What are magic items made of?

[CasualViking]

I'm brewing on my new D&D setting (core concept: not-South America has just been opened up to exploitation development by not-Europe), and as always, questions of economy underlie everything.

From a rules perspective, everyone knows what magic items are made of: They are made of gold pieces. You pony up your gold pieces, spend a little time, and hey presto, magic item. And it doesn't take much to craft magic items. Once you know how to craft magic items (one feat, Spellcraft, a bit of spellcasting) you can craft away, rapidly and without requiring any actual crafting skills. Spellcraft does everything for you. It seems more like assembling than crafting.

One possible answer is "pre-crafted sub-assemblies", made by lower skilled workers, crafting the finest thread, polishing gems, droning incantations for days and days. But that doesn't invite adventure, and while it makes sense for enchanting items in the first place, it makes very little sense when you spend 3,000 gp to upgrade your cloak from +1 to +2.

Gemstones? Gems and D&D magic already have a well established connection. Expensive matrial components are almost always gems.

Body parts of magical creatures? It gets bloody. If body parts are valuable in one adventure, every adventure is going to end with the party plopping out a Bag of Holding worth of bloody organs and body parts. It encourages murderhoboism.

Ideas, please?

[Dmitriy]

It depends on what you want your story to be about, and how much detail you want to give to crafting.

Honestly, Pathfinder/3.5e crafting rules are awful. A Wizard using them heavily can practically double his WBL, making them overpowered. My opinion is that, from a balance perspective, it's a good idea to just ditch the crafting rules.

However, just like with buying items, the detail level can differ. In Pathfinder Society, no screen time is given to shopping, while some GMs can dedicate entire sessions to PCs trying to acquire something they need.

Take a look at this theoretical example: a level 3 party gets a quest to slay a level 3 Fighter who also happens to be a Vampire. If the party relies on mundane weapons to deal damage, they will need weapons made of silver. While such items aren't expensive, a GM might rule that a small town where the adventure takes place doesn't have them readily available. The PCs will have to make a special order from a blacksmith, or venture far away, where silver weapons might be available, etc.

But you asked me about crafting, right? In this situation, the PCs might instead spend the session gathering materials for crafting. They will have to purchase a lot of silver, which is in turn not that common, somehow refine it, because alchemical silver is more pure than what you can see, say, in a silver spoon, then decide which weapons they will decide to craft -- a sword requires far more than an axe or a spear, then hammer it, then wrap the blades' handles in leather, or put their spearheads onto shafts, etc.

Purchasing silver can involve coming to every house in the town and talking to people so that they donate anything made of silver, maybe even smelting all the silver coins available nearby. This might be represented by some social skills rolls, and maybe a big service or two for those letting their family heirloom to be smelted, sacrificed for slaying an undead terrorizing the surroundings.

Of course, not every GM nor every player would like such a story, and if you have been bored by what I wrote, perhaps, it's not your piece of cake.

Again, it's only for those groups that would like crafting to get more attention. Because Pathfinder doesn't have a good rules system to support that, it would require a lot of GM fiat to work.

Note that while I am speaking from experience, I have tested it in a freeform role play, not in Pathfinder, so your mileage may vary.

[Spellweaver]

How about magic?

The idea is to make say a ring of protection, you'd need the energy of a mother protecting her young for a vile attack. Or the selfless action of a good servant protecting ones master. Or the selfless action of a friend or love to save a friend or lover. Or something along those lines. The idea is to capture that ''moment of emotion" and turn it into magic. In most cases this will require an adventure as the emotion must be real and intense. You can't just draw a dagger on a mother cat with some kittens and say "I make a ring of protection +100!". As the items go up in power, so do what is needed. Like the laugh of a princess when she sees her newborn baby for the first time or the pride of a dragon that sees their child do a great deed.

You might also add prepared items like "an opal that has seen the light of three full moons" or a "ruby covered in dragon's blood".

Even better: don't have magic item creation just "you sit in a work shop and make stuff" have it be more "this item must be made "on the night of a new moon on the highest mountain and struck by both fire and cold at the same time".

All the above requires a lot of adventure.

Even better, for a group adventure: give everybody a magic item. Maybe do it like the items share a single +5, and each of the five characters could get a +1 or they can trade/share for like one +2 and a +3 for two characters or a single +5 and so forth. Or maybe five powers, that can be divided and combined.

[reddir]

I love the flavor you all are bringing to this - makes it feel like a real story and legit experience. So much more satisfying than just MagicMart #311.

[Tiktakkat]

In classical terms, that is pretty much it. Spellweaver described a bunch of the "advanced" options. To expand:

First, the item should be of high quality craftsmanship. Masterwork at least, better if the system supports it.
This is most easily represented by gold pieces, but could also be a high enough Craft skill check by someone, with the creator of the item preferred.

Next is the question of special materials, with gems topping the list both for raw value and for reputed magical properties they possess. This can extend to the various special materials present in the system, with a preference for the more "fantastic" ones, like meteoric iron and the like.
Again, this typically comes down to throwing gold pieces around, but could involve more skill checks to shape the gems and special materials, Appraise or Diplomacy or other skill checks to find and purchase rare materials, or some system for magical preparation of the materials.

Then are the body parts. While nasty, this is part of various magical laws like contagion and similarity. Want to fly? You need wings, which means wings from flying creatures, magical ones preferred. Want to throw fire? Get that draconic flame organ or the essence of a fire elemental.
Yet again, throw money at it! If you want to significantly cut down on magic item creation, insist that the party must collect the bits themselves. Not only do you slow down the magic item frenzy but you get built in sub-quests. Of course that could distract from a published campaign, and more seriously irk the non-item creating party members who do not want to be dragged off by the wizard on another snipe hunt.

Finally you get the abstract components, like sighs, shadows, reflections, emotions, and the like.
These are extremely difficult to quantify, which is why they wind up being used so rarely. How exactly do you gather and store a sigh?
If you manage to incorporate these, while gp works for them, they are a great way to substitute for xp costs if you use them. The more obscure the component, the more xp it pays for. That has a side effect of avoiding item crafters being lower level than the rest of the party.

One thing to remember for all of this is that it will add time and complexity to what many may just want to handwave with throwing gp around. 7 fantastic ingredients may sound really cool, but sending the PCs on a scavenger hunt for every magic item they want to create is likely to get old quickly, not to mention all the work involved in making up formulas for every single item.
Perhaps just have the players suggest 1-3 components for every item they craft, with ways to acquire them short of full adventures, or convenient placing of such in adventures for them to discover as treasure.

[Toliudar]

Also given the real history of Europeans arriving in the Americas, murderhobo behaviour might be an entirely accurate context. One way or another, as you intimate, it'll be about exploiting resources, probably at the expense of whoever is near/using/made of those resources.

[Gavinfoxx]

Sugar and spice and everything nice!

/s

[Dmitriy]

How about magic?

The idea is to make say a ring of protection, you'd need the energy of a mother protecting her young for a vile attack. Or the selfless action of a good servant protecting ones master. Or the selfless action of a friend or love to save a friend or lover. Or something along those lines. The idea is to capture that ''moment of emotion" and turn it into magic. In most cases this will require an adventure as the emotion must be real and intense. You can't just draw a dagger on a mother cat with some kittens and say "I make a ring of protection +100!". As the items go up in power, so do what is needed. Like the laugh of a princess when she sees her newborn baby for the first time or the pride of a dragon that sees their child do a great deed.

You might also add prepared items like "an opal that has seen the light of three full moons" or a "ruby covered in dragon's blood".

Even better: don't have magic item creation just "you sit in a work shop and make stuff" have it be more "this item must be made "on the night of a new moon on the highest mountain and struck by both fire and cold at the same time".

All the above requires a lot of adventure.

Even better, for a group adventure: give everybody a magic item. Maybe do it like the items share a single +5, and each of the five characters could get a +1 or they can trade/share for like one +2 and a +3 for two characters or a single +5 and so forth. Or maybe five powers, that can be divided and combined.

This reminds me of the fairy tales I have read as a child. Makes crafting feel a lot more magical.

[Thurbane]

1E and 2E had much more concrete examples and guidelines of what materials are used in magic item creation. The 2E Book of Artifacts was a good source from memory. I think the 1E DMG has some examples - a Potion of Giant Strength required sweat from the brow of a giant, IIRC. There was also a 1E issue of White Dwarf magazine (3rd party, obviously) that had quite an exhaustive list.

In 3E, it was made more abstract - which I believe was intentional, so as not to bog down the process, and also to allow DMs to inject their own fluff.

[tyckspoon]

1E and 2E had much more concrete examples and guidelines of what materials are used in magic item creation. The 2E Book of Artifacts was a good source from memory. I think the 1E DMG has some examples - a Potion of Giant Strength required sweat from the brow of a giant, IIRC. There was also a 1E issue of White Dwarf magazine (3rd party, obviously) that had quite an exhaustive list.

In 3E, it was made more abstract - which I believe was intentional, so as not to bog down the process, and also to allow DMs to inject their own fluff.

1E and especially 2E had huge 'Do what I say, not what I do' problems with their descriptions of magic items; they were supposed to require these huge ordeals to make, and no sane person would do it normally, so clearly they're rare and special, because there had to be an overwhelming need to make them in order to justify going through all the hoops.. and then you have official adventure modules where you collect a double platoon's worth of +1 longswords and find caches of 2d6 healing potions all over the place. 3E abstracting the whole thing to 'set a pile of gold on fire and it transmutes to a magic item' is at least something you can imagine crafty spellcasters doing on a relatively large scale, especially after they took out the d100 Table of Lab Accidents and the chance to permanently level and/or Constitution drain yourself..

..honestly I kind of prefer just playing the mechanical implication of 3E's crafting method straight - you make magic items by piling up a bunch of gold/gems/other valuables inside of a magic circle, with the material host for the item you wish to create buried at the bottom (the ring/sword/widget that is eventually going to be magical.) You chant/incant/meditate/cast spells/waft rare incenses/whatever at it until the required crafting period is done. As you proceed the pile of treasure gets smaller and smaller, as the material sublimates into raw magical potency that infuses the item to be enchanted. When you're done, all of the gold is gone, and you have a freshly minted Magic Thing.

[Thurbane]

1E and especially 2E had huge 'Do what I say, not what I do' problems with their descriptions of magic items; they were supposed to require these huge ordeals to make, and no sane person would do it normally, so clearly they're rare and special, because there had to be an overwhelming need to make them in order to justify going through all the hoops.. and then you have official adventure modules where you collect a double platoon's worth of +1 longswords and find caches of 2d6 healing potions all over the place. 3E abstracting the whole thing to 'set a pile of gold on fire and it transmutes to a magic item' is at least something you can imagine crafty spellcasters doing on a relatively large scale, especially after they took out the d100 Table of Lab Accidents and the chance to permanently level and/or Constitution drain yourself..

..honestly I kind of prefer just playing the mechanical implication of 3E's crafting method straight - you make magic items by piling up a bunch of gold/gems/other valuables inside of a magic circle, with the material host for the item you wish to create buried at the bottom (the ring/sword/widget that is eventually going to be magical.) You chant/incant/meditate/cast spells/waft rare incenses/whatever at it until the required crafting period is done. As you proceed the pile of treasure gets smaller and smaller, as the material sublimates into raw magical potency that infuses the item to be enchanted. When you're done, all of the gold is gone, and you have a freshly minted Magic Thing.

True: 2E and especially 1E had a radically different approach to PCs making items. In 1E, it was basically not allowed, and in 2E the rules made it difficult and awkard to do so.

Personally, I much prefer the 3E approach myself - the DM doesn't have to try and explain magical loot as being the result of long lost methods or extinct civilisations.

I just thought if the OP was looking for some suggestions on materials, those might be sources of inspiration.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

This is completely setting-dependant, but in mine the important bit is the gold. Wands are usually wood, bone, or other metals treated and inscribed upon using powders and inks made from the gold in the crafting cost, for instance. Because in my setting gold is the be-all-end-all currency for anyone who can afford to deal in it because it's literally solid magic.

[Psyren]

How about magic?

The idea is to make say a ring of protection, you'd need the energy of a mother protecting her young for a vile attack. Or the selfless action of a good servant protecting ones master. Or the selfless action of a friend or love to save a friend or lover. Or something along those lines. The idea is to capture that ''moment of emotion" and turn it into magic. In most cases this will require an adventure as the emotion must be real and intense. You can't just draw a dagger on a mother cat with some kittens and say "I make a ring of protection +100!". As the items go up in power, so do what is needed. Like the laugh of a princess when she sees her newborn baby for the first time or the pride of a dragon that sees their child do a great deed.

You might also add prepared items like "an opal that has seen the light of three full moons" or a "ruby covered in dragon's blood".

Even better: don't have magic item creation just "you sit in a work shop and make stuff" have it be more "this item must be made "on the night of a new moon on the highest mountain and struck by both fire and cold at the same time".

All the above requires a lot of adventure.

Even better, for a group adventure: give everybody a magic item. Maybe do it like the items share a single +5, and each of the five characters could get a +1 or they can trade/share for like one +2 and a +3 for two characters or a single +5 and so forth. Or maybe five powers, that can be divided and combined.

I'd reserve this kind of thing for artifacts. Having to consult an astrological chart and hunt down fresh virgin unicorn tears just so I can make a sword I can kill a shadow with before it drains me to a husk seems like a good way for humanoid civilization to not get past the living in caves stage.

EDIT: I'd also use this for things like relics, legacy weapons, and other more unique magic items - but not a +1 ghost touch longsword.

[Troacctid]

I like residuum. Steal that from 4e.

Dragonshards are good too.

[Maat Mons]

I'd say there are rare wellsprings of a very strange energy. When this energy is interwoven with magic, the magic gains durability and permanence. This is the essential ingredient in all magic items. Its harvested, bottled, and sold at exorbitant prices. The listed gp cost of an item corresponds to how much of the stuff you need to buy.

In not-Europe, all wellsprings are controlled by countries or organizations that have grown very powerful with the profits they make. But the newly-discovered not-South America has wellsprings claimed by no one but savages. And savages aren't people, so it's perfectly acceptable for the civilized folk to kill them and lay a proper claim on the wellsprings.

[Prime32]

From a rules perspective, everyone knows what magic items are made of: They are made of gold pieces. You pony up your gold pieces, spend a little time, and hey presto, magic item. And it doesn't take much to craft magic items. Once you know how to craft magic items (one feat, Spellcraft, a bit of spellcasting) you can craft away, rapidly and without requiring any actual crafting skills. Spellcraft does everything for you. It seems more like assembling than crafting.

One possible answer is "pre-crafted sub-assemblies", made by lower skilled workers, crafting the finest thread, polishing gems, droning incantations for days and days. But that doesn't invite adventure, and while it makes sense for enchanting items in the first place, it makes very little sense when you spend 3,000 gp to upgrade your cloak from +1 to +2.

Eberron has schemas, which are items that can be used to create other magic items quickly and cheaply. Most are effectively artifacts (and relegated to stuff like magic blenders and streetlights that adventurers wouldn't be interested in anyway), but "minor schemas" are player-craftable and function like reusable scrolls that can be activated 1/day (making them a cost-efficient way of meeting spell requirements when crafting). There's also creation forges, large installations which can mass produce both magical and mundane items, but which are expensive and difficult to repair.

I like residuum. Steal that from 4e.

Dragonshards are good too.

IIRC, in 4e Eberron those are the same thing. Powdered dragonshards are described as "residuum-grade".

[Spellweaver]

I'd reserve this kind of thing for artifacts. Having to consult an astrological chart and hunt down fresh virgin unicorn tears just so I can make a sword I can kill a shadow with before it drains me to a husk seems like a good way for humanoid civilization to not get past the living in caves stage.

EDIT: I'd also use this for things like relics, legacy weapons, and other more unique magic items - but not a +1 ghost touch longsword.

The point is that is scales with the power of an item. Does fresh virgin unicorn tears sound like something hard or a character of say 5th level?

[Psyren]

The point is that is scales with the power of an item. Does fresh virgin unicorn tears sound like something hard or a character of say 5th level?

I was largely being facetious there, but taking your question at face value - that would depend entirely on the availability of such a reagent, i.e. the GM making it available.

But my point was that gating common magic items (particularly those the game expects to be common) behind rigmarole is likely to be detrimental to the game as a whole, because it wasn't designed around that assumption.

[Jay R]

Manufacturing a magic item requires a masterwork item. So the primary substance would be whatever that item is usually made from -- steel for weapons, gold and jewels for broaches, etc.

I've always assumed that there must also be some small, expensive items worked in, such as gold threads into a cloak herbs into potions, etc. These would be substances that are capable of holding the magic required for the item to work.

But part of the cost could be one-time-use tools, including herbs or drugs that the crafter needs to allow the right mental abilities.

Finally, it could be some very uninteresting stuff needed just to preserve spell components. The Fly spell requires a wing feather, which is fragile. Some sort of glue or other binding agent might be needed to keep the wing from being destroyed, while still being workable as a component.

[Silly Name]

I love the idea of making magic items flavorful and require strange and powerful components. It's a fantastic idea, it makes every little trinket feel special and earned.

But it clashes with expectations of the 3.PF system (not with D&D in general), which assumes that magic items are something characters can access fairly regularly and around this core piece of information revolve many assumptions on what kind of adventures and challenges adventurers can expect to have.

Now, having to brave the tunnelling caves of the Burning Caldera to converse with the powerful Djinn Lord ruling over the volcano in order to be granted a flask of pure elemental fire to enchant your axe so you may fell the Jotunn Jarl threatening your kingdom can be an excellent part of an adventure, very fun and fascinating and giving magic the appropriate gravitas.

But having to embark on a quest every time I want to craft or upgrade an item? That's a pain. It steals the spotlight from any "main quest" the characters may be on, and sometimes can even effectively lock the players from enchanting their stuff because they're on a time sensitive mission and they can't afford a week-long diversion to find a dryad willing to grant them a lock of her hair to use in their batch of Barkskin potions. Or maybe a wand of Magic Missile needs to be crafted under a full moon, but it's a new moon and we can't sit on our thumbs for a month while an army of ghosts besieges the city.

I agree with Psyern that, at least in the context of 3.PF, this kind of limitation should be imposed on only the most powerful items, while "common" magic items should be more easily craftable/the ingredients available in any sufficiently-large city. That, or you litter dungeons and ruins with magic items and potions that have inexplicably been left unplundered until the party came along, Final Fantasy style.

That, or your players don't care about crafting stuff themselves and just shower the local wizard with money and wait for her to enchant their stuff while they go murder everything in the next dungeon. It's a valid option!

[reddir]

For fire effects, Essence of Fire from a Djin is great but might only be required for something near Epic level. For basic stuff, maybe a still burning coal from the first fire lit that day in a blacksmith's forge would be sufficient. For something more significant, maybe a branch charred by a fire started by lightning.

No need for every ingredient to be something of deep significance. All that is required is something that fits the theme and of flavor and rarity fit for the level of item being created.

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Also, the flavorful ingredients necessary for magic items and potions do not need to be fixed - the GM can allow the crafters to use a variety of 'correct-themed' ingredients for each effect.

So any fire-themed ingredient of sufficient rarity could be used for any fire effect of equal or lesser power.

-------

No reason that needed ingredients for the lower level stuff won't be stocked. Especially if the ingredients are based on theme and not strictly fixed.

A fire started by lightning is likely to leave many charred branches! And if they can be used to invoke a variety of fire effects, it should be common practice to alchemists and such to keep a stock on hand.

=========================

EDIT - the examples I provided here are intentionally simple and concrete for the purpose of illustration. I absolutely love the more subtle examples others have given, and would encourage using those whenever possible.
The TV show "Once Upon A Time" had a great scene with Rumplestiltskin in his workshop with vials of all sorts of things like 'last breath of x' or 'freely given memory', etc.

[King of Nowhere]

i treat magic a bit like programming for the fluff stuff.
so, a gliph is the equivalent of a circuit, and it is made with various materials including magic conductors and magic insulators and pieces that will do stuff with magic. for each of those there are materials.
and unfortunately they are all expensive.