Caster Level and Magic Item Creation

Can someone please explain the caster level requirement for magic item creation, or rather, what about it was supposed to have been errated and wasn't? After reading Monte's 3.5 review and Sean Reynold's commentary I saw this mentioned twice and find I have no idea what they are talking about. So please help.

Thullgrim

Dungeon Master's Guide, page 178.

There is much confusion about what it really means or should mean. Apparently, 3.5 may not clear it up.

The impression that I get is that the designers of the game may have never reached a true concensus over the definition. I can't really point to any examples of overt disagreement.

The real issue seems to be the following:

Every magic item has prerequisites. (Spells, feats, skill ranks, race of creator, or occasionally even a listing of "X level.")

Every Item also lists the Caster Level. Which is not a requirement to create the item. Or maybe it is. Depends on how you interpret things and which rule you site.

Things could have been made much more clear by an implicit statement one way or the other. Once again, I've read that 3.5 seems to have the same (confusing) text in this section as 3.0.

I'm sure that I've missed some important details, it's just that in my game we've avoided this issue by writing house rules to cover it, no matter what the official rule is.

As it is written it looks like an item requires you to be a certain level but it's not supposed to be a requirement to make the item. It was supposed to be errattaed but never made iton the list and therefore never made it into 3.5

The caster level section of magic items is just telling you what level that item is typically found at. It's useful to determine what the effects based on caster level are supposed to be.

What determines what the level of the caster is supposed to be tocreate the item is based on which item creation feat you are using and/or the spell required for the creation of the item or in the case of armor and weapons the enchancement bonus would need to be taken into account.

So if you wanted to make a wondrous item that required a 7th level spell you would need to have at least the min number of levels to cast 7th spells, unless you had some other way of castingthat spell during creation in which case you min. caster requirement is 3rd because of the feat required.

HTH,

Bryan

Gilwen said:

The caster level section of magic items is just telling you what level that item is typically found at. It's useful to determine what the effects based on caster level are supposed to be.

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It's also useful to determine the success or failure of a Dispel Magic targetting the item.

People seem to have an amazing capacity to miss the obvious: if it's not listed after the word "Prerequisite", it's not a prerequisite ... as surprising as that may sound.

Occam's Razor. I wish people would apply it more often.

More information on the topic can be found here: www.superdan.net/dndfaq2.html

If they do ever actually change this rule, I sincerely hope they actually provide rules answering the question of "what happens to the market price of 'other' items when Caster Level is altered?"

Once apon a time, I was a little confused about the rules concerning the making of magic items, then someone on this board pointed me towards Monte Cooks FAQ on the Subject.

Now I do the same: Monte Cook on making Magic Items.

Seeing as how he had a firm hand in designing said rules, he probably has the best insite as to what was meant.

No errata, because there was no mistake.

I'll repeat here what I stated in another thread:

At GenCon last year during the D&D Q&A, it was stated that caster level is not, and never has been a prerequisite for item creation, which is why caster level is listed independently (read as "in-front-of and seperated by a semi-colon") of the prerequisites.

That said, it surprises me that they didn't attempt to address that confusion by listing caster level on a seperate line.

Pax said:

People seem to have an amazing capacity to miss the obvious: if it's not listed after the word "Prerequisite", it's not a prerequisite ... as surprising as that may sound.

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But here is where the problem actually lies. Later in the DMG (referring to 3.0 because I don't have access to 3.5 yet) there is a section titled Caster Level in the Creating Magic Items Section. it states the following:

"The power of the item (just as a spell’s caster level measures its power). The caster level determines the item’s saving throw
bonus, as well as range or other level-dependent aspects of the powers of the item (if variable). It also determines the level that
must be contended with should the item come under the effect of a dispel magic spell or similar situation.

For potions, scrolls, and wands, the creator can set the caster level of the item at any number high enough to cast the stored
spell and not higher than her own caster level. For other magic items, the caster level is determined by the item itself. In this
case, the creator’s caster level must be as high as the item’s caster level (and prerequisites may effectively put a higher
minimum on the creator’s level)."

This last paragraph tells us that you need to be a certain level to create all magic items. You need to be a certain level to create a scroll written at a certain level (makes sense) and you need to be a certain caster level to create a wondrous item of a certain caster level.

When a character wants to create a magic item, he does not have to be the one casting the spells required, but must have the corresponding Feat. This brought me to create a House Rule when I DM. If a character wants to create a certain magic item, like Gloves of Storing for example, he needs to be able to cast Shrink Item and be a 6th level caster. If one of my players with a 3rd level caster wants to create it, he will have to find or buy a scroll with Shrink Item written at 6th level. This cost goes beyond the normal cost it takes to create an item.

There are my two cents.

BC

Truth.

Andy Collins said in his thread on wizard's board (Q: unanswered questions) that:

"Caster level is NOT a prerequisite and NEVER has been. When an item is created by a different character, it will have a higher or LOWER caster level."

I hope this helps.

Centaur said:

Once apon a time, I was a little confused about the rules concerning the making of magic items, then someone on this board pointed me towards Monte Cooks FAQ on the Subject....

Seeing as how he had a firm hand in designing said rules, he probably has the best insite as to what was meant.

Click to expand...

And here's his more recent comment from http://www.montecook.com/review.html :

Caster level is still a prerequisite for magic item creation. This was an error in the 3.0 DMG and remains. You still have to be 17th level to make a 1st-level pearl of power.

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Sean K. Reynolds recently suggested that the passages in question were added by someone else after Monte had let go of the book.