NPCs as Magic Items

As part of my weekly Endless Eon game, the party eventually gained access to the aid of the wise man Jake, an orthodox adherent of the Emulators of Jake. Conceptually, he's a high-level cleric, but I didn't want to write out a list of prepared spells or give him the potential to solve too many problems, and I knew the players were mostly interested in his ability to heal HP, so rather than make him a leveled figure with spell slots, I just ruled that he could heal any number of people of 1d6 damage per person per day. ezpz, classic DM trick.Later, I realized that he was in effect almost identical to the classic item the Staff of Healing. It made me want to run with the idea, to expand on the idea of finding NPCs with abilities similar to magic items in the same contexts that you might find magic items while adventuring— kept captive in a dungeon, or offered as a reward or in trade. People like intelligent magic items, and these magical people could scratch the same itch. You get some…