Do you like XP costs for magic item creation?

[Thanee]

I really meant that in relation to 4E.

@mach1.9pants: If you really think Item Creation in 3E is too costly, then I believe you are very, very wrong... it is extremely potent and powerful in my experience.

Bye
Thanee

 

[delericho]

I don't think having a small penalty for 2 combats will really stop a character from creating magical items.

True, but I'm not sure we really should.

In the short term, a character would gain the boost of having a new (presumably powerful) item, with the corresponding weakness of the negative level (as suggested).

As time goes forward, the penalty would be removed, true, but at the same time the DM should probably re-assert the Wealth-per-Level guidelines (or equivalent) to bring the characters back into parity with where they 'should' be. (And, by that, I'm not advocating a slavish adherence to those guidelines, merely that they should be taken as some sort of rough metric.)

Why would PCs bother creating items? Well, in the short term there's the benefit of having the item. In the longer term, they have the advantage of having exactly the items they want, and also the in-game prestige of wielding an item they have made themselves.

Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud by this point.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I really meant that in relation to 4E.

@mach1.9pants: If you really think Item Creation in 3E is too costly, then I believe you are very, very wrong... it is extremely potent and powerful in my experience.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah as long as the players get to keep all the MI all the time. Often my players tend to 'lose' (stolen, destroyed, disjuncted, whatever) their MI, then the XP is gone forever

Edit:I never thought it was too costly, it is just something that:
A. My players never did and
B. NPC spellcasters would be reluctant to do it without any REAL value to themselves i.e. useful, to them, items or getting a real big wadge of CASH

 

[Delta]

I thought XP costs made a lot of sense. I was delighted by the elegance when I first opened the 3E books.

I definitely see levels/XP as "life force", in the same way that they're drained by undead; and so a reasonable drain when making magic items.

My main suprise was that I thought the XP costs were too low. And I even say this as the primary spellcaster/item creator in a 3E party for several years.

 

[Vegepygmy]

I don't view XP as "strength", I look at it as knowledge/experience.

That's fine, if it works for you, but then obviously it doesn't make sense for XP to be used as a spell component, either.

I think the problem some people have with "crafting costs XP" is that they ascribe too much importance to the term "experience point," and don't really understand what they're meant to represent. ("It's called an experience point, so it must represent knowledge/experience!")

That's like insisting "French fries" come from France.

Once you get over the idea that XP represent knowledge/experience, "crafting costs XP" probably makes more sense.

 

[Derren]

That's fine, if it works for you, but then obviously it doesn't make sense for XP to be used as a spell component, either.

Why not? Ever seen Neverending Story (2?) Whenever the boy makes a wish he forgets something. If that is not experience cost then I don't know what it is.

 

[Treebore]

That's fine, if it works for you, but then obviously it doesn't make sense for XP to be used as a spell component, either.

I think the problem some people have with "crafting costs XP" is that they ascribe too much importance to the term "experience point," and don't really understand what they're meant to represent. ("It's called an experience point, so it must represent knowledge/experience!")

That's like insisting "French fries" come from France.

Once you get over the idea that XP represent knowledge/experience, "crafting costs XP" probably makes more sense.

It also helps that HP and CON have much more to do with a characters "life force" than XP's do.

 

[Victim]

It also helps that HP and CON have much more to do with a characters "life force" than XP's do.

I generally think of level as having the most to do with life force (which relates strongly to HP and barely at all with Con). Attacks based around snuffing out someone's life tend to bypass HP (Finger of Death/necromancy effects, Enervation/level drain). So then XP in the sense of 'fractions of a level' would also relate strongly to life force.

 

[Dinkeldog]

I disliked it as a caster. There's some balancing necessary, because, even with gold, and the expenditure of the feat, something needs to happen in as tightly balanced a game as 3E. However, it still didn't explain the presence of multiple strong weapons and armors. Why would a caster turn himself into a +1 sword-making factory at the expense of limiting his effectiveness?

 

[thedungeondelver]

I find it telling that previous editions did not do the XP cost, D&D 3 did, and D&D 4 does not.