What nonsense can be done with Chameleon Crafting?

[bekeleven]

No, not a second-level chameleon with a floating feat. I'm referring to Chameleon Crafting, from Dragon 349 p.89:


You can place any spell or power that you know into any items you create. [...] [With] the Brew Potion feat, [you] can create a magic potion of My Light.

This is obviously intended to be used on certain item creation feats, those being: Brew Potion, Craft Wand, Scribe Scroll, Craft Dorje, Imprint Stone, Scribe Tattoo, etc. and maybe a few more like Craft Staff/Psicrown.

However, the feat can be taken with any item creation feat as a prerequisite, and explicitly allows you to place any spell or power into any item. So. I have several questions, but they all come down to "what does this allow" and "how can we break it?"

Example sub-questions of these two include:


This feat explicitly allows me to place a 9th level spell into a wand, right?
What happens if I place, say, Energy Bolt into my Bracers of Armor? Ego Whip into Boots of Elvenkind? Literally any combination? Hell, it's "any spell or power" so can I put Hardening into my magic armor? What happens if I do? Does the price change, and if so, how?
"The item crafted determines if the effect is magical or psionic." If I create a magical scroll of a power can I turn a wizard into a PtS wizard and combat erudites?
This feat doesn't explain how things like power points work. If I create a wand of a power, what determines how many power points are used when I use the wand? If I make a Dorje of a spell, what determines caster level? Note that unlike some of the other questions I'm asking, this is really just using the feat as intended, and it's still unclear to me.
And if you can answer those questions, I have questions about mixing. I create a staff with a bunch of spells, and one power. See the previous question: What determines its power points, manifester level, and augments?
On the subject of "how do we break it," items created with this are 1.5x more expensive, but surely there are combinations of these effects where it comes out cheaper to make something with this than it does normally. Like are there specific combinations of effects that end up cheaper on one side than the other?
Chameleon Crafting is an Item Creation Feat that doesn't actually allow you to create any items. Is that weird? Does it mean anything? Or am I forgetting precedent because it's late at night? Similarly, it requires you to be able to cast spells and manifest powers, but it's not a [Psionic] feat, which I find a little odd. I guess they didn't want multiple feat descriptors. I use those things all the time!


I'll stop listing questions, but I hope you see the potential. So, lay it on me. What's up with this feat? What shenanigans can it enable?

[Saintheart]

Full Runecaster shenanigans with psionic powers.

And indeed allows you to freely dump arcane spells into runes as well, without any Mulan human, Anyspell, or Alternate Source Spell ab/use.

"Any [Item Creation] feat" is sometimes a prerequisite for certain PrCs, e.g. the Maester from Complete Adventurer. Chameleon Crafting would satisfy that prerequisite.

Less certain about what happens because it clearly wasn't contemplated: Graft Flesh, thus giving access to Undead/Maug/Fiendish/Illithid graft items and so on. Not magic items, sure, but Chameleon Crafting by RAW doesn't care about that, and a Weapon Graft specifically permits a magic weapon to be made into a graft. Simialr questions around creating Symbionts.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The Create Device feat from Ravenloft: Legacy of the Blood (1st party approved) is probably the most useful and breakable item creation feat you could hope to have. Devices are nonmagical versions of magic (and psionic) items that completely ignore a number of conceits of magic items, such as the fact that they don't need supernatural reagents, they function perfectly well in places where magic and psionics don't work (or have major negative consequences, such as taint from using preternatural abilities in Ravenloft), they ignore SR/PR, and (since they're nonmagical items) can be fabricated in literal seconds instead of days, weeks, months, or even years.

[Crake]

Ravenloft: Legacy of the Blood (1st party approved)

Misleading. It's not 1st party material, it's WotC licensed, but it's written and published by sword and sorcery studios as a campaign setting supplement for their Ravenloft Campaign Setting: Core Rulebook, published in 2001.

Again. Not 1st party. I dunno what you're trying to get away with by calling it "1st party approved", whatever that's supposed to mean. If someone is playing with 1st party only books, this would not be on the list.

[Troacctid]

This feat explicitly allows me to place a 9th level spell into a wand, right?
What happens if I place, say, Energy Bolt into my Bracers of Armor? Ego Whip into Boots of Elvenkind? Literally any combination? Hell, it's "any spell or power" so can I put Hardening into my magic armor? What happens if I do? Does the price change, and if so, how?
"The item crafted determines if the effect is magical or psionic." If I create a magical scroll of a power can I turn a wizard into a PtS wizard and combat erudites?
This feat doesn't explain how things like power points work. If I create a wand of a power, what determines how many power points are used when I use the wand? If I make a Dorje of a spell, what determines caster level? Note that unlike some of the other questions I'm asking, this is really just using the feat as intended, and it's still unclear to me.
And if you can answer those questions, I have questions about mixing. I create a staff with a bunch of spells, and one power. See the previous question: What determines its power points, manifester level, and augments?
On the subject of "how do we break it," items created with this are 1.5x more expensive, but surely there are combinations of these effects where it comes out cheaper to make something with this than it does normally. Like are there specific combinations of effects that end up cheaper on one side than the other?
Chameleon Crafting is an Item Creation Feat that doesn't actually allow you to create any items. Is that weird? Does it mean anything? Or am I forgetting precedent because it's late at night? Similarly, it requires you to be able to cast spells and manifest powers, but it's not a [Psionic] feat, which I find a little odd. I guess they didn't want multiple feat descriptors. I use those things all the time!

1. No. The feat doesn't explicitly override that restriction. It might implicitly override that restriction, but it's not clear to me that that's the case. I could see it either way.
2. Wondrous items don't contain spells the way potions, scrolls, and wands do. Attempting to put a random spell effect into an item that doesn't actually work that way is just the same as creating a custom magic item, which is up to the DM to adjudicate, just like it would be without Chameleon Crafting.
3. Wizards can only copy spells that are on their list. So, no.
4. It defaults to the non-augmented version. But I guess if you want to do the math and augment it, I'm not a cop.
5. See previous answer.
6. Off the top of my head, mind blank is likely to be cheaper as a power. So is minor creation.
7. It's unusual but not unique.

I don't see much potential here, to be honest.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Misleading. It's not 1st party material, it's WotC licensed, but it's written and published by sword and sorcery studios as a campaign setting supplement for their Ravenloft Campaign Setting: Core Rulebook, published in 2001.

Again. Not 1st party. I dunno what you're trying to get away with by calling it "1st party approved", whatever that's supposed to mean. If someone is playing with 1st party only books, this would not be on the list.It's got WotC's stamp of approval on it. Hence "1st party approved."

Would "WotC approved" have been better? It's basically the same thing.

[Troacctid]

It's got WotC's stamp of approval on it. Hence "1st party approved."

Would "WotC approved" have been better? It's basically the same thing.
That's not really how licensing works. Sword & Sorcery paid Wizards of the Coast a licensing fee to use the Ravenloft setting. Part of the terms included the ability to include the Wizards of the Coast "Official Licensed Product" seal, but no one from WotC actually wrote, produced, or edited the books in any capacity. The license also did not extend to the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e rules—officially, Legacy of the Blood uses the d20 System. This is a big part of why their Ravenloft series has its own Ravenloft Player's Handbook (AKA "The Ravenloft Player's Handbook for the d20 System, version 3.5" as the book calls itself in the introduction) and Ravenloft Dungeon Master's Guide.

Technically, you could probably say that any given published 3rd party supplement with the d20 logo is "1st party approved" because it adheres to WotC's pre-approved guidelines for the OGL. Legally, WotC gave their approval!

[Crake]

Yeah, its not a "stamp of approval" it's a "these guys paid us to use our product, and part of the deal is, we get to have publishing credit for our work". Has nothing to do with "approval".

[bekeleven]

Wondrous items don't contain spells the way potions, scrolls, and wands do.
I went through the SRD on magical items to look for some verbiage and see if I could reverse engineer this, but I only found references to putting spells "into" magical items in the following sections:

[Creating Magical Items] While item creation costs are handled in detail below, note that normally the two primary factors are the caster level of the creator and the level of the spell or spells put into the item.

[Creating Magical Items - Staffs] a spell can be placed into the staff at only half the normal cost, but then activating that particular spell costs 2 charges from the staff.I saw no references to similar verbiage in potions, scrolls, or wands (or indeed, in other locations like weapons, armor, or wondrous items.) So I don't agree with your conclusion that a spell allowing you to put any spell "into" any magical item would apply only to a subset of magical items, unless you wanted to argue that the subset was staves.

[Troacctid]

I went through the SRD on magical items to look for some verbiage and see if I could reverse engineer this, but I only found references to putting spells "into" magical items in the following sections:
I saw no references to similar verbiage in potions, scrolls, or wands (or indeed, in other locations like weapons, armor, or wondrous items.) So I don't agree with your conclusion that a spell allowing you to put any spell "into" any magical item would apply only to a subset of magical items, unless you wanted to argue that the subset was staves.
Okay, so, more in-depth answer.

The transparency rules for converting magic items into psionic items and vice versa (MIC 232) do explicitly differentiate between items that replicate a spell effect and items that do not. Most but not all wondrous items are in the latter category, which means that you can substitute a psionic power with a similar flavor and create it as a universal item instead. The ones that are in the former category include items such as boots of teleportation and eyes of charming, and in those cases, you normally need to have the exact psionic equivalent of that spell (in this case psionic teleport or psionic charm). In both cases, the effect of the item is unchanged, and it still produces the "default" magical version of the spell.

With Chameleon Crafting, if you want to use it on wondrous items, you have three potential outcomes. One, you create the exact same item, but with a different prerequisite, maybe slightly loosening the "exact duplicate" restriction to allow you to use the "thematic match" option instead. Two, you create an item with an entirely new effect, in which case what you have is a custom magic item, and the DM determines the price, as per the normal rules for custom magic items. And the third option is "Wow, I don't understand how this keeps happening, I just was trying to craft winged boots of time hop and all I got was another eternal wand of time hop again! This is, like, the third time this month! So weird!"

[Yamatohekatsue]

Dosent making spells that take more then one charge of out a staff cut the cost of the staff buy the number of charges the spells take? so in theory if you used this crafting feat and made the cost 1.5 time more expensive then made the spells use 2 charges each the cost of the staff would be cut in half now the staff would cost like 75% normal price

[redking]

Psionic Runecaster is wild and legal (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?627131-Overlooked-examples-of-optimization-RAW-and-RAI-compliant&p=24934059).

[Saintheart]

Dosent making spells that take more then one charge of out a staff cut the cost of the staff buy the number of charges the spells take?

By official SRD rules, yes, but only down to requiring 2 charges for 1 spell. Going by "Rules of the Game" articles off the WOTC archives - which are not official RAW, despite that - further divisors are possible, i.e. you could literally pay 1/50th of the price for a staff if you deemed it took 50 charges for 1 casting of the spell.

[bekeleven]

So, my initial question was "this feat explicitly allows you to do something but doesn't really have rules for it. What happens by RAW if you do it?"

The answer, "you can't do it because the feat doesn't have rules for it" doesn't feel useful to me. Your suggestion is basically that most uses of the feat require making custom magic/psionic items, which is a thing that players can do without the feat. Your opinion is that the feat just doesn't do anything and it's not worth it to figure out how it should function?

[Troacctid]

So, my initial question was "this feat explicitly allows you to do something but doesn't really have rules for it. What happens by RAW if you do it?"

The answer, "you can't do it because the feat doesn't have rules for it" doesn't feel useful to me. Your suggestion is basically that most uses of the feat require making custom magic/psionic items, which is a thing that players can do without the feat. Your opinion is that the feat just doesn't do anything and it's not worth it to figure out how it should function?
It works just fine with wands, staffs, potions, schemas, scepters, runes, attuned gemstones, psionic seals, contingent spells, and other magic items that are just different ways to put a spell effect into a widget. I personally don't see the appeal of spending 50% more for the privilege, but it absolutely does the thing it's supposed to do.