Say I wanted to increase the arcane pool of my black blade. By the FAQ I can't enchant it with effects as Craft Magic Arms and Armor. But is there any way to equip it? Say, slide a Ring of Arcane Mastery over the pommel, or use a Headband of Intellect as a hilt wrap.
By the rules, I can't find anything for or against this. There's a blood reservoir item that needs to be attached to weapons to work, but that's about it. An ioun stone could orbit around it as it has 3+ Int, but it has no limbs to grasp and equip it, and I'm not sure it qualifies as a "creature".
How would you determine what magic item slots it would have? The closest parallel in animal magic item slots is the 'serpentine' body type with belt, eyes, and headband slots (though it doesn't have eyes). Animal Companions and Familiars and Eidolons (with restrictions) and Phantoms can all use magic items. Why not class-gifted intelligent items?
Addendum: Can you enchant it as a wondrous item, rather than weapon?
Magic items aren't creatures and so do not have item slots. Even intelligent magical items.
And no, you are unable to enchant it as a wondrous item.
The limitation comes from it being a class ability beyond anything else really. It has a certain role to play, and is designed to ONLY play that role.
Why not ask the GM if you can play a regular magus and possibly get an intelligent magical weapon instead?
There are spells, magical items, and class abilities that can be used to temporarily add abilities to weapons. I have a list. Many will work on Black Blades.
That's not exactly what I'm trying to do. The goal I'm trying to accomplish is expanding the arcane pool of the black blade. It gets 1+Int Bonus points/day, and it's Int score goes up by 1 every odd level. That means that the number of points it contains is minimal--1 at 3rd, 2 at 5th, 3 at 9th, 4 at 13th, etc. It's not until 19th level that you can use the blade's abilities on a regular basis, with the Life Drinker ability restoring some points every time you drop a creature.
Now while the amount of arcane points of the magus+black blade is higher than that of a vanilla magus, as you can't use your own arcane points to fuel the abilities of the blade, only its own, limiting your use of its abilities. For most of the abilities, this is fine. But for the 'keep one in the vault' Unbreakable and the 'last until next turn' Energy Attunement (which can really eat up your points if you need to go force or sonic), it feels like it's too little. And there seems to be no way too boost the amount. If I could feed my points into the sword, use my own points instead, make it out of special materials (permanently ironwooded-wyrroot), equip it with an Intelligence-enhancing magic item, or even cast Fox's Cunning on it (even though it's not on the magus list; not sure how that affects arcane pool) then it would be better. But there isn't any support for intelligent magic items that I can find. Any sourcebooks for those?
That's not exactly what I'm trying to do. The goal I'm trying to accomplish is expanding the arcane pool of the black blade. It gets 1+Int Bonus points/day, and it's Int score goes up by 1 every odd level. That means that the number of points it contains is minimal--1 at 3rd, 2 at 5th, 3 at 9th, 4 at 13th, etc. It's not until 19th level that you can use the blade's abilities on a regular basis, with the Life Drinker ability restoring some points every time you drop a creature.
Now while the amount of arcane points of the magus+black blade is higher than that of a vanilla magus, as you can't use your own arcane points to fuel the abilities of the blade, only its own, limiting your use of its abilities. For most of the abilities, this is fine. But for the 'keep one in the vault' Unbreakable and the 'last until next turn' Energy Attunement (which can really eat up your points if you need to go force or sonic), it feels like it's too little. And there seems to be no way too boost the amount. If I could feed my points into the sword, use my own points instead, make it out of special materials (permanently ironwooded-wyrroot), equip it with an Intelligence-enhancing magic item, or even cast Fox's Cunning on it (even though it's not on the magus list; not sure how that affects arcane pool) then it would be better. But there isn't any support for intelligent magic items that I can find. Any sourcebooks for those?
Well looks like you are running into the intended, limited resource pool. The abilities of the sword aren't intended to be used every encounter (assuming the 3-5 you are expected to run into). They are there as a supplemental set of abilities to the already decent load out the Magus has at its disposal.
As for "support" for magical items, it amounts to the intelligent magic item section in the CRB and a page or two in the Familiar Folio/Companion book or whatever it was called. They are pretty much strictly GM fiat with the exception of things like Black Blade which are tightly controlled by rules mechanics and limitations. There really isn't much for them, because they are only around if the GM wants to deal with them. And at that point it is up to the GM how they will work.
Basically if you want a bigger pool you will have to convince your GM to house rule something.
Obviously we are pretty much into GM adjudication here, and certainly in any game that didn't allow custom magic item crafting (such as PFS) you can pretty much expect that none of this will fly.
So this is all custom item/house rules territory.
I think whether an intelligent item can be equipped, and if so, whether it has slots or can only use slotless priced items is questionable. An intelligent magic item is somewhat similar to a construct which certainly could use magic items. It wouldn't be unreasonable for a GM to say a black blade could be equipped with magic items, but didn't have any magic item slots, so if you wanted a ring for it, it would cost twice as much as normal (and of course have to be custom made.) This is fairly powerful though, since intelligent items can take their own actions but usually don't have many things they can do, adding in additional abilities can dramatically increase the utility of it. In terms of game balance it is probably similar to the difference between a familiar and an improved familiar, which of course costs a feat.
In design terms, the real reason a black blade can't be enchanted is because it is impossible to price out the cost of an enchantment correctly. Spell Storing has a different price depending on whether it is being placed on a +1 or a +2 blade for example, and since the blackblade is going to increase on its own, you can't get a real price in the traditional way. It would take an extensive house rule to solve that issue. Fixed price enchantments, like glamered for example, could be added to a black blade without any balance issues.
For the most part the same applies to enchanting a black blade as a wondrous items. If the intelligent part can't activate any wondrous item commands on its own (which would make it just like equipped items) the only mechanical advantage is being able to hold just one thing instead of several. Depending on the specific item this could be no advantage, a big advantage, a bit of an advantage or actually a detriment and a GM who wanted to allow this should price the enchantment according. For example a black blade that was also a stone of good luck wouldn't be just like having the two items separately. A blackblade/rod of quicken (not actually a wondrous item) would be a big advantage. A black blade/horn of blasting would be a minor advantage, saving the need to manipulate two things but not giving you new that you couldn't do in a round. A black blade/broom of flying on the other hand would actually be quite a bit worse than the two items on their own.
Obviously we are pretty much into GM adjudication here, and certainly in any game that didn't allow custom magic item crafting (such as PFS) you can pretty much expect that none of this will fly.
So this is all custom item/house rules territory.
I think whether an intelligent item can be equipped, and if so, whether it has slots or can only use slotless priced items is questionable. An intelligent magic item is somewhat similar to a construct which certainly could use magic items. It wouldn't be unreasonable for a GM to say a black blade could be equipped with magic items, but didn't have any magic item slots, so if you wanted a ring for it, it would cost twice as much as normal (and of course have to be custom made.) This is fairly powerful though, since intelligent items can take their own actions but usually don't have many things they can do, adding in additional abilities can dramatically increase the utility of it. In terms of game balance it is probably similar to the difference between a familiar and an improved familiar, which of course costs a feat.
In design terms, the real reason a black blade can't be enchanted is because it is impossible to price out the cost of an enchantment correctly. Spell Storing has a different price depending on whether it is being placed on a +1 or a +2 blade for example, and since the blackblade is going to increase on its own, you can't get a real price in the traditional way. It would take an extensive house rule to solve that issue. Fixed price enchantments, like glamered for example, could be added to a black blade without any balance issues.
For the most part the same applies to enchanting a black blade as a wondrous items. If the intelligent part can't activate any wondrous item commands on its own (which would make it just like equipped items) the only mechanical advantage is being able to hold just one thing instead of several. Depending on the specific item this could be no advantage, a big advantage, a bit of an advantage or actually...
Actually you missed one of the most important things. Action Economy. Having a magic item being able to activate and operate other magic items is HUGE. They already get things like skill checks (which could make a difference if you are a 2+/skill class) and allow for double perception checks and the like. All for a handful of gold. While other classes have to invest class resources into such things.
Basically, there are many reasons the rules don't touch on anything like intelligent magic items having slots or being able to do things that are limited to actual creatures. There is a whole can of worms to be opened.