House Cannith has an enclave devoted solely to wand production. This facility is equipped with tools that amplify the Mark of Making and channel planar energies; the artisans also have access to a vast array of exotic woods and materials. You can also create a wand, but you’re starting from scratch and creating the tools you need. Essentially, when House Cannith creates magic items, it’s using factories; while your artificer is the equivalent of the tinkerer working in the garage. You can create magic items, and you can potentially create items that House Cannith can’t make… but it’s going to take you more time and gold than it takes for them. Here’s an overview of the process.
The Schema. The first step in creating a magic item is to acquire a schema for it. This is the equivalent of a recipe or a blueprint; it explains the process and components required to create the item. If you can obtain a schema—from House Cannith, the mystical library of Arcanix, the collection of an experienced artificer—you’re ready to move on. Otherwise, you can create a schema, but this takes time and skill. An arcane spellcaster uses Arcana to create schema. A divine caster uses Religion, while a druid or ranger relies on Nature. You must have a minimum skill bonus—your proficiency bonus plus your ability score bonus—in order to develop a schema. You must maintain the minimum skill bonus for the duration of your work, so an effect that increases an ability score for a few minutes won’t help you.
Schema Creation Requirements
| Item Rarity |
Work Weeks |
Minimum Skill |
| Common |
3 days |
+2 |
| Uncommon |
1 |
+4 |
| Rare |
3 |
+6 |
| Very Rare |
8 |
+8 |
| Legendary |
16 |
+10 |
This ability to develop a schema represents remarkable talent. It could take House Cannith years or decades to develop a particular schema; the fact that you can accomplish this in weeks reflects the idea that player characters are innovators. However, it is always up to the DM to decide if you can create a particular schema. The DM can always choose to exclude a particular magic item from a campaign.
Rare Components. Any magic item requires specialized materials — Eberron dragonshards, rare woods or metals, exotic herbs or other substances. While exotic, these things can be purchased or obtained in any major city. But creating a magic item from scratch often requires rarer components that can’t simply be purchased. You might need a flower from Thelanis, a feather from a couatl, or the scale of a dragon. More often than not, such this will require an adventure. You may not have to kill something to obtain what you need, but you’ll surely have to overcome a challenge. The Magic Item Ingredients table suggests how difficult that challenge could be.
Magic Item Ingredients
| Item Rarity |
CR Range |
| Common |
1-3 |
| Uncommon |
4-8 |
| Rare |
9-12 |
| Very Rare |
13-18 |
| Legendary |
19+ |
It’s possible to find a rare component even when you’re not looking for one. You could discover an exotic Khyber crystal in the ruins of an artificer’s workshop. Time and study could yield suggestions as to what items could be made with the component; for example, that Khyber shard could be used to create an iron flask or dimensional shackles.
Creation. Once you have your schema and any rare components, you’re ready to begin. The DM can assign skills or tools that are required for this act of creation, so that it requires both proficiency and access to these tools. You must pay the basic costs of materials and services required to make the item. And you must spend a significant amount of time working on it; creating a legendary item can take a year of effort!
Magic Item Crafting Time and Cost
| Item Rarity |
Work Weeks |
Cost* |
| Common |
1 |
50 gp |
| Uncommon |
2 |
200 gp |
| Rare |
10 |
2,000 gp |
| Very Rare |
25 |
20,000 gp |
| Legendary |
40 |
100,000 gp |
* Halved for a consumable item
The Magic Item Crafting Time and Cost table provides a basic framework, but various factors could reduce time or cost. Eberron dragonshards are a significant amount of the cost of materials. A remarkable dragonshard could reduce the cost of creating an item by 10 percent. A planar convergence could reduce the time or cost required to make an item with an effect tied to that plane. Ultimately, this is a story, and there are exceptions to every rule.
Complications. These rules for magic item creation are derived from the system presented in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. This also offers the idea that the creation of a magic item is a complex procedure and that complications can arise. If you use this rule, there’s a 10 percent chance of a complication arising for every five workweeks spent on crafting the item. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything presents a number of possible complications.
