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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