(3.5/PF1) Wearing Rings Like a Lord

The following is an addendum to my previous article regarding magic rings in the d20 System. While that article outlines several ways that a character can get around the two-ring limit, I also wanted to present an original option that lets characters push that limit rather than circumvent it. Hence the following new item:

QUINTESSOR (MINOR ARTIFACT)

Aura strong universal; CL 20^th

Slot ring (see text); Weight –

DESCRIPTION

A quintessor appears to be a bracelet with five short lengths of chain dangling from it. As a standard action, a magic ring can be touched to one of the lengths of chain, which mystically attaches to it. A character can then wear the ring normally, with the chain stretching taut over the back of the finger. Up to five rings may be attached to a quintessor in this manner, and all attached rings function normally, superseding the standard limit on how many magic rings a character can benefit from at once. An attached ring is treated as having a caster level of 20 (unless its normal caster level is higher).

Wearing a quintessor disables all other ring slots that a character has, including if they have more than the standard two. They are similarly unable to make use of items such as a hand of glory or a meridian belt. A character can only benefit from a single quintessor at a time.

The person wearing a quintessor may remove a ring as a standard action. For all other characters besides the wearer, the rings are considered to be part of the artifact, and cannot be separated from it while worn. Attempts to steal or sunder attached rings automatically fail (though the quintessor itself may be targeted). If a quintessor is not currently worn, anyone may add or remove a ring from it. Adding or removing rings from a quintessor does not provoke an attack of opportunity.

DESTRUCTION

A quintessor can be destroyed if it is worn for a full year with five cursed rings attached. At the end of this year, the quintessor (and the rings) corrode into nothing.

(3.5/PF1) The Return of Protection Scrolls

For all that D&D 5th Edition isn’t my game of choice, I have to give credit where credit is due: its designers were quite earnest in looking to the whole of the game’s history for inspiration.

Nowhere is that more true than in 5E’s reintroduction of protection scrolls.

Last seen in AD&D 2nd Edition, protection scrolls (also called scrolls of protection) are the lesser-known cousins of spell scrolls. Whereas the latter have inscribed spells that are just waiting for a spellcaster to unleash them (though certain non-spellcasters can also make use of them), protection scrolls are able to be used by anyone. As their name suggests, they’re entirely defensive in nature, serving to safeguard the user against certain types of monsters, damage, or harmful situations.

Being scroll-specific, but not fitting in with the basic spell-in-a-can formula that scrolls otherwise used, it’s perhaps no great surprise that protection scrolls were dropped when D&D 3rd Edition came out, particularly since it was easy to scribe a defensive spell down and call it close enough. 4th Edition likewise had no use for them (though a ritual scroll for a protective spell effect was vaguely evocative of the same idea). And so that particular brand of magic items were ignored until 5E brought them back.

But what if we wanted to have protection scrolls in a d20 System game? What would they look like? What follows is my take on those questions.

d20 Protection Scrolls

The characteristics of a protection scroll are that they’re single-use items, that anyone can use them, and that they ward the user against (as noted above) some sort of damage, monster, or other hazard.

Fulfilling the first characteristic is fairly simple; the d20 System is full of single-use items, ranging from potions to feather tokens to ordinary spell scrolls. Likewise, the game has a vast array of defensive spells and abilities that can be made use of. It’s that second component, that anyone can activate them, which sets protection scrolls apart from spell scrolls. As written, the Scribe Scroll feat only allows for the latter, and their nature as spell completion magic items (which sets the conditions as to who can activate them) are an issue.

The resolution, therefore, is to simply say that protection scrolls aren’t actually scrolls (i.e. magic items made via the Scribe Scroll feat) at all: they’re wondrous items, albeit in scroll form.

If that seems like a rather convenient leap in logic, consider that there are already several other categories of magic items that are textual in nature and are wondrous items. These include blessed books, golem manuals, and various stat-boosting manuals and tomes. So we’re simply adding protection scrolls to that group.

And with that, most of the pieces fall into place…emphasis on “most of.” Since we don’t need to reinvent the wheel where protective effects are concerned, these are going to be a category of single-use spell effects. To that end, looking at the rules for estimating magic item gold piece values tells us that a single use, use-activated magic item has a formula of spell level x caster level x 50 gp.

Here’s where we’re going to start making a few changes. First, we’re going to tweak the cost modifier to spell level x caster level x 35 gp, and have the activation method be a command word. The command word reflects that, as scrolls, these need to be read out loud to take effects, and so can’t be activated in an area of magical silence, will alert anyone nearby who can hear you speaking (albeit possibly requiring a Listen/Perception check), etc.

A secondary restriction that justifies this lower price is that protection scrolls can only be used in conjunction with spells of the abjuration school. At the GM’s discretion, certain spells of this school are incompatible with protection scrolls (see below).

Safety First

Given the multiplicity of spells in the d20 System, and how arbitrarily some of them can be assigned to various spell schools, it’s possible that limiting protection scrolls to abjuration effects only might not be narrow enough. While protection scrolls are still more expensive than other types of scrolls, they’re markedly less expensive than potions, and have no corresponding cap on the level of the spells that can be used.

To that end, consider imposing the following additional restrictions. These necessarily require some GM discretion, since the d20 game rules don’t systematize what constitutes a defensive effects versus other kinds of powers, but shouldn’t be unduly difficult to adjudicate:

• Protection scrolls cannot be used to attack creatures (including inflict hit point damage, ability damage or drain, or other “debuff” status effects such as confusion, paralysis, negative levels, etc.).
• Protection scrolls cannot restore hit points, negative levels, ability damage or drain, etc.
• Protection scrolls cannot be used to create or summon, or banish or dismiss, any creature or thing.
• Protection scrolls cannot use movement/transportation effects (i.e. avoiding is different than protecting).
• Protection scrolls keep characters from harm, rather than suppressing an enemy’s ability to act (e.g. antimagic field is thematically incompatible with how protection scrolls are supposed to function).
• Protection scrolls serve to defeat incoming damage/conditions rather than overcome them (e.g. they don’t add to Armor Class or saving throws, but would instead grant damage reduction or energy resistance), though spells with multiple effects such as protection from evil can serve as exceptions.

Taking these guidelines into account, here are some example protection scrolls.

SCROLL, PROTECTION FROM ELEMENTS

Aura faint abjuration; CL 3^rd

Slot –; Price 210 gp; Weight —

DESCRIPTION

This scroll grants the reader the benefits of resist energy. The type of energy to be resisted is chosen when the scroll is activated.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, resist energy; Cost 105 gp

SCROLL, PROTECTION FROM MINOR MAGIC

Aura moderate abjuration; CL 7^th

Slot –; Price 980 gp; Weight –

DESCRIPTION

This scroll grants the reader the benefits of lesser globe of invulnerability.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, antimagic field; Cost 490 gp

SCROLL, PROTECTION FROM PARALYSIS

Aura moderate abjuration; CL 7^th

Slot –; Price 980 gp; Weight –

DESCRIPTION

This scroll grants the reader the benefits of freedom of movement.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, freedom of movement; Cost 490 gp

SCROLL, PROTECTION FROM SCRYING

Aura faint abjuration; CL 5^th

Slot –; Price 575 gp; Weight —

DESCRIPTION

This scroll grants the reader the benefits of nondetection.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, nondetection; Cost 312 gp

SCROLL, PROTECTION FROM VERMIN

Aura moderate abjuration; CL 7^th

Slot –; Price 980 gp; Weight –

DESCRIPTION

This scroll grants the reader the benefits of repulse vermin.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, repulse vermin; Cost 490 gp

REPULSE [CREATURE TYPE]

School abjuration; Level cleric 5, sorcerer/wizard 4

Components V, S, F/DF (a pair of feline statuettes worth 10 gp)

Range 10 ft.

Area 10-ft.-radius spherical emanation, centered on you

This spell functions like repulsion, except as listed above, and only affects a single creature type as per a ranger’s favored enemy (e.g. evil outsiders, humanoids of a specific subtype, etc.); at the GM’s option, other groups of creatures may be designated (e.g. lycanthropes).

Each creature type counts as a different version of this spell; repulse dragons and repulse elves, for example, are two separate spells that must be scribed separately into a spellbook, count as two spells known, etc.

The takeaway here is that protection scrolls have a narrower range of effects than what standard spells scrolls or potions allow for, but are cheaper and can have higher-level spells than the latter while not requiring spellcasting or ranks in Use Magic Device the way the former would. Judicious use of protection scrolls can help safeguard your PCs from the dangers of your campaign world…or help safeguard your campaign world from them!

(3.5/PF1) Divorcing Planar Magic Traits from the Planes

Aficionados of the d20 System won’t be surprised by my pointing out that there are certain areas where the game’s presentation isn’t backed up by the rules…or at least, could be backed up more.

Take, for instance, the druid. Presented as nature’s defender, eschewing civilization in favor of the pristine wilderness, the druid as presented in the rules only has a faint suggestion of the archetype that it’s described as embodying. They can’t use metal armor or shields, have small bonuses to Knowledge (nature) and Survival, can move through “undergrowth” without being impaired, and leave no trail in “natural surroundings.”

Their spellcasting, however, still works just fine in an urban area. So does their ability to wild shape. There’s no real reason they can’t have an animal companion in a town (although the DMG comments on the practical difficulty of this, that advice is near-universally ignored). If you don’t care much about two small skill bonuses, aren’t worried about being tracked, and don’t care too much that there’s no undergrowth to move through, you can play an urban druid with no real difficulty.

This is also the case for less direct presentations. For instance, there’s an expectation that practitioners of a given type of elemental magic would be in a matching environment, e.g. you’d expect a fire elementalist to reside in a desert or near a volcano. But with the way the rules work, you’re far more likely to find them in an arctic tundra. After all, most of the creatures you’d find in an extremely hot area are probably going to be resistant – or even completely immune – to fire damage, putting the elementalist at a disadvantage. Far better to be in an arctic area where the monsters have vulnerability to fire damage!

Now, we can’t call any of these “discrepancies” per se, since as noted before, this is more of an area where the game rules aren’t backing up the flavor text and associated implications as thoroughly as they could, rather than contradicting anything. Given that, what rules can we use to better support the themes and ideas being put forward? Ideally without having to rewrite any classes or impose cumbersome new rules?

The answer is to simply repurpose a few old rules, specifically those on planar magic traits.

A quick glance at that page makes it clear that this is actually an idea that’s been around for a long time. Two of the traits on that page – “dead magic” and “wild magic” – have been used in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting at least as far back as the days of AD&D 2nd Edition. Given that we don’t need to worry about the “normal magic” trait, being the default unless something says otherwise, we’ll instead turn our attention to the remaining three: enhanced magic (note that this is different in 3.5 and PF1), impeded magic, and limited magic.

Natural Areas of Supernatural Influence

The idea here is that, in various parts of the game world, these “planar” traits kick in, affecting the use of magic within their boundaries just as they would on other planes. Exactly why this happens can be for any reason the GM determines; it can be because of ancient magical accidents, certain planes being “closer” in certain spots, a divine blessing/curse, the lingering vestiges from the death of an arch-fey, or any other reason imaginable. The justification ultimately matters less than the consequences.

And those consequences are that there are certain areas where a combination of limited, impeded, and enhanced magic suppress certain types of spellcasting (and related magic items) and enhance others.

For example, suppose your campaign world has an arctic tundra called the Frozen Lands. When you get within five miles of its border, the impeded magic trait kicks in for all spells with the [fire] descriptor, forcing characters to make a Spellcraft check (d20 + the level of the spell) to successfully cast those spells. Once you cross the border proper, however, then things escalate, and suddenly you have to deal with the limited magic trait making it so that ONLY spells with the [cold] descriptor work! Even further in, the limited magic trait is complemented by the enhanced magic trait, giving [cold] spells the effects of the Empower Spell feat for free…which becomes the Maximize Spell feat once you reach the center of the Frozen Lands.

Creatively applied, this can lend a lot of color to your campaign world. Why don’t high-level druids just cast storm of vengeance on cities whose loggers don’t respect the woodlands? Maybe because metropolises have the limited magic trait against “primal” spells (i.e. spells and spell-like abilities cast by druids, rangers, and creatures of the fey type). Why is the heretical lich-lord still ruling his twisted country, but can’t seem to muster and invasion of the neighboring human kingdoms? Because his lands have impeded magic against all divine spells and the spell-like abilities of creatures of the outsider type.

While using magic traits in this manner can make for great world-building, be careful to keep in mind how “game-able” they are as well. Impeded magic usually has a narrower scope and can potentially be overcome with a skill check, whereas limited magic can be much broader and is a blanket restriction. Enhanced magic works for monsters and NPCs just as much as PCs. Make sure that you don’t send your party into an area where lots of their magic is negated and their enemies’ magic is enhanced unless you know they can handle it; there’s a reason why so few adventures take place in dead magic zones!

That said, judicious applications of magic traits can make your campaign world much more dynamic in how its supernatural heavy-hitters organize themselves, forcing the flavor text to work that much closer with the mechanics.

For a complementary change, also consider removing immunities in favor of resistances. That’s a bit more work, as it requires coming up with resistance values for all creatures with elemental immunities, but it solves other problems. A fire elementalist in an area where all fire spells are Maximized might be able to deal enough damage to overcome even a red dragon’s fire resistance!

(3.5/PF1) Wear and Tear for Armor and Shields

A while back, I was reading an article on a blog (I can’t recall which one) that was mulling the idea of making shields more disposable, in terms of having the damage they absorb come at the cost of their physical integrity. It was a fairly interesting proposal, and it got me thinking about how to implement that in the d20 System.

Of course, that quickly turned up how the d20 System already has the mechanics for that. After all, shields – and armor, for that matter – have hardness and hit points under the standard game rules. It’s having them take damage over the course of a fight that’s the issue. Aside from sunder attempts (which are often seen as a waste of an attack that should be directed against their wielder, even if you have the feat necessary to avoid an attack of opportunity for making the attempt; plus the idea that you’re destroying the gear you’ll take off your enemy’s corpse), there really isn’t any method whereby armor and shields suffer from wear and tear.

Now, it should be noted that for many players, that’s a feature rather than a bug. Even without getting into the idea of “why should martials have yet another strike against them, while casters are demigods in the making?”, there’s also the fact that checking for incidental damage done to objects over the course of a fight has the potential to slow down play. That’s a trade-off that a lot of players would rather not make.

The problem is that there isn’t really a system for those who would rather make that trade-off. So, this is a quick-and-dirty take on the idea of implementing “wear and tear rules” for armor and shields.

The Breakdown

For a quick(ish) way to check and see if a character’s armor/shield takes damage over the course of combat, the following system is used.

Step 1. If an attack roll fails to equal or exceed a character’s Armor Class, but would equal or exceed their touch AC, then the character’s armor/shield – if they have one – is potentially damaged.

For example, an enemy makes an attack against a griffon rider and the adjusted result of their roll is 19. That’s less than the griffon rider’s AC of 22, but more than their touch AC of 12. As a result, their armor or shield is potentially damaged.

Step 2. If the value by which the attack roll failed to hit the character’s total AC is less than their total shield bonus (i.e. including enhancement bonuses for magic shields, etc.), then the attack was stopped by the character’s shield. If the attack roll missed by an amount greater than the character’s total shield bonus, but equal or less than their total shield bonus and total armor bonus combined, then it was stopped by their armor.

The griffon rider has a total shield bonus of +3, thanks to having a masterwork heavy steel shield and the Shield Focus feat. Since their attacker’s roll was 19, three less than the griffon rider’s total AC, the attack was stopped by their shield. Since the griffon rider is wearing banded mail (armor bonus +7), if the attack roll had been from 12 to 18, it would have struck the griffon rider’s armor instead.

Step 3. Having determined that, roll the attack’s damage, and apply it to the armor or shield as appropriate. Remember to subtract the hardness value of the material the armor/shield is made from, and apply the rest to its hit points.

The attacker rolls 17 points of damage. A heavy steel shield has hardness 10 and 20 hit points. The hardness soaks up 10 points of damage, and the remaining 7 are dealt to the shield, leaving it with 13 hit points left.

That’s all there is to it. While it hasn’t been put through playtesting, my guess is that it goes faster in usage than it does on paper. That said, there are a few recommendations and reminders that I’d make when using this alternative rule:

• Consider making attack rolls and damage rolls at the same time. That way the damage total is there whether you hit the enemy or their protective gear.
• On the same token, make sure to have the hardness and hit points of your armor and shield written right there on your character sheet.
• Each “plus” of an enhancement bonus increases the hardness of armor/shields by 1 and adds +10 to their hit points. So a +3 heavy steel shield will have hardness 13 and 50 hit points.
• Remember that critical hits and precision damage (e.g. sneak attacks, etc.) don’t apply to inanimate objects, such as armor and shields.
• Likewise, don’t forget that energy damage (e.g. fire damage, acid damage, etc.) is usually halved before applying hardness to objects, unless the GM says that the object is highly vulnerable to a particular energy type. That won’t come into play most of the time, since most attacks that cause energy damage call for saving throws rather than attack rolls, but things like the flaming magic weapon property can potentially make this relevant.
• If playing Pathfinder 1E, remember that armor and shields which lose more than half their hit points gain the broken condition. This halves the AC bonus they provide, and doubles the armor check penalty for armor (but not for shields, strangely enough).
• Step 2, above, is the most complicated. Because of that, it might be tempting to say that any attack roll which is less than a character’s total AC, but equal or exceeds their touch AC, potentially damages their armor or shield. The problem with that is that there are numerous bonus types that apply to touch AC, such as deflection bonuses, luck bonuses, insight bonuses, etc. Having anything which hits touch AC potentially damage armor artificially inflates the potential for armor to be damaged.
• This system largely makes sundering obsolete. Consider allowing sunder attempts to be made by anyone without provoking an attack of opportunity, and allowing people with sunder-specific feats (e.g. Improved Sunder) to replace them with some other feat of their choice.

That’s the full range of it. If this sounds like something you think would work well in your game, consider combining this with the oft-forgotten rules for damaging cover and friendly fire. At that point you’ll be playing in a grittier, more lethal world, where characters will find their their protective gear will need to be maintained, lest it fail them at a crucial moment!

(3.5/PF1) Rings, Bling, and Other Things

Insofar as the d20 System goes, magic rings are perhaps one of the most obtrusive aspects of the game’s restrictions on how many magic items a PC can use.

That’s because it’s an area where the “body slot” system stops being intuitive. We don’t question the idea that a character can only wear one pair of boots, for example, nor that they can only have on one hat at a time. But rings? Most PCs have ten fingers, not to mention ten toes, two ears, a nose, etc. So why just two rings, beyond the idea of one for each hand (or less than that, if you’re playing a four-armed race)?

Part of it is a legacy restriction. In both 1^st and 2^nd Edition AD&D, PCs could only use two magic rings, and they had to not only be worn on the hands, but on opposite hands. Another part is that the restriction dovetails with the formalized limits that the body slot system imposes in exchange for the game rules making magic items easier for PCs to buy or make for themselves. And of course, being limited to only two rings makes it easier to record them on your character sheet.

Even so, it’s worth reviewing what the d20 System game rules actually say in this regard, to make sure that we’re assuming is in fact the case. So let’s perform a quick overview.

In the Magic Items On the Body section of the 3.5 SRD specifically says:

One ring on each hand (or two rings on one hand)

That parenthetical note is already more permissive than what the AD&D rules allowed for! Likewise, the section on Magic Rings specifically calls out what happens if you try to put on more than this:

A character can only effectively wear two magic rings. A third magic ring doesn’t work if the wearer is already wearing two magic rings.

Interestingly, while the Pathfinder 1E SRD maintains the word-for-word restriction about a third ring not working, its section on Magic Items on the Body is much more permissive than in 3.5:

Ring (up to two): rings.

This seems to indicate that you don’t need to wear magic rings on your fingers in Pathfinder 1E. However, contrast this with the first sentence under the Using Items section of the PF1 SRD:

To use a magic item, it must be activated, although sometimes activation simply means putting a ring on your finger.

Given that this seems like an example (“although sometimes”), you could argue that it’s not making a declarative statement that magic rings need to be worn on your fingers in Pathfinder. Clearly, that particular caveat being lifted from 3.5 and earlier versions of the game will need a GM ruling at each table, but it’s interesting to consider that Pathfinder is less restrictive in that regard.

Still, it keeps the single largest limitation, which has been there since the beginning: that a character use no more than two magic rings at a time.

Of course, as is typical of the d20 System, there are ways around even the most ironclad of restrictions.

For 3.5, the Extra Rings feat in the Eberron Campaign Setting allowed you to wear up to four magic rings at a time (specifying two on each hand). The hand of glory essentially lets you use your neck slot to wear another ring, along with using two minor spells once per day each, and a ten-ring sword is much the same. The meridian belt lets you wear four rings at once, but still only lets you benefit from two at a time, switching between which two are active as a swift action each round (notice that this Pathfinder item also includes the presumption that rings can normally only be worn on your hands). If you’re an epic-level 3.5 character, the Additional Magic Item Space feat will let you wear another ring, and can be taken multiple times.

Of course, there are other ways to gain the effect of multiple rings at once. For instance, you can take advantage of the rules for Adding New Abilities to an existing item to imbue a single ring with the power of multiple rings (the SRD even uses two magic rings as examples). Since rings normally take up a body slot, this means that all of the powers such a ring has (except the single most expensive) have a x1.5 multiplier to their base cost, so this can get expensive in a hurry (though the Magic Item Compendium has a list of “common item effects” which don’t have their costs increased when added to a body slot-using item in this way; Pathfinder technically doesn’t use this rule, though it’s worth considering as a house rule).

But if you’d prefer to actually wear multiple rings, instead of creating a single ring with multiple abilities, there’s one other alternative:

Double the ring’s price to remove its body slot limitation.

In both 3.5 and Pathfinder, the table for Estimating Magic Item Gold Piece Values notes that an item which normally takes up a body slot costs double the GP value if that limitation is removed. Presuming that you can treat this as an improvement that can be made after the item has been created (which seems entirely reasonable), this means that you can upgrade any magic ring to remove its body slot dependency…and so can wear as many as you want (and, for that matter, such a ring can be worn anywhere on your body).

This opens up a lot of possibilities, especially for magic rings whose base price is relatively cheap. An “unslotted” ring of feather falling, for instance, costs only 4,400 gp. In some cases, this is price is comparable to simply imbuing a “slotted” ring with another ring’s powers.

For example, the wizard Morios currently has three magic rings in his possession: a ring of invisibility (20,000 gp), a ring of mind shielding (8,000 gp), and a ring of feather falling (2,200 gp). He can’t use three rings at once, so he decides to sell the ring of feather falling, netting 1,100 gp for it as per the rule that magic items sell for one-half their market price. Not wanting to lose the effect even though the ring is gone, he then decides to add the functionality of a ring of feather falling to his ring of mind shielding.

Since the ring of feather falling is the less-expensive item, adding its power to his ring of mind shielding entails a x1.5 cost multiplier to the former’s price; since Morios doesn’t have the Forge Ring feat, he has to get someone else to do it, and so needs to pay 3,300 gp. Since he earned 1,100 gp from selling the ring of feather falling, adding that power to his ring of mind shielding has a net out-of-pocket cost of 2,200 gp…exactly what he would have paid if he’d wanted to make his ring of feather falling slotless by doubling its base price.

Presuming you have the money to spend, there’s no reason you can’t pay to “unslot” enough magic rings to the point where you can wear ten at once!

An interesting tangent from this is that magic items whose standard presentation presumes that they have no body slot – notwithstanding those that are held (e.g. magic weapons and shields, rod, staves, and wands) or are consumable (e.g. potions and scrolls) – can presumably have slotted versions created; these would have half the market price of the original (just don’t try this with magic armor; no GM would let you wear two suits of full plate!). Note that such an item needs to be made this way during its creation; the rules for improving magic items don’t let you introduce flaws or limitations that lower the cost of a completed item.

For instance, consider the following:

AJNAS

An ajna is an ioun stone which magically adheres to the user’s forehead rather than orbiting them. While worn, an ajna takes up a slot as per a headband. Attaching or removing an ajna is a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. Removing an ajna from an unwilling character is the same as stealing an item in combat (they’re considered to be “fastened” to a character due to the adhering magic). Ajnas are otherwise the same as ioun stones, having AC 24, 10 hit points, and hardness 5, with a market price equal to one-half an ioun stone of the same type. An ajna may be cracked or flawed, but cannot be used in conjunction with a wayfinder.

An example ajna is presented below, formatted for Pathfinder:

Ajna, Dark Blue Rhomboid

Aura strong varied; CL 12^th; Slot headband; Price 5,000 gp; Weight ––

DESCRIPTION

This stone grants the wearer the effects of the Alertness feat.

Cracked: This stone grants a +1 competence bonus on Perception and Sense Motive checks. Price: 200 gp.

Flawed: This stone grants a +2 competence bonus on Perception checks and a –1 penalty to initiative checks. Price: 150 gp.

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS

Feats Craft Wondrous Item; Special creator must be 12^th level; Cost 2,500 gp.

(3.5/PF1) Playing a Utility Mage, Introduction and Part I: Spell Categories

My current campaign, where I’m playing a magic-hating slayer (a PF1 class) with the witch killer archetype, is moving toward its conclusion. As a result, I’ve started to think about my next character, with a wizard being an appealing prospect. To that end, here are some general thoughts I’ve had on how to get the most out of a wizard PC who has an out-of-combat focus.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that character classes lend themselves to certain roles. While various builds, alternate class features, and Pathfinder-style archetypes can tweak what each class does best, the base versions have particular areas of focus where they tend to be most effective. For wizards, one such area is what I call “utility magic.”

To be sure, their broad selection of spells allows for wizards to fulfill a wide variety of specialties. Blaster mages, battlefield controllers, summoners, and many more are areas where wizards can excel, or at least serve as above-average practitioners (even if several of those areas have their own specialty classes with a tighter focus). But utility magic is an area where wizards truly shine.

But rather than jump the wand, let’s start off with a simple definition of exactly what utility magic – or rather, a “utility mage” – is:

A utility mage is a wizard who primarily uses their spells to solve out-of-combat problems that the party faces.

Now, that’s a fairly broad and unnuanced statement, and so requires clarification. For one thing, this doesn’t mean that a utility mage has no part to play when combat breaks out. They absolutely do! But it’s not their specialty, which means that they’re not going to be an unstoppable force of destruction on the battlefield. Taking huge chunks out of an enemy’s hit points is something best left to fighters, rogues, sorcerers, and similar classes; utility mages do their part, but they truly shine when the problem facing the group is one that can’t simply be cut down.

With that said, let’s take a look at how a utility mage can best prepare their spells for the challenges they’ll face.

SPELL CATEGORIES

Before we talk about how a utility mage should prepare their spells, it should be stressed that what’s below are guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. If you have a good idea of what your party will be facing in the near future, make sure to keep that in mind when readying your magical loadout for the day, adjusting the recommendations below as necessary. Flexibility is a utility mage’s greatest assets, so be sure to use it maximum effect when you know what you’ll be up against ahead of time.

Taking that into account, here are a few categories for how you should ready your spells each day:

Spells to Prepare: It’s self-evident that the spells you’ll want to actually prepare in your available spell slots are the ones you think there’s a high likelihood of needing to cast sometime over the next day. But you only have so many slots, which means getting the most you can out of the spells you’ve readied.

To that end, one of the most salient factors worth considering is the duration of a particular spell. Mage armor is an excellent choice here, because its hour-per-level duration means that once you have a few levels under your belt, it’s practically guaranteed to last for an entire adventuring day. Shield, by contrast, is much less likely to last as long as you need.

As a rule of thumb, any spell with a duration of 10 minutes per level should be considered here (taking into account the usefulness of the spell in question; if you’re adventuring in a temperate climate during the summer months, an endure elements spell won’t be very helpful, even if it does last for a long time). False life, resist energy, see invisibility; all are excellent choices that have the potential to last through the active part of an adventuring day, especially if you happen to have an Extend Spell metamagic rod handy.

There’s a second category of spells that you’ll also want to consider preparing here, but based on casting time rather than duration. Specifically, any spell which requires an immediate action to cast is something you’ll want to prepare, simply because there’s no other way to cast them in a timely manner. Feather fall, along with spells such as avoid planar effects (3.5), emergency force sphere (PF1), liberating command (PF1), or nerveskitter (3.5) are all spells you can’t put to their fullest use if you need to spend a move action drawing a scroll. Dedicate a spell slot to them so that you won’t wish you had later.

Spells to Leave a Slot Open For: A quirk of the d20 rules is that, if a preparatory spellcaster chooses to leave a spell slot open when preparing their spells for the day, they can fill it with a particular spell after fifteen minutes of study. You’ll want to take advantage of this for when an unexpected situation happens that requires a spell you haven’t prepped.

The general guideline here is to leave a single slot open at each spell level; if that’s too much, leave open a slot of the highest spell level you can cast, and one at every other level below that (remember, you can prepare a spell in a higher-level slot). That way, if it turns out that you need control water or stone shape, you can prepare them without having to wait an entire day.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with waiting an entire day if the party is in no rush. It won’t be that often that you’ll have fifteen minutes free to prepare a spell, but won’t be able to wait until tomorrow’s round of spell preparation. Even so, there are times when losing a day might make a difference; if the enemy army marches out the next morning, you won’t be able to wait a day to send an arcane eye into the commander’s tent to look over their plans.

While spells with niche effects are the go-to for this particular category, note that spells with long casting times also fit this designation very well. If you have ten minutes free to cast sending, then an extra fifteen minutes to prepare it usually won’t make that much of a difference. Ditto for fire trap, hallucinatory terrain, and major creation, among other spells.

Spells to Put in a Scroll: You know how wizards get Scribe Scroll for free? There’s a reason for that! Even if you trade that free feat away via an archetype or alternate class feature, make sure to take it via a feat slot as soon as you can; it’s that important!

Remember those niche spells we said probably weren’t worth preparing in a slot ahead of time? This is where they go! Something like water breathing doesn’t seem worth preparing at all when you’re about to venture down into a dungeon. But when the back room of the place turns out to open into a cavern with an underground lake, and some tentacled horror lurking in the water grabs the paladin and pulls him under, all of a sudden it’s one of the most important spells in your arsenal…and you can bet that he’s not going to be able to wait fifteen minutes for you to prep it in an open slot.

That’s really the perfect example for this category, because it encompasses spells which won’t be necessary ninety-nine percent of the time, but when they are needed, they’re needed right now! When your fighter fails his save against a medusa’s petrifying gaze, you need him back in the fight immediately, which is when it’s time to break out that scroll of stone to flesh you’ve been carrying around. The same can be said for using that scroll of remove curse you’ve been saving (since the cleric doesn’t usually prepare that spell) when the aboleth you’re fighting dominates the party’s barbarian.

That combination – immediacy and eccentric effect – is also why you shouldn’t bother putting spells with unusually short or notably long casting times on scrolls. The former (as noted previously) aren’t useful if you need to spend an action retrieving a scroll, while the latter can just be prepped into an open slot (since you already have the free time to cast them). That doesn’t even take into account that the PF1 rules specify that activating a scroll takes a standard action or the spell’s full casting time, whichever is longer, to boot. Since each scroll is a monetary investment on your part, make sure you’re putting your gp where it’ll do the most good.

Spells to Cast from a Wand or Staff: Remember that bit about a utility mage having a role to play in combat, even if it wasn’t where they excelled? This is what that was in reference to.

As exciting as it can be to imagine busting out a little-known spell that turns things around, there are going to be times when a fight is just a matter of wearing down the bad guys’ hit points before they wear down yours. To that end, you’ll want one or two good attack spells, an equal number of defensive spells, and a buff spell or two (all 4^th-level or below), all of which will be your go-to magic for when a fight breaks out. Those are what you’ll want to go into wands, or ideally a staff.

If that sounds boring, remember that these are your fallback options for when there’s nothing else you can do to contribute. Solving out-of-combat problems is important, but when a fight does break out, you don’t want to be the guy sitting there doing nothing because he prepped for all sorts of unusual contingencies but has nothing to do in a straightforward battle. Better a staff/small group of wands than using a sling or a light crossbow.

This might seem like a less-than-ideal proposition, given that wands tend to have poor caster levels and worse save DCs. A wand of fireball, for instance, is caster level 5; that means it only deals 5d6 damage, which is 17 points on average, and 8 if the bad guys make their Reflex saves…which they likely will, since the save DC is only 14.

The thing to remember here is that’s what “not being optimized for combat” looks like. Reliably dealing a small amount of damage each round, ideally to multiple enemies at once, is a respectable role to play, even if it’s not one that warrants the spotlight. If you do want to stand out a little more, however, consider asking the GM if you can pay to improve a wand’s caster level (as per the “adding new abilities” clause for creating magic items). The difference in cost of upgrading a CL 5 wand of fireball to, for instance, a CL 10 wand of fireball is easy to calculate (it simply doubles the price from 11,250 gp to 22,500 gp), and while that won’t change the save DC, it ups the damage dice and helps to deal with spell resistance. If you can’t upgrade an existing wand, then make sure your next one is built that way to begin with.

A final note with regard to wands with attack spells: you’ll want to have at least two, just in case you run into an enemy who’s immune to one damage type. You can’t hurt devils with a wand of fireball, for instance, so you’ll want to have a wand of lightning bolt just in case.

For defensive and buffing wands, you’ll either want to choose spells that are personal-only (such as shield) or affect multiple creatures (such as haste). Spells which can be cast on others, but only affect one person per casting (such as cat’s grace), are likely to be depleted in very short order if everyone wants those used on them before every fight. While wands are made to be used, burning through them faster than you can fund buying/making new ones is something you want to avoid. Even for spells with long durations (such as protection from energy), you’ll still expend a number of charges equal to the entire party at the beginning of the adventuring day, which can add up faster than you might think; better to prepare those long-duration spells in your slots, even if you need to do so multiple times over.

One trick that help with a defensive/buffing wand’s lifespan is to buy or make them with the Extend Spell metamagic feat built-in. That this can be done is established in Pathfinder via riffle scrolls (which are just normal scrolls whose spells have been modified by Silent Spell), and there shouldn’t be a problem with it in 3.5 either. Using Extend Spell in this way is often a money-saver.

For instance, a typical wand of haste is 11,250 gp, since its construction cost is 5 (caster level) x 3 (spell level) x 750 gp. A wand of extended haste (CL 7 x spell level 4 x 750 gp) is 21,000 gp. And yet the latter lasts for 14 rounds compare to the former’s 5, being almost triple the duration for less than double the price. It also affects seven characters instead of five, in case you have a larger party. For more savings, ask if the GM will let you upgrade the former into the latter (though you’ll either need to have taken Extend Spell or have a metamagic rod for that).

Now, the advantage of a staff is that you can combine all of these functions into one (if you’re worried about the theme of the staff, just say that it’s “battle”). Doing so has numerous advantages, the largest of which is that it saves on money. Consider the following example (for 3.5):

Morios, a utility mage, has a CL10 wand of fireball (22,500 gp), a CL 10 wand of lightning bolt (22,500 gp), a CL 7 wand of extended haste (21,000 gp), and a CL 3 wand of extended shield (4,500 gp). His total expenditures add up to 70,500 gp. Even if he crafts all of those himself, halving the prices, that’s still expensive! To cut down on costs, Morios decides to commission the crafting of a custom staff that has all of those spells.

Because staves can’t be crafted with a caster level of less than 8 (and there’s no reason to go higher, since they always function at their wielder’s caster level), and because Morios doesn’t want to have to expend two charges for any particular function, the costs are as follows:

• The extended haste (being a 4^th-level effect) costs 12,000 gp (caster level x spell level x 375 gp).
• The next-highest effect can be either of the 3^rd-level spells, so fireball is arbitrarily chosen, costing 6,750 gp (caster level x spell level x 281.25 gp).
• The remaining 3^rd-level spell, lightning bolt, only costs 4,500 gp (caster level x spell level x 187.5 gp).
• The final spell effect, a 2^nd-level extended shield, costs 3,000 gp (caster level x spell level x 187.5 gp).

That comes out to a grand total of 26,250 gp, barely more than the cost of his single most-expensive wand! Throw in that there’s no more wasting actions drawing and switching between wands, and that his staff will automatically use his caster level and ability score modifier to save DCs, and this is a much better option all around…or is it?

One thing to keep in mind here is that, as attractive as staves are, they have some hidden drawbacks. The big one being that you’re now drawing on a communal pool of charges for your spells. Before, Morios’s four wands had two hundred charges between them, with an average cost of 352.5 gp per charge. For his staff, he’s paying 525 gp per charge. Whether or not that’s worthwhile is a toss-up (you can’t assign a gp value to saving actions switching between wands, nor the ability to use your own caster level and ability score modifier for save DCs), but purely in terms of cost it’s a net loss, particularly since the charges will run out that much sooner.

And it’s worse for PF1-style staves. Their cost to create is higher, albeit only barely (the example staff listed above would cost 28,000 gp to purchase in PF1), but while their ability to be perpetually recharged for no monetary expenditure means that you save gp in the long run, their miniscule pool of only ten charges – and inability to regain more than one charge per day – means that you’ll expend them almost immediately if you use them as your go-to in battle, and then be stuck waiting for days to fully recharge them.

If you’re playing Pathfinder 1^st edition, and want to follow these guidelines for playing a utility mage, it’s probably better to eschew staves altogether in favor of wands.

Next time: Spells are a utility mage’s bread and butter, but they don’t get all that many for free, so we’ll look at various methods of spell acquisition.

Tweaking the Improved Familiar feat for Pathfinder 1E

The Improved Familiar feat is almost a microcosm of the evolution of d20 System options across its most notable RPGs.

In D&D 3.0, the feat didn’t exist under the Core Rules, premiering in the Tome and Blood supplement. D&D 3.5 saw it added to the Player’s Handbook (as well as the SRD), and while it had a few expansions here and there (such as in Dragon #331, which allowed a PC to take the feat and gain an additional ability in exchange for keeping their existing familiar), Pathfinder 1E made its expanded list of improved familiars Open Game Content (just like the rest of the system), making its options much easier to collate.

One thing that’s worth noting, however, is that the Improved Familiar feat doesn’t always require you to take a new familiar in place of your old one. It’s entirely possible for you to take a standard familiar with a template (originally that was only celestial or fiendish, but more possibilities were added over time). While that can be a different creature altogether, there’s no reason to think that this can’t be the same familiar you’ve had up until now, imbued with planar energies that “upgrade” it to a planar being.

Taking that idea further, why not allow for the Improved Familiar feat to augment your familiar in other ways as well? Likewise, why do those template require such strict alignments on behalf of the familiar’s master? It makes sense that you need to be good-aligned to have a familiar with the celestial template, but limiting it to Neutral Good feels too restrictive. Clearly, some tweaking is needed.

To that end, here are my suggestions for alternative options (in addition to simply selecting a more powerful creature) for what Improved Familiar can do:

Upon taking the Improved Familiar feat, if you are at least 3rd level or higher in the class that grants a familiar, you may apply one of the following templates to it (with your alignment requirements as noted):

Advanced, aerial, aqueous, celestial (any good), counterpoised (any neutral), cthonic, dark, entropic (any chaotic), fey-touched, fiendish (any evil), fiery, giant, primordial, resolute (any lawful).

Any abilities which are dependent on Hit Dice use either the familiar’s Hit Dice, or your levels in the class that grants you a familiar, whichever is higher.

Special: If you have a subtype corresponding to a particular template noted above (e.g. the Good subtype for the celestial template, the Aquatic or Water subtype for the aqueous template, etc.), have a familiar, and have at least 3 or more Hit Dice, you receive Improved Familiar as a bonus feat, but only to grant the corresponding template. If you have more than one subtype, you may pick which corresponding template to apply to your familiar; once made, this choice cannot be changed.

At the GM’s option, a template with a Challenge Rating adjustment of +1 or less other than the ones above may be granted to your familiar upon taking this feat.

This allows for a much greater degree of customization, along with a greater range of who can select the various aligned templates for their familiar. Likewise, the special notation allows for characters from alien realms to have a templated familiar without costing them a feat (since otherwise it would be odd to consider, for instance, an efreeti wizard might have to carefully protect a non-elemental familiar on the Plane of Fire until he could earn another feat slot). We’ve also left the possibility open for a different template to be applied if there’s one that’s not on this list but would otherwise be appropriate.

Hopefully this makes your familiar feel a little more new.

Changes, Tweaks, and Other House Rules

One of the primary features of tabletop RPG games is that they’re inherently “hackable.” While house rules predate RPGs by a very long time – just look at various twists people have come up with for Monopoly, or even simple poker for that matter – the expansive (and quite often rules-heavy) nature of role-playing games means that there’s a greater variety of areas where players can alter things to better suit their tastes. While I’m sure there are some tables out there which keep everything by-the-book standard, my guess is that they’re in the minority by far.

To that end, here are five house rules (albeit comparatively modest ones) that my current group has introduced for our Pathfinder 1E campaign.

#1: Multiplying damage on a critical hit

We’d instituted this house rule before we even knew it was a house rule. You see, if you look at the various weapon tables, you’ll see that under the “Critical” column, they all have a multiplier listed; either x2, x3, or rarely, x4. So we took those literally, deciding that upon a successful critical hit, you totaled your damage (minus sources that used their own dice, such as sneak attack) and multiplied them by the listed amount. So if you dealt 12 damage with your greataxe on a critical, you inflicted 36 points of damage on an enemy. Seems obvious, right?

Except, as it turns out, that’s not how it works.

If you read the actual text regarding critical hits, it says “A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together.” While it describes that as being a “multiplier” in the very next sentence, this is clearly a form of shorthand, much like the x2, x3 and x4 notations in the weapon tables’ Critical columns. So confirming a critical with a greataxe means rolling that d12 three times, adding your damage bonuses to each roll, and then totaling them up.

Given how this adds extra rolls to the process, slowing things down (e.g. the person playing the greataxe-wielding character probably doesn’t have 3d12 on hand in case of a critical), we weren’t too keen on it. There was also the fact that the official method made criticals less exciting. Once a critical hit is confirmed, the possibility of rolling the maximum value on the die is one that makes us all hold our breaths; that possibility is distinctly minimized when multiple dice are rolled, and the decrease in tension is one we were all very keenly aware of. For those reasons, we decided to keep doing it the way we had been, and we’ve yet to look back.

#2: Draw anything when moving (even just 5 feet)

The clause about drawing a weapon as a free action while moving (albeit only if you have at least a +1 Base Attack Bonus, which all martial characters had as of 1st level, and everyone else did after that) is one that we all found fairly easy to keep in mind from the get-go.

What we tended to overlook, however, was that this only worked with regard to a “regular move.” While not rigorously clarified, that phrase probably means “taking a move action to actually move” across the battlemat, as opposed to charging, running, or taking a 5-foot step. But my group overlooked this fairly early on, and so it quickly became a regular feature where we’d draw weapons while doing any of those things.

But while that was an unintentional reinterpretation of the rule on our part, we were far more deliberate about expanding what could be drawn beyond weapons. Simply put, the fact that you could draw a weapon – any kind of weapon, from a dagger sized for a halfling to a greataxe larger than your half-orc barbarian – as a free action while moving, but not any other kind of item, damaged our sense of verisimilitude. Was a wand really that much harder to draw than a shortsword? Is a potion more difficult to manipulate than a whip?

Ultimately, we couldn’t countenance such an artificial distinction, particularly when it was so punishing with regard to the game’s action economy. So now, moving any distance for any reason (unless the movement is involuntary, such as if you’re being bull rushed), allows you to draw an item kept on your person.

#3: No more Heighten Spell feat

Heighten Spell is a feat that we’ve done away with completely in our game. The reason for doing so isn’t because we don’t care for what it does, but because what it does shouldn’t be locked behind a feat to begin with. If you’re casting a spell via a slot that’s higher than the spell’s actual level, you’re already taking a drawback (since there are presumably spells appropriate to the slot being expended that would be more powerful/useful). So allowing for the spell’s DC to be adjusted according to the new slot, without requiring a feat to make that happen, seems like the least that can be done.

There are several other reasons for this change, most of which are comparatively minor in scope, but collectively make for a compelling point. For instance, Heighten Spell is a metamagic feat, which means that whenever a spontaneous spellcaster uses it to cast a spell with a casting time of 1 standard action now has to take a full-round action, punishing them further. It’s not like they can avoid this with a magic item either, since there is no metamagic rod of Heighten Spell. And of course, having the spell function as per the slot used to cast it without requiring Heighten Spell makes it a little easier to get through a globe of invulnerability, keeping spellcasters a little more relevant when that spell comes into play.

#4: Activating (most) magic weapon properties is a free action

If you take a look at the “Activation” entry in the overview for magic weapons, you’ll see that those weapons with properties that need to be deliberately initiated (as opposed to providing a passive bonus of some sort) require a standard action on their wielder’s part to do so.

This is far, far too high of a cost under the game’s action economy.

Since you only get one standard action in a combat round, and making a single attack is itself a standard action, this means you’re essentially losing an attack in order to activate your weapon’s flaming property. And if your weapon has the shock property in addition to being flaming, you’re now using TWO standard actions – essentially, giving up two combat rounds – in order to get the benefit of both properties. And if you’re dual-wielding a pair of flaming shock weapons, well…you might as well not even bother entering combat.

The above is why we’ve house ruled all such weapons to need only a free action to activate or deactivate. Doing so stops punishing characters for choosing particular properties (and also eliminates instances of people leaving their weapon properties active in perpetuity, claiming that just because they’re magic they won’t set anything on fire when put in a sheathe or laid down across a bedroll; I really hate that entire idea).

That said, this rule isn’t completely universal. If a weapon property grants the weapon the ability to act on its own (such as dancing weapons), then activating it still requires a standard action, since otherwise it’s essentially granting the wielder an extra action when invoked, as opposed to not wasting the single action they would otherwise have put to better use.

#5: Certain magical properties don’t cost extra when added to existing magic items

This one’s a little arcane (pun intended), so bear with me.

If you recall the 3.5 Magic Item Compendium, you might remember that there was a small-but-significant adjustment to the rules for creating magic items at the end of the book’s sixth chapter. While written in a fairly discursive manner, it dealt with the little-known rule for adding new abilities to extant magic items, quietly eliminating the x1.5 multiplier for certain “common effects.”

Most (but not all) of these effects were related to the “Big Six” of magic items; specifically, there was no longer a cost multiplier associated with adding armor, deflection, or natural armor bonuses to AC, resistance bonuses to saving throws, enhancement bonuses to ability scores, or energy resistance onto an existing magic item. This freed up a few thousand gp here and there for PCs to be able to afford magic items that were less mechanically helpful but were far more evocative in what they did. (From a narrative standpoint, I like to think that these effects simply “take” to being built into items easier than others, and that explains why they don’t cost as much to add into existing magic items.)

Unfortunately, coming so late in the life-cycle of 3.5, this rule never got added to the SRD, and so was never incorporated into Pathfinder 1E. But since it’s so easy to institute, we had no trouble implementing it anyway, and found that it helped to diversify our magic items in a way that the MiC’s designers no doubt hoped.

What house rules have you added to your tabletop RPG campaigns? Sound off in the comments below!

Variations on a Theme

One of the more notable aspects of the d20 System (i.e. D&D 3.X and Pathfinder 1E) is how much magic item creation is not only formularized, but put into the hands of the PCs.

Earlier editions still allowed PCs to make magic items, of course, but the process was not only much more arduous in terms of what was required, but the actual ingredients involved were left up to the GM to determine. So if you wanted to create a wand of fire, the GM would come up with whatever list of fire-themed materials they felt was appropriate, at which point it was then up to the PCs to track down, purchase, steal, or otherwise acquire the necessary components, at which point the spellcaster(s) would need to undergo the lengthy process of constructing the item they wanted. And even then, there was no guarantee that it would turn out precisely the way they’d envisioned.

In the d20 System, once you take the relevant item creation feats, it’s simply a matter of expending the necessary time and money (and XP in D&D 3.X), along with an (easily-passed) skill check or two. In fact, in Pathfinder you don’t even need the prerequisite spells to make (most) magic items, simply raising the skill DC for each one missing instead! Doing so allows characters to not only tailor their gear to an unprecedented degree, but also allows for potentially unlimited variations on a theme.

To that end, here are a few variant magic items that take advantage of this flexibility to fill a few gaps among the magic items found in the Core Rules.

BRACERS OF MARKSMANSHIP, GREATER

Aura moderate transmutation; CL 8^th

Slot wrists; Price 25,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

These wristbands function as greater bracers of archery, but with crossbows (including wrist launchers, but not ballista or other siege weapons) instead of bows.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Magic Arms and Armor, crafter must be proficient with a crossbow; Cost 12,500 gp

BRACERS OF MARKSMANSHIP, LESSER

Aura faint transmutation; CL 4^th

Slot wrists; Price 5,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

These wristbands function as lesser bracers of archery, but with crossbows (including wrist launchers, but not ballista or other siege weapons) instead of bows.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Magic Arms and Armor, crafter must be proficient with a crossbow; Cost 2,500 gp

BRACERS OF SHARPSHOOTING, GREATER

Aura moderate transmutation; CL 8^th

Slot wrists; Price 25,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

These wristbands function as greater bracers of archery, but with firearms (not including cannons or other siege weapons) instead of bows.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Magic Arms and Armor, crafter must be proficient with firearms; Cost 12,500 gp

BRACERS OF SHARPSHOOTING, LESSER

Aura faint transmutation; CL 4^th

Slot wrists; Price 5,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

These wristbands function as lesser bracers of archery, but with firearms (not including cannons or other siege weapons) instead of bows.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Magic Arms and Armor, crafter must be proficient with firearms; Cost 2,500 gp

Given that bows are already the optimal ranged weapons in most games, there’s no reason why a magic item that makes them even more potent can’t be reskinned in service to less-common choices of distance-fighting weaponry.

ELIXIR OF CLIMBING

Aura faint transmutation; CL 5^th

Slot none; Price 250 gp; Weight ––

DESCRIPTION

Imbibing this liquid grants the drinker an uncanny knack for scaling difficult surfaces (+10 competence bonus on Climb checks for 1 hour).

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, spider climb; Cost 125 gp

Given that there are elixirs that provide an hour-long +10 competence bonus for all of the other physical skills, such as Acrobatics, Perception, Stealth, and Swim, this one rounds out the gap in coverage.

GLOVES OF NIMBLENESS

Aura faint transmutation; CL 5^th

Slot hands; Price 4,500 gp; Weight ––

DESCRIPTION

These leather gloves grant the wearer a +3 competence bonus on Dexterity-based checks. Both gloves must be worn for the magic to be effective.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, cat’s grace; Cost 2,250 gp

This is essentially a circlet of persuasion, except keyed to a different ability score and set in a different body slot. The choice of Dexterity for this item was because of the number of skills that ability affects, which (under the Pathfinder rules) is seven: Acrobatics, Disable Device, Escape Artist, Fly, Ride, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth. Charisma affects the same number – Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Perform, and Use Magic Device – so long as you count Perform as only being one skill.

HELPFUL HAVERSACK

Aura moderate conjuration; CL 9^th

Slot none; Price 6,000 gp; Weight 20 lbs.

DESCRIPTION

This backpack functions as per a handy haversack, save that its side pouches each have the storage capacity of a minor bag of holding and the central portion can hold as much as a type I bag of holding. Regardless of how much is stored in it, the backpack only ever weighs 20 pounds.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, secret chest; Cost 3,000 gp

The benefit of a handy haversack isn’t that you can retrieve items faster than you could from a bag of holding (which is more spacious in what it can contain), but that it allows you to do so without drawing an attack of opportunity. Given how that’s far more important to most players than staying under their encumbrance limit (when they pay attention to that limit at all), it’s something of a surprise that improved haversacks like the one above aren’t more common.

INCENSE OF REFLECTION

Aura faint enchantment; CL 5^th

Slot none; Price 3,200 gp; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

This small rectangular block of sweet-smelling incense is visually indistinguishable from nonmagical incense until lit. When it is burned, the special fragrance and pearly hued smoke of this special incense are recognizable by anyone making a DC 15 Spellcraft check.

When a divine spellcaster lights a block of incense of reflection and then spends 8 hours praying and meditating nearby, the incense enables him to either prepare all his spells (if a preparatory spellcaster), or use each of his spell slots (if a spontaneous spellcaster), as though affected by the Empower Spell feat. However, all the spells prepared in this way are at their normal level, not at two levels higher (as with the regular metamagic feat).

Divine spellcasters who are able to use other types of spellcasting do not gain any benefit for their non-divine spells from incense of reflection.

Each block of incense burns for 8 hours, and the effects persist for 24 hours.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Empower Spell, bless; Cost 1,600 gp.

A scaled-back version of incense of meditation, this item has some additional text added to cover gaps and ambiguities that the original item doesn’t address, such as spontaneous divine casters and multiclass characters.

IRONGLAZE

Aura faint transmutation; CL 5^th

Slot none; Price 250 gp; Weight ––

DESCRIPTION

This gummy substance is a deep red in color, and can be applied to a weapon as a standard action. It gives the weapon the properties of cold iron for 1 hour, replacing the properties of any other special material it might have. One vial coats a single melee weapon or 20 units of ammunition.

CONSTRUCTION

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item; Cost 125 gp

While various types of weapon blanch have become the go-to for most groups that need a quick way to overcome material-based damage reduction, silversheen remains viable, despite being more expensive, thanks to its longer duration. As such, there’s no real reason why there couldn’t be a cold iron version as well (whereas an adamantine version could potentially bring up issues of bypassing the hardness of other objects).

These are just a few potential variants; even overlooking the possibility of completely original items (or simply combining the properties of various items), there are many more possibilities. A horn of law/chaos really isn’t that different from a horn of goodness/evil. Neither is a cube of heat resistance much of a change from a cube of frost resistance. Or scale up your boots of teleportation to boots of greater teleportation.

When it comes to magic, there’s no reason to stick to the standard stuff.

More Blood of the Coven: Moon Hags and Lunar Changelings

As a tweaked version of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, the first edition of the Pathfinder RPG built on its predecessor’s strengths. However, it also shored up many of its predecessor’s weaknesses. One of the ways it did this was by continuing to provide supporting material for new PC races and classes after they were introduced, ensuring that they wouldn’t miss out on new developments over the life of the game.

However, over the course of a decade it was inevitable that some things would fall through the cracks.

One instance of this was seen in Blood of the Coven, a supplement for the Pathfinder Player Companion line that was released in late 2017. The book focused heavily (though not exclusively) on changelings, the daughters of hags that had initially debuted – as both a monster and a PC race – in Pathfinder Adventure Path #43: The Haunting of Harrowstone in early 2011.

One of the expanded options presented in Blood of the Coven was that there were subraces of changelings based around what type of hag their mother was, with each having a slight twist on a few of their racial traits. Given that there were ten different types of hags across the myriad Pathfinder products, all of which were referenced there, it allowed for quite a few different options to be presented in an impressive display of comprehensiveness.

Except that it didn’t stay comprehensive, at least not completely. While Blood of the Coven made sure to reference esoteric hags from far-flung products, such as dreamthief hags from the Occult Bestiary, or ash hags from the Cheliax, The Infernal Empire sourcebook, it couldn’t reference products that hadn’t come out yet. That meant that when the moon hag debuted in Planar Adventures just over eight months later, changelings born of such creatures didn’t have the same set of options as others of their kind.

Now, to be fair, the moon hag entry does provide basic information on changelings specific to them. They just don’t get the half-page of expanded information that other kinds of changelings received in Blood of the Coven. So the oversight was an altogether minor one.

Still, it’s a shame that changelings of moon hag parentage won’t get that same expanded write-up, as Pathfinder has since moved on to a second edition. But tabletop RPGs have always had a do-it-yourself element to them, particularly where house rules and homebrewed content are concerned. So in that spirit, here’s my take on an expanded presentation of moon hag changelings, following the format in Blood of the Coven:

MOON-BORN CHANGELING (LUNAR MAY)

Willowy and pale-skinned, lunar mays are among the least outgoing of their kind. Suspicious and slow to trust, they’re unforgiving toward anything they regard as threats to themselves, often lashing out at perceived danger preemptively.

Moon-Born Changeling

Ancestry Moon hag (Planar Adventures 242)

Typical Alignment CN

Ability Modifiers +2 Wis, +2 Cha, -2 Con

Hag Racial Trait Moon-born changelings gain a +1 insight bonus to their AC but take a -2 penalty on Will saves. If a moon is visible, the bonus and penalty each increase by 1.

Cautious to the point of paranoia, anxiety is the hallmark of lunar mays. Considerations of potential hazards and worst-case scenarios come easily to them, and they’re frequently unable to ignore these persistent worries, to the point of dreaming up elaborate (and usually impractical) responses to imagined situations. Oftentimes, they’re driven to proactively neutralize that which frightens them, which can range from clandestine attempts at manipulation to outright murder.

While lunar mays are as likely as other changelings to be heterochromatic (i.e. each eye having a different color), many also suffer from subconjunctival hemorrhages, where blood fills their sclera, turning the white part of their eyes red. While harmless, this often happens during moments of peak fear, anger, or other emotional extremes, in some cases being so intense that the ocular bleeding overflows, causing them to cry tears of blood. Rarely, the hemorrhaging becomes permanent, leaving the lunar may with sclera that are perpetually reddened.

Between their persistent anxiety and the reactions that their ocular peculiarities provoke, most lunar mays grow up to be socially maladjusted. Many develop persecution complexes, and comfort themselves with fantasies about being exiled fey princesses, wayward daughters of deities, or reincarnations of ancient personages of power. For many, finding out the truth about their parentage is a source of more stress than their already-strained psyches can bear, leading to madness that serves to catalyze their transformation into moon hags.

AWAKENED HAG HERITAGE

You have a 10% chance of negating a critical hit or precision-based damage (such as a rogue’s sneak attack), taking normal damage instead. This stacks with similar abilities, such as armor with the fortification property.

Moon Hag Coven Powers

One additional bit of information that wasn’t present in the moon hag monster entry was what spells (or rather, spell-like abilities) they contributed when they joined a coven. This was something that had been present in previous entries for new hags, such as storm hags and winter hags, making its omission there slightly more egregious. As such, let’s go ahead and make an entry for them also, as per the list on page 13 of Blood of the Coven:

Moon Hag: confusion, phantasmal revenge, primal regression, phobia.