Crafting Magic Items

In order to craft magic items, artisans harness the magic of the world through magical essences. These come in many forms: gems, creature parts, rare herbs, and magical metals are but a few.

Magic item prices

Buying magic items outright from an artisan or dealer is very expensive, as they have to be crafted without knowing there is a buyer. As always, specific magic items may be more or less expensive, if they are even for sale at all. When selling magic items, most merchants offer you half this amount of gold, but very few merchants have enough gold on hand to buy items of the higher rarities.

Crafting an Item

Magical items are fuelled by the essences used in their crafting. The crafting also requires mundane materials and reagents, which are abstracted into a gold cost.

Essences

The DM determines what essences are required for crafting a particular item. Most permanent items require two essences of the same rarity as the item, while consumable items generally require a single essence. Some items might require a specific essence or material to craft, such as the dragon scales required to craft Dragonscale Arrows.

For example, crafting a pair of Bracers of Defense, a rare item, requires a rare earth essence and a rare lawful essence. An earth elemental core and a 1200gp amethyst would fulfill this. In addition, the crafting requires ~700gp of other materials and would take one week to complete for a character that is proficient with either smith's tools or jeweler's tools.

If an NPC artisan is hired to do the crafting, the gold cost is doubled, representing a fee. The artisan might reduce or waive this fee as a reward for a quest, or be haggled down to a better price.

The Workshop

Crafting a magic item requires a workshop of sufficient quality, and proficiency with the correct tools. Most crafts require equipment that is not easily brought along while adventuring, thus most forges are located in settlements or other points of interest. Some workshops can support multiple types of tools.

Common items can be crafted without a workshop, using only the tools themselves. Higher rarity items require seeking out a dedicated workshop. Most settlements have at least a few different uncommon workshops, and asking nicely will grant you access. A large city might have a full set of uncommon ones, and a small handful of rare workshops, which might require a small favor before you can use it.

Very rare workshops are, as the name implies, not common. Even a capital city might only have a single one, and might require a serious quest before you are granted access.

Legendary workshops are located in remote places of power: on other planes, deep in dungeons, or high in the mountains. They are seldom unguarded, and gaining access to these workshops is an arduous task. Furthermore, the very act of creation in one of these places may attract attention from those who wish to disrupt your task or claim the fruit of your labor as their own.

Example workshops:

• Weaver's Tools: Marina Proudshaw's wagon in the Touchstone Troupe
• Herbalism Kit: The garden of Aeniwyn nan Iacaris in Arastfjord
• Leatherworker's Tools: Aenifin Nimthar's workshop in Moonlight Grove
• Mason's Tools: Heimdall's Chisel in Tel Amnora
• Alchemist's Tools: The laboratory of Sira Blazefire at the Greystone Archive
• Glassblower's Tools: The glassworks of Halwyn Isniex in Solstice
• Smith's Tools: The Black Anvil in the dungeons of Fort Nox in the Shadowfell
• Jeweler's Tools: The Glittering Cave in Myrkheim

Facility: Workshop

You can establish a workshop of your own in a Bastion.

Your workshop contains all the tools you need to craft with up to three types of artisan's tools.

If you have hirelings, you can give the Craft order to this facility to have them work on an item instead of doing it yourself. You must provide the essences and gold for the item you want.

Proficiency and Expertise

You can only craft items using tools you are proficient with. For example, proficiency with Smith's Tools lets you craft metallic weapon and armor, and proficiency with Weaver's Supplies is used to create robes and clothing.

If you have Expertise with the tool in question, you can roll twice for the cost and time or amount created, choosing which result to keep. It is very rare for NPCs to have Expertise in their tools.

Some printed features, notably the Artificer Tools of the Trade subclass features, allow you to half the amount of time it takes to craft an item. This has the same effect as Expertise.

Example recipes

The following table contains a handful of example recipes. As always, the DM will listen to well-thought out arguments for why a different essence or proficiency should apply.

* - the rarity of the essence determines the magnitude.

** - the type of the essence used determines which damage type the potion provides resistance to.

Masterwork equipment

Basic +1/+2/+3 armors and weapons are not necessarily enchanted per se, instead being masterfully crafted using processes that imbue them with subtle magical strength. These items can be crafted using any two essences of the same rarity as the resulting item.

Downtime: Crafting

You spend the week in a workshop, toiling on your latest project. You gain one week of progress towards the project completion.

Downtime: Disenchant item

Just as magic items can be constructed from essences, so too can essences be recovered from items. This is a destructive process, but provides a way of reusing items whose usefulness has run its course.

Using one week of downtime, you can destroy a magic item, gaining an essence of its rarity. Usually, this essence has the type of one of the essences used to craft that particular item.