Magical Item Creation In many AD&D campaigns, characters are defined by their magical items. Rings, potions, boots, cloaks—all kinds of devices exist that are designed to let a character break the rules of the game in one way or another. Controlling the player character’s acquisition of powerful magical items may be one of the most important jobs of the DM, since too little can lead to boredom or stagnation, while too much can create an ever-spiralling elevation of power gaming and wreck a good game even faster.

Just because a character has the ability to make a magical item, the DM shouldn’t wave his hand and let the item appear in the campaign. It’s important to strictly enforce the details of magical item creation, since this is a character power that can unbalance a game very quickly. The point is for the player to appreciate all the trouble and effort his character goes through in order to create even simple items. Forging a powerful item may take a character out of the campaign for months.

Creating magical items has been described in great detail in the Book of Artifacts, and again in DM™ Option: High Level Campaigns. The rules presented here mirror those systems and sum up the process for ease of reference. In addition, some more ideas for strange materials and components for magical items are included in order to widen the range of bizarre quests and riddles a DM can throw at a character while he’s working on his next potion or devising a new ring or wand.

Standard vs. Nonstandard Items: A character isn’t limited to duplicating magical items that appear in the DMG . He can choose to devise completely new magical items, tailored to his own needs and tastes. However, the character can attempt to create new items as he sees fit. Some may be simple variants of existing items—for example, there’s no reason a ring of displacement wouldn’t work as well as a cloak of displacement. Other items can incorporate powers never before seen in a magical item. Generally, variant items suffer a –5% penalty to the final success check, and nonstandard items suffer a –10% penalty.

Specialist Wizards: Some magical items very clearly duplicate the effects of certain spells or specialist schools. For example, a wand of polymorphing is obviously an item with strong ties to the school of alteration, while a wand of force belongs in the school of force. If the DM agrees that the item in question does indeed fall into the character’s specialty, the wizard gains a +5% bonus on his success check when creating the item.

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