qwilion

Lore:

One of the first books of magical items for fantasy rpgs I ever read was FR4: The Magister, one of the things I truly loved about this book got lost in 3^rd edition, the descriptive bits, the colorful effects, the histories, legends and lore. I love these things, but when doing something like this sometimes you run the risk of writing a novel rather than writing an rpg supplement.

1. Make flavor text useful and part of the game.

My first decision was to include Knowledge DCs, they make lore part of the mechanics, and this has been used in a similar manner that many products now do this for Monsters, Prestige Classes, and some artifacts.

2. Every Item will have at least 3 Knowledge DCs

When I was working on the Magic Items Evolved series we had a spell that required to you always include the following information.

Age of object.
Name of last creature to touch the object, if any (other than you).
Race of last creature to touch the object, if any (other than you).
Name of the object's creator (a natural object, like a rock, was created by nature).
Race of the object's creator, if any.
Object's purpose.
Material(s) that makes up the object.
Location of the object's creation.
Name of the most recent owner of the object, if any.

I thought this made a nice starting point of what lore is useful information when it comes to magical items, along with the basics questions of Who? What? Where? When? Why? And How? that you can ask about any magical item.

Yet this is really only useful within a given setting, and I don’t get the option of using an existing setting. I personally hate generic items, I understand their useful and easy to just drop into your game and that is something I wanted to offer my customers was ease of use but when I looked back on the feeling of reading The Magister you got the idea that you could put this into your game just by changing the names or just straight stealing the names. So I decided to design it in a modular fashion and include a glossary with suggestions for making quick changes, so that you could include the items in any stand campaign that uses the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, so that lead to me digging deep, into the development of Questhaven, The Evocative City, as the default backdrop for Magic Items 101.

3. Keep magical items magical!

Asking around to friends who you bounce ideas off of the idea came up of also including novel uses for the magical item, and possible fame associated with the item, which then led me the idea that magic is not science and you could add something that does not quite make perfect sense, an unusual trait that is not a drawback or a curse but something that simply adds to the depth of an items role-playing options.

4. Items should have a multiple choice secret

Ray Winniger’s second rule of dungeoncraft says, “Whenever you design a major piece of the campaign world, always devise at least one secret related to that piece.” Now, I am not saying that every magic item I am creating is a major piece of your campaign world but I think it should have that potential if it strikes a chord with a player. Mike Mearls used this idea to great effect in Ruins of Intrigue, and I decided to steal a piece from him, he had multiple secrets for each piece so this is something that I have added and made part of the highest lore DC. DMs have the option to disregard the secret completely or pick the one that best suits his campaign and the PCs. The Lore often simply acts as rumor so it could just be a lie.

Here is an example of magical item Lore

“You see a single unbroken garment of flesh colored cloth that would cover your whole body; you see now apparent way to put the garment on. As you look at it, it changes to match the color of your skin.”

Lore:

Bardic Knowledge or Knowledge (arcana)
DC 16: This is a vestment of athleticism or Ngokesha Ilokwe in the ancient language of the Zuvale. Nukosi Zuvale a founding member of the Circle of Heroes, the ruling body of Questhaven, and the Questor’s Society, is well known for popularizing the use of these, and he can still be found making use of them as he travel’s the “roof roads” of the Evocative City.

DC 21: Siphiwe Zuvale “The First Wife of Questhaven” crafted these for many of the members of her family for use in the War of Cyn and Circle. Most of them were lost in the struggle root out “Old Corrode”, Emperor Korvak’s Heir Apparent the great wyrm dragon Corvraodeiaksis, from the Donjon Evanescent.

DC 31: Seven of these vestments are rumored to actually be attuned to open up gateways into the Donjon Evanescent if one stands upon the proper point on the “roof roads.” Potential destinations include “Old Corrode’s Lair”, “The Cynmark Museaum” and “The Atelier”

Glossary:

Donjon Evanescent: a massive collective of extradimensional spaces that form a labyrinth like structure that exists in and around the city of Questhaven. If you are not using an extradimensional safehold in your current campaign replace this with any major dungeon.

Circle of Heroes: The governing body of the city of Questhaven selected from members of the Questor’s Society, in times of crisis it is lead by the Chosen One.

Questhaven: A major metropolis on the coast of a mystical sea. Freed from the rule of Korvak Cynmark the Dark Emperor a hundred years ago, it is currently ruled by the cities liberators an aligarchy of adventurers known as the Questor’s Society, also known as The Evocative City and The City of Adventure, it is referred to in a derogatory fashion as The City of Bastards due to the lack of a hereditary nobility and for the high population of half-breeds that reside in the city.

Questor’s Society: The dominant political, military and economic force in Questhaven; they are a coalition of adventures, explorers, treasure seekers and heroes. Membership to the group is granted by invitation only, usually functioning as a meritocracy. The Society selects new members of the Circle of Heroes when one step down or dies from among their membership. The Society has its own courts and its own privileges that are usually only granted to most country’s nobility.

Narrative Approach

Narrative inspiration to me is the easiest form of inspiration. I just look to what happens in my own home game, and my muse is often an item custom made for a character, which is of course harder to do in professional design because I don’t know the character I am designing for. Instead I am forced to limit myself to looking at the character archetypes though and draw inspiration from them. There is also a smaller niche that I can draw inspiration from characters from: literature. Any numbers of players I have known over the years have said “I want my character to be like X from the Y book series.”

Game Approach

There are actually two approaches within this as I look at other OGL sources that had a cool idea but broke the game or had sound mechanics that were utterly useless or boring. I can improve these in a number of ways.

Fight or Die: And remember to stay competitive against monsters players have to enhance their AC, Attacks and Saves or they will just die! There are lots of GMs (and players) who hate this, but if the game is played as written it is required

The Price Right, is it worth more than an additional +1 to your AC or attack and damage? This goes back to what I hate most about pricing. Compare every item made to a sword, armor, AC boost, Save Boost, or Stat Boost Item that’s how a gamiest player determines value is.

Growth: An item that can improve helps with character growth, which can bring you back to a narrative approach and make your role-player very happy if he never has to give up his inheritance but can simply enhance it with magic.

Slots: Don’t compete with AC/SAVE/Stat boost items for slots; you will lose every time, Pathfinder made this a lot easier.

Keep it Simple stupid: an ability that takes more than a paragraph is too much; the player needs to understand what this does without having to look it up every time he plays.

Less than a standard action: Immediate, swift, free and move actions, otherwise a player will just attack or cast a spell. Use activated and continues are even better.

The next approach is to look at the existing game mechanics and find inspiration by creating new ways to use existing mechanics or new ways to enhance existing mechanics especially non-offensive abilities since offensive abilities are the first thing to unbalance a game.

Simulation Approach

This is the idea of finding inspiration in real life and then using the game mechanics to emulate it; my first attempt was looking at the Dragonscale Ballistic Vest and seeing what one could do with a little magic added to the concept. In a way this is like creating Magitek so I make sure I take a step back and put myself in the medieval mindset and the nature of how the craftsmanship of objects was handled in that day and age, there is no mass production!, heck even one town over would have a different way of making horseshoes than the previous one you visited.

Next time we will talk a bit about Lore!

Feats 101 is #4 on RpgNow (as of this writing), which is the highest we have ever been.  Now sure I could go and do Feats 102, but there are A LOT of third party publisher feat books for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.  So I have decided to start working on Magic Items 101.  I have also wanted to do a design diary for some time for my retail products, and this seems like a good place to start.

The guiding design principle for Magic Items 101 will be magic items players will actually use, that do not break the game.  

Lets start with some of the basic design choices I have made.

I have decided to use a format similar to WotC’s MIC, I have used this format previously for an Arcana Evolved series on magic items and fond it quite useful, I have decided to add Lore DC results and will incorporate the Pathfinder rules for Identifying the properties of a magic item using detect magic and Spellcraft, also I will be looking at spells such analyze dweomer and legend lore.

 I also  want to list suggested character level for magic items based on treasure level and suggested wealth by level.This leads the #1 issue I have with magic item design: creation costs.  It’s not so much an issue when you do something standard like +5 circumstance bonus to acrobatics, but it becomes problematic when you do something outside the norm.  My guiding principle in these cases are at what level is it the ability the magic item grants appropriate, and that in the end gives me a eyeball for the price by doing a comparison with the costs of what is available to a character using the suggested wealth by level. 

For example I have never seen a player take a rod of enemy detection (23,500 gp), every player I know would rather spend 16,000 gp on a +4 shield/armor/bracers, +4 cloak of resistance/Ability-score booster item; or even 18,000 gp on a +3 weapon , +3 ring of protection, or +3 amulet of natural armor.

So there will be several cost points for me to look at.

1. Magic item creation costs,
2. Comparison cost verses items players always take.
3. The treasure reward by Encounter Level,
4. Wealth by Level.

  
To make sure players will actually use them and DMs will actually reward them I need to make sure that I have items for all levels of pay from 1^st through at least 15^th level (the standard playing levels for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game).

 Next time I start looking at inspiration for items that would be part of a reward for 1^st level characters or a starting 2nd level character could purchase with his initial worth. 

Steven D. Russell
Rite Publishing