Superior masterwork items for a low magic world?

[Valesin]

A while back I posted looking for advice about various aspects of a low-magic-item world. (BTW, thanks for all the advice!)

Among all the postings were a couple of suggestions that the world should have superior masterwork items, especially weapons. Does anyone use improved masterwork items in their world? How many 'categories' of MW items do you use (e.g., +1 attack, then +1 damage, then +2 attack, etc)?

And, perhaps most importantly, how do you price them? Is it a linear progression of costs or more like standard DMG magic items?

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

The Black Company Campaign Setting does this and does it well. It adds all sort of bonuses associated to masterwork equipment and the effects increase the more its creator beat the Craft DC by.

 

[Clay_More]

I actually made a bit of a complex set of weapon crafting rules that are essentially non-magical, but expands a great deal on the basic MW concept. I think there should be a link in the bottom of my signature to the wiki I made. It also has some work on pricing (or in case you craft it yourself, on the Craft DC's etc.).

 

[Arkhandus]

Here's what I got, but it's not meant to replace magic weapons, just provide a greater variety in mundane items, at a lower price than magical items. I haven't yet decided what the Craft DCs would be for better-than-masterwork items. I also haven't gotten anything done yet for superior/grand masterwork shields.

Superior Masterwork Weapon: Replaces masterwork, full cost must be paid whether or not item would already have been considered masterwork, grants +1 attack and damage, bonuses do not stack with enhancements, nonproficiency penalties with it are reduced by 1, hardness is 115% of normal rounded up, hit points are 115% of normal rounded up, magical enhancements cost 5% less all around.

Grand Masterwork Weapon: Replaces masterwork and superior masterwork, full cost must be paid whether or not item would already have been considered masterwork or superior masterwork, grants +2 attack and damage, bonuses do not stack with enhancements, nonproficiency penalties with it are reduced by 2, hardness is 130% of normal rounded up, hit points are 130% of normal rounded up, weight is 85% of normal rounded down to nearest 1/2 pound, magical enhancements cost 10% less all around.

Superior Masterwork Armor: Replaces masterwork, full cost must be paid whether or not item would already have been considered masterwork, reduces armor check penalty by 2 but not below 0, grants +1 to max dex bonus, hardness is 115% of normal rounded up, hit points are 115% of normal rounded up.

Grand Masterwork Armor: Replaces masterwork and superior masterwork, full cost must be paid whether or not item would already have been considered masterwork or superior masterwork, reduces armor check penalty by 2 but not below 0, grants +1 to max dex bonus and +1 better AC, hardness is 130% of normal rounded up, hit points are 130% of normal rounded up, weight is 85% of normal rounded down to nearest 1/2 pound, arcane spell failure from the armor is reduced by 10%.

Masterwork Tool: Grants +2 on checks made with the tool, holds 15% more weight, has 15% larger space.

Superior Masterwork Tool: Replaces masterwork, full cost must be paid whether or not item would already have been considered masterwork, grants +4 on checks made with the tool, hardness is 115% of normal rounded up, hit points are 115% of normal rounded up, holds 30% more weight, has 30% larger space.

Grand Masterwork Tool: Replaces masterwork and superior masterwork, full cost must be paid whether or not item would already have been considered masterwork or superior masterwork, grants +6 on checks made with the tool, hardness is 130% of normal rounded up, hit points are 130% of normal rounded up, holds 50% more weight, has 50% larger space, weight is 85% of normal rounded down to nearest 1/2 pound.

Name						Price		Weight/Space/Holds
Masterwork Weapon				+300 gp		----------/----------/----------
Superior Masterwork Weapon			+700 gp		----------/----------/----------
Grand Masterwork Weapon				+1,400 gp	15% less/----------/----------
Masterwork Ammunition (1 Piece)			+6 gp		----------/----------/----------
Superior Masterwork Ammunition (1 Piece)	+10 gp		----------/----------/----------
Grand Masterwork Ammunition (1 Piece)		+17 gp		15% less/----------/----------
Masterwork Shield				+200 gp		----------/----------/----------
Superior Masterwork Shield			+450 gp		----------/----------/----------
Grand Masterwork Shield				+800 gp		15% less/----------/----------
Masterwork Armor				+150 gp		----------/----------/----------
Superior Masterwork Armor			+350 gp		----------/----------/----------
Grand Masterwork Armor				+700 gp		15% less/----------/----------
Masterwork Accessory				+200 gp		----------/----------/----------
Superior Masterwork Accessory			+350 gp		----------/----------/----------
Grand Masterwork Accessory			+700 gp		15% less/----------/----------
Masterwork Tool					+50 gp		----------/15% more/15% more
Superior Masterwork Tool			+150 gp		----------/30% more/30% more
Grand Masterwork Tool				+300 gp		15% less/50% more/50% more

 

[Spatzimaus]

A long time ago, my group threw out the PHB Craft system and replaced it with something that, ironically, would work well in a low-magic world as a replacement for the masterwork rules. (Ironic because our world is actually higher magic than the core rules...) It goes like this (key points in bold).


Every material has a cost (in gp/lb, with iron or crude steel as 1), a DC modifier (+0 for iron, ~+20 for the really powerful stuff), a Hardness (from 5 to 25), and a list of extra benefits. By default, the item's HP is proportional to its hardness, and the maximum enchantment it can hold is equal to its DC modifier. We converted 44 materials to this system, heavily skewed towards the metal side of things, since we didn't have many players who wanted organic stuff outside of the usual Dragonscale. (We added a bunch of crystal materials that worked well for the treehuggers, and with the weight-reducing metals like mithral the light-armor folks were happy to give up the leather, so all that was left were the woods for bows.)

There's no separate "masterwork" component to craft. If you want a Fine Steel longsword (the equivalent of masterwork), it's DC +3 (meaning 18 instead of 15), and costs 10 gp/lb for materials. That's all you need to know, if you want to craft one, with one exception: the core rules' Craft equations just won't work if you want to figure out how long it takes to make something. We totally reworked that system too.
(Our system: take the base item's gp cost from the PHB. Multiply by (DC-10, minimum 1, including the DC modifier for materials). Each day, make a Craft check; the result is the number of gp progress made towards this total.)

If you want to buy a Fine Steel weapon, you COULD just take the PHB cost of the sword and multiply by 10 (the ratio of material costs, since there's no mithral-like weight reduction to contend with). The x10 cost already includes the fact that the material is harder to work with (and so you'd probably need assistants and/or masterwork tools) and is harder to find, although an NPC crafter might charge even more just because he knows you really want those bonuses.

In our system, there's a steady progression of materials to work with. For the sword example, you could use Fine Steel (DC +3), Silver or Cold Iron (+4), Cinnabryl (+5), Silver-Iron (+6), Arandur (+6), Mithral (+7), Adamantium (+9), Starmetal (+10), Gartine (+11), Ferroplasm (Karach) (+13), Dajaava (Baatorian Green Steel) (+15), Tanar'ri Bloodsteel (+15), Darksteel (+16), True Mithral (+18), Adamantine (+19), and Orichalcum (+20, at 600 gp/lb!). And that list was only the metals; if you want to include all the various crystals (Dlarun, Substare, Laen, various elemental crystals), hardened plant products (Ironwood, Cranor), or bone materials that can be used in the place of metals, well, it's most of our list. Most of these are drawn from various AD&D references, and each has a bunch of benefits, although a few have been substantially altered from their AD&D counterparts.

All of the bonuses from armor/weapons are Material bonues, and stack with magical bonuses, so the "+1 to attack rolls" benefit of masterwork applies even if you enchant your Fine Steel sword. Since both weapons AND armor get material bonuses, the effect tends to cancel out unless you're a class that doesn't use weapons and/or armor (monks, casters).
This also means that you have to carefully consider the costs. A +1 Orichalcum weapon would probably cost more and be harder to make than a +3 Fine Steel one, while being weaker in combat. But, the Orichalcum weapon could be enchanted far higher and has a lot of other benefits, so in the long term you'd gravitate to the rare, high-end materials.
(In a non-magical setting, this one doesn't really matter.)

---------------------
Now, to your original point: you could easily do something similar. Sure, you could just make a series of weapon crafting grades: "Primitive" (DC -4), "Crude" (DC -2), "Plain" (DC +0), "Fine" (DC +2), "Masterwork" (DC +4), "Grandmaster" (DC +6), etc., with escalating bonuses, costs, and DCs for each step. But having the various grades correspond to different exotic materials (with varying bonuses for each) is really a lot more interesting to the players, IMO. And it's actually not been nearly as much of a bookkeeping headache as I thought it was going to be.

 

[GlassJaw]

The Black Company Campaign Setting does this and does it well. It adds all sort of bonuses associated to masterwork equipment and the effects increase the more its creator beat the Craft DC by.

Actually, Black Company is exactly what I don't want in expanded craft rules, especially for a low-magic setting. All it does is add a bunch of magical effects and call them non-magical. What's the point of that?

Clay, you have some interesting options in your rules, although a few are a little wonky. I could see myself stealing a few though.

 

[Jon Potter]

A while back I posted looking for advice about various aspects of a low-magic-item world. (BTW, thanks for all the advice!)

Among all the postings were a couple of suggestions that the world should have superior masterwork items, especially weapons. Does anyone use improved masterwork items in their world? How many 'categories' of MW items do you use (e.g., +1 attack, then +1 damage, then +2 attack, etc)?

And, perhaps most importantly, how do you price them? Is it a linear progression of costs or more like standard DMG magic items?

In the Badaxe Games' Heroes of High Favor books there is a bunch of new masterwork effects you can add using the craft skill. The effects range from weight reduction to adding a tempered edge (and relevant "+" to attack rolls) for armor and weapons to increasing market value and improving skill checks with other masterwork items. The system is easy to wrap your brain around and nicely reflects a low-magic feel.

The Dwarf book (logically) has the most masterwork qualities, but the Elf book also has a fair number.

 

[Terraism]

Lots of really, really cool stuff.

Okay, splendid. Now, let's see more details. This looks *wonderful.*

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, splendid. Now, let's see more details. This looks *wonderful.*

I should probably start a separate thread for this, since it's a little off-topic, and I want to be able to find it later. I'll post it later tonight.

 

[Kerrick]

A long time ago, my group threw out the PHB Craft system and replaced it with something that, ironically, would work well in a low-magic world as a replacement for the masterwork rules. (Ironic because our world is actually higher magic than the core rules...) It goes like this (key points in bold).

I did something similar awhile back... I rewrote the crafting system and the masterwork system - I thought the idea of "masterwork components" was absurd and a flat bonus that's the same for all items was also silly, so I ditched those and made the whole item masterwork and applied a price multiplier - a +1 masterwork dagger, for instance, is 8 gp, not 302.