Custom Equipment

Item Attunement Rules

Item Enchantments

Obtaining and Manipulating Item Enchantments

Tinkerer’s Workshop

Item Prefixes

Custom Equipment is a blanket term referring to any item, including weapons, armor, and magic items, that have been modified by features added in Legends of Kern such that they are no longer vanilla. Most notably, these items can modified to include a prefix that places an adjective in front of the item's name and grants it different roguelike effects, and the other being enchantments derived from spell scrolls can be applied to certain items as well to allow the character attuned to it to cast that spell under certain conditions.

Any player character can attune to a maximum of 3 items at a time, with the exception of receiving an Attunement Tattoo, which increases the maximum number of attunement slots that character has by 1.

In this setting, all magical items require attunement, but this is counteracted by the strengths that those items provide. Generally speaking, a magic item can have a maximum number of three enchantments, unless that item was already a named magic item that received enchantments at a later point. For example, a player might receive a Vorpal Sword in the form of a rapier that they can place enchantments onto. Because of the properties of the Vorpal Sword, this makes it a fundamentally different item from a regular rapier with enchantments.

An Item Enchantment is a loosely-defining term to describe magical properties or abilities enabled by the magic inside of a Simple Weapon, Martial Weapon, or piece of Armor. (For the sake of consistency, ‘Armor’ also includes clothing items like robes, boots, shirts, rings, etc.)

Item Enchantments are most commonly a magic spell no higher than 5^th level, and it can include cantrips. The most common method of obtaining an item with enchantments is by buying them from the Traveling Merchant or obtaining them as random loot from fishing or dungeons. This means that you could have a sword or piece of armor that lets you cast 1 to 3 different spells at least once per long rest, which is decided by the DM.

For example, if you have a Martial Weapon that is enchanted with the Fire Bolt cantrip, you may cast that cantrip whenever you want; but if that weapon contained the 3^rd level spell Fireball instead, that would be a case for casting that spell only once per day and at 3^rd level only if it is cast using the sword.

Item Enchantments also dictate the weapon’s bonus to attack rolls and damage, and conversely, a piece of armor’s bonus to armor class. For example, if you have a Dagger that contains three enchantments, that dagger is now a +3; if it contains two, it is a +2; and only one makes it a +1, and a piece of Armor with three enchantments grants a +3 to armor class on top of the base, and so on.

In their raw form, Item Enchantments are Spell Scrolls. Any Spell Scroll lower than 6^th level can be applied to an item to enchant it, thus making it a magical item.

Any character who passes an Intelligence (Arcana) check using a Tinkerer’s Workshop can add an enchantment to their gear. On a failure, the enchantment is lost. Artificers and Wizards gain a natural advantage on this check, and the check must be passed for each enchantment desired to be added to the item.

If an Item Enchantment is removed from a piece of gear, that enchantment can be applied to a different piece of gear immediately, or the enchanter can decide to copy it to a spell scroll to save it for later. If neither of these options are taken, the enchantment fades away and ceases to exist.

Copying an enchantment to a spell scroll works in the same way a Wizard would copy a spell to their spellbook; that is, it costs gold pieces for the fine papers and inks necessary to store the spell, as well as time for stabilizing and accurately copying it onto a scroll.

This means that if the Traveling Merchant, chest loot, or fishing loot contains an Item Enchantment desired by the players, they can remove that enchantment to place onto their existing gear.

The table below dictates what Intelligence (Arcana) check must be passed in order to place an enchantment onto an item. The enchantments are added sequentially; therefore, the first enchantment is easier to do than the second, and so on, and the higher the level the enchantment is, the harder the difficulty check is overall.

For example, let’s say we want to enchant a longsword with the following spells: Telekinesis, Haste, and Fire Bolt. To do this most optimally, we would start with the 5^th-level spell Telekinesis. Because it is the first spell being added to the longsword, we only need to pass a DC 15 Arcana check. Next is the 3^rd-level spell Haste. Because it is the 2^nd enchantment being added, the DC we need to pass is 14. Finally, we will add the Cantrip Fire Bolt and only need to pass a DC 10. If the enchantments were added in the reverse order, it would require a DC 25 Arcana check to add Telekinesis to the sword as the 3^rd and last enchantment added to the item.

Removing an enchantment from an item does not require any Arcana check and only requires gold, even if the enchantment is being copied to a spell scroll.

Additionally, item enchantments can NOT be applied to artifacts or Legendary items, such as the Darkheart or Glove of Power.

The Tinkerer’s Workshops can be found all over the world. They are owned by classes of wizards who are able to create them, and they appear as large, smooth, mounted stones that quietly hum. Interacting with them causes the stones to produce large, blue tendrils that allow the user to manipulate enchantments on items.

The stones weigh 15,000 pounds and are usually fixed to a structure somewhere on a wizard’s property. Some of them charge money for the players to use it, but unlike blacksmiths with their reforge feature, the workshop only charges a single-session admission fee that may range in value depending on the party’s level and reputation.

Certain workshop owners can be Charisma checked into letting the players in for free or at a discounted price.

Cantrip

To make items and equipment feel even more unique, the prefix system combines a random adjective along with up to 3 additional perks for a player character to reap. The perks are varied, and there are good and bad ones; this is done to make sure that certain items might be fantastic on some characters and terrible on others.

Each prefix is unique, meaning that even though there may be two items that share the same adjective, they are virtually guaranteed to have different perks. Once a prefix is added to an item, it becomes permanent, unless the players pay the blacksmith to remove the prefix, thus reverting it back to a regular item. Individual perks cannot be added or removed like Item Enchantments can.

To reforge an item, a player must first locate an appropriate blacksmith to do so. Blacksmiths typically only specialize in one type of item, meaning that a blacksmith may only be able to reforge melee weapons, but not armor or ranged weapons. Certain blacksmiths may perform all three types of reforge. The cost to reforge an item varies depending on its’ rarity:

Rarity	Cost
Remove Prefix	5 G
Common	10 G
Uncommon	20 G
Rare	50 G
Very Rare	150 G
Legendary	500 G

Legendary items may receive prefixes, but not Item Enchantments.

Certain perks may only stack once, which is up to the DM. For example, if a character has two pieces of armor that each receive a Prefix perk that allows them to take an additional action during combat, that character may only be granted one additional action and not two.

Blacksmiths do not work for free. Because this is still D&D, a player can theoretically become proficient in smithing and learn how to reforge items on their own, thus bypassing the need to pay someone else to do it. Additionally, a blacksmith might work for free if the players agree to help him. This would mainly look like running an errand for the blacksmith, like obtaining and delivering some rare metals or new equipment. Alternatively, they may be able to bypass the need to pay by passing any of the following checks once per day:

Skill	Difficulty Check	On a Success…	On a Failure…
Deception	25	Varies.	The player is banned from that blacksmith’s shop.
Intimidation	25	The blacksmith will work for free for the next 24 hours.	The blacksmith and their employees could become hostile; they might inform the authorities; and/or the players are banned from the shop.
Persuasion	20	The blacksmith will perform up to 3 reforges for free.	The blacksmith declines the player’s offer.