Fixing Relics Forever with the new Cleric Feats

[merrychase]

Fixing Relics Forever with new Cleric Feats

Consider: From the Wiki, "Utilizing the new Cleric feats in order to create, improve, and expand upon their relic, players will gain access to many mechanical benefits."

Issue: Currently, creating relics requires time and effort from DMs, whether these items are stocked in stores IG for purchase or given to characters directly. Balance and variety for all present and future dieties/faiths is a non-trivial and on-going consideration.

Additionally, there are four new cleric feats related to relics and a new skill category: Sacrifice, Enhance, Enchant, Sanctify, and consecrate. With a few changes, these could be made to satisfy one interpretation of the quote, and so free DMs from an ongoing task and future proof the relic system for new deities/pantheons while remaining balanced with the existing item ecosystem.

Suggestion: Enable clerics to create their own relics by using these feats on items they find in-game. To do this, make the following modifications to the feats.

1. Swap so Cleric gets Sanctify at level 6, Enchant at level 8
2. In addition to its OUB Cleric's Patron, have Sanctify add OUB Cleric, add to item ability to cast 3rd level divine spells. i.e. make the item a valid relic. Increase cost to 5 sacrifice points.
3. Change second tier Enhance so that it gives the item the ability to cast 4th level divine spells. Cost 10 points.
4. Change third tier Enhance so that it gives the item the ability to cast 5th level divine spells. Cost 15 points.
5. Add sacrifice point cost to attune to relic to 5 points.
6. Start new characters with 10 points.
7. Have sacrifice points be deducted, even on a failed roll for any of these feats.
8. Have sacrifice relic only work on relics that are not OUB cleric's patron, and not OUB: Wheel generic
9. Get rid of re-roll addendum to SF: Consecrate, instead have it halve round up all sacrifice point costs

Some discussion
- Sanctifying the item and giving it relic properties I believe makes it truly usuable by only clerics. I.e. you can't use these feats to just make general loot better for anyone. Alternatively also tack on Min Cleric levels: 5,7,9 respectively to the three tiers.

- Since relics in this scenario are modified items from the general loot tables, there's no need for seperate balance considerations just for relic items. The enchantments are to my mind minor and not balance breaking: +2 to a skill, a 1 level spell and a +1 random save vs descriptor. If that's a concern, then these just remove these.

-The gold-value DC scaling is fairly steep i.e. making already powerful/valuable items into slightly more powerful and a relic will in fact have for most clerics impossible consecrate DCs.

- You can only attune to one relic at a time, so you can't stack multiple items with the boons. This in fact can be determintal to enchance/sanctify lots of your items, since it means you can't wear them all at the same time.

- Giving attunement a point cost will make it so a cleric cannot continously swap out lots of relics they've made. An established cleric may wish perhaps to have two or three relic items they would consider using in different scenarios, and swap between them occassionally, but the cost in points means they can't do this for every rest and should consider carefully if its worth doing.

- Having higher sacrifice point costs, and deducting points for failed DCs means clerics will have an additional incentive to get points - i.e. do conversion, obtain relics to sacrifice, and live longer. These might ultimately be more satisfying gates than say, acquiring 10k gold pieces.

- Introducing new faiths and pantheons (the Dome for example) does not require a DM to also make new relics.