I'm quoting both of you because its the same response, mostly. Mort can skip the first paragraph as it's more for Oofta.
I'm a big fan of DMs. I think they are what make this game what it is. I think bad DMing is the reason for most of the complaints we see around here. A good DM can also make up for most issues in a system. The issues in this thread included. DMs here aren't the problem, and good DMs will adjust for these issues over time. We saw this in 2015 and 2016 as DMs adjusted to some of 5e's CR issues.
My issue is with item crafting, not DMs having to encounter balance. We see in the DMG, both 2014 and 2024, guidelines on gold rewards and on magic items by level. In 2024, under "awarding magic items" we read;
"The table shows how many items of each rarity are meant to be handed out during each of the four tiers of play."
This leads me to believe that WotC knows that magic items have an impact on encounter balance. The number for the entire campaign, for rare magic items is 23. We will come back to that. Let's continue.
Next we see guidelines for gold found in "Treasure hoards" by CR. Under "Adventure Rewards" we read;
"As a rough benchmark, aim to roll on the Random Treasure Hoard table about once per game session."
Notice here, that for a CR 0-4, the lowest tier, the amount is, on average, 500 GP per game session. Keep this number in mind because it's important. Also looking at higher levels, you'll notice 5 and 6 digits in this number. Remember that too.
Under crafting magic items, we see another table for crafting magic items, crazy. This table shows time required and cost in gold sorted by rarity. For rarities up to rare items, it takes no more than 2000 gold and no more than 50 days. It takes less, of both time and gold, for lesser rarities. The gold amount is trivial under the guidelines outlined above, if you remember that number, even for low level parties.
It continues;
"Assistants. Characters can combine their efforts to shorten the crafting time. Divide the time needed to create an item by the number of characters working on it. Normally, only one other character can assist you, but the DM might allow more assistants."
So under the rules as written, a level 3 party can craft a rare magic item every 25 days. If you average 3 days per session, which is a blistering pace, a party of four can craft 2 rare items every 25 days with over 1000 gp left over. If you start increasing levels or decreasing the pace, the money situation gets out of hand even at low levels.
If we revisit that table on treasure hoards, that you should award once per session. We can see that a level 5 party makes enough in one session to craft multiple rare items. A level 11 party makes enough in 2 sessions to craft the entire 23 rare items suggested for the campaign.
A single session of level 17 play provides enough money to create every single magic item from rarities rare and below that is recommended for the whole campaign with hundreds of thousands left over. A level 11 party can garner enough in a handful of sessions.
What does this all mean? It means that given WotC's own guidelines, the players have enough gold to overwhlem the system in magic items. If you assume 2014's guidance on downtime stands, as no advice to not have downtime was included, the problems becomes obvious.
Under WotC's own advice, following their own guidelines, the item crafting they provided easily outpaces suggested magic item rewards. The implication is that WotC expects fast campaigns, in regard to in world time, to limit that number, or they just don't expect you to use the system at all.
The system, as written, is busted. It forces arbitrary time limits on campaigns and throws out a long history of downtime in those very campaigns. If you want to have longer campaigns with downtime, your only recourse is to simply throw out the crafting system or ignore published guidelines all together.
EDIT: You can also, just raise encounter difficulty to absurd levels. But I feel like just not using this silly crafting system is far preferable.
EDIT2: Oofta posted one of the tables mentioned above. Thanks Oofta!
