College of Material Magicks
Adapted from an article by Roy Cram
At this college you will learn the arcane arts of preparing magical items. There is not much new in the way of spells to learn, but many alchemical skills and artistic crafts must be mastered. There are
three specific categories of material magicks: Scrolls, Potions, and Charged Items.
A wizard must be at least Third Level to attend this college. The tuition is 3000 gp; the seminar requires twelve full week of intense study and an L1 IQ SR is required to pass.
Scrolls
Scrolls are very expensive and not always reliable (unless demon skin is used). They are, however, the safest way to store spells. They are only usable by the mage who prepared them, unless specific allowances are made during the scroll's ensorcellment. Even then, only wizards and rogues can activate them.
Material requirements:
All scrolls must be written on specially prepared skins with special inks. The type of skin used affects the scroll's chances of success. When a wizard or rogue attempts to use a scroll, they roll 2d6; if they roll beneath the success number given below, the scroll has failed and is wasted.
Skin Type | Success for Wizard | Success for Rogues | Cost of Skin and Preperation (in GP) |
Lamb | 6+ | 8+ | 5 |
Human | 5+ | 7+ | 200 |
High Elf or Troll | 4+ | 6+ | 300 |
Dragon | 3+ | 5+ | 600 |
Demon | +2 | +4 | 1200 |
These skins must be removed and ensorcelled within three days of the "donor's" death.
Pens used to inscribe the scroll must be plucked from a harpy, roc, griffin or similar flying creature with a mystical nature. The ink is usually prepared from mummy bones and demon or fairy (best) or
dragon (acceptable) blood. A pulverized gem of at least 10 gp value per level of spell must be included in the mixture.
Preparing a Scroll:
Enscrolling a spell requires the use of the another special spell. This spell is given to graduates of the college as their departing gift.
Scrollspell (cost special)
The strength cost of this spell is equal to the cost of the spell being inscribed plus one point per level of that spell.
It takes one hour per spell level to inscribe a scroll, and at the end of that time, the wizard must make an IQ SR at the level of the spell. If the roll is failed, the scroll and all materials used in its preparation are ruined. A completed scroll is actually a poem of sorts, which should evoke the imagery of the spell effect.
Casting a Scroll:
Reading a scroll is not a quick process; the caster cannot be doing anything else or moving about in any manner. It takes about ten seconds per spell level to read off the entire scroll. Once the scroll is read, it either works or it doesn't, and then the magic is gone and the materials are useless.
Potions & Powders
These can be used by anyone and are consistent in their effects. However, all potions and powders, etc., will have some side-effects, usually due to the noxious chemicals used. The side-effects vary,
but will remain the same for each potion type prepared by the same wizard. Also, for each batch prepared, roll 2d6; on a snake-eyes, the magical effect is crocked (reversed or otherwise perverted).
For each type of potion (which may actually take the form of a powder, unguent, tincture, salve, suppository, whatever), suitable materials must be used to absorb the appropriate magical energies.
The first step is to create an ordinary item -- a tea, a graphite powder, a lard balm, etc. To this mundane base must be added a small amount of sulfur and garlic, and finally the special ingredient.
This special ingredient may be anything -- indeed it may be different from one batch to the next -- but the GM must agree that it is somehow germaine to the spell's effect. Once the preparation is complete, the Wizard need only cast the desired spell into the potion. Finally, player and GM must agree on suitable side-effects. If the special ingredient is very rare or valuable, the side-effects will be
less disruptive.
Below are some examples of successful preparations and their side-effects.
Cateyes Drops 75 gp/dose
The special ingredient is the eyes of an owl or cat. While using this preparation, the person cannot endure bright light, and may suffer temporary blindness afterwards (L1 CON SR to avoid). If the eyes of a black panther are used, blindess will never result.
Healing Feeling Elixir 400 gp/dose
The special ingredient is mummy dust. The disease will be cured but the patient will undergo violent convulsions and will have to held down to prevent injury; he will lose about half his hit points in the process anyway (these will be recovered normally). If the dust is freshly scraped off of a "living" mummy, the convulsions will be gentle and will only incapacitate the patient for 15 minutes.
Too-Bad Toxin Potion 280 gp/dose
The special ingredient is stems from the Destroying Angel mushroom. The toxins are driven out of the system through excretion, and the patient will become quite poisonous himself for the next d6 hours. If instead of a mushroom, venom sacs from a winged viper are used, the patient will not become poisonous, but will feel quite ill for about an hour.
Double-Double Drops 700 gp/dose
The special ingredient is blowfish scales. It will double a wizard's IQ, a warrior's ST, or a Rogue's LK for 5 turns, then halve it for another 5 turns. After all this is over, most imbibers will suffer random fits of nausea for the next 24 hours. If giant's blood is used as the special ingredient, there is no nausea, but the halved attribute lasts for ten minutes.
Mixing and overdosing:
When two potions are mixed together the results are entirely unpredictable -- the practice is not recommended. Using more than one dose of even the same potion at a time can also be quite dangerous. The effects may cancel or even multiply each other, and the side-effects are bound to be memorable.
Charged Items
Charged items include rods, wands, rings, talismans, teacups or whatever pleases the creator's imagination. They are reliable and not usually dangerous. They can only be used by their creator unless specific allowances are made during the object's creation. If such is the case, they may be used by anyone who knows or can discover the key (gesture, word, thought, trigger button, etc.), but tend to be rather volatile and prone to accidental triggering.
Creating such an item requires a suitable receptacle, as for potions. Almost any item can be used, but it must be of high quality and fine workmanship. Once prepared, this object will then absorb a single spell type only, but may hold up to (2d6 minus the spell level) charges, but always at least one. Once used, the item cannot be recharged, so all spells that it can hold must be cast into it at its
creation, within one 24 hour period. Casting a spell for absorption by the item will actually cost 50% more mana points than normal. Some example of successful items are:
Gem of Brightness
a 120 gp value imperial topaz that holds 10 Will-o-Wisp spells.
Knock-Knocker
a finely wrought cudgel covered in silver filigree, about 85 gp value. It holds 5 Knock- Knock spells, but will explode if used against a barrier sealed by a Lock-tight spell.
Rock-a-Bye Rod
A silver and copper rod of 700 gp value. It holds 3 Rock-a-Bye spells.
Other ideas include Dum-Dum blackjacks, Wind Whistle bottles, Zombie-Zonk bracelets, Breaker- Breaker shields and Smog bellows.
As mentioned before, any item that has been keyed to be usable by people other than the creator tend to be volatile. If any such item is dropped or roughly handled there is always a 1 in 6 chance that
it will spontaneously discharge.
True Enchantments:
A regular charged item may be turned into a semi-permanent enchanted object whose spell will repeatedly or continually function. Such an item must be made of truly special materials (they must somehow correspond to the spell effect and be valued at 500 gp per spell level), then charged as normal, then have the spell Some Enchanted Item cast upon it (this is a level 5 spell, available for purchase from the college at a cost of 2500 gp). The mana cost of this spell equals three times the cost of the spell being enchanted. The exact parameters of the item are up to the GM; and despite all the preparations, it is still a "regular" magical construct and is subject to dispelling and unmagicking in all the regular ways.
Really fabulous enchanted items such as Flaming Holy Swords, and Amulets of Invincibility verus Whatsits, etc., are made by demigods, not mortal wizards.
This college is a simplified version of the original system by Roy Cram which appeared in Sorcerer's Apprentice # 15.