Cailet the Magic Item Vendor (or, Keeping Magic Items In Check In My Campaigns) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Cailet the Magic Item Vendor (or, Keeping Magic Items In Check In My Campaigns) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Kelynmor
05-15-06, 02:07 AM I came up with a character concept (NPC) that I want to be central to all of my campaigns and am looking for help creating her. Basically, since 99% of all players are reliant on magic items, I was looking for an entrepreneurial gnome who has set up magic item shops in all major cities, except that by walking in the door, the PC’s are actually walking into a portal that takes you to her central shop in some remote location.

Now, I want this NPC to be special, so I was thinking of making her a gestalt (none of the players are gestalt) so that I wouldn’t have to try making my own class(s) for her and hopefully the players won’t get greedy and try to steal from her/kill her and her staff and loot the place. As of right now I’m looking at an Artificer 20 // Wiz 5/ Maester 5 / Loremaster 10. Reasons for all this is that I want her to be capable of making any of the magic items the players are going to need/want, which Artificers are capable of doing nicely. In addition, I wanted her to have some true magic ability but also be able to offer arcane lore services (Identify and Bardic Knowledge / Legend Lore abilities). At the moment, her build looks like this…

1. Wiz 1 // Art 1................................(c) ???
2. Wiz 2 // Art 2
3. Wiz 3 // Art 3................................(c) ???
4. Wiz 4 // Art 4................................(a) Extraordinary Artisan
5. Wiz 5 // Art 5................................(w) Extend Spell
6. Wiz 5 / Mae 1 // Art 6.....................(c) Leadership (m) Craft Construct
7. Wiz 5 / Mae 2 // Art 7
8. Wiz 5 / Mae 3 // Art 8.....................(a) Legendary Artisan
9. Wiz 5 / Mae 4 // Art 9.....................(c) ???
10. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 // Art 10..................(m) Craft Scepter
11. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 1 // Art 11
12. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 2 // Art 12.......(c) Craft Contingent (a)
13. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 3 // Art 13
14. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 4 // Art 14
15. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 5 // Art 15.......(c) ???
16. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 6 // Art 16.......(a) Extra Rings
17. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 7 // Art 17
18. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 8 // Art 18.......(c) Create Portal
19. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 9 // Art 19
20. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 10 // Art 20..... (a) Persistent Spell

Alternatively, I was also thinking Bard or Cleric w/ magic & <other> domains instead of wizard. Substituting Cleric would be a parallel benefit with the Artisan’s ability to wear armor without spell failure to her incantations. Also, swapping Incantrix instead of Loremaster would be nice as well. Incantrix would add a lot of metamagic potential to her custom magic items as well as some other useful abilities like improved metamagic and metamagic effect.

She’s going to start at lvl 20, just so I have plenty of options for her and so that I don’t have to keep advancing her as the player’s advance, especially since she will span multiple campaigns. If any characters make it to epic levels, I’ll scale her up accordingly.

The basic concept is to use her as a medium for controlling the power of magic items, and to use her as a way to use up any magic items that the players decide to sell and recycle the magic back into the campaign (through her use of retain essence) by making some unique magic items that I’ve made up (or read on these boards) and giving them to the party to “test out.” Also, I’ll keep a check on the pool of money the players spend on magic items, as well as what she spends to make them, so that there may be discounts available.

She has leadership as an easy way of measuring what other characters are going to be working for/with her. I’m already thinking of a couple of dwarves for the smiths to make the actual items and several others to keep the shop running and advertise in the cities. Possibly also giving her an emancipated golem that she created as a cohort, or something. I’m also tempted to give her the Item Familiar feat, just cause with all of her crafting she’ll be proficient at, it seems like a good fit. I’m undecided on that point however; but all of that is stuff for later.

I look forward to reading all of your ideas, as this is the best place I can think of to “optimize” this concept.
colm_l
05-15-06, 05:23 AM My advice is not to make her Gestalt if the players aren't.

Players tend to like feeling like their characters are important or special. Having a NPC n times more powerful than them kind of spoils that.

If you want her to have both innate magic & artificer abilities - you could just make a theurge class to do that (or rule artificer can be advanced by one of the pre existing ones).

That said it's your game so if it works for you.

Nice idea on item control BTW. I was considering doing something similar myself.

If you want to optimise a crafter you should pick up the Extraordinary Artisan & Exceptional Artisan from Eberron early followed by Magical Artisan (wondrous Items) from Faerun.

Due to the Artificers XP- drain feature. Legendary Artisan is less useful than it seems.
Kelynmor
05-15-06, 07:40 PM I've thought about doing something like the Mystic Theurge route. Unfortunately, it's the class features of Artisan that I want more so than the incantations. Because of this, if I take the Mystic Theurge route she'd sacrifice too much of the Artisan's class abilities just to be a competent arcane caster, which is not something I care to sacrifice. Alternatively, I suppose I could make her an "Arcane Artisan" and just replace the incantations with the Wizard's spell progression and not giver her any of the Wizard's bonus feats as well as take away the armor proficiency and give her a Wizard's BAB. This however results in me having to make-up a new class, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place.

I have a different opinion on Legendary Artisan as I feel it will optimize her retain essence feature by requiring less XP to make an item, which will leave more of her pool to use for other (or more powerful) items. I also feel that Exceptional Artisan isn't as good because of the Maester levels (1st lvl decreases craft time required by 50%, as opposed to 25%). If I were to take a different approach than gestalt, then I probably would take Exceptional Art. since I'd lose the extra 25% from Maester.

Magical Artisan is definitely a possibility, but why for Craft Wondrous? There are a lot of items that can be made with this feat, but wouldn't weapons and armor be more expensive. I haven't really compared this thought yet, just using info that I can recall. I'll look it up later tonight.

As for everything else, a few questions:

1.) What would be better for a gestalt Artisan, Loremaster or Incantrix? I still like the idea of Loremaster, but I could also see her as an Incantrix.

2.) Is Item Familiar a worthwhile feat for her, and if so, what item should she make for her familiar? Would her homunculous be a good choice, or should I go for a staff or other weaponlike item?

3.) Would Exceptional Artisan stack with quick casting feature from Maester? Would it be 75% if it does stack?

4.) What other feats should I take and is there a certain build I should try to aim for? (ATM, I was thinking about giving her a staff or scepter.)

I'm glad to see a response, but I'd like to hear more ideas about an alternative to gestalt that doesn't sacrifice her Artisan class abilities.

Thanks for the input! :)
~Kel
Stickboy2323
05-15-06, 08:18 PM How about this idea? Instead of making her some total badass Artificer/Wizard/Whatever item crafter why not just make her a mid level Aristocrat/Expert. She's the owner/operator, financial baker and face of her world wide corporation. She employs artisans and crafters, smiths, artificers, wizards and anybody else who can help make her company better. You could make her kind of like the Bill Gates of your D&D world except she wouldn't be a demon in human guise.

Also, if you want to avoid the party having any ideas of ripping off the place just have her set up shop in Sigil. No one would dare mess with her there.

Hope it helps.
jstorrie
05-15-06, 09:16 PM A demigod artificer devoted to artifice/magic presents an interesting source for powerful magical items. Why is this entity trying to put more magic into circulation? The PCs can't reasonably threaten it at low levels, since it has demi-divine backing. Being a demigod, its motivations can be obscure and it could be a sort of neutral arms-broker during world conflict.
Kelynmor
05-15-06, 11:22 PM You could make her kind of like the Bill Gates of your D&D world except she wouldn't be a demon in human guise.

I LOL'd :D

I like the idea of making her more business like, but I wouldn't make her aristocrat/expert. I'm against business people trying to take an industry they don't understand and try to make it more productive without realizing the reality of the productivity associated in a particular field and how it doesn't mesh well with business paradigms.[/RANT]

I'm also not sure I like the idea of going the divinity route. Because I'm intending this character to be able to transcend campaign worlds (I mostly play in FR or a generic world, was thinking of giving Eberron a try) I think that making her a divinity would complicate things. Although, they seem to have Lolth everywhere nowadays, so maybe I'll look more into that approach.

Since it seems that the gestalt character is a bad idea, how about this...

Marshal 3/Artificer 12/Exemplar 5

With this build I can use 1 of 2 auras from Marshal to add Cha to Int or Cha checks. Basically she's checking on her craftsmen and directing their efforts to better affect since craft skill is Int based. Additionally, she can use the cha bonus on her UMD and other social checks. The Diplomacy bonus would be a nice extra with this concept also. With Artificer 12 I'd still get all the class features and I can use my character feats to fill in the couple that I feel she should have (namely Create Portal, Craft Scepter and Forge Ring). Finally with Exemplar, I can make up for the lack of skill mastery from Art 13 as well as have skill artistry and persuasive performance. She's a very charismatic and intelligent gnome who is able to effectively motivate her staff to new levels of productivity and still be able to operate as a magic item crafter for those nice "prototype" magic items. If I wanted to extend this further, take her epic and finish out Artificer and Exemplar to bring her closer to the demi-god idea such that she can be pretty much belong in any campaign without complicating her with demi-god status. Also, since exemplar would make her an outsider (via perfect self) she's that much further from being a standard gnome.

I like these ideas and am going to work with this current concept. Any additional help would be appreciated. I still would like some ideas on other feats, but I need to update my build and progression to see what holes I need to fill in. Please feel free to post more and I'll be back tomorrow after work asking for help filling in feats.

Thanks so far!

~Kel
Kinghappo
05-16-06, 04:37 AM I'm DM'ing a campaign that has a simular concept though more on the other side of the spectrum, i have a high level NPC articifer who is crafting massive armies of the low cr (from dragon mag) golems, the adventurer's first adventure (since they were smart and choose to be diplomatic instead of bursting into his house by force) had them takeing a tour with other dignataries from around to his underground workshop which looks almost like a scene from starwars (instead of storm troopers he produces paper golems but the amount is preety much the same) and throught their campaign they go against diffrent factions (includeing some rich snobs who happen to of purchased a couple shield guardians, guard duty for a star who actualy replaced himself with a wax golem purchased by the same man) and get stuck between two kingdoms having the first major construct war (all purchaced from yup, the same guy) for his build i optimized him for construct production (kingdoms in addition to paying the base price also supplied him with various magical treasures from their vaults (to cover xp costs outgame)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Kelynmor 05-15-06, 02:07 AM	I came up with a character concept (NPC) that I want to be central to all of my campaigns and am looking for help creating her. Basically, since 99% of all players are reliant on magic items, I was looking for an entrepreneurial gnome who has set up magic item shops in all major cities, except that by walking in the door, the PC’s are actually walking into a portal that takes you to her central shop in some remote location. Now, I want this NPC to be special, so I was thinking of making her a gestalt (none of the players are gestalt) so that I wouldn’t have to try making my own class(s) for her and hopefully the players won’t get greedy and try to steal from her/kill her and her staff and loot the place. As of right now I’m looking at an Artificer 20 // Wiz 5/ Maester 5 / Loremaster 10. Reasons for all this is that I want her to be capable of making any of the magic items the players are going to need/want, which Artificers are capable of doing nicely. In addition, I wanted her to have some true magic ability but also be able to offer arcane lore services (Identify and Bardic Knowledge / Legend Lore abilities). At the moment, her build looks like this… 1. Wiz 1 // Art 1................................(c) ??? 2. Wiz 2 // Art 2 3. Wiz 3 // Art 3................................(c) ??? 4. Wiz 4 // Art 4................................(a) Extraordinary Artisan 5. Wiz 5 // Art 5................................(w) Extend Spell 6. Wiz 5 / Mae 1 // Art 6.....................(c) Leadership (m) Craft Construct 7. Wiz 5 / Mae 2 // Art 7 8. Wiz 5 / Mae 3 // Art 8.....................(a) Legendary Artisan 9. Wiz 5 / Mae 4 // Art 9.....................(c) ??? 10. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 // Art 10..................(m) Craft Scepter 11. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 1 // Art 11 12. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 2 // Art 12.......(c) Craft Contingent (a) 13. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 3 // Art 13 14. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 4 // Art 14 15. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 5 // Art 15.......(c) ??? 16. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 6 // Art 16.......(a) Extra Rings 17. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 7 // Art 17 18. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 8 // Art 18.......(c) Create Portal 19. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 9 // Art 19 20. Wiz 5 / Mae 5 / Lore 10 // Art 20..... (a) Persistent Spell Alternatively, I was also thinking Bard or Cleric w/ magic & <other> domains instead of wizard. Substituting Cleric would be a parallel benefit with the Artisan’s ability to wear armor without spell failure to her incantations. Also, swapping Incantrix instead of Loremaster would be nice as well. Incantrix would add a lot of metamagic potential to her custom magic items as well as some other useful abilities like improved metamagic and metamagic effect. She’s going to start at lvl 20, just so I have plenty of options for her and so that I don’t have to keep advancing her as the player’s advance, especially since she will span multiple campaigns. If any characters make it to epic levels, I’ll scale her up accordingly. The basic concept is to use her as a medium for controlling the power of magic items, and to use her as a way to use up any magic items that the players decide to sell and recycle the magic back into the campaign (through her use of retain essence) by making some unique magic items that I’ve made up (or read on these boards) and giving them to the party to “test out.” Also, I’ll keep a check on the pool of money the players spend on magic items, as well as what she spends to make them, so that there may be discounts available. She has leadership as an easy way of measuring what other characters are going to be working for/with her. I’m already thinking of a couple of dwarves for the smiths to make the actual items and several others to keep the shop running and advertise in the cities. Possibly also giving her an emancipated golem that she created as a cohort, or something. I’m also tempted to give her the Item Familiar feat, just cause with all of her crafting she’ll be proficient at, it seems like a good fit. I’m undecided on that point however; but all of that is stuff for later. I look forward to reading all of your ideas, as this is the best place I can think of to “optimize” this concept.
colm_l 05-15-06, 05:23 AM	My advice is not to make her Gestalt if the players aren't. Players tend to like feeling like their characters are important or special. Having a NPC n times more powerful than them kind of spoils that. If you want her to have both innate magic & artificer abilities - you could just make a theurge class to do that (or rule artificer can be advanced by one of the pre existing ones). That said it's your game so if it works for you. Nice idea on item control BTW. I was considering doing something similar myself. If you want to optimise a crafter you should pick up the Extraordinary Artisan & Exceptional Artisan from Eberron early followed by Magical Artisan (wondrous Items) from Faerun. Due to the Artificers XP- drain feature. Legendary Artisan is less useful than it seems.
Kelynmor 05-15-06, 07:40 PM	I've thought about doing something like the Mystic Theurge route. Unfortunately, it's the class features of Artisan that I want more so than the incantations. Because of this, if I take the Mystic Theurge route she'd sacrifice too much of the Artisan's class abilities just to be a competent arcane caster, which is not something I care to sacrifice. Alternatively, I suppose I could make her an "Arcane Artisan" and just replace the incantations with the Wizard's spell progression and not giver her any of the Wizard's bonus feats as well as take away the armor proficiency and give her a Wizard's BAB. This however results in me having to make-up a new class, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place. I have a different opinion on Legendary Artisan as I feel it will optimize her retain essence feature by requiring less XP to make an item, which will leave more of her pool to use for other (or more powerful) items. I also feel that Exceptional Artisan isn't as good because of the Maester levels (1st lvl decreases craft time required by 50%, as opposed to 25%). If I were to take a different approach than gestalt, then I probably would take Exceptional Art. since I'd lose the extra 25% from Maester. Magical Artisan is definitely a possibility, but why for Craft Wondrous? There are a lot of items that can be made with this feat, but wouldn't weapons and armor be more expensive. I haven't really compared this thought yet, just using info that I can recall. I'll look it up later tonight. As for everything else, a few questions: 1.) What would be better for a gestalt Artisan, Loremaster or Incantrix? I still like the idea of Loremaster, but I could also see her as an Incantrix. 2.) Is Item Familiar a worthwhile feat for her, and if so, what item should she make for her familiar? Would her homunculous be a good choice, or should I go for a staff or other weaponlike item? 3.) Would Exceptional Artisan stack with quick casting feature from Maester? Would it be 75% if it does stack? 4.) What other feats should I take and is there a certain build I should try to aim for? (ATM, I was thinking about giving her a staff or scepter.) I'm glad to see a response, but I'd like to hear more ideas about an alternative to gestalt that doesn't sacrifice her Artisan class abilities. Thanks for the input! :) ~Kel
Stickboy2323 05-15-06, 08:18 PM	How about this idea? Instead of making her some total badass Artificer/Wizard/Whatever item crafter why not just make her a mid level Aristocrat/Expert. She's the owner/operator, financial baker and face of her world wide corporation. She employs artisans and crafters, smiths, artificers, wizards and anybody else who can help make her company better. You could make her kind of like the Bill Gates of your D&D world except she wouldn't be a demon in human guise. Also, if you want to avoid the party having any ideas of ripping off the place just have her set up shop in Sigil. No one would dare mess with her there. Hope it helps.
jstorrie 05-15-06, 09:16 PM	A demigod artificer devoted to artifice/magic presents an interesting source for powerful magical items. Why is this entity trying to put more magic into circulation? The PCs can't reasonably threaten it at low levels, since it has demi-divine backing. Being a demigod, its motivations can be obscure and it could be a sort of neutral arms-broker during world conflict.
Kelynmor 05-15-06, 11:22 PM	You could make her kind of like the Bill Gates of your D&D world except she wouldn't be a demon in human guise. I LOL'd :D I like the idea of making her more business like, but I wouldn't make her aristocrat/expert. I'm against business people trying to take an industry they don't understand and try to make it more productive without realizing the reality of the productivity associated in a particular field and how it doesn't mesh well with business paradigms.[/RANT] I'm also not sure I like the idea of going the divinity route. Because I'm intending this character to be able to transcend campaign worlds (I mostly play in FR or a generic world, was thinking of giving Eberron a try) I think that making her a divinity would complicate things. Although, they seem to have Lolth everywhere nowadays, so maybe I'll look more into that approach. Since it seems that the gestalt character is a bad idea, how about this... Marshal 3/Artificer 12/Exemplar 5 With this build I can use 1 of 2 auras from Marshal to add Cha to Int or Cha checks. Basically she's checking on her craftsmen and directing their efforts to better affect since craft skill is Int based. Additionally, she can use the cha bonus on her UMD and other social checks. The Diplomacy bonus would be a nice extra with this concept also. With Artificer 12 I'd still get all the class features and I can use my character feats to fill in the couple that I feel she should have (namely Create Portal, Craft Scepter and Forge Ring). Finally with Exemplar, I can make up for the lack of skill mastery from Art 13 as well as have skill artistry and persuasive performance. She's a very charismatic and intelligent gnome who is able to effectively motivate her staff to new levels of productivity and still be able to operate as a magic item crafter for those nice "prototype" magic items. If I wanted to extend this further, take her epic and finish out Artificer and Exemplar to bring her closer to the demi-god idea such that she can be pretty much belong in any campaign without complicating her with demi-god status. Also, since exemplar would make her an outsider (via perfect self) she's that much further from being a standard gnome. I like these ideas and am going to work with this current concept. Any additional help would be appreciated. I still would like some ideas on other feats, but I need to update my build and progression to see what holes I need to fill in. Please feel free to post more and I'll be back tomorrow after work asking for help filling in feats. Thanks so far! ~Kel
Kinghappo 05-16-06, 04:37 AM	I'm DM'ing a campaign that has a simular concept though more on the other side of the spectrum, i have a high level NPC articifer who is crafting massive armies of the low cr (from dragon mag) golems, the adventurer's first adventure (since they were smart and choose to be diplomatic instead of bursting into his house by force) had them takeing a tour with other dignataries from around to his underground workshop which looks almost like a scene from starwars (instead of storm troopers he produces paper golems but the amount is preety much the same) and throught their campaign they go against diffrent factions (includeing some rich snobs who happen to of purchased a couple shield guardians, guard duty for a star who actualy replaced himself with a wax golem purchased by the same man) and get stuck between two kingdoms having the first major construct war (all purchaced from yup, the same guy) for his build i optimized him for construct production (kingdoms in addition to paying the base price also supplied him with various magical treasures from their vaults (to cover xp costs outgame)