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. A crafter does not build a base item from nothing; they take an existing item — a sword, a ring, a bag, a hat — and attempt to infuse it with magic. The DM’s overview document is the source for this page.

Materials

Defeating creatures, exploring dangerous places, or discovering rare locations may yield 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, a crafter 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.

A character may learn only one of the two. The choice is independent of class and of ability scores — it is not tied to either (session 3 ruling).

Both a Master and a Grandmaster can take on apprentices and start a character on the craft. In Sunton that means Govannon, Grandmaster Arcane Forger, and Simon, Master Mystic Shaper. Govannon’s price is materials; he will trade training for them.

The attempt

With the matching materials, a base item, and the right tools, a crafter may attempt the craft. Crafting requires a roll on a die set by the crafter’s rank — Apprentice, Journeyworker, Master, Grandmaster — with no modifiers.

Lower is better. A 1 is a critical success on any die, which is why the scale runs downward: a better crafter rolls a smaller die and so fails less often, and a rarer item is rolled on a larger one.

There are four outcomes:

• the craft succeeds;
• it fails, and the ingredients are preserved;
• it fails, and the ingredients are lost;
• it fails, and something bad happens.

A beginner may attempt a legendary item. The odds are simply very poor, and the ingredients must match the rarity of what is being made.

Quantities

The base cost is six ingredients, of which two-thirds are the catalyst and must all be of one type, and one-third the enhancer, likewise all of one type. All of them may be the same type if the crafter likes.

Weapons and armour cost more:

• Weapon — six, plus half the weapon’s maximum damage. A dagger (1d4, max 4) needs eight. A 1d10 weapon needs eleven. A 2d6 weapon (max 12) needs twelve.
• Armour — six, plus half the AC it grants.

The magical effect need not have anything to do with the ingredient. Dragon scales do not restrict the crafter to fire type.

What the item does

Effects are bought from a crafting budget set by the item’s rarity. A common item has a budget of three points, and no single effect on a common item may cost more than two — so a common item carries two effects. Effect costs run from one point up to fifty.

Effects seen at the table include: casting a chosen non-damaging cantrip three times a day outside combat (1); a +1 bonus to one specific saving throw (2); weapon proficiency of any kind; advantage on one attack per day; extra damage once per day; pushing or pulling a struck target five feet, or slowing it by up to ten feet for a round; casting a non-damaging cantrip once per day in combat; and a situational +1 to attack rolls — on opportunity attacks, on the first attack of a combat, against a named opponent, or against opponents who have not yet acted.

The chosen cantrip is fixed when the item is made.

In short: a crafter hunts, harvests, and trades for materials of matching type, rarity, and magic; attempts to infuse an item; and rolls against their own skill and the item’s rarity — creating something new, or something gone wrong.