Last week, I wrote about a custom crafting system I developed for an upcoming Pathfinder campaign. As I mentioned in that article, the system I ended up building was too big to cover in detail completely in a single article. Last time, we looked at the basic foundation of the system, as well as mundane item recipes and equipment enchantments. This week, we’ll look at the second time of enchantments in this system: spell effect enchantments.
Spell Effect Enchantments
Excluding potions and alchemical items, which we’ll take a deeper look at next week in part 3 of this article, most major types of non-equipment magic items mainly possess some variation of an existing spell effect. Wands and staves use charges to cast specific spells, and many rings and wondrous items provide a permanent casting or a number of uses/day of certain spell effects. Rods are kind of the odd exception here in that most of them have more unique magical effects not tied to a specific spell, but, like many wondrous items, they do generally share the trait of providing a limited uses/day of a particular magical ability.
Though ideally we would like for our players to be able to make any magic item so long as its value doesn’t exceed the max value of our highest tier crafted items, that goal is unfortunately going to be unachievable without an undesirable amount of complexity. Even if we are only considering the Core Rulebook for this system, there are simply too many items to create individual recipes for. We won’t be able to create enough combinations of unique recipes without requiring a large number of components and/or adding additional types of descriptors, and that will simply add too much complexity to the system than I’m comfortable with.
Rather than creating recipes for individual items, the approach I took involved creating recipes for spell effects. All spell recipes involve three components – following the basic enchantment formula of “base item + focus + effect” discussed last week, these three components will always be some combination of focus and effect components – usually one focus and two effect components – which can then be combined with a base item to form the desired magic item. Unlike equipment enchantments, spell recipes can have more than one type of descriptor used for its effect components, which allows for a much greater range of unique combinations.
The recipe for a particular spell effect will always be the same no matter what, but how the item uses that spell effect can vary depending on the base item used. Barkskin, for example, is created by combining Legendary Divine, Rare Empowered, and Rare Windswept components. Using these three components with a mundane wand creates a Wand of Barkskin. Using them with a mundane Amulet, however, instead creates what is effectively an Amulet of Natural Armor. The component cost of each spell is approximately equal to the cost of an average-priced wand of the same spell.
The list of spell recipes can be found at the link below – note that I only went up to 3rd level spells due to the low-magic world this system is being used in.
Spell Effects: https://empiresfall-1.obsidianportal.com/wikis/crafting-spell-effect-tables
The rarity of the base item determines the maximum level spell that can be imbued within the item and the effective caster level of the spell effect. For staves, it also determines how many spells can be imbued in the staff and how many charges each level of spell consumes. For wondrous items, it also determines whether the effect is at-will/constant, or if it has a limited number of uses per day. For example, enchanting an Uncommon Wand with Cure Light Wounds would create your typical Wand of Cure Light Wounds, which casts at an effective caster level of 1, thus healing 1d8+1. If the crafter was to instead use a Rare wand, it would cast at an effective caster level of 3 and thus heal 1d3+4 instead.
There are some tradeoffs that came with using this type of system. The first, and biggest, is that values of some items are not as true to actual magic item prices compared to the system we used for equipment enchantments. However, component costs of spell effects and items have been determined from a more conservative point of view, so in terms of component value, most of the time if a discrepancy in value does exist, the party will be overpaying rather than potentially getting a power item at a significant discount.
This doesn’t actually impact the party too much, since as discussed at the beginning of this article, crafted magic items are able to replace standard magic items at a 2:1 ratio, so the party is usually going to come out ahead in terms of magic items overall if they find ways to use all of the components they find. They also gain a great deal of flexibility with magic items that they might not otherwise have in exchange for sometimes “overpaying,” since they can apply spell effects to any wondrous item slot of their choosing rather than being restricted to having certain effects only in certain slots with the standard wondrous item lists.
The other big sore point is rods, which as mentioned earlier, usually more more unique magical effects that can’t be easily replicated with spells. Ultimately, I ended up making rods effectively something between a wondrous item and a wand/staff. Rods can be enchanted using the same process as wondrous items, but can only be used when held. They also can only hold the opposite type of effects that normal wondrous items can hold – the effects of crafted wondrous items can only affect the wearer, while the effects of crafted rods can only affect others at the direction of the wielder. Though some wondrous items do exist in the Core Rulebook that can allow the wielder to cast certain area-of-effect or targeted spells, I ultimately chose to make this distinction so that crafted rods and wondrous items had a different mechanical feel, rather than just having rods be “held wondrous items.”
Charged Magic Items (Wands/Staves)
Wands and staves were the easiest items to adapt to this system, since they already function by casting specific spells. Since the component value of each spell recipe was also designed to approximate the value of an average wand of that spell level, it also made wands in particular the easiest crafted item to balance. An Uncommon base wand can be enchanted with any level spell, and the final value in terms of components will be about the same as purchasing that same wand in the game world.
This did leave a problem in that Rare and Legendary wands needed something else to differentiate them from Uncommon wands. The easiest way to do this was to allow the creation of wands with higher-than-normal caster levels by using a better quality base wand. Fortunately, Ultimate Equipment gave us a handy table on how to estimate magic item values which can be used as a base to determine how much an increased caster level is worth. I also used this table to help balance crafting for wondrous items, which we’ll look at later.
According to the formulas listed in that table, the value of a magic item with 50 charges (e.g. a wand) is equal to 750 gp multiplied by the item’s caster level and the level of the spell imbued in the wand. Wands with level 0 spells are slightly different, in that 0.5 is used the spell level of these spells in these formulas (since using 0 would result in the formula returning a value of 0 gp). For example, for a standard wand containing a second-level spell with the minimum sorcerer caster level of 4, this formula works out to 750 gp * 2 * 4, for a value of 6,000 gp.
Now, the basic crafting recipes that I discussed last week have the recipe for a mundane wand consist of three components. In the case of second level spells mentioned above, spell effect recipes have already been balanced such that the value of a crafted Uncommon wand of that spell is close to the calculated value of 13,500 gp. The component values discussed last week listed 50 gp for an Uncommon component, 500 gp for Rare, and 5,000 gp for Legendary, meaning that for a Rare wand, I had to add 1,350 gp worth of value over an Uncommon, and for a Legendary wand, I had to add 14,850 gp worth of value over an Uncommon. By taking that wand value formula and working it backwards, I found that increasing the caster level of a second-level wand by one adds 1,500 gp to the item’s value. In other words, adding one caster level approximates the value increase from making an Uncommon wand a Rare one and adding ten caster levels approximates the value increase from making it Legendary.
Because of how the wand formula works, changing the level of the imbued spell changes the value of each caster level the item has. For lower-level spells, each caster level is worth less than caster levels for higher-level spells. In other words, one caster level increase for a Rare wand and ten caster levels for a Legendary wand, as I found for second level spells, wouldn’t be as accurate for other levels of spells. For example, for a third level spell, each added caster level is worth 2,250 gp rather than 1,500 gp – with this value, adding one caster level is already exceeding the component value of a Rare wand (albeit not by much) and adding seven caster levels approximates the value of a Legendary wand rather than ten. Conversely, for a first level spell, the value of each caster level is halved, meaning that two extra caster levels approximates the value of a Rare wand and twenty approximates the value of a Legendary wand.
My use of the E6 system for the came this crafting system was intended for added an extra problem here. Namely, in E6, it should be impossible or near-impossible for a character to obtain a caster level higher than 10. With the findings gathered from reverse-engineering the wand value formula, a Legendary wand of a first-level spell would need to have a caster level of 21 to be a fair value, a Legendary wand of a second-level spell would need a caster level of 14 to be a fair value, and a Legendary wand of a third-level spell would need a caster level of 13 to be a fair value. All of these caster levels were way too high for a system with lower levels of magic.
Ultimately, what I ended up doing was taking a conservative approach and having the caster level increase from higher rarity wands be less than what the actual component value would be. My main reason for doing this, as with many of the other decisions I made in this system, was the low-magic setting brought by the E6 system I was using in the game this system was intended for. In a world where even a caster level of 10 is near-unheard of, where caster levels of even 7-9 are difficult to reach, caster levels are more valuable than it would be in a standard Pathfinder game. When a only a character at “max level” plus some additional epic progression is able to get a caster level of 7, an item with a caster level of 7 would certainly seem to qualify as “legendary” in the eyes of this world.
The final caster levels I used were based in part on the various spellcasting progression of different classes. For an Uncommon wand, the caster level of the wand is the minimum possible caster level a character would need to cast a spell of that level. In other words, the caster level of an Uncommon wand is equal to the first level that a wizard or cleric would be able to cast the spell level in question – CL 1 for 0 and 1st-level spells, CL 3 for 2nd-level spells, and CL 5 for 3rd-level spells. A Rare wand increases this caster level by one – CL 2 for 0 and 1st-level spells, CL 4 for 2nd-level spells, and CL 6 for 3rd-level spells. This is essentially the same as the minimum level a sorcerer would have to be to cast that level spell (with the exception of 0 and 1st-level spells). For Legendary wands, the caster level is increased by an additional 4 levels over a Rare wand – CL 6 for 0 and 1st level spells, CL 8 for 2nd-level spells, and CL 10 for 3rd-level spells. This meant that CL 10 was the absolute highest that a crafted wand can get, which is the highest upward bound on caster level I was comfortable with in a low-magic game.
Now, this caster level progression was generally fairly undervalued compared to the actual value of a normal wand. Though the increased number of crafting components would mean that the party would generally still come out ahead in terms of magic items, as mentioned previously, I still wanted to add in some extra perks with crafted wands to make up for the underwhelming value. The first of these perks was a fairly obvious one – adding the ability to recharge wands. By consuming the recipe for the wand’s spell effect again, a wand can be replenished back to 50 charges. In the case of an Uncommon wand, the cost of recharging the wand is roughly equivalent to making a new wand. For Rare and Legendary wands, however, the crafter gets some savings in terms of value, which helps make up for the low caster level progression undervaluing these wands.
The second perk I added to wands was allowing the use of Adaptable components to allow the crafter to change the spell imbued within a wand. By consuming one additional Adaptable component of the same rarity as the base wand, the crafter can consume a spell recipe to recharge the wand and change its spell to that of the spell formed by the new recipe. This process requires one hour of uninterrupted downtime in a relatively safe location. In other words, the party cannot just stop in the middle of a dungeon to swap a wand over to a more beneficial spell, but rather do it as part of a rest or while in town. I did put one other limitation on adaptable wands as well – the maximum spell level that the wand can be changed to is determined by the wand’s rarity. Uncommon adaptable wands can only be changed to a 0 or 1st-level spell, Rare adaptable wands can be changed to any spell up to 2nd level, and Legendary adaptable wands can be changed to any spell up to 3rd level. This limitation would also help make up for some of the underwhelming value of normal Rare and Legendary wands.
Staves
Staves function similarly to wands, but with the ability to be imbued with multiple spells and the innate ability to slowly recharge over time. Similarly, the basic recipe for staves in this crafting system is similar to that of wands: a mundane staff is combined with a spell effect recipe to imbue it with a spell. Unlike wands, however, multiple spell effect recipes can be used to imbue it with multiple spells. The maximum number of spells that can be imbued, as well as the number of charges a spell of a specific level will consume when used, depends on the rarity of the base staff. In addition, the maximum spell level that can be imbued in a staff also depends on the base staff’s rarity. Since staves are more valuable than wands, these limitations help the final value of crafted staves more accurately represent those of normal staves.
An Uncommon staff can hold up to two spells of either 0 or 1st-level. Level 0 spells cost one charge to use, while level 1 spells cost two charges. A Rare staff can hold up to three spells of 2nd-level or less, with level 0 and 1 spells costing one charge and level 2 spells casting two charges. A Legendary wand can hold up to four spells of 3rd-level or less. Spells of levels 0-2 cost the same number of charges as a Rare wand, while a 3rd-level spell costs three charges. The base caster level of the staff is the same as that of a crafted wand of the same rarity and of the highest spell level the staff in question could hold. For example, a Rare staff can hold up to 2nd-level spells, and thus, has a caster level of 4, the same as a Rare wand imbued with a 2nd-level spell.
Like crafted wands, staves can have an additional Adaptive component added to let the crafter swap imbued spells by consuming the recipe for the new spell effect and spending one hour of uninterrupted time in a safe location. Unlike crafted wands, however, a crafted staff cannot be recharged by expending components – even if a spell stored in an adaptable spell is swapped with a new one, no charges are regained. The only way to recharge a staff is through the normal staff rules: up to one charge can be replenished each day by expending a prepared spell or spell slot of the highest level spell the staff can cast.
Rods & Wondrous Items
Initially, when it came to rods and wondrous items, I was thinking that I was going to need separate recipe systems from other magic items – either specific recipes for each unique wondrous item or rod, or some other variation of the recipe formula that would take into account whether the item would be constant, at-will, limited uses-per-day, or some other type of usage. When I ended up balancing spell effect recipes around the value of a normal wand, however, I realized that similar to charged magic items, I could balance the value of various types of rod and wondrous item usage around base item rarity.
The same magic item creation formulas from Ultimate Equipment that I used when looking at wands also came of use here. Looking at those formulas, items that provide permanent or limited uses/day of a spell effect have similar formulas to those of wands. For most spells, the value of an item with a constant or unlimited-use effect is equal to 2,000gp * caster level * spell level. An item with a limited number of uses per day divides that unlimited use value by a specific number based on how limited the number of charges is.
To look at the upper bound of these types of items in the crafting system detailed so far, a Legendary wondrous item would require three Legendary components for the base item, plus three more Legendary components if imbuing it with a 3rd-level spell effect. This gives a component value of 30,000 gp. By dividing this number by the maximum spell level (3) and the base price for an unlimited-use item (2,000), I found that having a Legendary wondrous item apply a permament effect with a caster level of 5 would accurately represent the value of a normal, unlimited-use wondrous item. As it so happens, that caster level of 5 is also the minimum caster level needed to cast a 3rd-level spell by a wizard or cleric.
By using similar thinking, a Rare wondrous item is made up of three Rare components, plus a Legendary and two additional Rare components for the spell effect (assuming we cap Rare wondrous items at 2nd-level spells), giving it a component value of 7,500 gp. Continuing to use the wizard/cleric spell progression to determine caster level, I found that dividing this value by the spell level (2) and caster level (3) brought a result of 1,250gp – less than the base price for an unlimited-use item. This would indicate that, for a 2nd-level spell, an average wondrous item with unlimited-uses would cost far less via crafting than the item was actually worth.
The magic item creation table, however, also states that a magic item with limited uses per day has its value divided by a number equal to 5 divided by the number of charges per day. To look at it another way, you can multiply the unlimited-item value of a magic item by X/5, where X is the number of charges per day, to get the value of a limited uses/day item. By applying that formula to the initial formula I was working with, I found that limiting a Rare wondrous item to 3 uses/day would cause the items value according to the Ultimate Equipment table to be exactly equal to 7,500 gp for a 2nd-level spell with CL 3.
Applying similar thinking to Uncommon wondrous items, an Uncommon wondrous item with a 1st-level spell is worth 750 gp (four Uncommon components and a Rare component). Even assuming a caster level and spell level of 1, that still leaves an unlimited-use item worth 2,000 gp, far above the component value. Using the same uses/day formula, I found that 2 uses/day leaves the item with a value of 800 gp, which is fairly close to the actual item value.
With those calculations done, I found that to properly balance wondrous items, an Uncommon item would need to be limited to a maximum of 1st-level spells (CL 1) and 2 uses per day, a Rare item to 2nd-level spells (CL 3) and 3 uses per day, and Legendary items to 3rd-level spells (CL 5) with unlimited usage. Accordingly, these would be the limitations of each rarity of crafted wondrous items and rods. To craft one of these items, the crafter would simply combine a mundane rod or wondrous item of the desired rarity with the desired spell recipe up to the maximum spell level allowed by that rarity. The final product would have uses/day and caster level depending on the rarity used.
As discussed early on this article, crafted wondrous items would always have their spell effect only affect the wearer; while crafted rods were the opposite, and could have their target chosen by the wielder for each use. This extra flexibility offered by rods would help offset the extra component required to make a mundane rod versus a wondrous item as well as the additional downside of having to wield a rod in order for it to be used.
Metamagic Rods
There was one additional category of rods I wanted to include that this system didn’t allow for: metamagic rods. Fortunately, a system already existed to determine the value of a metamagic rod based how many uses/day it had and the spell level cost of the metamagic feat the rod applies. Any metamagic rod that applies a metamagic feat with a normal cost of +1 spell level was worth 3,000 gp for a 1/day rod, 11,000 gp for a 2/day rod, and 24,500 gp for a 3/day rod. For a metamagic rod with a normal cost of +2 spell level, a 1/day rod was worth 9,000 gp, a 2/day rod worth 32,500 gp, and a 3/day rod worth 73,000 gp. Notice that the cost of the +2 spell level metamagic rods are each about three times that of a +1 spell level metamagic rod. +3 spell level metamagic rods start at 14,000 gp for a 1/day rod, about five times the value of a +1 rod.
This grouping of metamagic rods by spell level cost and uses/day meant that I could create some basic formulas based off of this grouping. For example, a 1/day rod of a +1 spell level metamagic feat could have its value approximated by a recipe of a Rare rod (four Rare components) plus two additional Rare components. The combination of those two additional components could be varied in the recipes to create unique recipes for each type of megamagic rod. The rest of the formulas I came up with would follow a similar approach – a base rod (four components) plus two additional components. Using these basic guidelines, I came up with the following simple formulas:
+1 metamagic rod, 1/day: Rare rod + 2 Rare components (3,000 gp component value)
+2 metamagic rod, 1/day: Rare rod + Rare component + Legendary component (7,500 gp component value)
+3 metamagic rod, 1/day: Rare rod + 2 Legendary components (12,000 gp component value)
+1 metamagic rod, 2/day: Rare rod + 2 Legendary components (12,000 gp component value)
+1 metamagic rod, 3/day: Legendary rod + Rare component + Legendary component (25,500 gp)
+2 metamagic rod, 2/day: Legendary rod + 2 Legendary components (30,000 gp component value)
You’ll notice that the 2/day and 3/day versions of the +3 metamagic rod are missing, as is the 3/day version of the +2 metamagic rod – this is because these three types of metamagic rods all have values higher than the maximum crafted item value in our system (50,000 gp).
With those basic formulas in place, I was then able to go about creating recipes for each specific metamagic rod by mixing a focus component with the effect component that best fit each type of +1, +2, or +3 spell level metamagic.
The Final Piece: Alchemy
With spell effect items finished, the only major category of magic items that I wanted to be craftable still left was alchemical items – specifically, potions and poisons. Next week, we’ll finish up this brief series by taking a look at the alchemy sub-system as well as some of the final details of the overall crafting system.