So You Think
You Can Forge
August 22nd, 2011
Hello again everyone. Today’s Dark Designs is about creating powerful magic items. It doesn’t matter exactly how you’re going to go about making them – crafting, forging, or even just plain old enchanting – the end result is the same: they wind up as swag for some greedy adventurer to make off with. So, since it’s clear that all magic items serve only one purpose (i.e., being treasure or equipment for adventuring types), there’s only one set of criteria by which a magic item can be judged, whether you’re talking about a +3 vorpal greatsword of mega-death or Robilgar’s extremely comfy armchair.
We here at Necromancers of the Northwest make a lot of magic items. Our second book ever, Into the Armory, was chock-full of them. Besides a little bit at the end about siege engines (several of which doubled as magical items), the book was comprised entirely of magic items. Along the same lines, our Ebon Vault series (which, as of this writing, includes The Ebon Vault: Secrets of the Staff, The Ebon Vault: Orbs of Power, and The Ebon Vault: Swords of Legend) deals exclusively with magic items, all of a specific type (as you might have guessed from the titles of the books). I’ve talked a bit in the past about the design process behind these books (admittedly, I haven’t talked very much about them, and could probably do with talking a bit more about them), which basically involves picking an item (such as rod, staff, or ring) and 1-3 mechanical themes (such as “spellgems” or “magical properties inexpensive enough to appear at very early levels), and then go wild.
But not every magic item is made as part of a larger picture, like in those books. Some exist more or less in a vacuum. For example, most of the magic items that pop up in From the Workshop articles are only loosely connected by a theme (and often that theme is something like “armor”). These are more what we’re going to focus on today, largely because even the magic items that are just parts of a larger product (as with The Ebon Vault) still have all the same problems as items designed in a vacuum, they just have additional complications, as well.
So, you’re out to make a magic item. What do you want it to do? The answer is clear (if not, perhaps, obvious), and is the same with every magic item, regardless of whether or not you have some specific powers in mind: you want your players to be excited about it. You want it to make them fight over it when it pops up in a treasure pile, scrimp and save their gold coins for levels upon levels in order to buy it, and generally go, “Wow. That is magic,” every time they see it in action. In short, you want it to impress.
My first general rule when making a cool new magic item is that, if possible, it should always do something that you can’t currently do anywhere else. Items like wands, potions, and staves (known to some as “spells in a can”) have an important place in a game, but they’re not that fun or exciting, and they don’t go very far when it comes to inspiring wonder and awe. For example, a wand of fly is nice, and probably a very practical way of getting airborne. But it’s not nearly as cool as, say, a pair of boots of flying that let you fly constantly. This is obviously a very subtle difference (namely, that one requires charges while the other is constant). Even though the practical difference between the two is basically nothing, the fact that one allows you to cast fly while the other gives you constant flight, is a big deal to a lot of players. Any wizard can cast fly. No normal PC can be constantly flying (at least, not without a special magic item).
Often these items will do something very similar to what an existing feat, class feature, or spell does. It’s basically impossible not to, considering the amazing breadth of abilities already included in the game. The point, I suppose, is that the harder it is to boil the item down into “like X, but Y” the more special and magical the item is going to feel.
Another important consideration in making magic items is that they should be useful—to adventurers. Though I poked a bit of fun at the idea earlier, it’s ultimately true: unless you play a lot of games about bakers and dockworkers, you should probably focus on magic items that are relevant to the dungeon-delving element. Of course, if you do have lots of games that involve unorthodox activities, you shouldn’t hesitate to design your magic items with that in mind. The point is that your magic item is there to excite your players, and most players aren’t going to be that excited about an auto-calculating abacus, no matter how useful it would be to Filgar the Accountant.
But D&D is a big game, and there’s a lot more to being useful than not being an abacus. Obviously, most magic items (like most feats and most class features and, when you get right down to it, most everything in the game) have some kind of practical application in combat. It might be a sword that does extra damage, or armor that keeps you extra safe, or wands that let you fling spells like there’s no tomorrow, and so on and so forth. The exciting ones are a bit more complex than those, typically, but you get the idea.
When considering the usefulness of the item, it pays once again to consider your audience. Do you have a specific PC in mind for this item? If it’s a wizard, you probably aren’t making a suit of plate mail (unless, of course, the magic is that it has no arcane spell failure). If it’s a barbarian, he probably won’t be interested in that wand. Of course, at its simplest execution, this principle is fairly obvious (everyone knows wizards and armor go together about as well as, well, barbarians and wands), but there are subtler applications as well. Did your PC just get a +3 greatsword? Not the best time to give him a mirror shield.
That applies more to selecting treasure to hand out than it does to actually designing the treasure, though (unless you design treasure specifically for use in your game. There’s nothing strictly wrong with that, mind you, and many designers would probably find it liberating to be able to design in a closed environment like that, but personally I think it feels slippery, has the potential to undermine the rules of the game, and is just begging to end in a giant “Nuh-uh! My sword breaks sword-proof forcefields!”). That said, there are lots of different criteria by which an item could be considered “useful.”
One thing to consider is how often a weapon’s special ability is going to come up. Let’s consider three weapons, for example: the first is a +2 longsword. It’s dull as bricks, but you always get that +2 to attack and damage no matter what. The second is a +1 human bane longsword. You’ll only get the bonus when fighting humans (i.e., necromancers, bandits, town guards, warlords, barbarian kings, mad hermits, etc., etc., etc.), but humans typically crop up often enough in most games that you should get that extra +2 and 2d6 damage fairly regularly. The third weapon is unique. It’s a +1 longsword that instantly destroys any ancient green dragon with a name beginning with “K” that it strikes. That’s a powerful ability… if you plan on running into a lot of ancient green dragons with “K” names, but basically useless for most of the game (unless, of course, you used the sword to fuel a career as a dragon slayer, and had access to some sort of dracotelephonomicon). I haven’t actually tested it, but I’m pretty sure that very few PCs would choose the third weapon, if given a choice (personally, I’m not even that big a fan of bane weapons because they feel a little swingy).
Another thing to consider is how long the item is going to remain useful for a PC. Obviously as the game goes on, items with static bonuses (such as +1 longswords) will become obsolete, but if the player likes the item enough, for whatever reason (such as if the longsword killed dragons of certain color and nomenclature, say) they could always just have it further enchanted. But consider the following: a +1 goblin bane longsword and a +1 evil outsider bane longsword. Which one is going to be relevant to the PC longer? Evil outsiders range in CR from very low to very high. Goblins…don’t. Yes, OK, if your DM likes making level 20 goblin NPCs it might be relevant, but in most games, evil outsider bane is an ability with a lot more staying power. The same thought process can be applied to other things: the ability to cast teleport generally makes mount less useful. If you can dimension door regularly, you probably won’t be impressed by something that lets you walk through walls. Etcetera.
That’s it for this week. Join me next time, when I’ll be discussing a particularly strange and eldritch topic. In the meantime, always take the time to treasure your treasures.