Magic Item Creation

One of the things you run into during your adventuring career is the need for more and more powerful magic items.

There are essentially three places where you can pick up new magic items:

1. Shops

2. Adventuring, and

3. Item creation.

When you’re buying items at a shop (or commissioning an item to be crafted for you), you’re subject to a maximum item level equal to your character level (or 1 above that if you are willing to pay double).

Discovering items “in the wild” during adventures may or may not be more powerful than what you can find in the shop. But the problem there is that they are essentially random, even more random than that found in shops, and often unlikely to be useful to your character (or anyone else in the party for that matter).

So for those of you who wish to create your own magic items, this document provides some details for you to get the most out of crafting and item creation.

First of all, an item you create or craft yourself is not subject to item level. You can craft or create any item of which you have the talent, time, materials, and experience points.

Note: There is a distinction between the terms “crafting” and “item creation”. Crafting an object uses Craft checks. Item creation, on the other hand, does not, but instead uses feat prerequisites and spellcasting.

An example of something you might craft would be a sword, a suit of armor, alchemical mixtures, or even poison. Crafting turns raw materials into usable objects. Anything that has its own Craft subskill falls under the category of crafting—such as Craft (taxidermy).

An example of item creation is adding magic to existing objects—such as creating a holy avenger which does not require the creation of a sword, instead you add magic to an existing sword.

For more information about crafting items, refer to the Craft skill in the Player’s Handbook.

Before you can begin to create magic items, you will need one of the myriad Item Creation feats. Some of these include: Brew Potion, Craft Construct, Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Rod, Craft Staff, Craft Wand, Craft Wondrous Item, Forge Ring, and Scribe Scroll.

Do I have to be the one who casts the required spell on the item I am creating? No. You can pay someone else to cast it on the item for you, or have one of your friends do it. They only need to be present during the casting of the spell, not the entire creation time. The item is still considered to be crafted by you even if you had someone else cast the required spell on the item.

When do I pay for materials and experience points? You must pay all costs when you begin item creation, regardless of the success or failure of the creation process. There are no skill checks involved in item creation, but the item could be destroyed (in theory) before its complete.

Does the item creation time have to be consecutive? No, you can leave off of creation and come back as many times as you like until the item is complete. The time between creation sessions is irrelevant, you could even pick up the creation of your item years later.

Can I make custom items? No. You can only craft items that have already been published. Refer to the “Index of Magic Items.xlsx” for a list of published magic items. This list has information about book source, market price, creation cost, xp cost, and the time required to create the item.

But the Dungeon Master’s Guide has guidelines for designing customized magic items. This information is for DM’s and is not designed for player characters “in game” creation rules. In fact, these particular guidelines are so ill-suited for designing magic items that existing magic items break these rules more often than they follow them. They are incomplete and leave you with wildly differing prices, either much higher or much lower than what has been published. So these rules are simply not used for players to make custom magic items. (They are hardly even suitable for DMs to adjudicate his own custom magic items, and are more akin to “challenge rating” in the fact that DMs are to do final price adjustments based on what feels right—not exactly a game mechanic for a player).

Where are the rules for creating [some certain magic item]? Refer to each individual Item Creation feat for “in-game” creation rules for your character. Also refer to the general rules for all Item Creation feats, found on page 88 of the Player’s Handbook.

What if I take more than one feat that reduces the cost of creating magic items? Do they stack? No. They overlap. You only use the better value.

For more information about “in-game” general rules for creating magic items, refer to pages 282 and 283 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide under the heading: Creating Magic Items.

Here is an example of the process of creating a magic item.

Joa Bloa wants to create a magic sword, a +1 longsword.

1. First he takes the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat.

2. Then he finds the market price of a +1 longsword: which is the price of a masterwork longsword plus 2,000 gp—or 2,315 gp.

3. Then he calculates that this will take 8 hours a day for 3 days (1 day per 1,000 in gp value, round up).

4. Then he pays the cost of materials: 1,157 gp and 5 sp (half the full market value) as well as providing a masterwork longsword to work on.

5. Then he also pays 93 xp (1/25^th of the market price, round up—or 2,315 x 0.04).

6. After this is complete, he simply spends in-game time, 8 hours a day for 3 days (not necessarily consecutive days) devoted to fashioning the +1 longsword.

After this time is complete…Joa Bloa is the proud owner of his very own +1 longsword. No checks are required at all—in fact, unlike most other magic items, even spells are not required for creating magic weapons.

Special Note: These rules have always been available. However, considering the recent removal of guilds and also considering that some of you have been asking about this recently, I am allowing retraining of feats for Item Creation feats for a limited time. You may only exchange an existing feat for an Item Creation feat. This option is only available until our next game session.