Magical Research
General Comment
| The Oath-Bound setting offers a rich context for magical research — a post-Fall world where Velasian archive material is fragmentary, nwyf interaction is imperfectly understood, and the boundaries of what is possible are genuinely open. The vanilla DMG’s procedural framework is a useful skeleton, but in Oath-Bound magical research is primarily a gameplay event rather than a game-mechanical procedure. The interesting questions are who the practitioner knows, what they can access, what it costs them in time and relationships, and what they discover — not which tables to roll on. |
Creation Of Holy/Unholy Water (p.114) 
| The vanilla model creates a liquid sensitive to alignment — a category that does not exist in Oath-Bound. The functional equivalent is a liquid sensitive to foundational oath compatibility: whether the person or object it is applied to is in concord or opposition with the specific god whose follower created it. The differentiation is not good versus evil but fidelity and concord versus their absence or active opposition. |
The creation procedure applies as written, reframed in these terms.
Spell Research (p.115) 
| The vanilla pricing tables are superseded by the Oath-Bound economic model. The research process itself — identifying what is being sought, finding the necessary knowledge or materials, and developing the working through practice and failure — is a gameplay arc rather than a cost calculation. The Spell Catalog defines what exists and what can be developed toward. |
See Spell Catalog.
Fabrication of Magic Items, Including Potions And Scrolls (p.116)
| The vanilla pricing tables are superseded by the Oath-Bound economic model. The fabrication of arcane items in Oath-Bound involves engravure — the preparation and deployment of arcane symbology and mechanisms into objects destined for imbuing. This is a skilled practice with its own competency requirements, material dependencies, and failure modes. The quality of the engravure work determines the stability and reliability of the resulting item. |
As with spell research, the interesting questions are gameplay ones: who can do this work, where, with what materials, and at what risk.
See Engravure.
