## Sanctify Relic (Item Creation)
*You can create magic items that are imbued with a connection to your deity.*
**Prerequisite:** Any other item creation feat
**Benefit:** Relics are magic items—often but not always wondrous items—that rely on a divine connection to a specific deity to function. You can create a relic whose form matches your existing item creation feats.
### Relics in **Book of Exalted Deeds**
Sometimes confused with magic items or even artifacts, relics are unique items that carry the indelible mark of good upon them. A relic might be a bone or bone fragment from a martyr or other holy person, or some object that touched a saint in a special way—her burial shroud, perhaps, or the instrument of her execution. Holy power like that of a saint, a martyr, or a celestial leaves a lingering aura of good that is not magic in the traditional sense, but nevertheless can have miraculous effects, usually curative in nature.
All relics radiate an aura of good. An evil outsider or undead creature that touches a relic is burned as if by holy water, taking 2d4 points of damage. Relics are always considered sanctified, so if they are used as weapons they deal 1 extra point of damage against evil creatures or 1d4 points of damage against evil outsiders and evil undead (see Sanctified Weapons, above).
Like artifacts, relics cannot be manufactured, bought, or sold. However, each relic has a market price equivalent, for the DM’s use in assigning treasure only. These prices are calculated as though the relics were magic items. Likewise, relics have a caster level equivalent for purposes of spell effects and determining the strength of its aura of good, but relics never radiate magic, cannot be identified with the identify or analyze dweomer spells, and cannot be suppressed or dispelled with dispel magic or antimagic field.
### Relics in **Complete Divine**
A relic is a magic item—often, but not always, a wondrous item—that functions only when worn or held by a character who believes in the deity to whom the relic is dedicated. That character must devote a measure of spiritual energy to keep open a divine connection between the relic he wields and his deity’s power.
The wielder of a relic can establish the divine connection in two ways. Any divine spellcaster such as a cleric, druid, or paladin of the relevant deity can temporarily sacrifice a spell slot of the level specified in the relic’s description; the divine spellcaster can’t use the spell slot anymore, but he can use the relic. Whenever the cleric or druid prepares spells (or each morning in the case of
a spontaneous divine caster such as the favored soul), he decides whether or not he wants to keep the divine connection to the relic active.
Whether they’re clerics or not, believers can wield relics if they have the True Believer feat and are high enough character level that if they were a cleric, they would have a spell slot high enough to sacrifice, activating the divine connection to the relic.
For example, Jozan is a 9th-level cleric who finds himself in possession of a dawnstar relic. At dawn he can sacrifice a 4th-level spell slot to use the dawnstar for the day instead. Or he can prepare a 4th-level spell instead, choosing not to use the magic of the dawnstar.
If Alhandra the paladin has the True Believer feat and worships Pelor, she can use the dawnstar as long as she’s 7th level or higher, because that’s the level she’d first have a 4th-level spell slot if she were a cleric or druid. If Jozan had the True Believer feat, he could likewise use the dawnstar at 7th level or higher, and he wouldn’t have to give up a spell slot to do so.
**Buying and Selling Relics**
Relics are generally not available for purchase, nor will PCs trying to sell them automatically
find a buyer. They are much more rare than other magic items; usually less than a half-dozen
copies of each relic exist. Secondly, they’re tied so tightly to worship of a particular deity, so only a very few characters can use them.
The descriptions below list market prices for each relic, but those prices are listed to help the DM design appropriate treasure for the NPCs in the campaign—you’ll never find a price tag on a relic. Some churches might offer a finder’s fee or other gifts equivalent to half the market price if the PCs return a lost relic to them. But such a situation could be role-played, because the deal depends greatly on the relationship between the church and the specific PCs who’ve acquired
the relic.
The relics in the section below are based on the deities of the core D&D pantheon, but they don’t have to be. Moradin’s axe of ancestral virtue works just as well for a deity of the dwarves you’ve created yourself—or any warlike but good deity, for that matter.
If you create your own relic, price them like you would any other magic item, but give them a discount based on the spell slot a cleric must sacrifice to use them. A discount worth 400 × spell slot level × minimum cleric level is a good starting place.
Relics tend to be somewhat more complex than standard magic items. Many have magical effects that no spell duplicates exactly, giving them the feel of “artifacts on the cheap.”