Using the Item Forge to Make Material Templates

[Nicholas Camfield]

I am attempting to create new item material templates using the item forge for use in our new campaign. Essentially, we want to have different materials for weapons and armors that will have slightly different stats, bonuses or weaknesses and weights. I want to be able to make items feel different and have different effects or stats than their counterparts of a different make, ie Dwarven steel versus Elven steel versus a weaker iron longsword. I'd like one material to be better against the undead or against demons for example, or have a different weight than an identical item of a different material. I think most of this can be done in an item-by-item basis, but I just wondered if anyone had tried this on a larger scale before.

I have pretty much no experience with coding of any kind so any advice or help from someone else who may have attempted this would be appreciated.

[Zacchaeus]

Hi Nicholas, welcome to FG.

For which ruleset?

To use the forge you need one non magical (ordinary) item or a magic item and one template. So you would want to make all your stuff as templates and then use the forge to merge that with an ordinary or magical item item. See the image below for one possible way.

[Nicholas Camfield]

Oh sorry! For the 5e ruleset in Unity.

The screenshot you showed is pretty much how I am doing it now, so thanks for confirming that I'm at least on the right track. Is there any advice you can give on modifying the damage on those items? For example, adding an extra damage dice for an undead creature?
Your Youtube videos have been extremely helpful as well, thanks for helping someone new to FG (and D&D) along on their first steps.

[Zacchaeus]

There isn't a way to merge damage etc. In any case you would need to set up effects for that if the damage was only applicable to a specific creature type and you can't add effects to an item - at least not without an extension. You can include the details in the template description since that goes into the merged item. About the only other things that merge are the name and the magical bonus and magic gets added to the properties.

[Nicholas Camfield]

Ok. Thanks so much for answering my questions and the help!