My group recently made a number of changes to our characters in our current campaign. We switched up to use the automatic bonus progression and therefore changed the way equipment works with it. Only having magic items that provided fun and cool powers instead of all of those stat bumps. While toying around with items to drop and looking at my own PC, I was reminded of my conversion of Materia from Final Fantasy VII to Pathfinder. It splits the magical properties of weapons, armor, and shields in a way that allows characters to have their favorite gear, and yet power it up as they progress. No more trading in after every boss.
Craft Materia (Item Creation)
You can create materia, a form of crystal used to enhance equipment, and the slots you use to attach them to equipment.
Prereq: Craft (jewelry) 5 ranks, craft magic arms and armor
Benefit: You can create materia, a type of gem that attaches to weapons, armor, or shields. Creating materia takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in the price of its magical features (which does not include the price of the gem). To create materia you must use up raw materials costing half of this total price.
Additionally, you can create the materia slots that bind materia to equipment. Adding a materia slot to an item is the same cost as adding the masterwork quality to an item, except that it can be done after the item is created, and the item must already be masterwork. Items may have up to three slots (GM’s may limit slots for smaller items), but can only have one of each type of materia at a time. Adding materia to (or removing materia from) a slot is a full-round action that provokes an attack of opportunity.
The two types of materia are “plussed” abilities (keen, flaming) and “priced” abilities (glamered, shadow). In all cases, you must provide the gem to be enchanted, each with a value explained below. The gem’s value is not included in the crafting cost above.
“Plussed” materia: The gem must be worth at least 1,000 gp per plus to be added to it, minimum 1,000 gp. Plussed materia cannot be attached to a magic item with “plusses” or “plussed” bonuses.
”Priced” materia: The gem must be worth at least 100 gp per 1,000 gp of the total “priced” value, minimum 100 gp. Priced materia can be attached to a magic weapon, as long but having the same ability twice does not provide any extra benefit.
You may reuse materia by grinding up old materia as an additional component for a new one. You can add the old abilities to the new and just pay the difference between the old gem’s abilities and the resulting new gem’s abilities. You can also recreate or reuse broken materia, if it is one that you could make. Doing so is performed like reusing a gem, except that you lose the weakest or cheapest ability (chosen randomly if multiple have the same value).
At the GM’s discretion, many natural gemstones have an elemental affinity that can be harnessed in materia slots. Some examples: (red) ruby has fire, (blue) sapphire has cold, (green) emerald has acid, (clear) diamond has sonic, (yellow) topaz has electricity. Gems worth at least 1,000 gp provide weapons with +1 energy damage per 1,000 gp on a crit. When coupled with a “plussed” gem that has the same elemental affinity (flaming + ruby), the energy damage is on all attacks, and this extra damage doubles on a crit. In all cases, during a crit, the gem has a chance to crack equal to the amount of elemental damage it caused. A cracked gem loses this affinity. Gems cannot be coupled with materia that have an elemental ability different than their own.
See magic item creation rules for more information.
