Success and Failure

Magic is tricky and involves many constantly changing variables, causing each enchantment to differ slightly from prior attempts. No matter how many times a character has created a particular magical item, the chances for success remain the same. A character’s general level of expertise can improve, but particular enchantments cannot be mastered.

Each attempt to create a magical item requires a roll for success. The DM secretly rolls the dice to see if the attempt to create a magical item succeeds. Any roll of 96–00 fails automatically.

Most failed attempts ruin the item, melting it into useless slag or destroying it in some other dramatic fashion. A failed attempt to write a spell on a scroll fills the remaining space with a useless blob of ink, leaving spells already successfully written intact.

If the failure roll was a 96–00, the item appears to have been created normally but has a cursed or reversed effect instead. The DM decides the nature of the curse, using the cursed items from the magical item lists in the Dungeon Master Guide and Tome of Magic as a reference.

Table of Contents