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The svirfneblin, or deep gnomes of Faerûn, are particularly adept at crafting magic items from gemstones, including ioun stones. A tenth type, iol, is especially good, with secret spells. These are amethyst, chrysoberyl, chrysoprase, greenstone, hematite, Laeral's tears, obsidian, onyx, and sardonyx. Nine types of gemstones, known as the "nine secrets", can be used in the creation of ioun stones. Ioun stones have a tendency to gravitate toward a havoc orb.
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Ioun stones are thought to improve divination results with Mald Ulad's divining board, a form of ouija board. Clever adventurers and creatures are known to make their ioun stones invisible to prevent them from being stolen. Īdventurers are known to cast light spells such as continual flame on their ioun stones to serve as a light source. Unfinished ioun stones pose a risk of inflicting a debility on the bearer, not unlike a cursed item, whereupon they crumble into dust. Rarely, an ioun stone exists which is doubly as powerful as normal, but such stones are even more unstable, with around a 20% chance per year of burning out. Ioun stones are occasionally known to burn out after a long period of use. This ioun stone was later stolen by Rary the Traitor. Otiluke, the mage of Greyhawk, possesses a pale green prism ioun stone which moves visibly more quickly when he is angry. Ioun stones have been known to become attuned to the bearer over time, and react to their mood. It confers its magical ability to the bearer until it is removed from its orbit, usually either by the bearer or an opponent attempting to steal the item. Otherwise, it might seem odd when the players get to the higher levels and suddenly all these hitherto-unknown super-powerful NPCs come out of the woodwork (and why weren't they making their influence felt before?).When tossed into the air, an ioun stone begins to orbit the bearer's head at a distance of between one and three feet. Of course, many will die along the way, but in a world with many adventurers, this means you'd tend to have many high-level NPCs in such a game-world. I reason that if you can level up every 2-3 sessions, then it's pretty fast in game time to get to level 20, for NPCs as well as PCs.
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Secondly, there's the campaign design consideration. How much momentum you want to have in your campaign (does everyone want to level up regularly? what happens when they reach level 20 and can't level any more?). There are two ways to look at level advancement - firstly, there's the gameplay consideration. That's far too fast for me (level 20 is meant to be pretty much Legendary Hero status), but it depends how common those levels are in your game-world, and which levels you want to play at. If you played bi-weekly, you'd reach level 20 in 2.5 years (one level every 6 weeks), at the slowest end of that spectrum (levelling every 3 sessions). I'm inclined to agree, but it is a matter of taste.