Custom Magic Items

In our games, I like you to have ownership over your magic items and I also want them to feel unique, special, and important to you. To help facilitate this, custom magic items (and even some core magic items), can be leveled up in our games. What exactly can level up? Typically, I want each player to have an item that is particularly important to them, so usually a player will only have 1 item that can level up at a time. Having a conversation with me and establishing intent is a great way to let me know what you would like to build on or find in the future. Or, if not, I will introduce some from time to time to see if we can find a good fit.

How do I level up an item?

There are seven broad categories of method you could have your players pursue to level their items. When a new wielder/wearer/owner takes possession of the item, the item reverts to level 1.

1. Absorb Power. The players must kill a certain type of creature of a specific power while wielding or using their item (not necessarily to damage, just to aid the process). This might be a dragon of a particular type or a greater elemental. The power of the creature is then absorbed by the item.

2. Blood for the Blade. Maybe the item doesn’t need a specific, powerful creature to be slain, just lots of a particular type, such as 30 fire elementals or 100 ghosts.

3. Collect the Fragments. Maybe the item itself isn’t completely whole, or there are multiple copies. The parts or duplicates must be brought together for the item to reach its full potential.

4. Seek a Boon. If the object is of divine origin, or if the owner is especially devout, then maybe they must seek a boon from their god. This might involve a pilgrimage to a temple, doing some great deed or maybe just weeks of prayer.

5. The Quest. What’s more fun than a quest to a distant shrine, long lost temple or even another plane! This is the perfect one to use if there’s a particular place you want to take your players to.

6. The Ritual. An excellent way to mix together elements from several of the others. It might require lots of research, quests to collect tools and pieces of knowledge, the slaying of beasts for ingredients and securing the aid of a powerful mage.

7. Prove Worth. The item itself has a level of sentience, even if it cannot communicate. The owner must show the item that they are worthy of its powers by impressing it somehow, such as doing great deeds while using it.

When you have a powerful magic item, especially one with a long and storied history, there’s a chance that it may have a consciousness hidden within its depths. Sentient magic items can offer advice, guidance, power, insight, lore, and much more through developing bonds with the sentience. 

What types of sentience can an item have?

1. Constructed Intelligence. The creator of the item intended it to have intelligence and so formed a mind out of magic as part of the forging.

2. Echoes of Divinity. If an item was created or gifted by one of the gods, it may still thrum with that same, life-creating power and simply be alive.

3. Emergent Phenomena. Sometimes an item comes into contact with so much magical energy, either during its creation or during its use, that there are unintended consequences. This is particularly likely in items meant to boost intelligence or holdlarge quantities of knowledge.

4. Imprisoned Entity. Magic items make excellent prisons for dangerous beings, as it keeps them secure while also allowing their powers to be wielded by another. Obviously though, the imprisoned creature will have a mind of its own and likely want free.

5. Living Creature. Sometimes the item itself is simply alive, as is the case with the Raiment of the Mimic.

6. Reflection of the Creator. Either on purpose or by accident, the creator of the item put a little seed of themselves into the item that has grown to think and feel as a shadow version of the original.