Items That No Player Character Should Create

The rules for creating magical items allow the DM a great amount of latitude in determining just how difficult the creation of any particular item is going to be. After all, the search for a few exotic materials and processes can keep an ambitious PC busy for years! And the rules have been scaled to make the most powerful and deadly items prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. But, despite these safeguards, there are still a few items that are just too powerful for a player character to create.

The first item is actually an entire category—magical books. Books, tomes, librams, manuals, and other such items provide the character with the ability to build himself an instant level gain or quickly enhance his ability scores. In most campaigns, it’s safe to assume that magical books are demi-artifacts endowed with a special purpose and a near-sentient talent for skipping out on their present owners. For whatever reasons, powers beyond mortal ken had a hand in the creation of these devices, and the only characters who can duplicate the feat are those who stand on the verge of divine ascension.

The next two items are simply so inexplicably weird that the reasons why a PC would wish to create one or the other is almost impossible to fathom. These are the deck of many things and the sphere of annihilation. Both have potentially disastrous consequences for a campaign and should be extremely rare in any event. In particular, players seem to have a vindictive streak with regard to spheres of annihilation, using them to do things like drain seas and devour planets. The DM is well advised to prevent PCs from making a few dozen of these to liven up his world. The deck of many things, on the other hand, offers instant level gains and other such game-busting benefits. If a group of PCs finds one after an arduous adventure and chooses to experiment with it, they’ve earned the privilege. But preparing a new deck on demand is a privilege too dangerous for most players.

The last category is the least spectacular: special racial magic, such as cloaks or boots of elvenkind. Unless the character is a member of the race in question, he shouldn’t be able to create these items. However, if the character is an elf (for example), and he’s a priest that has risen high enough in level to contemplate the manufacture of these devices, there’s no reason the DM couldn’t allow him to do so as long as he follows the normal rules for item creation.

Table of Contents