Café de Nuit

So...intelligent magic items.

I've only just recently started looking at D&D 4e again. I dallied a bit when it came out, decided it wasn't for me, and didn't look back. But now I am trying my hand at writing some material for gaming publications, and I have run into a couple of snafus. While most of them can be resolved by, gasp, reading the rules (something I have no problem doing...) I have been unable to get my mind around this particular one.

Do intelligent magic items exist in 4e, or is that just the purview of artifacts? I've gone through the 4e PHB and DMG again, and the only thing I can find about sentient magic items is in the artifact section. Is that option no longer an option for non-artifact magical items? Is it detailed in a different book? (And if so, which one?) Or have I merely overlooked the appropriate section?

Thanks for any help I can get.

I have some books of 4E and I've looked in the character builder before and I haven't seen any intelligent magical items aside from artifacts.

I have been unable to get my mind around this particular one.?

Dragon Magazine #367 pp.22-30: Intelligent Items in 4E.

Rite Publishing #30 Intelligent Magic Items, highly rated - for Pathfinder RPG for $2.95 - read the reviews.

MichaelTumey wrote:Rite Publishing #30 Intelligent Magic Items, highly rated - for Pathfinder RPG for $2.95 - read the reviews.

I know there wasn't a [4e] in the title, but the OP was specifically asking about 4e, not PF. That does look like a good source of inspiration, though.

I didn't notice that, however, since PF is based on 3x, despite 4e being largely a different animal, I think a conversion of magic items from one edition to another isn't as serious of a difference as the difference between player classes in either edition. Also 4e, as far as I know, due to the nature of the GSL license, hadn't got many third party creations for it, so there's little hope to find such content outside of 4e books. If its not there, you'd need to convert or create from scratch.

I'm not very familiar with 4th Edition, but it seems like the defining characteristics of artifacts in that incarnation of the game are their relationships with their owners and their tendency to eventually "move on." Overwelming power doesn't seem as much of an attribute as in 3rd and earlier editions: it might be possible to design whatever item you have in mind as an artifact, even if it's intended for fairly low-level characters.