With the rules from the previous post in mind, I tried at my hand at coming up with some ingredient lists for a selection of items.
| Item name | Rarity | GP value (book) | Common resources | Uncommon resources | Rare resources | Very rare resources | Legendary resources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Potion of healing | Common | 3 units of common water, 3 units of common healthy mineral | |||||
| Shield | Common | 10 gp | 3 units of common wood, durable; 2 units of common metal, durable | ||||
| Potion of supreme healing | Very rare | 3 units of uncommon water, healthy | 2 units of of rare mineral, healthy | 4 units of very rare mineral, healthy | |||
| Slippers of spider climbing | Uncommon | 2 units of common cloth, durable; 2 units of common leather, airy | 3 units of uncommon silk, flexible |
Some decisions did not flow naturally from the system, and some raised additional questions. For example, while I know a very rare item needs a very rare ingredient, how much should I use? And should the other ingredients be common, or uncommon? And if I decide on a ‘unit’ of water, can I reasonably avoid players from having their character hoard such water once they find a source?
Overall, it worked quite easily, but I think it’s good to have an additional guideline. Going forward, for a legendary item, most of the ingredients should be legendary. The remainder of the ingredients should mostly be very rare, etc. This constrains the choices a lot. Let’s walk through the Potion of Supreme Healing
This item is very rare and magical. That means it requires the base 5 ingredients, plus 4 due to rarity and magical nature. That’s nine ingredients, most of which need to be very rare. So that’s 5 very rare ingredients. The remainder is 4, most of which need to be rare. So that’s 3 rare resources. The remaining resource needs to be uncommon. Given these rules, we can now write out the rarity of ingredients for any magic item.
| Magic item rarity | Common ingredients | Uncommon ingredients | Rare ingredients | Very rare ingredients | Legendary ingredients |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 6 | ||||
| Uncommon | 3 | 4 | |||
| Rare | 1 | 2 | 5 | ||
| Very rare | 1 | 3 | 5 | ||
| Legendary | 1 | 3 | 6 |
For non-magical items, it is even easier. They always need five resources, meaning three resources of the rarity of the item and two resources of a rarity level below that.
Just to emphasize: ingredient type choices are not logically constrained by this system, and I don’t think they should be. I like the idea of having healthy minerals in healthy water, but if a player would suggest using 5 very rare healthy mushrooms in 3 rare units of healthy oil in one unit of uncommon, aetherial water — well, that would be just fine. But: it’s important to establish a recipe beforehand if a player wants his PC to go out gathering these resources herself!
In fact, I would say there are two ways for a PC to arrive at a crafting recipe:
- Choosing ingredients according to the aforementioned rules. It is up to the DM whether the proposed recipe works.
- Buying a recipe from an artisan.
A remaining question then is what the monetary value of ingredients and recipes is. This is something for the next blog post.