A Question Regarding Magic Item "Requirements"


RPG Superstar™ 2011 General Discussion

Shadow Lodge Marathon Voter Season 6

Hello Everyone,

Any advice on the following would be appreciated.

In regards to a magic item's requirements and from the core rules:

"Certain requirements must be met in order for a character to create a magic item. These include feats, spells, and miscellaneous requirements such as level, alignment, and race or kind."

The "miscellaneous requirements" are then expanded upon with some core rule magic items requiring the creator to have ranks in a skill as a requirement. Is it possible then to come up with a further style of requirement? Does this need to reflect the nature or capacity of the creator or could it be furthered to include a specific material or item? Could it even be furthered to require a particular process in the item's manufacture such as the tempering of the item's glass by a dragon's breath?

I'd love to be daring with this project but I would not want such pushing of the envelope to transgress the line of auto-fail stupidity. Any thoughts appreciated.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


As a quick answer i'd say yes it could fantasy is full of concepts like this.

For a deeper and slightly more rules based concept i would consider allowing such factors to either make the crafting of an item easier or perhaps making such things the equivilent of metamagic for item crafting i.e. forging that flaming longsword in dragonfire may make an empowered version which does d8 fire instead of d6 whereas if forged in pheonix flame it could be considered holy or fire damage.

Contributor

None of the items in the Core Rulebook have physical items listed in the crafting requirements. When we saw some Superstar submissions last year that had things like "Craft Wondrous Item, fireball, 5,000 gp gem," it looked weird.

In other words, we generally don't specify what materials are necessary for creating magic items. If you publish a subsystem about that, or do it for your home game, that's fine, but to suddenly insert that into an item's writeup would be jarring.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

And please don't jar us. We much prefer canning. Or is that caning? Others, of course... ;-)


Neil Spicer wrote:
And please don't jar us. We much prefer canning. Or is that caning? Others, of course... ;-)

lol...See, this is what I meant in the other thread...lol

Grand Lodge Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8

Herremann the Wise wrote:
Is it possible then to come up with a further style of requirement? Does this need to reflect the nature or capacity of the creator or could it be furthered to include a specific material or item? Could it even be furthered to require a particular process in the item's manufacture such as the tempering of the item's glass by a dragon's breath?

Perhaps you could describe the process (briefly) in the text, then write in the requirements what qualities the creator needs to carry out the process.

It might be as simple as "Requirements: X, creator must be a dragon with the fire subtype, Y, Z", leaving players to work out on their own that a human wizard can arrange for a dragon to assist in the process to fulfil the requirement. It's a risk, though.

The GP cost includes all necessary arrangements to obtain the specific materials needed, whose cost should be proportionate to the power of the finished item (that is to say, included in the usual formula).

Shadow Lodge Marathon Voter Season 6

Starglim wrote:
Herremann the Wise wrote:
Is it possible then to come up with a further style of requirement? Does this need to reflect the nature or capacity of the creator or could it be furthered to include a specific material or item? Could it even be furthered to require a particular process in the item's manufacture such as the tempering of the item's glass by a dragon's breath?

Perhaps you could describe the process (briefly) in the text, then write in the requirements what qualities the creator needs to carry out the process.

It might be as simple as "Requirements: X, creator must be a dragon with the fire subtype, Y, Z", leaving players to work out on their own that a human wizard can arrange for a dragon to assist in the process to fulfil the requirement. It's a risk, though.

The GP cost includes all necessary arrangements to obtain the specific materials needed, whose cost should be proportionate to the power of the finished item (that is to say, included in the usual formula).

I think that's the way to go: leave the requirements section for the qualities and capacity of the creator otherwise it's too jarring as per SKR's comments. If there is anything "fruity" to be added, then it may best be done in the text (if truly required at all). I was just using the dragon's breath thing as an example of a restriction of opportunity and circumstance rather than of funds or personal quality or ability - no plans to use that in my submission. It would be funny if that actually turned up in someone elses though.

Anyway, thanks for the advice everyone.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

From reading through all the highlighted threads for previous RPG superstar competitions, I think the one quality that defines

Community / Forums / Archive / Paizo / RPG Superstar™ / Previous Contests / RPG Superstar™ 2011 / General Discussion / A Question Regarding Magic Item "Requirements" All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in General Discussion