D&D 5E PCs Making Their Own Magic Items

Jeff Carlsen · Oct 11, 2012

Hussar said:
A question for those that want (fairly) easily craftable expendables. How do you avoid the crafter power creep? If I can craft scrolls and wands, I can ignore the limitations of Vancian casting. I make myself essentially an at-will caster (more or less) but with daily level power spells.

This is mostly a problem with scrolls now that staves and wands have been reworked. My suggestion would be that a spellcaster must attune themselves to a scroll in order to use it. They must entwine their own magical potential with that in the scroll.

Patryn of Elvenshae · Oct 11, 2012

Hussar said:
If my caster can bang out wands or potions, how do you avoid the Cure Light Wounds wand situation where the cleric no longer needs to spend any spells outside of combat on healing and can focus almost exclusively on offense or utility, thus throwing balance out of whack?

I'm pretty sure we already have that with the Healer specialty: 25gp per healing potion, can make 3 in an hour, and eventually they're maximized for free.

Ed_Laprade · Oct 11, 2012

Voted 4e, but really should have voted Other. Making magic items ought to take time, and cost about half of what they'd sell for on the open market (assuming there is one). And characters should get XP for making them! Minor items (potions, scrolls and +1 stuff) shouldn't be difficult, but better stuff ought to cost more and take a good long time to make. However, there should be ways to reduce one or both requirements. (Obviously, reducing cost should take more time, and vice versa.) Questing for magical ingredients is certainly one way to go, but there are probably others as well.

Ferghis · Oct 11, 2012

Li Shenron said:
"Other": not so much special "quests" but specific recipies to discover and components to harvest. This would be my favourite.

I think that's what quests often are: going to find info and stuff.

Obryn said:
When I played 1e & 2e I saw the inability for PCs to capably make magic items at less-than-ridiculous cost & difficulty as a flaw in the system.

After playing 3e & 4e for years, I can comfortably say that I've found the opposite is true.

Oddly, I can't disagree with this. I'd xp you, but I can't.

Hussar said:
I'd like to see magic items get back to the idea of "special quests" but actually have guidelines in the DMG on how to craft those special quests. Don't just leave it up to the DM to make something up.

Vividly agree.

One way to do this would be to make recipes uncopyable: they were written in such a detailed manner, that copying them always results in a defect. That would make the recipe very, very precious, and therefore well-guarded.

But, even when the players have the means to make an item, there should be an opprtunity cost to it. My solution would be to make it take a long, long time to make items, and give the PCs a lot of different options on which to spend their non-adventuring time. So, the high level wizard can make a nice magic sword. That's great, but in the year that the wizard did that, the fighter gathered an army expanded the trade-routes to his barony, the paladin became the hero of a nearby city by significantly reducing disease, and the ranger gathered a bunch of new fey-contacts.

Hussar said:
Honestly, I'd love to see one shot magic items not be craftable. That's mostly where the problems with 3e come from. It's not that you can craft a +4 sword. Nobody actually does that because it's too bloody expensive. It's that you can craft half a hundred scrolls by the time you're fifth or sixth level and your casters never run out of spells again.

This was a real problem. What if characters had a limited number of "slots" for consumables as well? 4e arbitrarily limited the number of rings a character could wear and use to 2, a similar thing could be done with consumables. That way they would return to being "backup" items. The fighter would keep a healing potion equipped in case the cleric couldn't reach him.

tlantl · Oct 11, 2012

Ed_Laprade said:
Voted 4e, but really should have voted Other. Making magic items ought to take time, and cost about half of what they'd sell for on the open market (assuming there is one). And characters should get XP for making them! Minor items (potions, scrolls and +1 stuff) shouldn't be difficult, but better stuff ought to cost more and take a good long time to make. However, there should be ways to reduce one or both requirements. (Obviously, reducing cost should take more time, and vice versa.) Questing for magical ingredients is certainly one way to go, but there are probably others as well.

Well unless fighters and rogues and other non-casters can make magic items for XP then no one gets it from me.

I actually think the cost of making items shouldn't be too egregious, it's not like you're going to be getting rich off of stuff no one can afford. Looking at the prices of things and listening to the devs I get the impression a lot of the mistakes of WotC game design are going into the garbage can where they rightly belong.

What's the first thing your thief player wants to do when he finds a magic mart? Thats right he wants to rob the place. Why? Because that's where the money and magic items are found.

My biggest arms dealer is a lich who lives in a fully stocked dungeon. My players still wanted to rob the guy.

GX.Sigma · Oct 11, 2012

I'd have magic item crafting require a formula, some components, and a power source; then the DM can decide how hard each is to come by.

In my campaign, I might say that all wizards know how to scribe scrolls, but it takes some fairy dust, and you have to be 5th-level to do it. In your campaign, you might say that the formula for scribing scrolls is lost, and it requires the heart of the Tarrasque, and only the Archdruid can do it, and it causes him to age 100 years and lose 19 levels.

FireLance · Oct 12, 2012

GX.Sigma said:
In your campaign, you might say that the formula for scribing scrolls is lost, and it requires the heart of the Tarrasque, and only the Archdruid can do it, and it causes him to age 100 years and lose 19 levels.

The disconnect that sometimes happens is that after establishing how difficult it is to create magic items in their campaign, DMs then proceed to liberally sprinkle their dungeons with them. If scribing a scroll causes the creator to age 100 years and lose 19 levels, I would find it rather dissonant if I came across one or two scrolls every other dungeon.

howandwhy99 · Oct 12, 2012

Mattachine said:
I kinda liked the AD&D (1e) way of making magic items:

So do I (but I can't XP you right now for the nice breakdown).

I think this should at least be an option as it's one of the big D&D versions. I expect we'll get all kinds of options for those who want them. If crafting is quick & painless, then that's okay for those who want it.

Li Shenron · Oct 12, 2012

Ferghis said:
I think that's what quests often are: going to find info and stuff.

Yes, but I also had in mind something more "in the meantime".

The term "quest" sounds a bit too much like for each and every item you want to make (or learn to make) you should expect a small adventure. It's ok, but I would do it only once a while at most.

Instead, I prefer the idea that during other quests you occasionally meet a spellcaster who can teach (or sell) you a recipe, or you find a book of recipes, or sometimes you have to battle a monster or vermin which you've learned that you can harvest useful components from, or you spend a night in a forest and find herbal ingredients...

Thus not so often an entire proactive quest, but more often something scattered here and there, although the player should be rewarded for keeping in mind what he might need to harvest/collect and tell the DM.

Yora · Oct 12, 2012

While I am not completely opposed to the idea of the game having rules for item creation, I think that the making of magic items should not be assumed to be a regular part of the game.
The default should ne "No", and rules for making items should be a completely optional expansion of the game. And visibly so, not putting the rules just with all the other ones and adding a short line "DMs decide if you can make items or not", because that always tends to look like an opt-out rather than an opt-in.

I think I probably would allow the making of potions for my game, but everything else should not be a class feature. If the PCs need a magic chain or an enchanted crystal or something like that as a solution to a certain problem they have come up with, then I'd have them see an NPC and if there are spellcasters in the group, they even can be part of creation process, but I don't want to have rules for how long it takes, what components they need to buy, and rolling dice to see the speed of progress and amount of success.

Having the cleric spend a day brewing up some healing potions and elemental damage protection potions before setting out on an adventure is all I really want.