Magic Items

[Amador]

I'm wondering how custom magic items are made in games other than DnD 3.x?

[FlyingWhale]

I'm wondering how custom magic items are made in games other than DnD 3.x?

Is that to say, not Dungeons and Dragons? Like, D20 but not D&D specifically? Does 4E fit into your question? I wish I could help out, as I homebrew almost all of my games for the last 12 years... But it's always been D20 and we've stuck to D&D and Modern stuff... I'd be glad to toss out some ideas if you've a little more depth for me :)

[Glimbur]

First you go ask the Faerie Court for a favor. Provided they don't decide to just kidnap you, you have to do them a favor first. If you succeed, they might make something similar to what you ask.

GURPS has a thought out (more than 3.5 anyway) economic model for enchanting items. There are (or were last edition) specific spells you could put on items for specific prices. Because of how paying for spells works, there is a discontinuity in the graph of price v fatigue required. Interesting stuff.

In short, it depends on the system. More likely to have looser mechanics and more story requirements for making one.

[Amador]

I have no idea if there are item creation rules for 4e, but yes specifically not DnD. I am making the assumption that 1e/2e were similar to 3.x in item creation.

[FlyingWhale]

I have no idea if there are item creation rules for 4e, but yes specifically not DnD. I am making the assumption that 1e/2e were similar to 3.x in item creation.

Dude... Item creation in 4e is as follows. ANY character who manages the Ritualistic Caster feat (Which ANYONE can obtain for one feat) you can buy the Ritual, Enchant Magic Item. You pay market price for an item (Oh say, Flaming Longsword+1) in "components" and poof. You make it... Enough ragging on 4e though I actually find it very enjoyable...

Anyway, So, OK. So now we are somewhere... But do we still use the D20 system for this? Sorry I haven't anything to offer like Glimbur has. As I said before, my experience is strictly with D20 and mostly D&D...

[Glimbur]

I have no idea if there are item creation rules for 4e, but yes specifically not DnD. I am making the assumption that 1e/2e were similar to 3.x in item creation.

Not true. 3.x has specific rules and costs for magic items, because the system assumes a certain amount of magical power in item form for certain level characters. 2E expected people to find magic items as random loot; if you wanted to make one the DM was encouraged to make you go on several quests for Secret Dwarven Ore and the Tears of a Whale and the Breath of a Kitten and what have you to aid in the forging process.

[AmberVael]

You know, there are tons of non-d&d games.
This is like asking "so how do you make a weapon that isn't a sword?" There are so many answers that it becomes a mind boggling task.

Could you narrow it down? Or do you just want people to go "well in such and such a system, we do it this way" and proceed to give an in depth account of how other systems manage item creation?

[FlyingWhale]

Not true. 3.x has specific rules and costs for magic items, because the system assumes a certain amount of magical power in item form for certain level characters. 2E expected people to find magic items as random loot; if you wanted to make one the DM was encouraged to make you go on several quests for Secret Dwarven Ore and the Tears of a Whale and the Breath of a Kitten and what have you to aid in the forging process.

Snap, after being inspired by that... I Googled magic item creation and checked out wotc articles on it... And boy howdy, did 1e seem the way to go! People actually had objectives, and they had to do things and presumably deal with npcs and follow a set of ideas and... Man I play with losers...

[bosssmiley]

Ars Magica: quest for motes of the appropriate Vis, then imbue them at astrologically significant times according to the precepts of Hermetic alchemy.

Exalted: Flex! Flex! Flex so hard that reality itself warps around you!

Spoiler

Show

An Exalted character imbuing a Charm, yesterday.

Nobilis:

Errr, right-oh Nobilis.

[BobTheDog]

IIRC, in In Nomine you buy/make items with XP.

In Vampire, you need to have Thaumaturgy and each "magic item" requires its own specific ritual, which costs XP, too. Still, very much worth it for the power-stake.

[taltamir]

You know, there are tons of non-d&d games.
This is like asking "so how do you make a weapon that isn't a sword?" There are so many answers that it becomes a mind boggling task.

Could you narrow it down? Or do you just want people to go "well in such and such a system, we do it this way" and proceed to give an in depth account of how other systems manage item creation?

+1 on that. There are a LOOOOOT of games out there...

GURPS: two core methods:
1. Sure and Safe: Cast the spell a ton of times on it, again and again and again, for up to 8 hours a day... it can take weeks, to months, to years, depending on power of item. This is something you could say your character does as a day job, or something to make over a few months, OR adding that last level enchantment to an already powerful item withing risking it further.
2. Fast and dirty: Very short casting time, high mana (fatigue) cost, so you might need external power sources like helpers or manastones. Risk of failure / total item destruction / unusual but not necessarily "harmful" corruption. (ex, it could stink when used... or make a noise, or be painful to touch, etc).

I really REALLY like the gurps enchanting system.

Mage the Ascention: requires the use of magic "energy" that people covet or collect (which is only acquired from natural sites of magic, at a risk, and whom everyone, including the vast conspiracy, is going after...) Although I think I found a game breaking mechanic which allows you to ascend to godhood, but i am not sure because the explicit purpose of the game IS to ascend into godlike magical powers (and maybe then escape to the "magic world" beyond the veil as this world is increasingly hostile to casters... that is, the very act of casting builds up discord with the universe until it expels you into your own nightmare realm called "weird", which means character death pretty much).

[Amador]

I was specifically wondering about the general concept, or rules in similar format to DnD 3.x, as that is non-d20 dependent. Basically I'm trying to make magic item creation a dangerous task to accomplish without forcing characters to spend XP in order to have a item that they made themselves. Burning XP seems more like a punishment for the character when it is compounded with the feats that you must take to enchant an item. This is going to be heavily watched by the DM, any attempt to overpower a custom item will hopefully be caught, but I still want to design general rules for players to design items without the DM looking over their shoulder the whole time.

[Lapak]

I was specifically wondering about the general concept, or rules in similar format to DnD 3.x, as that is non-d20 dependent. Basically I'm trying to make magic item creation a dangerous task to accomplish without forcing characters to spend XP in order to have a item that they made themselves. Burning XP seems more like a punishment for the character when it is compounded with the feats that you must take to enchant an item. This is going to be heavily watched by the DM, any attempt to overpower a custom item will hopefully be caught, but I still want to design general rules for players to design items without the DM looking over their shoulder the whole time.

Basically, you're going to run into the problem that magical items do have to have a significant cost, or the PCs will grind them out as rapidly as possible. There are two roads you can go down with your goals as I read them.

Road One is the D&D 2e method. There is no 'formula' for a Sword + 1. If you want to make one, you're going to have to do some significant research, and THEN you're going to have to go collect one-of-a-kind components in order to make it. Maybe simple stuff for a sword + 1, like the blade must be forged in a cave 100' or more below the surface and must be quenched with the blood of an enemy you'd earn XP from. For a Staff of Power or a Flaming Sword + 5 you're going to have to mine the ore yourself from the demon-infested Pits of Darkness, apprentice for a year under the Master Smith who lives at the end of the known world (or someone convince him to forge it for you) and invest it with the soul of an earth spirit to strengthen it (considerably complicated by the fact that earth elementals don't have souls.)

Road Two is the It's Really Time-Consuming option. If you're got the right know-how, you can make an invisible mithril Ghost Touch chain shirt, but you need six months of downtime to make it. That should slow down the pace of item creation a bit.

[Amador]

One thought that I had was to change it from XP burn, to CON burn. That would force the characters to spend a lot of time working on the item, or they could try to make it faster at the risk of death from CON damage.

[PirateMonk]

GURPS: two core methods:
1. Sure and Safe: Cast the spell a ton of times on it, again and again and again, for up to 8 hours a day... it can take weeks, to months, to years, depending on power of item. This is something you could say your character does as a day job, or something to make over a few months, OR adding that last level enchantment to an already powerful item withing risking it further.
2. Fast and dirty: Very short casting time, high mana (fatigue) cost, so you might need external power sources like helpers or manastones. Risk of failure / total item destruction / unusual but not necessarily "harmful" corruption. (ex, it could stink when used... or make a noise, or be painful to touch, etc).

I really REALLY like the gurps enchanting system.

And that's just the basic system found in the "core" books. Magic Items 3 lists several alternatives, including folk magic (anyone can create items or do magic in general by following a formula), natural magic, spell engines (magical computers), enchantment based off various real-world religions, and industrial enchantment (assembly lines are enchanted the normal way, and can then be used to create a specific item in large quantities).

[daggaz]

Whats so hard about the OP's question? He asked for games that arent
DnD 3.x, so yeah... anything else. Just hit with some examples.

In Oblivion IV, for example, you need to go to a special creation altar (found in various areas, often in a mage guild) and you then cast the requisite spell on a certain item, as well as pay a gold cost. Poof, magic item. As well, they have altars for creation custom magic spells. Its a pretty decent creation system, actually, if a little bit two dimensional. Best thing, anybody could do it as you dont need UMD to cast off a scroll.

Hmm.. in a lot of other games, you can upgrade an item by taking said item and some quest items to some dude/place/time and saying the magic words/spell/whatever. Basically its taking it from DnD 2.0, but a lot of games had this variation to one degree or another, considering 2.0 was so dominant for so long, especially during the birth of computer RPGs.

In tech based games, you often need the spare parts, often stolen, salvaged, or purchased, which you then cram together into one unit, using the prerequisite skills, and perhaps needing some help from another person for which you have to pay or do a quest. Fall Out used this kind of system on occasion.

[Tyrrell]

In Ars Magica there are no standard items. I'll talk you through sort of a general item creation for Hermetic magi (the Wizards that are the primary subject of the game), there are many other types of magical characters in Ars Magica many of which enchant things in their own ways

Designing a magic item effect is basically the same process as designing a spell with the addition of magic item specific modifiers such as; how many times can it be used per day, is it a constant effect item, can the effect be triggered by the environment (such as going off every time a door opens in the same room as the item, getting triggered every sunset, or when immersed in water), is the use restricted to a certain type of person, will the item loose its magic in twenty years, how well does the effect penetrate spell resistance and so forth. Thus an item that casts a level 20 spell (spell levels are obviously much different in Ars then in D&D) up to 3 times a day with a penetration modifier of +10 (this is obviously different that D&D again) ends up being a level 27 effect due to the modifiers on the spell.

Creating an enchanted item is done by wizards as a laboratory activity (there are lots of these in the game, creating longevity rituals, binding familiars,inventing spells, upgrading your laboratory, extracting vis, and so on). Laboratory activities typically compare the character's appropriate laboratory total to a number for the lab activity (in this case the level of the effect described above) and determines if the wizards can do the job at all and, if so, how much progress he makes on it. Laboratory totals consist of the Wizard's understanding of magic theory, their abilities in the relevant magical arts, their intelligence, the magical aura where they are performing the work and possibly modifiers for how their laboratory is set up and particular virtues and flaws that the character has (think feats and anti-feats). Creating a magical item also requires vis, the specific amounts and types of vis depend on the specific enchantment.

Here's a excerpt from a letter I wrote to players years ago regarding vis

Vis is the ars magica version of the magic ingredient that the hero quests for in legend and literature. If the hero has to brave the valley of dire danger in order to get to the lake of despair and pick the last flower off of the ivy of woe, the reason he has to do it is because that flower of woe contains a bunch of mentem vis which he can now use to create a mentem magic powerful enough to wake the princess.

The ingredients that the Aesir collected to bind Fenris wolf, the reingeld of the Neibelungen, and the dragon’s blood that Achilles bathed in are the sort of items in folklore that serve the same purpose that vis does in Ars Magica.

In the setting, vis is as a whole not fantastically rare. Depending upon the style of play, magi characters normally see between 2 and 15 "pawns" of vis a year. Inconveniently for the magi however, there are fifteen types of vis, and the rules are fairly stringent about what vis can be used for what purposes.

As a result, a wizard might have plenty of imaginem vis in the form of water drawn from a magical well in which the reflection of the moon is trapped for all time, have plenty of muto vis in the form of butterfly cocoons stolen from the faerie court of dark summer just before they hatched, and have a wealth of ignem vis in the form of the dried heart of a two headed drake that the wizard defeated at great cost, but unless he can score some rego vis (harvested from the mysterious ancient stone circle that maps the progress of the stars) he's not going to be able to raise the magical defenses around his home and they'll be hell to pay when the mongol shamans learn that his defenses are down.

There's dozens of different options to modify this system. You can work from the laboratory notes of some mage who made an identical item in the past, you can put yourself on a wickedly intense schedule and work harder at the cost of your own health, you can experiment and raise your lab total at the risk of a roll on the oftentimes unkind experimental results table. You an get help in the laboratory from your familiar or from your apprentice, you can tweak your laboratory for certain kinds of enchantment (a laboratory for animal magic might be filled with a menagerie of caged beasts, one for body magic might be filled with organs in jars and have a table made out of fingernails). You can get bonuses for making the shape and material of the item appropriate to the effect that you are enchanting. You can get bonuses for having other powers created using the same magical arts (it's easier to enchant a fireball effect into a wand that has previously been enchanted with a wall of fire ability than it is to enchant a fireball effect into a boot that has previously been enchanted to cast "wall of ducks"). One can bind an item to oneself as a talisman and then the capacity of the item to receive enchantments is linked to the magical strength of the wizard rather than the physical nature of the item (also the talisman gives the wizard bonuses to cast spells that are related to the shape and material of the item).

Ars has a detailed, simulation heavy, dripping with incredible quantities of coolness, magic system and item creation is no exception