Special Ingredients
Creating an enchanted item is difficult. Even the simplest devices require
extraordinary materials and processes. In many cases, characters find that an item
just isn’t worth the trouble of gathering the components, treating or refining
them, and then weaving the spells that empower the final product. The DM’s
best means for controlling player character item creation is through the special
ingredients required by a particular item.
There are two types of special ingredients: materials and processes. Materials
are just what one would think—components that are actually incorporated into
the structure of the item. Processes are steps that somehow refine, imbue, or
alter the basic item. In either case, the ingredient can range from common to
exotic, embracing almost anything imaginable.
Materials: As a general rule of thumb, more powerful items require more unusual
materials. Materials may actually represent physical components of the item in
question—the metal used to forge a ring or a rod, the wool from which a cloak is
woven—or materials might be additives or refinements, such as a handful of pixie dust
for a potion of flying, or the scales of a giant snake that are incorporated in a phylactery of proof against poison.
Materials can be completely nonmaterial, metaphorical ingredients as well as
tangible substances. The courage of a knight, the spirit of a mountain, or the
breath of a butterfly are all examples of this type of ingredient. A player
character may have to exercise quite a bit of ingenuity and inventiveness to
capture these rare qualities or essences!
Materials are divided into three general categories: common, rare, and exotic.
Common materials can be acquired almost anywhere. Steel, leather, bone, cloth, oak
staves, and other such things are all common materials. Note that items suitable
for enchantment must be made of the finest materials available, so a wizard
might have to commission an ore-smelter to create the very purest steel available.
Even the most common magical items require materials worth 100 gp, at a bare
minimum! Intangible common materials could include the tears of a maiden, the
strength of a smith, or the essence of a rose.
Rare materials are more difficult to find or more expensive. A particular type or
grade of silk, diamonds, roc feathers, ebony, a wizard’s bones, or iron smelted
by a master dwarven smith would be rare. Intangible materials could include the
tears of a heartbroken maiden, the strength of a king, or the essence of rose
harvested on the first night of a new moon. Common materials produced or
gathered under unusual circumstances—such as the rose essence just described—also
count as rare.
Exotic materials can only be acquired through an adventure on the part of the
character. Silk woven from a phase spider, a faceted diamond never exposed to light,
an archmage’s bones, a lock of a goddess’s hair, or steel smelted from a fallen
star are all exotic materials; intangible materials might include the tears of
a heartbroken princess, the strength of the greatest king in the world, or the
essence of a rose harvested by the light of a comet that returns once every
twenty years.
Processes: Almost anything that alters, changes, decorates, or aids in the production of
an item without becoming part of the final piece is a process. Naturally, the
exact nature of the process varies with the physical form of the item; potions
might be mixed or brewed in a special retort, boiled over a fire fueled by an
unusual substance, stirred in a special fashion, distilled, evaporated, infused,
fermented, separated, or purified. Other processes appropriate for various
types of item include the following:
Ink for scrolls can be brewed much like a potion;
The alloy for metallic rings must be mined, smelted, and then cast in some
kind of mold, extruded as wire, or cold-worked. Setting stones, polishing,
tempering, inscribing, or etching could finish the ring. Rings can also be made from
nonmetallic substances; carefully carved stone, wood, or bone would work.
Wands and rods can be made of wood, iron, bone, crystal, stone, or almost
anything imaginable. These items might require lathing, steeping, tooling, sanding,
carving, polishing, enamelling, etching, or inlaying.
Staves are almost always made of wood, but a staff’s heels—metal bands that
cap the ends—could be made from any number of substances. Staves can be lathed,
carved, steeped, tooled, sanded, inlaid, or set with crystals or stones.
Functional weapons and armor can be made from iron, bronze, steel, or any of a
variety of fantastic alloys. Arms of +3 value are usually made from special
meteoric steel, +4 weapons or armor are made from mithral-alloyed steel, and +5
arms are of adamantite-alloyed steel. Processes used to make these items include
mining, smelting, refining, forging, casting, tempering, cooling, etching,
inlaying, sharpening, and enamelling or painting.
Other items could be beaten, boiled, embroidered, engraved, carved, painted,
smoked, cured, glazed, decorated, upholstered, tempered, lacquered, cooled, or
heated in some way. Take a look at the appropriate proficiency descriptions for
an idea of some of the processes involved.
Common processes could include chasing, engraving, marking, or finishing in any of
the manners described above. Rare processes would add a hard-to-find material—embroidering with gold thread,
boiling in the skull of a wizard, or painting with pigment made from the blood of
a cockatrice. Exotic processes could include such things as steeping the item or its components in
the energies of the Positive Material Plane, smoking it over a fire fueled by
branches of Yggdrasil, the World Oak, or forging the item with a hammer touched
by the hand of a god.
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