Magic Items

While plenty of technology in Starfinder incorporates magical elements, some items operate solely through eldritch principles and thus follow different rules.

This section covers magic items not addressed under another rules system (such as weapon fusions or augmentations). Magic items are often divided into held, worn, and consumable items.
Held items (such as orbs and rods) must be held in a hand or similar appendage and activated manually like a weapon.

Worn magic items are things like rings, cloaks, amulets, and gloves. Just as your armor has a limited number of upgrade slots, you can only wear up to two magic items at once and have both function normally—beyond that, the magical fields start to interfere with each other. You can’t wear more than one of the same type of item (two cloaks, two hats, etc.) except for rings. If you put on an additional worn magic item beyond these first two, it does not function until you have no more than two total magic items worn. This limitation applies specifically to worn magic items, and does not apply to armor upgrades, held items, weapon fusions, augmentations, magic armor, consumables, or other forms of magic, all of which function normally.

Lastly, consumables are magic items like serums or spell ampoules that create an immediate and temporary effect when ingested.

Charges

In a few rare cases, magic items require charges. However, such charged magic items function differently than charged technological items, whose batteries must be recharged or replaced. A magic item’s charges are inherent to the construction of the item and can’t be replenished with generators or batteries. Charges for a magic item either refresh each day or never refresh, depending on the item.

Table: Magic Items

Aeon Stones

Ring of Resistance

Spell Ampoule

Spell Gem

Tiara of Translocation

Other

Serums

Magic Items Descriptions

The magic items from Table: Magic Items are described below. Serums are grouped together at the end of this section.

Aeon Stones

Aeon stones are magic gemstones that orbit your head (or the nearest equivalent of a head, for species that lack heads) and grant you a constant magic effect. They do not count toward your worn magic item limit, and there’s no limit to the number you can have orbiting you. They are most common in the Azlanti Star Empire, which also has unique ways of using such stones, but the most common types of aeon stones can be found in magic shops in many major settlements. Aeon stones are categorized by their shape and color, with all stones of the same shape and color having the same magic abilities.

Placing an aeon stone in orbit around your head is a standard action, and removing it is a move action. An aeon stone must be in orbit for you to benefit from its abilities. The stone orbits at a distance of 3 inches to 3 feet, as you prefer, but always outside any armor or helmet you wear. An orbiting aeon stone has an Armor Class equal to 12 + your character level, and it can be attacked directly or even grappled (a successful grapple check plucks the stone out of its orbit and into the attacker’s hand).

Most aeon stones (including all those presented here) are capable of glowing with a bright light. As a standard action, you can activate or deactivate the illumination of an aeon stone, which glows brightly enough to increase the light level in your square by one step (see Vision and Light on page 261).

Each aeon stone also has at least one other power that comes into effect when in orbit around you, detailed in the individual descriptions below.

• Clear Spindle: This aeon stone sustains you by negating the need for food or water.
• Dark Blue Rhomboid: This aeon stone grants you a +2 insight bonus to Perception and Sense Motive skill checks.
• Iridescent Spindle: This aeon stone sustains you by negating the need to breathe.
• Pearly White Spindle: This aeon stone increases your caster level by 1. This affects only calculations that directly refer to your caster level, such as caster level checks and spells with a duration of 1 round/level. It does not affect your spells known or spells per day. If you do not normally have a caster level, this does not give you any ability to know or cast spells.

Amulet of Camouflage

This modest amulet projects a simple pattern over your outer layers of armor, clothing, and equipment, which helps you blend into the background. When in an environment with a maximum distance at which Perception checks can be attempted, rolls to see at what range other creatures can attempt Perception checks against you are rolled twice, and the lower result applies. See Chapter 11 for more information on the Perception ranges of different environments. The amulet’s magic isn’t powerful enough to make you invisible or grant a bonus to Stealth checks. You can activate or deactivate this camouflage as a standard action.

Charge Cloak

A charge cloak can power devices that depend on electrical charges as if it were a battery. The cloak produces 4 charges each day, but they must be used as a single unit. Thus you could power a single attack from a yellow star plasma sword, which has a usage of 4, but you could also make only a single attack with a sub zero pistol, which has a usage of 1. The item must be one which uses charges or a battery, rather than petrol, rockets, rounds, or other forms of ammunition or power. You must be wearing or touching the item to be charged. You cannot use this item to recharge a battery or item; it can only be used to directly power an item for a single usage.

Glove of Storing

This simple glove is surprisingly smooth to the touch. While holding an item no larger than 2 bulk in the hand wearing it, you can command a glove of storing to shrink the held item to microscopic size and negligible bulk, and merge it with the palm of the glove. Returning the item to its original scale requires a mere snap of the fingers wearing the glove. You can store or retrieve an item within a glove of storing as a swift or move action. A glove of storing can store only one item at a time, and if the glove’s effect is suppressed or dispelled, any stored item immediately returns to its original size.

Ring of Cosmic Alignment

This majestic ring is forged from twin bands of mithral and adamantine. If you have the stellar mode class feature, whenever you start a turn of combat attuned to a stellar mode and choose to become unattuned, you can immediately gain 1 attunement point for the stellar mode that opposes the mode you began your turn in. For instance, if you began the turn in photon mode and choose to become unattuned, you can use the ring to gain 1 graviton attunement point. Using this ability is a swift action.

Ring of Resistance

This ring grants you magic protection against attacks and effects to which you are particularly vulnerable. You gain an enhancement bonus to saving throws with your lowest base saving throw bonus. If two or three of your base saving throw bonuses are tied for lowest value, you select which category gains this bonus when you first put on the ring, and this choice does not change unless a different base saving throw bonus later becomes your lowest bonus. The bonus is determined by the model of the ring of resistance.

Ring of Sustenance

This ring provides you with life-sustaining nourishment, negating the need for food or drink while the ring is worn. Additionally, the ring’s magic refreshes your body and mind while worn, so you need only 2 hours of sleep each day to gain the benefits of 8 hours of rest. If you cast spells, you can prepare spells after only 2 hours, but you still can’t prepare spells more than once per day. The ring must be worn for a full week before its magic takes effect, and if removed you must wear it for another week to reattune it to you.

Ring of Whispers

This simple gold band helps you hear when specific names are spoken. The ring can be attuned to recognize up to five proper names known to you, such as specific people, places, or things. The ring cannot be attuned to words that are not used as proper names. Attuning a ring of whispers to a new name takes 10 minutes, and if the new name exceeds the five-name limit, the oldest attuned name ceases to be attuned.

The ring grants you a +5 insight bonus to hearing-based Perception checks and sense through (hearing), but both abilities apply only to allow you to hear one of the attuned names being spoken. This allows you to potentially hear a name being spoken a room away or even through soundproof glass, but not any other sounds or conversations.

Rod of Cancellation

This device pulses with strange powers that drain items of all magical properties. When you touch a hybrid or magic item with a rod of cancellation, the item must succeed at a Will saving throw (DC = 10 + half your level + your Charisma bonus) or lose all magic abilities, becoming a mundane item of its type. If the touched item is being held or worn by a character, the item can use its bearer’s Will save bonus in place of its own, if better. Upon draining an item, the rod itself becomes nonmagical and cannot be used again. Drained items can be restored only with wish or miracle.

Shadow Orb

While you hold this small orb of black glass, it puts forth tendrils of darkness that capture nearby light. The light level within a 20-foot radius of you decreases by one step. Lasers fired at you are bent toward the orb. This gives laser attacks against you a +1 circumstance bonus to hit, but also grants you fire resistance 5 against laser attacks.

Spell Ampoules

Spell ampoules are injectable magic, where the essence of a magic spell has been condensed into a liquid form and prepared for injection into a creature. Known colloquially as “spell amps,” these heady, ready-to-use magic injections can be used only once. A spell amp duplicates the effect of a beneficial spell (a spell with “harmless” in its Saving Throw or Spell Resistance entry), excluding divination spells or spells that create some link between the caster and the target. In addition, the spell must be 3rd level or lower, have a casting time of 1 minute or less, and target one or more creatures (but not spells that target just the spellcaster). If a spell targets both creatures and objects, it only affects creatures when used as a spell amp. If a spell requires expending a Resolve Point to cast, it also requires the user to spend a Resolve Point when used as a spell amp (if you choose not to spend a Resolve Point or don’t have any Resolve Points remaining, the spell amp has no effect).

A spell amp always has an item level equal to three times the level of the spell it duplicates (treat as a 2nd-level item for spell amps with 0-level spells), and a caster level equal to its item level. Creating a spell ampoule has the same requirements as creating a spell gem (see below).

You can only use a spell ampoule on yourself or a willing or unconscious creature. Injecting yourself or a willing creature with a spell ampoule is a standard action, while injecting an unconscious creature is a full action. Spell amps take effect as if the spell had been cast upon the creature injected. When you are injected with a spell amp, you get to make any decisions about the spell’s effect as if you were the caster of the spell— you are both the effective target and the caster of the effect.

Spell Gem

Consisting of one or more lattices of carefully arranged lines of rare metal and bits of precious stone in a silicon casing, each lattice in a spell gem is encoded with magical writings equivalent to the casting of a single, specific spell. Holding a spell gem in your hand unlocks little-used portions of your mind, granting you the ability to temporarily cast the spell encoded within the gem without using up your daily spell slots. You must hold the spell gem in your hand throughout the spell’s casting time and must spend at least a standard action using the spell gem, even if the spell’s casting time is shorter. Each spell stored within a spell gem can be cast only once, after which the magic encoded within the spell gem’s lattice is forever expended.

Only spellcasters are capable of using spell gems—if you aren’t a spellcaster, you’re unable to make use of the knowledge that the gem unlocks. You don’t need to know the spell within a spell gem to use it, but the spell must be on your class’s spell list (or have otherwise been added to your spell list) and you must have a high enough key ability score to cast it. If the spell gem’s item level is higher than your caster level, once you’ve spent the full casting time of the spell, you must succeed at a caster level check with a DC equal to the spell gem’s item level + 1 or you fail to cast the spell. If you fail to cast a spell from a spell gem, the spell remains within the gem and you can attempt to use it again.

To craft a spell gem, you have to know the spell you’re encoding into the gem. If a spell requires expensive materials as part of its casting (such as raise dead), you must provide those while crafting the gem, and the gem’s price is increased by the price of the components. You can create larger, compound spell gems with multiple spells in multiple lattices, with a price equal to the total price of all spells stored within it. Such spell gems can be used to
cast only one spell at a time.

Staff of Mystic Healing

Available in a variety of shapes and sizes, a staff of mystic healing usually takes the form of an archaic shepherd’s crook, carved with pre-Gap runes of origin denoting prosperity and long life. If you have the healing touch class feature, you can use that ability one additional time per day while holding the staff. You cannot use more than one staff of mystic healing each day to gain more than one additional use of healing touch, and a staff of mystic healing works only once per day.

Tiara of Translocation

This shimmering circlet is crafted from rare metals and seems to bend and distort light around it, creating an eerie halo of light around your brow. Once per day, a tiara of translocation allows you to teleport yourself and up to 5 additional creatures, functioning as a teleport spell. Unlike the spell, the range at which you can use this item varies based upon its model, as described below. You cannot use a tiara of translocation to travel between the planes, and it refuses to function at all while in the Drift.