Magic Item Variants

Pathfinder’s magic item system is calibrated for a high-fantasy world like Golarion, with plenty of access to magic. However, not all settings, games, or subgenres match those assumptions. Varying from the default magic item system can help your group build games in low-magic settings, where the availability of magic items is unreliable, or where most or all of the power comes from the character and not their gear.

Automatic Bonus Progression

This variant removes the item bonus to rolls and DCs usually provided by magic items (with the exception of armor’s item bonus) and replaces it with a new kind of bonus—potency—to reflect a character’s innate ability instead.

In this variant, magic items, if they exist at all, can provide unique special abilities rather than numerical increases.

Special Class Features

Every character automatically gains the class features on Table 4–11: Automatic Bonus Progression.

Progression

Level Benefits

1	—
2	Attack potency +1
3	Skill potency (one at +1)
4	Devastating attacks (two dice)
5	Defense potency +1
6	Skill potency (two at +1 each)
7	Perception potency +1
8	Saving throw potency +1
9	Skill potency (one at +2, one at +1)
10	Attack potency +2
11	Defense potency +2
12	Devastating attacks (three dice)

13

Perception potency +2; skill potency (two at +2 each, one at +1)

14
Saving throw potency +2

15
Skill potency (three at +2 each, one at +1)

16
Attack potency +3

17

Ability apex; skill potency (one at +3, two at +2 each, two at +1 each)

18
Defense potency +3

19

Devastating attacks (four dice), Perception potency +3

20

Saving throw potency +3; skill potency (two at +3 each, two at +2 each, two at +1 each)

AttAck potency

2nd Starting at 2nd level, you gain a +1 potency bonus to attack rolls with all weapons and unarmed attacks. This increases to +2 at 10th level, and +3 at 16th level.

skill potency

3rd At 3rd level, choose a single skill. You gain a +1 potency bonus with that skill. At 6th level, choose a second skill to gain a +1 potency bonus. At 9th level, choose one of those skills and increase its potency bonus to +2. At 13th level, increase the potency bonus of your second skill to +2 and choose a third skill to gain a +1 potency bonus. At 15th level, increase the third skill’s potency bonus to +2 and choose a fourth skill to gain a +1 potency bonus. At 17th level, choose one of your three skills with a +2 potency bonus to increase to +3, and choose a fifth skill to gain a +1 potency bonus. Finally, at 20th level, choose one of the two skills with a +2 potency bonus to increase to +3, choose one of the three skills at a +1 potency bonus to increase to +2, and choose one new skill to gain a +1 potency bonus. You can spend 1 week to retrain one of these assignments at any time.

devAstAting AttAcks

4th At 4th level, your weapon and unarmed Strikes deal two damage dice instead of one. This increases to three at 12th level and to four at 19th level.

defense potency

5th At 5th level, you gain a +1 potency bonus to AC. At 11th level, this bonus increases to +2, and at 18th level, to +3.

perception potency

7th At 7th level, you gain a +1 potency bonus to Perception, increasing to +2 at level 13 and +3 at level 19.

sAving throw potency

8th At 8th level, you gain a +1 potency bonus to saves, increasing to +2 at level 14 and +3 at level 20.

Ability Apex

17th

At 17th level, choose one ability score to either increase by 2 or increase to 18 (whichever grants the higher score).

Item Bonus

Property Rune Slots

Item Level

Price

Expert
+1
1
2
35 gp

Master
+2
2
10
935 gp

Legendary
+3
3
16
8,935 gp

Bonus Increase

Property Rune Slots

Item Level

Price

Expert
+1
1
5
160 gp

Master
+2
2
11
1,060 gp

Legendary
+3
3
18
20,560 gp

Item Bonus

Damage Dice

Property Rune Slots

Item Level

Price

Expert
+1
1
1
2
35 gp

Expert devastating
+1
2
1
4
100 gp

Master
+2
2
2
10
1,000 gp

Master devastating
+2
3
2
12
2,000 gp

Legendary
+3
3
3
16
10,000 gp

Legendary devastating
+3
4
3
19
40,000 gp

Bonus Increase

Save Bonus

Property Rune Slots

Item Level

Price

Expert
+1
—
1
5
160 gp

Expert resilient
+1
+1
1
8
500 gp

Master
+2
+1
2
11
1,400 gp

Master resilient
+2
+2
2
14
4,500 gp

Legendary
+3
+2
3
18
24,000 gp

Legendary resilient
+3
+3
3
20
70,000 gp

Adjusting Items and Treasure

With this variant, you can ignore as much of Table 10–9: Party Treasure by Level on page 509 of the Core Rulebook as you want, though you’ll usually want to provide consistent currency. The main area your choice will impact is in spellcasting items, such as scrolls and wands.

Remove all potency runes, striking runes, and resilient runes. Items that normally grant an item bonus to statistics or damage dice no longer do, other than the base item bonus to AC from armor. Apex items do not increase ability scores. If your world still includes magic items, a safe bet is to continue to give out consumable items at roughly the rate on Table 10–9 of the Core Rulebook.

If you choose to eliminate runes entirely, this can reduce the PCs’ damage since they won’t have runes like flaming or holy. If you’ve removed nearly all treasure, challenges might become more difficult, even with automatic bonuses.

High-Quality

In this variant, gear can provide bonuses even if it’s not magical. This is useful for games and settings that set out to give fine, non-magical items the same prominence as magic items. High-quality gear requires the corresponding proficiency rank in Crafting to Craft.

High-Quality Weapons and Armor

High-quality weapons and armor give the same benefits as weapon and armor potency runes (Tables 4–12 and 4–13). To remove magic from weapons and armor, you can use the devastating attacks and saving throw potency entries from the automatic bonus progression variant, or you can have quality also provide the effects of striking and resilient runes, using Table 4–14 and Table 4–15. If you choose to still have magic weapons and armor, the effects don’t stack with quality.

High-Quality Skill Items

Items with skill or Perception bonuses don’t have fundamental runes. If an existing skill bonus item costs less than the listed Price for a high-quality skill item or has a lower level, it likely has a feature such as a limitation, so adjust accordingly. A character in a game with this variant can Craft or buy a non-magical item to boost Perception or a skill using the table below.

Item Bonus

Item Level

Price

Expert	+1	3	40 gp
Master	+2	9	550 gp
Legendary	+3	17	11,000 gp