Making Magic Items without Spending XP

skelso · Feb 9, 2008

I've always hated spending xp for magic item creation and I've come up with all sorts of house rules over the years to try and avoid it without letting my players go nuts with item creation.

An idea just occurred to me that I think could be exceedingly simple and not require massive amounts of bookkeeping or special clauses to make it work.

I leave all the magic item creation rules alone, but add the following line:

If the character personally crafts the mundane component of the item, the experience cost is waived. Notice the character can still choose to spend xp to enchant a different item, if he or she prefers.

For example, when making a magic sword, if the caster crafts a masterwork sword himself, all further enchantment of that sword will cost only the regular cash and time, but no experience. It takes around 6 game weeks to make a masterwork weapon, so this would prevent a player from going nuts with making magic items to overpower his character, or the party, or to try and sell at a profit.

On other items where the crafting portion is not so concrete, the DM would likely have to make certain rulings.

For example, the wizard crafts parchment to enchant into a scroll. This would probably still take a day or so. The cost of which should probably be subtracted from the cost of creating the scroll.

Would this work? Any thoughts? Has this been suggested before?

Thanks for reading.

the Jester · Feb 9, 2008

Well, the tongue in cheek answer is, of course, if you want to craft magic items without spending xp, wait for 4e.

More helpfully, I'd say that you should be very careful when eliminating the xp cost of magic items- otherwise, you're empowering casters to make magic items for the party at half price, with the only other cost being some time. I don't personally micromanage the wealth by level of the pcs in my game, but I can easily imagine this going horribly wrong in a campaign more focused on "by the book balance" than mine.

What I have started doing imc is putting "power construction components" out there- for instance, this rare magic gem might count as 500 xp for item construction if the item has properties related to Abjuration, or whatever. (Though I'm using this idea to help alleviate the ridiculous levels of money required for epic spell research and the like, rather than "standard level" stuff.)

skelso · Feb 9, 2008

the Jester said:
What I have started doing imc is putting "power construction components" out there- for instance, this rare magic gem might count as 500 xp for item construction if the item has properties related to Abjuration, or whatever.

Actually, I like that idea a lot.

Cbas_10 · Feb 9, 2008

That's not a bad approach. Some details I might change here or there (like the 6 gaming week part), but overall, not a bad idea.

Similar to you, I don't like the idea of players spending XP to cast spells or create magical items. The route I took was the optional Power Components rule, and I made it a standard rule. When players want to craft an item or cast a particular spell, we work together on figuring out what an appropriate Power Component would be.

Such components might be bits of rare/tough creatures (dragon blood, illithid brain fluid, etc), rare substances (meteorite, rare stones/gems, etc) or one of a few other following concepts:

Sympathetic materials: a Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals might have a "base item" that is a particular type of rock obtained from a certain type of spot in the Earth Elemental Plane.

Ritual: Casting Raise Dead or any other higher level version is no casual affair. Elaborate rituals with numbers of the god's faithful present is a good start to describe the involved aspects of a "ritual" power component.

Powerful times or places: Intersections of ley lines, solar eclipses, ancient battlefields, and more.

Not only does all of this solve my XP-for-casting/creating problem, but it can also be the inspiration for adventures on its own.

Aidan Milvus · Feb 9, 2008

If you don't like spending xp to make items, play an artificer...

But, failing that, the power component idea sounds pretty good.

I don't know if just the make it yourself would work out that well. Take a cloak of Elven kind. To make it, you have to be at least a 3rd level elf. We'll say a 16 int, would give a craft skill of +11 (6 ranks, +3 int, +2 mwk tools) Taking 10 on the check will give you a 21 check, a wool cloak is only 5 sp, and even giving the dc for a superior item, you'd do 420 sp worth of work in a week, so you could make 84 cloaks in a week. Assuming an 8 hour work day, that's only 40 minutes of time crafting the cloak that you need for a cloak of elvenkind... Doesn't really work as well as the time it takes to make the masterwork sword... Same goes for practically anything that doesn't involve weapons or armor.

Plus, that would only give players a reason to cry and complain about having to still spend the same for the raw materials to make the item, even though they crafted the main item themselves.

Nifft · Feb 10, 2008

Another option: crafting magic items costs exactly as much as buying them. What does the feat get you? Automatic access.

Cheers, -- N

Nyeshet · Feb 11, 2008

the Jester said:
What I have started doing imc is putting "power construction components" out there- for instance, this rare magic gem might count as 500 xp for item construction if the item has properties related to Abjuration, or whatever. (Though I'm using this idea to help alleviate the ridiculous levels of money required for epic spell research and the like, rather than "standard level" stuff.)

This is somewhat similar to what I do, except that when a magic item is to be made, I have them make Knowledge checks to determine the best components. Sure, almost any magic item or part of a magical creature might contribute something towards the xp of making the item (Thus the reason magic users can use their own xp if they really wish to do so when making magic items.), but if you want the most bang for your buck, as the saying goes, you will seek out the best ingredients.

If infusing a blade with the Flaming property, for example, it would be best if the components were (carefully) harvested from a fiery magical creature or item. So a quest will ensue to seek out and gather a feather of a phoenix, or heart of a wyrmling red dragon, or one or more weapons known to already have the flaming property, or several scrolls / wands with flaming magic in them, or a rare ore from a specific volcano known to be in a high magic region, and so forth. Of course, if the item is from a creature, and if it is well harvested (skill check involved), then the xp gained from defeating the creature is notably less. Similarly, there is not a one to one correspondence in xp - whether from creatures or from items. Scrolls and wands have temporary charges - it would take several xp from either to equate to one xp used for a permanent magic item (such as a Flaming sword).

To help make up for some of the complexity this adds, I severely reduced the requirements for magic items. Spells are not needed if the items / creature parts drained of xp are already of the correct type, for example. Also, the number of feats needed to make magic items is severely reduced (1 charge items, multi-charge items, permanent items, multi-spell items, etc). So in the end, if you have the right type of ingredients, all that is really needed is correct caster level and a few successful Knowledge and Spellcraft checks.