Creating Equipment and Magic Items (Voidhaven Supplement)
Much of this is a port from an original document which I (Zibby (talk)) did not write, but am putting in as a basis for how items are planned to function. Thank you to those who have contributed to this conglomerate both knowing and otherwise, which has ended up as the items and how items work in Voidhaven.
Crafting Magic Items
Crafting magic items is a time-consuming process in most games, but as this game world is meant to be a high-magic setting, crafting magic items has been modified to be considerably less time consuming. The progress in gp which can be made toward crafting a magic item increases as a character gains levels, as below. This also applies for gp per day progress when disenchanting.
Level GP/Day 1 50 5 100 10 150 15 200 20 250
Disenchanting
A character who takes this activity is disassembling a magic item, and extracting its magical essences into a useful common material, called arcane dust. A character must be at least a high enough level to craft a given item, in order to disenchant it. For each day of disenchanting, the character makes progress toward destroying the magic item based on their level as above, up to the full value of the item. Upon destruction of the magic item, they obtain a pile of arcane dust, a glowing blue metallic powder, worth half the value of the magic item it was extracted from. This dust counts as a magic item, and can only be sold through the selling a magic item downtime activity on p.129-130 of the DMG, but cannot be broken down any farther. Residuum can be used in the place of spell components, if you lack a components pouch or focus, and can be spent to cover the gp value of valuable spell components, but it is always consumed when used this way. Arcane dust can be spent in the place of the monetary expense of copying spells into a spellbook. It's main purpose is to be spent to reduce the crafting time of a new magic item, by artificially reducing its value for crafting purposes at a 1:1 ratio. (IE, if you have 50gp of arcane dust, and make a magic item with a value of 90gp, then you only need to craft up to 40gp of that to complete the item. The item is still worth 90gp, you just took a shortcut.) It is always consumed when used, releasing its metaphysical form from its temporarily physical state.
Many thanks to Kydo for your original work on Disenchanting.
Magic Item Values in Voidhaven
(Sane magic item prices)
Introduction
Have you ever wondered how much an item truly costs? Have you been wanting to find or craft an item but aren’t sure how it fits in to the grand scheme of things? Did you ever look at sovereign glue and say to yourself, “There is no way that glue is worth 500,000 gp when Sentinal shield is worth 500gp”. Well you are in luck because this guide is for you. Brainstorming with the Giant In the Playground, /r/ DnDNext, and EnWorld forums, Saidoro has put together a set of tables that break down the costs, reasons for the costs, and DMG page to find the item.
DM Preface
Your world need not sell the magic items for the prices given below. Your world does not even need to sell the magic items below at all. The primary purpose of the tables below is to establish the relative price of magic items so that you can have a reasonably sane economy and/or so that you can quickly eyeball how much the swag you’re giving your players is worth. The items are divided into a few different lists for your convenience. The lists are as follows:
- Consumables are items that are used some set amount of times (usually once) and then are gone.
- Summoning Items are items that summon creatures to kill things or solve problems for you.
- Combat Items are items that primarily make the user better at killing things. Some also have other killing-unrelated effects, but these are not the primary source of their utility.
- Noncombat Items are items that primarily make the user better at solving problems in a killing-unrelated manner. Some also make the user better at killing things, but this is not the primary source of their utility.
- Game-Changing Items are items that can have major effects on the way the players engage with the world or that can resculpt the campaign world in some major way all on their own. They are not necessarily overpowered, but the GM should take a look at them to make sure that the items they allow are compatible with the sort of game and world they want to create.
Each is discussed further in their own section. By adjusting the prices of the various lists, the DM can make it easier or harder to get their hands on various types of problem solving abilities.
Again, the prices below are not absolute. The DM may adjust the prices of items individually or by list, they may make any item available or not, they may say that magic items can’t be sold for gold at all and that the below prices only roughly estimate value when people are trading magic items for other magic items or they may even not show these tables to their PCs at all and just use them to estimate treasure values. The below lists are intended as a tool, not an imposition on your campaign world.
Consumables Consumables represent all items that can be used up when used in their intended manner. By default, consumables are somewhere around one tenth the price of an equivalent permanent item. The scroll prices below represent a typical scroll of that level. Scrolls with significant direct value, such as scrolls of fabricate or wish, may be priced differently.
Summoning Items Summoning items give their users shiny new friends to help them destroy their enemies or solve problems. With the exception of the Onyx dog, the Silver Raven and the Ivory Goat of Terror, the value of these items is heavily dependent on how expensive mercenaries are in your campaign world. The basic rules makes hiring even quite competent allies startlingly cheap, and while these items aren’t based on the ridiculous 2 gp/day rule, they do assume that hiring combat ready minions is a relatively cheap activity that most players will be doing a little bit of if the situation warrants it. Adjust the below prices accordingly if this is not true in your campaign world.
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Combat Items Combat items are primarily good for killing things. A few have other uses as well, like the luckstone or the Ioun Stone Mastery, but their biggest effect is making their owner better at killing or not getting killed. Increase the price of these items if you want your players mostly getting oddball magic items that don’t interact much at all with combat. All items which are weapons or armor add the cost of the base weapon or armor that makes them up to their price.
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Noncombat Items Noncomat items give some sort of problem-solving ability not directly related to combat. Some, like the Eversmoking Bottle and the Boots of Levitation are also useful in combat, but that isn’t where the bulk of their utility comes from. Increase the price of these items if you’d rather have your players resort to combat more predictably instead of coming up with complicated schemes that avoid direct fighting.
Gamechanging Items Gamechanging items significantly impact either the gameworld as a whole or the sort of things that are capable of challenging their holders. I don’t really see either of these as a problem, but they may not fit with some campaigns or some settings, so the DM should take a careful look at the items on this list and decide whether or not they are allowed.
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Items that Won’t be priced
Candle of Invocation: Because we’ve learned a thing or two from 3.5
Deck of Many Things, Efreeti Bottle, Iron flask, Ring of Three Wishes, and Luck Blade: Because Wishes
Well of Many Worlds: Because if the GM wants you to have a TARDIS you’ll have one and if they don’t you won’t
Wand of Wonder: Because lolrandom
Ring of Djinni Summoning: It’s pretty much everything from the gamechanging list in a single item
Bag of Tricks: Creating permanent living creatures does absolutely silly things to the economy
Tome of the Stilled Tongue: No wizard would ever sell this
Manuals and tomes +2: If these come up, the GM is probably giving them to the whole party as a “level up” type thing
Belt of giant Strength and Potion of Giant Strength: breaks bounded accuracy
Rod of Resurrection: Plot device
Helm of Brilliance: Lolrandom
Bag of Beans: Lolrandom (Seriously, it summons mummy lords with treasure filled crypts)
Staff of the Magi: Too much power
Manual of Golems: This is a blueprint, not an item. Use whatever rules go into pricing blueprints for your campaign and adjust the golem crafting prices as needed
Cursed items
Credits: Saidoro: For the list and the work putting it all together. SalmonSquire: For the layout of the original document. Wizard of the Coast: For making a great 5th edition of D&D. Giant In The Playground: For their help refining the list. /r/DnDNext and EnWorld: For their extra input.
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