D&D 5E How is 5th edition in respects to magic item creation?

[MoreDetonation]

I remember back in 3.5, wizards would craft massive amounts of scrolls and wands to supplement their slots. Even with higher-level spells, the gold cost was so low that a wizard with enough gold might never need to use a spell slot.

I know 5e has rules for magic item creation, including for scrolls. I was wondering: have they nerfed crafting somewhat? (At least so that crafting becomes viable only for rare occasions.)

 

[Staffan]

The 5e item creation rules can be summed up in one word: vague.

In more words: Item creation is very much up to DM fiat nowadays. First off, it's presented in the DMG as an option the DM might allow. There's nothing in the PHB about making items. It also requires a formula for each specific item, and says nothing about how hard such a formula might be to obtain. You may also require particular ingredients and/or circumstances for particular items. Item creation also takes a very long time - 4 days for really weak Common items (regular Healing potions), 20 days for fairly weak Uncommon items, and multiplied by 10 for each category above that.

One of the UAs had expanded downtime rules which, among other things, included more specific and player-friendly rules for item creation. We'll see if those make their way to Xanathar's, and how much they've changed.

 

[Krachek]

Magic items can be optional in 5ed.
Crafting is an option of this option.

 

[schnee]

I remember back in 3.5, wizards would craft massive amounts of scrolls and wands to supplement their slots. Even with higher-level spells, the gold cost was so low that a wizard with enough gold might never need to use a spell slot.

I know 5e has rules for magic item creation, including for scrolls. I was wondering: have they nerfed crafting somewhat? (At least so that crafting becomes viable only for rare occasions.)

They have beaten crafting nearly to death with a nerf bat.

What you said about Wizards is one of the reasons why. That stuff is great for power gaming munchkins, but bad for the rest of the game. So now the game supports only the lowest-level crafting, i.e. healing potions and the like.

It's now much closer to Basic and AD&D; you are adventurers, who go out to find cool stuff via your crazy risk-taking. You have no idea what you will find, or where you'll find it. And you're not sitting away in your lab; you're out there, in the world outside.

Go out and find that loot!

 

[happyhermit]

It's totally left up to the GM to decide whether they want PC magic item creation at all, and if they do how difficult it will be. There are optional rules in the DMG that the GM can use that allow for easily adjusting the difficulty. They really haven't nerfed it at all, they just left it up to the GM decide how important it is in a particular game.

 

[LapBandit]

Magic items can be optional in 5ed.
Crafting is an option of this option.

So optional that every official adventure has contained loads of them. Magic items being optional is a marketing ploy by WotC to make you believe 5th Ed is balanced. A not insignificant amount of the community has bought that hook, line, and sinker. Spells are essentially reusable magic items; as long as they are in the game, magic items are in the game.

 

[Dan Chernozub]

I can recommend the magic-item-crafting rules on donjon as a good starting point for a homebrew ruling of this.

I'm running pretty complex magic items in my games (no plain +1 longswords) so I let players get creative with what their characters are trying to create. I don't let them control the final result 100%, of course.

One great idea I've picked from Detect Magic spell - it shows what school of magic was used in the creation of the effect, so for any item, you are trying to create - you need to use a specific spell you know, repeatedly, trying to twist it for a permanent effect.

It might work, it might work in an unexpected way, it might spawn a side-quest for a rare ingredient - whatever creates good content for the participants is welcome in my game.

One recent example - a Wizard in my party is followed/haunted by a spirit of a witch doctor he tortured and burned. He is trying to provide the spirit an instrument to effect the material plane once again. His idea was that the spirit was melovloent, so he was using Chromatic Orb on his staff while trying to commune with the spirit to let the witch to express itself through an element damage of its choice. However, witch doctor was a good, though misguided divine spellcaster, so in the middle of the battle that was going bad for the PCs, the staff exploded with a wave of healing energy.

The work he has put into the staff was lost, but the party still received help at the crucial moment, so he didn't feel "cheated out of his effort" and he learnt something important about his long dead adversary and a permanent companion. It was good for the encounter and it was good for the story of the PC.

 

[Staffan]

I'll also add that one of the more important uses of scrolls in 3e is no longer as important in 5e, because of changes in the magic system.

See, in 3e, pretty much every condition you could impose on PCs had its own spell to fix it. Remove fear, remove paralysis, lesser restoration, remove blindness/deafness, remove curse, remove disease, neutralize poison, restoration, break enchantment, stone to flesh, greater restoration. Unless you knew you were getting into a situation where one of these would be particularly relevant (e.g. remove paralysis if fighting ghouls, or neutralize poison versus yuan-ti), the chance of getting to actually cast one of these was pretty low, so you didn't want to use up precious spell slots with them. On the other hand, you could be pretty screwed if you didn't have the right one available on short notice. So, what the cleric did was spend some time with the wizard to build up some scrolls of these spells, which could then be used as needed.

In 5e, two things have changed that makes that aspect of scroll-usage less important. One is that the number of condition-relief spells are significantly lowered - almost everything on the above list can be handled with lesser and greater restoration, particularly everything that requires immediate attention. The other is that spell preparation is separated from spells cast per day. So if you prepare lesser restoration and don't run into anything that requires removing poisons etc., you can use that spell slot on hold person instead.

As an aside, that's why playing an Oracle as a main healer in Pathfinder sucked - with limited spells known, there's no way I could justify getting all the condition-relief spells. It was awesome at low levels when I completely broke color spray though...

 

[Xetheral]

The biggest problem with the 5e crafting rules is that the creation cost and time required to craft an item is based on Rarity, rather than utility. A single dose of Soverign Glue, for example, is just as expensive to create as a Belt of Storm Giant Strength or a Sphere of Annihilation, because all are considered "Lengendary" Rarity.

On top of the obvious balance issues this creates, there is also a verisimilitude problem: crafting such items takes half a million gold and 54.7 person-years (at 8 hours per person per day). It is mind-boggling (and immersion wrecking) to imagine that anyone would ever have gone to that much trouble to craft Soverign Glue.

If Soverign Glue was a one-off problem, it wouldn't be a big deal. But unfortunately the item lists are replete with examples where the utility of an item does not line up with its Rarity. This means the the limitations of the Rarity-based pricing scheme are unfortunately widespread. As written in the DMG, the provided rules are basically useless at tables that prioritize balance and/or verisimilitude.

 

[gyor]

The biggesy problem with the 5e crafting rules is that the creation cost and time required to craft an item is based on Rarity, rather than utility. A single dose of Soverign Glue, for example, is just as expensive to create as a Belt of Storm Giant Strength or a Sphere of Annihilation, because all are considered "Lengendary" Rarity.

On top of the obvious balance issues this creates, there is also a verisimilitude problem: crafting such items takes half a million gold and 54.7 person-years (at 8 hours per person per day). It is mind-boggling (and immersion wrecking) to imagine that anyone would ever have gone to that much trouble to craft Soverign Glue.

If Soverign Glue was a one-off problem, it wouldn't be a big deal. But unfortunately the item lists are replete with examples where the utility of an item does not line up with its Rarity. This means the the limitations of the Rarity-based pricing scheme are unfortunately widespread. As written in the DMG, the provided rules are basically useless at tables that prioritize balance and/or verisimilitude.

Then it's good that XGTE will have new magic item rules including likely magic item creation.