Joshua Blackletter ask me to fix
"The part where wizards can't invent spells or brew potions without sitting in their tower for months while everyone else adventures."
Obviously to professionally make professional reliable magical items requires time, dedication , specialised equipment and rare ingredients.
HOWEVER your players are playing dangerous fucking idiots. If wizards were drug manufacturers they would be the idiots making shake and bake meth in the toilets of k-mart after being arrested for shoplifting. They would be alcoholics eating shoe polish on toast. They would be cutting no-doze with broken glass and trying to get the k out of dead animals in the vet's freezer.
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So with the prioritizing Safety, Repeatability, Predictability , and Quality control allll the way below "As soon as possible" and "Dunno with this monster dick I found I guess?" the following school of magical item creation exists:
-Combine or process dangerous garbage in a way that puts you physically at risk or at least severely inconvenienced
-have it activated by spending the session under some kind of taboo , or "hard mode challenge" or the thing that would seem appropriate for a child's folkmagic or hideous degrading bet
-have a number of spells or spell points held in reserve for the entire session = to roughly the items level of effect x 3.
-earn a "reasonable and typical" amount of exp for the session. No hiding at home.
(The player should come up the particulars and the d.m can add any caveats or extra details to make it appropriately difficult).
Fucking this up means rolling on some magical fuck up table.
If you want a roll at the end of this ; do a double stat check with the stat that seems the most appropriate to the method (Dex for keeping rabbits in your hat the whole time with no-one learning about it, Con for drinking every unidentified fluid encountered that session).
If both checks succeed : the item is created. If one succeeds the item is created with some seriously side effect, if neither succeed it can work once but with a dangerous magic side effect. If either fumble it blows up in your face.
TABLE OF EXAMPLE METHODS
1. A sword+1 : make a sword yourself in half a hour out of fresh ingredients and use it in the session to inflict a total damage = to your max hitpoints. Even if this works the sword will require constant mundane and magical maintenance because you can barely make a sharp stick in half a hour
2. Healing potion : you can't hurt or kill anything in this session and lick any wound made in your presence. You must drink all the ingredients (troll blood, herb teas, pure alcholol) and retain any piss as this is the potion.
3. A flying ointment: you must not touch the ground this session. At the end of the session you must jump off something real high and then roll to see if it works.
4. Protective garments: You must find someone to convince that the garment you are trying to enchant actually works now and sell it to them. And then steal it back.
5. Something fire related: Something on you must be on fire this whole session. You may not put out any fires without the enchantment process failing.
6. Something divining: you must learn everything animate and larger than a cat's name that you encounter this session.
7. Shapechange: Disguise yourself as another animal and fool everyone not you companions. If someone sees through your bluff killing them and eating their eyes might prevent the magic from fucking up
8. Movement: You must be only covered in "freeing" substances this whole session. I.e lard and not be locked, trapped or contained
This is seriously the best murderhoboish stuff ever
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