Crafting Overview

In brief, here’s how characters craft items using these rules:

1. Learn the Recipe. The player characters must first find the Recipe for the magic item they want to create, which identifies its properties and the Components needed. T he Recipe also details the types of monsters from which the Components must be harvested. Permanent items, such as weapons and armor, require between four and ten Components, while consumables, like potions and scrolls, only need two or three.

2. Harvest the Components. After the player characters defeat a monster, they can spend ten minutes to Harvest and preserve Components from the corpse. This process must be completed quickly after a monster dies, otherwise the Component's innate magic fades. The Game Master describes what Components are available, and then each player character may choose to harvest one Component (regardless of how many foes were defeated). This abstractly represents how Components can be damaged in battle, ruined by harvesting, or of insufficient quality for crafting.

3. Locate a Workshop. Once the required Components are collected, the characters must bring them to a suitable Workshop to build the item. Workshops have a rarity that corresponds to the magic items which may be produced there. Uncommon or Rare Workshops may be found in great cities, whereas Very Rare and Legendary Workshops are only found in fantastic locations with powerful magical phenomena present, such as magma forges deep in the heart of the earth and arcane laboratories constructed along extraplanar rifts.

4. Construct the Item. The characters spend one day working at the Workshop to combine the Components, and their new magic item is complete!

Component and Workshop Rarity

Components and Workshops have a rarity, which correspond to the rarity of the magic item made with them. For exam ple, an Uncommon magic item typically calls for Uncommon Components and must be created at an Uncommon workshop. T his rarity also provides a rough gauge for what level characters should be able to craft the item. T he rarity of harvested Components are based on the mon ster’s Challenge Rating. Unless otherwise specified, a compo nent’s rarity is defined by the Component Rarity table.

The rarity of the Components and workshop used in crafting always determine the highest rarity item they can produce. You can use higher rarity Components and Workshops to produce lower rarity items. For example, if a recipe calls for an Uncom mon part, such as monster blood, a character may substitute Rare monster blood to fill the requirements of the Recipe.

How Often Do Characters Craft an Item?

Assuming that the player characters face about 4 to 8 combat encounters per character level against non-humanoid foes over the course of an entire campaign, each player character can craft the following quantities of permanent magic items:

• 3–4 Uncommon
• 2–3 Rare
• 1–2 Very Rare
• 1 Legendary

These numbers are approximate but are provided to offer a baseline set of expectations which you can adjust accordingly based on how many magic items you wish your player char acters to possess. Characters may craft many more Common magic items, as well as many consumable magic items (potions and scrolls) of all rarities.

We recommend adjusting the amount of treasure found in your campaign when you use these rules. Characters should find about half as many magic items as they normally would, since they’ll be crafting their own instead.