Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Hastifer 08-07-06, 06:11 PM	I am trying to add some flavor to magical item creation, I want more than just "you need 4000 to make these gauntlets" Specifically for strength and charisma items but other stat boosting and miscellaneous are welcome.
Wyrmul 08-08-06, 05:02 AM	For strength, the dust of a ruby crushed by an ogre or giant. For charisma, a lock of a nymphs hair. Find something associated with the spell and run with it.
Devlonir 08-08-06, 01:16 PM	Or.. for example.. for the str items (who also need bull's strength cast for them): +2 = blood of a bull +4 = blood of a (celestial or fiendish) dire bull +6 = blood of a powerful bull of legends, only found there and there in a small herd. Any stat boosting item can be made harder and harder to make as the stat increases that way. For other items, look at the power level, consider what level the player can make it.. and then decide what kind of encounter would be needed to get the item. (think under minimum level for minor items, at minimum level for medium items and above minimum level for powerful items)
tiercel 08-10-06, 10:23 PM	One way to implement this, rather than railroading your players into collecting everything they ever see on their adventures, is as a sort of "power component." Without the specific component, a magic item could be manufactured at normal price... but with a special rare component, the gp (or even XP) price of the item could be reduced by, say, 5-10%. The rarity and difficulty in obtaining such a component would be somewhat in line with the amount of savings it would generate -- truly fantastic components might produce larger savings, or savings on major items, while minor components would produce minor discounts or savings on minor items. These components could be of various types: expended material components (an actual intact and fresh eagle's eye for eyes of the eagle) crafted material focus (iron from the magic-infused veins running beneath the deep gnome city of Clobguldin can be forged into a distinctive red-flecked steel good for making armor of invulnerability) time/location components (the last stage of enchanting a shifter's sorrow takes place during a full moon at a cairn containing the remains of a lycanthrope) activation component (a murlynd's spoon being empowered by its first use in the hands of a small child in the crafter's home town) mystic component ( a tan bag of tricks might be crafted with "the happiness of a feral elf child" -- where it would be up to your PCs to figure out a way to satisfy this and to you as a DM to adjudicate whether their method of fulfilling the criterion was sufficient or particularly noteworthy) [Edit to add:] For stat boosters in particular, the component could have something to do with the personality of either the crafter or the recipient. Someone who is charismatic through youthful exuberance might appropriately have a +Cha item created using a petal from the garland worn by a newlywed bride on her wedding day; someone whose presence is no less compelling but is more dark and brooding might instead have an item whose construction uses the broken and discarded toy of a young child. (These might do for +4 items; +2 items might be simpler, while +6 items might involve more exotic conditions.) Different components could be used as well; gauntlets of ogre strength +2 might have an activation component, their magic complete when their wearer first slays in melee a foe stronger than himself. A more powerful belt of giant strength might have to be enchanted on a battlefield upon which one of the wearer's ancestors fought and studded with bits of metal left over from that battle. A mighty belt, instead of being leather, might instead be woven from locks of giant-hair, one of which was given freely by a friendly giant, one of which was taken from a giant bested in physical combat, and one which was either stolen or tricked away from its giant -- and all three giants of different types.
PaddyPaddyFool 08-16-06, 11:26 AM	Fine ideas, Tiercel. Another nice one is special training - to create a vorpal blade, the adventurers need to find a smith of rare skill gained yadayadayada and persuade him to help them, for instance. Of course, that means that the adventurers can't do it themselves, which is kind of the point. But I really like the specific components idea, especially if the adventurers are forced into some morally ambiguous decisions for it (eg a good party being given a bloody good reason to kill some good-aligned creature, like a celestial lion or metallic dragon, for a part of its anatomy).