One, Two, Many

Charged Magic Items

Charged miscellaneous magic items, back in the AD&D DMG, range from one charge (various items) to 80 (a Chime of Opening). They can appear one item at a time or in groups of up to 50 (Dust of Disappearance and its lookalikes). Populating treasure tables, and placing treasure in adventures, benefits from having a diversity of item values; a given effect could be 1,000gp for a single charge, a common item, or 80,000gp for 80 charges of the same spell, a very rare item, so deciding what kind of items exist on the treasure tables one uses has impact on how often they show up, if using ‘Heroic’ rarity-based treasure tables like ACKS II. On non-heroic tables, you have the same flexibility shown AD&D and many classic games- you can have cheap items appear on their own, or in large batches as a single result, depending how variable you want the value of a (usually pretty valuable) random miscellaneous item to be.

But why can items that are made as a single charge be found in large quantities? This question is raised after playing a game with pretty standard treasure tables, in which our party found a few dozen packets of Dust of Disappearance. Now, said dust comes in neat little packets, so we distributed it around so that each person in the party had 1-3 uses of it. But if found magic items are the remains of prior adventurers, we’d expect dust and similar items to be found in low or singular quantities, not in stashes equivalent in value to one permanent item. I’d rather manually tweak results when appropriate, having ‘clumps’ among the common/uncommon treasure found when circumstances warrant it, than have such clumps appear by default on the rare/very rare tables and never have packets of dust, candles, etc be found alone. I’ve also considered adjusted tables that allot some percent chance to simply roll on the table for the rarity below and find ~2d4 of the item rolled; ie a ‘rare miscellaneous item’ can end up being 6 of the same uncommon item.

I’m interested in the question of when it makes sense to make single or low-charge items, vs making an item with many charges. This is mostly a question of which you do for the same total cost, as the obvious scenario of ‘I only expect to use this once’ leads to making single charge items as needed. some other thoughts follow.

Reasons to make single/low-charge items:

• Keep a more flexible schedule around other campaign activities, due to quicker production time per unit.

• Have a lower cost per unit. No need to wait until you have 20,000gp of ogre skulls to be able to make a 10-charge item, you can make something every 2,000gp worth of skulls as they come in. It’s also often easier to sell smaller item piecemeal than wait for a buyer on a big item, and smaller items are more convenient for grinding up and using as special components on a new project.

• Higher success rate in item creation. After making one item, you now have a formula to make more. Most item production is from formula already, but anyone making a new kind of charged item has this incentive to go small, rather than make one big roll for a new item and risk failure.

• Gain the ability to spread out capacity to equip a larger group. You can have flight, or invisibility, or higher damage, etc, for everyone, at the discretion of those people as to when to use it.

• Mitigate risk. If the one guy who has the wand of water breathing (10 charges left) gets burned to death, the party has no water breathing capacity. If instead the party has 10 single-use baubles of water breathing, 9 remain.

Reasons to make multi/high-charge items:

• Lower encumbrance. Carrying one item is less encumbrance than carrying multiple items. Any character who would want to be carrying multiple charges of an effect, with a low chance of wanting to split them between different carriers, will benefit from carrying a single multi-charge item instead.

• Lower risk when working with esoteric spells. If 10 charges of an esoteric spell are needed, with a mishap occurring on a 1-3 on the d20 magic research roll, making a single item has a 15% chance of a mishap, while making 10 separate items has an 80.3% chance of at least one mishap.

• Greater control can be kept over the resulting item. Smaller items end up divided out among the party, a single big item the mage can easier justify retaining himself.

• Higher capacity on single users. This is perhaps more relevant in items like a Scarab of Life, with protective effects, than on items used proactively.

Many of the reasons to make low-charge items apply to potions, and are why even a spellcaster of 9th level or higher, able to make miscellaneous items, will typically still make a potion for a spell meant to apply to a creature, as the item formula for such items should circulate more commonly with how many 5th level and higher casters are making such items. As such, dusts and candles and other disposable miscellaneous items will have a tendency to have other effects not allowed to potions: summoning, walls, area-of-effect spells of all kinds, etc. High-charge items, once past a certain charge count, are often best made as implements, to get the corresponding boost to caster level. Below is an example miscellaneous single-charge item. Easily found on its own, though one could imagine it being found in significant quantities.

Beguiling Biscuit

Base Cost 1,000gp: Single charge Bewitch Beast 2^nd level effect. Apparent Value: 2sp.

This soft, round, golden brown biscuit is an inch and half across, never rotting or growing stale. Offering the biscuit to a living animal target within 90’ and speaking a gentle enticement in any language will bewitch the target unless it succeeds on an Implements saving throw, as the spell bewitch beast. A bewitched target will slowly approach, taking and eating the offered biscuit; on a successful saving throw, the biscuit will split down the middle, thereafter non-magical. Whether magical or not, the biscuit tastes amazing to any animal regardless of typical diet, but tastes only bland and slightly sweet to any other living creature.