Clerical Item Creation

There's a post on Untimately about Brendan's house/system rules for potion manufacture that made me think about clerics manufacturing potions or other items. Certainly in AD&D there are rules for clerical magic item creation, which is arguably easier than the process used by magic-users, at least for everything other than potions and scrolls. But in the original booklets, there are no such rules. In fact, I would say that the rules strongly imply that magic item creation is strictly a magic-user ability.

Many people house-ruled otherwise, of course, probably because they felt odd about magic-users being able to make potions of healing, scrolls of clerical spells, or other items usable only by clerics. Paradoxically, most people didn't change the rules about magic-users being able to make weapons and armor they were unable to use, although the Judges Guild Ready Reference Sheets had rules about M-Us needing the assistance of dwarven smiths to make weapons and armor.

My own inclination is to keep magic item creation strictly in the domain of magic-users, with one possible exception: holy water. Holy water is not, strictly speaking, a magic item, but it has unusual properties and is manufactured, if you want to call it that. (I'll have some house rules on holy water in a future post.) For other items, I'd make the following house rules:

• A potion of healing isn't really clerical, despite the fact that only clerics can cast healing spells.
• Items to be used by clerics must be blessed by a cleric before enchantment begins.
• Clerical scrolls likewise require blessed parchment and ink. Unlike magic-user scrolls, cleric scrolls don't follow the Holmes house rule; only wizards can create cleric scrolls.