Sovereign Materials

Something I’ve long pondered about D&D is how there are certain things that you cannot create with magic. The need for this is, of course, to stop player characters from creating gold pieces, spending them, and walking away before they vanish. But there ought to be more than the practical constraint surrounding this idea.

Hence, “sovereign materials”.

There are certain materials that magic cannot find, summon, conjure, reproduce, or alter the properties of called sovereign materials. As a result, other items cannot be changed into these materials. Their special nature is part of why they are valued.

However, these materials can still be included in spell effects, including transformations, vanishings, teleportation, etc. That is, a gold coin can be carried while teleporting, but lead cannot be transformed into gold, even temporarily. For this reason, these items are often used in the making of magic items.

Items can be imbued with magic that might seem to break the rule, if it can be justified. For example, a magic hammer that returns to the wielder after being thrown isn’t being summoned by the wielder but rather has been imbued with the ability to seek its master on command. This is very different from casting a spell that summons an opponent’s magic weapon to you, which wouldn’t be allowed. Likewise, you could make magic armor that floats, because you’re imbuing the armor with the property of being buoyant, not altering its inherent weight.

This rule especially helps GMs who want to let their players craft their own spells and magic items. You couldn’t create a magic sword, for example, that duplicates itself for use in dual-wielding. But you could make a spell that, I don’t know, pushes things around, and that would still affect sovereign materials; you could, after all, push something around with your own hands, if you got close to it.