Relic Forge

Relic Forge is the campaign's magic-item crafting system: a risk-based toolkit built on harvesting rare materials and taking real chances. You do not build a base item from nothing; you take an existing item — a sword, a ring, a bag, a hat — and attempt to infuse it with magic.

Materials

As you defeat creatures, explore dangerous places, or discover rare locations, you may harvest magical materials — from creatures, treasure hoards, plants, mines, elemental sites, ancient ruins, and other powerful sources. Every material has three defining qualities:

• Rarity — set by the challenge rating of the creature or location it came from, at the DM's discretion.
• Material type — the kind of stuff that holds the raw magic: hide, bone, ichor, essence, mineral, and many more.
• Magic type — the kind of raw magic within it. Depending on the setting this may be a school (evocation, abjuration, illusion, …) or a damage type (fire, lightning, cold, …), at the DM's discretion.

To craft, you must gather a set number of materials that match in rarity, material type, and magic type.

Disciplines and tools

There are two crafting disciplines, each needing its own tools:

• Arcane Forging — weapons, armor, shields, rods, wands, and staves; needs an arcane forge.
• Mystic Shaping — wondrous items, jewelry, clothing, containers, consumables, and the like; needs a shaper's workshop.

The attempt

With the matching materials, a base item, and the right tools, you may attempt the craft. Crafting requires a roll, and the dice depend on two things: the rarity of the item you are trying to make, and your skill as a crafter (crafter skill runs from Apprentice to Grandmaster). Higher-level crafters use better dice; more common items use smaller dice with fewer chances of failure, while rarer items use dice with more chances of failure.

On a success, the item gains its magical properties. On a failure, there are consequences: some merely waste the materials, some cause a magical backlash, and the most powerful attempts can produce dangerous, even world-altering results. Crafting powerful magic is never completely safe.

In short: you hunt, you harvest, you trade, you gather materials of matching type, rarity, and magic, you attempt to infuse an item, and you roll against your skill and the item's rarity — creating something new, or something gone wrong.