I'm going to be starting this campaign this weekend, and one of my players wants to have an Ancient Relic. For those of you who aren't familiar with the feat, it gives him a magic item that he can sacrifice gold or other magic items to, pray over, and end up with a magic item of his choice. He has to spend a day per 1,000 gp in the final value of the item praying, and there's a progression chart for how expensive an item he can get at each level.
I'm generally okay with this; if he wants to blow off gold and magic items to get something exactly like he wants, that's fine with me. The problem I have is the time involved--at 12th level, he can get an item worth 33,000 gp, which means his character is sitting in the Shrine of Whoever for 33 days... and I don't want there to be a month-long gap in the middle of chapter, well, anything. By 15th level, it's up to 100 days.
Am I reading this feat right? Is this as much of a problem as I think it is? I've already told the players that if they have their hearts set on having a +N whatever by a certain level, let me know and I'll see if I can work it into the plot, so this is mostly unnecessary. Plus, I'm really not keen on having month(s)-long gaps in the story...
This is no different than any other PC with an item creation feat. Creating magic items takes time. The SCAP often mentions giving players time to use their item creation feats between adventures. So I don't see how one player taking Ancient Relic is more of a problem than another player taking, say, Craft Wondrous Item.
Of course, if you really don't like the idea of players taking months off between adventures to make items, you can use the Craft Point rules from Arcana Unearthed. (Or is it Unearthed Arcana? The Monte Cook book, not the WotC one.)
Hmm... I had been thinking of the breaks between chapters as just a week or three, so they could make potions and items worth 10-20kgp. I know the timeline is supposed to be a year and a half; if this character stops after every chapter and prays his relic up, he'll go through several years of game time...
Hmm... I had been thinking of the breaks between chapters as just a week or three, so they could make potions and items worth 10-20kgp. I know the timeline is supposed to be a year and a half; if this character stops after every chapter and prays his relic up, he'll go through several years of game time...
There's a gap between Flood Season and Zenith Trajectory of a couple of months. Flood Season ends in October and Zenith begins the following spring. There can also be a month or more between Zenith and Demonskar.
The later chapters come fast and furious so that a little over a year should elapse.