D&D 3rd edition introduced a well-defined process for creating magic items. It seemed like a good idea – lots of folks wanted something beyond the ask-your-DM-and-prepare-to-quest-like-crazy-to-make-a-shield+3 guidelines of 1st and 2nd edition, and I was certainly among them. Too bad none of us – players or designers – anticipated the effects of the standardized system we wanted or got: magic items being taken for granted (because they could almost all be produced reliably), severe disruptions to the way people played the game (because certain items could be produced quite cheaply, thus altering assumptions about the power available to characters, parties, and NPCs), and mundane wealth being devalued (because both could be acquired with gold, any mundane object was just some fraction of a more powerful or directly useful magic item). So we probably want to dump the 3E item creation rules. But that still leaves us wanting some sort of replacement. What form should that take?

There are a lot of ways you could go here, anywhere from trying to use the Crafting rules to make an item of the appropriate value and declaring that the value is in the magic (this is good for having Dwarves produce magic swords both because it doesn’t require them to have any spellcasting ability and because it’ll take forever to make anything), or you can adopt use something like Benjamin Baugh’s B/X Magic-User Tweaks, but those of those are better suited for creating permanent items that require some basic investment. Also, they tend to create a proliferation of magic wealth over time. We want a basic system that allows low-level characters to get some basic potions, scrolls, or other consumable items out there without worrying about them producing the things indefinitely. We’d also like a system that allows the local hedge mage to produce some items they can sell the characters without raising questions like “why can’t the PCs just pick this up as a business model”?

So here’s the idea: a character has an Enchantment Pool equal to their caster level + the attribute modifier for that class’s spellcasting; multiclassed characters have a separate Enchantment pool for each class (so a Cleric 3/Wizard 5 with Wisdom 12 and Int 17 has a Clerical Enchantment Pool of 3 + 1 = 4, and a Wizardly Enchantment Pool of 5 + 3 = 8).

1. Putting a single use of a spell into an item costs enchantment points equal to its spell level + 1 (so a cantrip or orison requires 1 Enchantment point, a 3rd level spell requires 4, etc.)
2. Enchantment Points can only be used to place a spell from the same class’s spell list into an item (so in the above example, Clerical Enchantment Points can’t be used to help make a scroll of Fireball)
3. This process can only place a spell into an item if the creator could cast it (though the DM might permit metamagicked versions of otherwise-castable spells)
4. Placing a spell into an item should require some time and monetary cost (as a starting point consider 1 day and 10 GP per Enchantment Point placed in the item)
5. The caster does not regain Enchantment Points placed into an item until one of the following happens
   1. The spell is used (note that the attempt to activate the spell is when the points leave the item and become available to the caster again, regardless of how long the spell itself lasts or even if it’s successfully activated)
   2. The item bearing the enchantment is destroyed
   3. The enchantment expires, based on the expiration terms its creator set. These can be based on a time or on external conditions the item could note if it had the creator’s senses – which means it’s tricky at best to set up remote deactivation. Most creators set up some sort of time limits (“until sunrise”, “the next full moon after I give this to somebody”, “when touched by sunlight” – a Drow favorite, etc.). Note that expiration terms are per-enchantment, so a ring could contain both an Invisibility spell which will expire if unused in 3 days and a Feather Fall spell that could last a month or a season or whatever.

The key to this is that a very limited pool of Enchantment Points are tied up in the item and can’t be recovered, which means nobody can create a large number of these items and would-be enchanters are much less inclined to make high-power items if they can avoid it. And even if they do they’re likely to place some sort of expiration terms on the enchantment. The expiration terms means that players have an incentive to use consumable items rather than hoarding them, – items will just expire (perhaps even “going bad” in the case of ingested items like potions or enchanted foodstuffs) sooner or later.

The downside is the need to track expiration terms for consumable enchantments the PCs find. We probably need to work on a table to randomly determine “typical” expiration terms. For now, though (and in a pinch) use the following guideline: if characters don’t know what would cause an enchantment to expire, have the enchantment itself roll a saving throw when they attempt to use it (against DC 16, with a bonus equal to the points invested in that enchantment); if the save succeeds something has happened that caused the enchantment to expire before being used. This is because more powerful enchantments will tend to have stricter terms on them. Of course if characters know or research the terms in advance they can try to avoid these expiration conditions…