stuff that would be game breaking if they were something get you could just make (cf. the level up books, the deck of many things, the death rock, the cage of zagyg and ivory chain of pao, and IIRC the Nether Scrolls actually grant you Create Artifact as a mortal if you read enough of them

[Melcar]

They also do stuff that would be game breaking if they were something get you could just make (cf. the level up books, the deck of many things, the death rock, the cage of zagyg and ivory chain of pao, and IIRC the Nether Scrolls actually grant you Create Artifact as a mortal if you read enough of them

Be advised, The Nether Scrolls grants you a level for each read page/scroll. A full set is 50 pages/scrolls albeit only about 19 are accounted for in their scroll form - Larloch has those, and the other set has been transformed into a golden beach tree and is hidden in the Windsong tower of Myth Drannor… where the tower is tho, who knows!

While the set normally holds 5 chapters, the elves discovered a sixth after transforming them into the tree suggesting that there might be a lot more hidden knowledge in them than first thought!

[schreier]

One other benefit is that an artifact will work in an antimagic field