Our magic item rules (page 284) reward PCs who acquire multiple items but penalize PCs who try to use more items than their level. Deciding how close the PCs end up to their max items is partially a question of campaign style and partly a question of power level.
We prefer it when characters are hungry for more magic rather than feeling like they are close to full. We suggest that the optimal number of magic items for a character is somewhere between half the character’s level and the character’s level. If there’s 50% to 75% chance that a character gains a new magic item over the course of a full level, that’s good by us.
Items and necessity: As you will see in Chapter 9, adventurer-tier items frequently give +1 bonuses to various stats, champion-tier items give a +2 bonus, and epic-tier items give a +3 bonus. Up at epic tier, PCs who don’t have at least a champion-tier weapon to attack with and champion-tier magic armor to protect them may have a rough time of it.
Some GMs hate that type of highly-recommended upgrading of magic. We think it’s part of the heritage of our dungeon-crawling game, but we’re also perfectly happy if GMs who don’t want to deal with item ramp-up simply give characters the bonuses they could be due at each tier.
We designed the game so that magic items are fun to interact with, and so that changes and upgrades in items are an interesting part of the story instead of resembling online shopping. If you’re a GM who wants a low-magic game or if you are okay with magic item powers but don’t want to track bonuses, give the PCs the bonuses to begin with. But don’t give them bonuses to ALL the chakras, because that would be soft.
The full monty-haul: Our magic items have not been scientifically balanced. It’s art. A truly well-equipped champion- or epic-tier adventurer party, pushed all the way to the limit of their item allowance, could be capable of handling standard battles a bit more easily than you’d like. If you get the feeling that the PCs’ magic items are kicking your campaign’s ass, give the monsters reinforcements.
Magic item mortality: We keep magic item acquisition dialed a bit more to the high side, partly because we like the icon relationship items, partly because it’s entertaining to bring in new magic item quirks, and partly because we also find ways of making terrible things happen to characters’ existing items. Since magic items are in some sense alive, they can die. Like NPC allies, magic items aren’t a necessary part of a character.
We’re mostly all grown-ups, but even so this type of item-slaughter comes along with an implicit promise: if the story of the game is eliminating some of a PC’s magic items, they’ll get something else soon enough.
Our solution is to allow ritual casting of any spell known by a character who can use ritual magic. Clerics and wizards learn ritual magic as part of their training. Other spellcasters can learn ritual magic by taking the Ritual Casting feat (page 44).
As a rule, ritual casting is an elaborate sequence of magical actions. The usual process and complication of a ritual comes across something like a combination of staging a puppet show (where the puppets are magical servitors) and cooking a five-course meal (where the final product is a desired magical effect).
To cast a spell as a ritual:
• Choose the spell that will be used and expended by the ritual.
• Tell the GM what you are trying to accomplish and gather ingredients for the ritual that feel right or that the GM tells you are necessary. This can turn into a mini-adventure in itself if the GM or player wants to take the story in that direction.
• Spend 1d4 minutes/quarter-hours/hours preparing and casting the ritual. You can’t cast other spells during this period. A PC taking damage won’t necessarily end the ritual, but it will be ruined if a character falls unconscious or launches an attack of their own. Note that we’re not telling you exactly which time period you should use because we think that pace varies greatly campaign-by-campaign. Some rituals feel right taking hours. Others seem like they could be accomplished in minutes. The important thing is that rituals ordinarily can’t be cast during combat, or if they are, it’s a very dicey proposition as enemies try to take out the caster before the ritual is complete.
• Make a skill check using one of your magical backgrounds and the ability score the GM deems appropriate. Use the standard DC targets (or a special DC set by the GM), depending on your tier and the results you’re hoping for. The higher the level of the spell consumed by the ritual, the greater the effect.
Determining results: Choose outcomes that seem like logical (or magical!) outgrowths of the spell’s normal effects.
The effects don’t have to play within the usual constraints of the magic system, and they don’t have to be taken as a precedent for future rituals. Performing a magic ritual once actually makes it less likely that the same caster can perform the same ritual for the same effect again, because the world builds resistance to being broken. That’s how we play it, anyway, since we think that great magicians like the Archmage and Priestess are more limited in what they can accomplish with mighty magic than it would first appear. Examples of some ritual effects appear below.
Failure means life gets interesting: As usual, use the fail forward mechanic: most rituals “work,” but failure may get you results you had not properly bargained for such as side effects that send the story careening in a direction no one intended, complications with spirits that aided in the ritual but fail to disperse when the ritual is done, and coming to the attention of enemy spellcasters who note the disturbance of a partially-botched ritual as a disturbance in the aether.
Rituals expend the spell: No matter what outcome the ritual has, ritual casting expends the spell until your next full heal-up.
My favorite way of eliminating an item is as a favor to desperate PCs. If they’re facing a horrible defeat or a sickening death, it’s possible that one of their magic items might be able to turn the tide—the item’s selfless sacrifice could provide another reroll or one final desperate attack. If successful, the PC cherishes the memory of the item that sacrificed itself. And maybe even the item’s quirk.
RITUALS
Most spells available to clerics, sorcerers, and wizards are either combat spells or useful in combat. But our vision of the world is that many spellcasters use magic outside of combat for varied effects that aren’t properly handled by a literal reading of the spell lists.
Faster rituals: The High Arcana talent of the wizard allows you to cast a ritual in a matter of rounds instead of minutes. The elaborate preparations of normal rituals aren’t used during fast high arcana rituals, but they should still require some type of component and unusual elaboration. Note that ritual casting in combat doesn’t usually let you make a combat spell into an even better combat spell. Rituals aren’t meant to be used to blast enemies into smithereens, though one could imagine a ritual aimed at a tower or a magic portal—destruction is an option. But not the type of destruction that occurs during a battle.
Summary: Use the spells already in the PCs’ arsenals as the basis of free-form magic that accomplishes non-combat effects. Part of the fun is setting the scene and explaining the ritual in the context of the world’s magic; don’t stint on your special effects budget.
Example ritual 1: The PCs acquire a fearsome bow created by the Diabolist. Simply carrying the bow threatens to overwhelm the rogue who has no intention of using it. No NPC with an ounce of good-intention is willing to take the risk of disposing of the bow.
So the wizard improvises a magic item destruction ritual using acid arrow, the perfect spell for disintegrating a demonic bow.
Example ritual 2: Two of the PCs have been thrown in irons and dragged into a gladiatorial pit that serves one of Axis’ arenas.
The PCs actually want to be there, but they need their weapons and armor, which will enable them to accomplish their mission in the arena instead of the gladiators’ weapons that are designed to get them killed. So the group’s wizard uses a sleep ritual on the guards watching their gear so that the rogue can sneak the PCs’ real weapons to them, while the ritual casting bard executes a glamor ritual to hide the switch. The plan is a lot of trouble, perhaps, but when it’s time to assassinate an archduke in the arena, two spells is a small price for creating such a set up.