Enchant Your Own Magic Items in DND 5e

nothing quite breaks immersion for me like finding the exact item I was hoping for in a local shop or some random chest of loot liberated from yesterday's Baddie sometimes it all feels a bit staged there has to be a better way to do this right well instead of asking your players what they want for Christmas why not just give them the tools to create whatever they want instead it can be hard to imagine what enchanting or crafting magic items would look like however many groups forget that the DMG and xanathar's Guide to Everything both give some very basic rules for crafting magic items though they leave a lot up for interpretation and only really provide a basic foundation for a relatively incomplete system and although there are other supplementary materials for this I've found that these sources often over complicate the process to the point where players might feel as though crafting is a bit of a chore like a random side quest in a role-playing video game so for this reason I've found that most campaigns completely ignore this part of gameplay bestly I set out to strike a balance between it all to create a system that remains flexible and flavorful with rules that excite your players and promote incredible role play opportunities instead of disenchanting them and squashing their sense of wonder as you can imagine it's a fine line to walk so to explain this properly let's start at the beginning with the tools needed and the methods by which an item can be crafted or Enchanted xanathar's Guide to Everything describes the crafting process of typical mundane items plainly by only suggesting examples of what tools might be needed for certain types of crafts like Smith's tools for armor and weapons or Weaver's tools for cloaks and robes this much should be fairly obvious to say that when crafting non-magical items you hope to enchant this all should be pretty easy to guess at here's a list of all the tools in the game I'd wager that aside from a few options on this list they largely go unused or completely ignored by most groups I know they didn't often come up for me but now we're going to change all that after all a character's tool proficiency represents a trade that they've taken on that likely plays into the character's identity and ignoring this stuff seems like a missed opportunity but we are not extremely interested in the crafting of mundane items are we so how does this relate to enchanting some super cool and flavorful magic items well xanadar also mentions that it's necessary to have a tool proficiency or Proficiency in Arcana in order to enchant a mundane item and as you can guess this leaves the method by which the item is to be enchanted up to the player to decide in the DM to interpret but why stop there far too often I find that spellcaster classes are given the leg up over Marshall classes even in things such as this that Marshalls should excel at and benefit most from so for this reason I allow anyone to enchant an item by using any relevant skill check that they are proficient in and can relate to their method of doing so yet tool proficiencies can certainly Aid you in this endeavor allowing you to double your proficiency bonus for checks to turn a normal item into a magical one but they are not necessary in my system think about it perhaps the Barbarian hopes to enchant his favorite acts using the tooth of an adult red dragon he felt though not proficient in Smith's tools perhaps he toils away with the tooth and an Athletics check to carve deep grooves into the metal of his ax over an extended period of time leaving behind Trace Amounts of the dragon's Essence and allowing his blade to deal extra fire damage or maybe the cleric which is to enchant an amulet using the eye of a quaddle that made the ultimate sacrifice protecting the party even without tools the cleric might sit and pray over the eye as a religion check pressing into the amulet while clutching their holy symbol in the other hand ultimately creating an item that grants limited true sight or immunity to scrying effects maybe your fighter could paint on an assortment of symbols they know from the history of their Clan with the blood of some outlandish Beast to turn a common blade magical runes carved into the blade shine brightly as the magic within begins to manifest its silvered Edge catches the Moonlight and a soft hum emanates from the saber it has a pleasing weight as you try a few practice swings and realize this is a weapon forged for a single purpose to slay monsters oh and if you're looking for more idea is like this you should probably check out this video's sponsor and the author of that last interpretation describe their service offers nearly 7 000 different finely crafted descriptions for just about anything you might need in your next DND campaign whether you're a DM or a player and they've even offered a generous 10 off your first month by following the link in the description and using the code constructed chaos at checkout so thanks again to our friends over at describe for the wonderful words as well as sponsoring this video now back to crafting opening up the possibilities for everyone to enchant in this way creates a ton of unique role play potential and flavor while also making a case for the advantage that tool proficiencies can provide and the best part your players will feel excited by the possibilities instead of feeling turned off and restricted by the rules and requirements laid out in xanathars sure this is a simple change and arguably more simple than what the guide has presented to us but it's just the beginning so let's talk time and money when it comes to crafting non-magical items the Source book says that we'll need half of the items selling cost in raw materials represented by gold and the number of work weeks to craft it equal to that gold amount divided by 50. perhaps some will disagree with me here but a work week which is five days of roughly eight hours working each day seems a bit long for the crafting of say a couple of great swords if one is truly proficient in the tools needed to craft something like this I feel as though the time necessary for its completion would be less than half of that and honestly in a fantasy setting with characters that exhibit great feats of heroism against Mighty foes and live to tell the tale I find it hard to believe that it would take any of them more than a single day so for this reason I play with this exact precedent instead under the presumption that my players will not abuse this to make obscene amounts of money and flood the local economy with mass-produced weapons with a logo etched into the pommel that looks blatantly phallic ah if you want to leave this as is because your players will definitely take advantage of it feel free and if you're enjoying where all this is going so far also feel free to like the video and subscribe to the channel that takes zero work weeks and will cost you absolutely nothing thanks so let's get back to the really fun stuff creating and enchanting magic items xanathars once again provides us with a foundation for how long an item may take to craft as well as any cost associated with the raw materials needed to do so according to its Rarity just do note that this does not include the cost of the item itself believe it or not both the time needed and the gold amount needed is vastly decreased from the original suggested amounts in the dungeon Masters Guide however I'm going to suggest changing this too for an easy conversion just like I did before I decided to treat work weeks as days instead so that crafting a cloak of billowing doesn't take a full week of downtime just to make you look cool because honestly I'm not sure how often during a campaign we're going to get enough down time to create something like this anyway even when it comes to just a rare item that would take well over two months to create and that's without considering the gold amount needed here too but more than anything I found it necessary to drastically reduce this time because unlike the suggestion from Wizards of the Coast that crafting a magic item automatically succeeds it is possible to fail in my system but we'll get to that in just a moment to avoid the same issue from earlier of becoming some sort of tax evading billionaire mass-producing magic items with questionable tactics that probably cause cancer I've actually opted to keep the cost for creating such an item as is 2000 gold pieces might seem a bit steep for materials to craft a rare item but when you consider that selling that same item would easily go for double that we want to dissuade players from creating things that they don't intend to keep and use for themselves at the end of the day the focus here is to facilitate a process that makes players feel as though they can make their gear every bit as much a part of their character as their Ray Base Class and backstory so on that note let's talk about the mechanics that make all this possible using ingredients that players May stumble upon or seek out themselves from here we make a complete departure from what's presented in the DND Source books by drawing a bit on some of the other systems for crafting that I've seen out there again we want this to remain relatively simple but my true end goal is to disguise my attempts to understand what type of item a player is looking for in game instead of asking them out of character or away from the table I want them to feel as though they created this item or effect with a sense of Discovery and not a lack of surprise when I give them the winged boots like they asked for the 10th time and that all starts when the party fails a monster or collects some magical trinket from the environment around them when I put my players up against a new enemy or into a new location they often investigate and collect various objects as they're available for example when it comes to collecting the skin of a displacer beast I would have them roll a medicine check to see if they can retrieve of it without damaging it and similarly when they attempt to carve a cluster of crystals from their Rocky bed I may have them make a nature check in my experience the DC for this does not need to be abundantly high for most things and should likely vary with the projected Rarity of the item that this might create xanathars does provide a useful table to guide your judgment when it comes to ingredients gained from monsters and I've added a harvesting DC as a baseline that I use but you can also feel free to just use the challenge rating of the monsters they felt what's really important here is that the players understand that failing this task is possible without risk the reward can often feel less thrilling and not at all earned once our displacer B skin has been displaced it's up to the player to investigate over the course of a short or long rest in order to determine the qualities that may present themselves in crafting with it this is where things really get fun and you want to bring your A game as the DM be sure to ask your player how they're inspecting this ingredient what qualities are they testing it for and what methods are they using without your player knowing more often than not this song and dance will disclose to you what type of item they're hoping to make and depending on how successful they are with their check they may even discover additional properties that can be capitalized on sadly there is no one resource for every type of ingredient effect or magic item recipe that you might come up with but there are some books that go into great detail however in my experience the best way to get ideas for this is to look at the stat block of the creature or environmental effects of the location that this was obtained from challenge yourself as the DM to prep an idea or two before the session after a player comes into possession of something like this even if you don't use that exact idea you may be able to use it as a jumping off point for the hints your player gives you in describing their appraisal finally with these Mysteries made clear to your player and once they have ample down time in a safe environment conducive to concocting their creation they'll enter the Final Phase of enchanting as I mentioned earlier it is still entirely possible for them to fail in their attempts to finish their item even though they'll be able to use virtually any skill check that they can come up with a viable process for now in the early testing of this system I quickly discovered that having the main ingredient or gold completely lost in the process of this failure after doing so much work up to this point wasn't all that fun in many cases I found that it could even compel a group of adventurers to hunt down the same monster more than once with the goal of creating an item that they failed to create initially if this sounds fun to you I think that's perfectly fine however I like to approach my games by centering them around the main conflicts the Big Bad Evil guys and the backstories of the party so spending a ton of time attempting to farm ingredients can feel unimportant at best for this reason although it is possible to fail the crafting check the main ingredient in the gold cost is not lost at least the majority of it anyway there definitely needs to be some downside in failing an enchantment attempt once again no risk makes a reward feel less earned and less desirable one could argue that the time wasted in a failed attempt might be risk enough but in a game where days weeks and months pass in a matter of seconds at the table I don't think it's quite enough to make it feel real for the players so with a crafting DC consistent to this chart that I made I'd like to impose the following failure risks if a check is within five of the DC nothing happens but the enchantment does fail checks that are six to ten less than the DC cause one quarter of the gold to be lost and checks that are failed by over 10 cause one quarter of the goal to be lost and an additional effect to occur that relates to the ingredient itself these effects could be anything like a certain amount of piercing damage as the magical power of some ingredient causes the splintering of some wood components that then fire off as shrapnel injuring the crafter and possibly others nearby AI or The Escape of a dangerous toxin from an ingredient taken from a deadly snake causing the crafter to become poisoned for some time and to carry with them a terrible odor for up to a week being creative with these effects can add a bit to a DM's plate but it's much easier than you'd think as a baseline for example you could easily just look at a monster stat block from which the ingredient was procured and simply re-flavor one of the attacks or actions that it has this alone will go a long way in immersing your players in the task of enchanting an item and remind them of the creature or place they got this item from now you may argue that such effects are less dangerous during a downtime activity when players have plenty of opportunity for resting and ridding themselves of any ill effects and that's where you'd be wrong assuming the party is somewhere in town perhaps the enchanter is sharing a workspace with others or worse in a public environment full of people townspoke may interpret this blunder as an attack on them and you may attract the attention of the local guard as your hold off for questioning and if the group is far away from civilization to avoid these types of situations the sound smell or sight of such an event might attract wild beasts from nearby perhaps a group of Bandits that had been stalking your well-stocked party were hoping for just such an opportunity to Rob them of their gold and gear as you can imagine this can be extremely compelling in terms of Storytelling and could spawn entire sessions spent escaping from a misunderstanding with the city's protectors or tracking down the thieves that stole from you here we've turned a potential downside into some really cool Exposition for new adventures and all of this from a system that was completely underutilized and incomplete all that's left now is to watch your players envelop themselves in the magic of Your World crafting their own items and flavor to become a part of it if you're interested in more enchanting content like this be sure to like the video and Hammer the Subscribe button now as always go out there and make some chaos

Channel: Constructed Chaos

Views: 45,303

Keywords: dnd, dungeons and dragons, ttrpg, tabletop rpg, dnd 5e, enchant magic item 5e, DM Tip, DnD Homebrew, DnD 5e Homebrew, dnd enchanting items, enchanting magic items dnd, crafting magic items 5e, craft magic item dnd, crafting magic items dnd, crafting magic items dnd 5e, homebrew crafting 5e, artificer 5e, artificer dnd, artificer infusions guide, dnd magic items, d&d magic items, magic items homebrew, dnd 5e crafting magic items, dnd 5e enchanting items, dnd 5e crafting

Id: KxcC3BZtwFE

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022