Artificer Battery Pack (3.5e Equipment)

''This vest is covered in colored lines that focus on a single Khyber dragonshard in the center. As your hand passes over the crystal, your hair stands on end and your hand feels slightly cold and weaker, as if it drained you of your life energy.''

Though it can be used by artificers, this vest was originally designed by wizards who wanted to imitate the ability of artificers to create items with less expenditure of personal energy than others. The artificer battery pack functions as a limited, replenishable Craft Reserve for anyone who wears it.

The artificer battery pack only works whenever a character wearing it bestows a negative level or levels on a living creature, through a spell, ability, magic item, or any other means, and the target dies before the negative level or levels are removed. The vest then automatically creates a number of Craft Reserve points equal to the target's Total Hit Dice x the number of negative levels bestowed. These points function just like the Craft Reserve of an artificer, with the exceptions below.

The points are stored within the artificer battery pack, and it can only hold a limited amount of points based on it's caster level (see below). Any points generated beyond this threshold are lost. The points are not added to the actual Craft Reserve pool of an artificer if an artificer is wearing the vest, and they cannot in any way be transferred out of the vest except when creating a magic item. However, if they so choose, a wearer of the vest can put their own XP (or Craft Reserve, if they are an artificer) into the vest as a full-round action. However, this still count's towards the vest's maximum capacity. Taking off the vest does not cause the Craft Reserve points to be lost, and another character can put the vest on and benefit from any Craft Reserve points in the vest.

The minimum Caster Level required to create an artificer battery pack is 7th, but it can be made at different strengths for the purposes of determining the maximum amount of Craft Reserve points it can contain, even lower than the maximum amount of a 7th level artificer (200xp), but no higher than the creator's own Caster Level (thus is takes a 20th level caster to create the amount a 20th level artificer would recieve, 5000xp reserve). To determine maximum Craft Reserve, consult the Artificer table on page 30 of the Eberron Campaign Setting.

The price and cost of the artificer battery pack are variable, based off of the maximum Craft Reserve of the vest. The artificer battery pack can be created as an attached warforged component that occupies space on the body as a vest.


 * Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Vampiric Touch, Enervation
 * Cost to Create: 1/2 of price in gp; 1/25 of price in XP