D&D 5E Crafting Magical Items vs Regular

[Dausuul]

And then there's the G&A, marketing, taxes, ...

It's a rough business, the magic item industry.

Clearly, the solution for talented but impoverished adventurers is Chen's Instant Kickstarter.

 

[Fanaelialae]

In fairness, a mundane crafter makes (or saves) half the cost of the item, since he only has to spend half the price to make the item. On the other hand, crafting magic items requires the full cost (so spellcasters arguably don't typically craft items to make a profit, but rather to achieve a purpose like outfitting a dragon slayer so he can kill a wyrm that's been troubling the caster).

Personally, I plan to use an idea I saw somewhere on these boards. Basically, mundane crafting progresses at a rate of 5 * your proficiency bonus. If you don't have a proficiency bonus, it's just 5. I like it because it means that by 20th level you can create 30 gp worth of goods per day, or 60 if you have expertise. I haven't decided whether to do something similar for magic item creation.

Admittedly, downtime in my games tends to be limited. Usually days, sometimes weeks, rarely months, and never years. This could imbalance a game with lots of downtime.

 

[kerleth]

Speaking of poisons. I haven't seen any indication that a poison is used up after the first hit. From the text I have read, it seems that a poisoned sword stays poisoned for the whole minute. As someone who was perpetually disappointed with poisons in 3rd, I am happy so see that they might actually be worth investing in now.

 

[SilverBulletKY]

Speaking of poisons. I haven't seen any indication that a poison is used up after the first hit. From the text I have read, it seems that a poisoned sword stays poisoned for the whole minute. As someone who was perpetually disappointed with poisons in 3rd, I am happy so see that they might actually be worth investing in now.

It's not.. it would last for 10 rounds of combat - but still seems like a quick use of 20 days of work.

 

[Fralex]

I kind of wish the crafting system had more to it. Everything takes so long, it's hard for me to really see the appeal. I'll probably make alchemical items count as magic for the purpose of crafting time; I am not going to spend five to ten days making a single-use low-damage combat item that is wasted on a miss.

On a side note, does anybody else feel like we need some more alchemical items? The only things alchemist's supplies definitely can craft are acid and alchemist's fire, and maybe they could also make holy water, alcohol, rare inks, and gunpowder (if that exists yet). What about all the other classics, like the sunrod, the thunderstone, the soupstone?

 

[Ahrimon]

I think we need a whole new Auroras Whole Realms Catalog

 

[Inchoroi]

In fairness, a mundane crafter makes (or saves) half the cost of the item, since he only has to spend half the price to make the item. On the other hand, crafting magic items requires the full cost (so spellcasters arguably don't typically craft items to make a profit, but rather to achieve a purpose like outfitting a dragon slayer so he can kill a wyrm that's been troubling the caster).

Personally, I plan to use an idea I saw somewhere on these boards. Basically, mundane crafting progresses at a rate of 5 * your proficiency bonus. If you don't have a proficiency bonus, it's just 5. I like it because it means that by 20th level you can create 30 gp worth of goods per day, or 60 if you have expertise. I haven't decided whether to do something similar for magic item creation.

Admittedly, downtime in my games tends to be limited. Usually days, sometimes weeks, rarely months, and never years. This could imbalance a game with lots of downtime.

Hm. I do like this idea of 5 x proficiency bonus for mundane crafting. It fits that a mundane smith, whom I cannot see being above 3rd level or so, could make a plate armor set in enough time to have it be viable. From what I can gather from my research, it takes about 1100 man-hours for a person on their own now to make one from scratch, which makes it about 137 days of work; this means that our hypothetical smith could make a set of plate armor in about 150 days, which is close enough for the purposes of my games.

 

[77IM]

In fairness, a mundane crafter makes (or saves) half the cost of the item, since he only has to spend half the price to make the item. On the other hand, crafting magic items requires the full cost (so spellcasters arguably don't typically craft items to make a profit, but rather to achieve a purpose like outfitting a dragon slayer so he can kill a wyrm that's been troubling the caster).

This suggests another good house rule: for mundane items, if you buy better material, you craft 5x faster but pay the FULL price in raw materials instead of half price. Bam! Mundane plate armor just got easier than magic plate! Of course, this makes crafting into simply a slow way of buying, but it could still be useful for making custom items or illegal items (like poisons).

 

[TwoSix]

I think the long timeframe for crafting and other downtime activities has some nice knockoff benefits.

1) It encourages roleplay with the community. You could take 20 days to craft poison yourself, or you can have a chat with the local thieves' guild, or local herbalist and get them to give you a hand. Or better yet, do both, and have even more poison.

2) It encourages dialogue with the DM to explore your options. Want to craft a suit of magic armor that takes 200 days? Work with your DM to recruit the local blacksmith and his apprentices to help. Make a quick trip to the dwarven mine to find some high quality ore that only takes half the time to work with. Maybe the essence of the tainted earth elemental that haunts the local woods can count as 1000g towards the total creation cost. And so on and so on.