Anybody else HATE item creation feats?

[JLXC]

I love the Feats. I DM and I find them refreshing and intelligent. I game the FR and a home brew made of DMG suggested Gear level. My players have a blast, I don't have to have my players miraculously find Gear that just happens to fit them (by this I mean what they need as characters, like a magic spiked chain and other COMMON things heh)! Wow how convenient! Groan. In worlds where magic is real WHY WHY oh WHY do so many folks have trouble dealing with the fact that people from that world WOULD know about and use magic items, and of course MAKE THEM. Just because YOU, living in the hum drum world are Seriously impressed by a +1 sword... does NOT NOT NOT mean PC's should have to be. Gimme a break. They would look at such a thing as cool and useful. Magic IS Technology in many D&D worlds... Sorry if that destroys your vision of players in awe of a Ring of Protection +1. I always hear people compalining about how magic is NOT Tech, and it's horrible to think that! Because it trivialized magic.

Welcome to 3E. Magic may not be trivial, but it's more common, and people know about it and understand it. They respect it's power... but even Commoners know about it. They've hear of it. The might be impressed by it. To Most PC's and 5th level + NPC's magic is a useful thing. Magic Items make useful tools. They are not OHHHH AHHHHH items. They get used. So what?

 

[Reprisal]

I've come to the stark realization that, unlike the original quote, the inverse is true for D&D, at least in my opinion:

"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."

I've found that this is how I tend to run my games... Not because I'm some raving technologist, but because the very way RPGs are played pretty much takes the wonder, the fantasy, out of magic.

In a game, such as this one, where there are rules for magic (simply out of necessity), then that sense of wonder you could get from reading a novel, or watching a movie, is lost...

Perhaps that's part of the problem... You can accept it and move on like JLXC here, or you can try to head it off with some creative GM work... Either way, you're bound to lose something in the mix. What you lose, however, is up to you, given enough time to ponder yourself and your players...

 

[PenguinKing]

Thing is, "unknowable mystery" isn't the only literary archetype of magic out there. There are plenty of examples in literature - yes, many of them predating D&D - where magic does have knowable, at-least-semi-quantifiable "rules". Besides, sometimes, "magic should be mysterious and incomprehensible to the mortal mind!" is DM-speak for "I want to be able to arbitrarily jerk my player characters around for no good reason whenever I please and wave it off with 'it's magic'!".

- Sir Bob.

 

[Petrosian]

[/B][/QUOTE]

1. As LostSoul points out, there is no accounting for where the gold piece cost gets spent or what limitations there might be on acquiring the necessary components. For all we know the gold pieces magically meld with the item during the creation.

"Creating a magic item requires costly components, most of which are consumed in the process. The cost of these materials equals half the cost of the item. "

Just because the price is expressed in gold pieces in no way implies gold pieces are used. You could make the same arguments about healing kits, which provide no explicit guidelines for assembling the kit and what is needed other than THE COST.

Magic items are not by far the only thing in DND where specific details are skipped and cost provided. That is the NORM.

Thats one of the reasons that towns have max gp costs for stuff.

2. There is no requirement of a laboratory or other facilities. You can create magic items anywhere you can meditate for spells. I find this completely unbelievable. What did all that gold get spent on and how is it used in the enchantment process? I guess it all just magically fuses into the item? Pshaw!

"Using an item creation feat also requires access to a laboratory or magical workshop, special tools, and so on. "

Since you clearly missed this part, i figured i would post it for you.

A line in the DMG about how quiet a place needs to be in order to make items does not, make that NOT, mean thats the only criteria.

3. Just because you know how to cast water breathing and freedom of movement you automatically know how to create a cloak of the manta ray with the right feat. I would have liked to see a treatise required for creating each specific item, probably just using the rules for researching or scribing (should you find someone else's research journal) new spells. Ah well...house rules.

Ok, lets pay close attention...

Sorcerer A has water breathing and freedom of movement spells. Does he know how to make a cloak of the mantra ray JUST BECAUSE he knows these spells? Nope. matter of fact, he may have no clue.

What in the world does he need to do BY THE RULES to know how to make it? he has to ALSO take the feat, which is what enables him to know how. just like taking the combat reflexes feats lets me know how to get multiple AoOs. just like the improved initiative feat allows me to notice signs and get off the bat quicker.

Thats what the feat represents, having learned HOW TO DO SOMETHING.

Its not "just because" he has the spells. Its ALSO BECAUSE he stufied and learned how to make the spells into magic items, as represented by him taking the feat.

He could have studied how to make his evocations more potent with spell focus. He could have studied how to make his spells last longer with extend.

Then again, perhaps you are also in favor of him having to spend time researching how to apply extend on each individual spell?

Other subject... on the whole "well finding a +1 sword is no great ohhh ahhh mystery wonder when the mage has already crafted you one."

Look, DnD is not low magic. You cannot gauge how it ought to be perceived by comparing it to low magic myths.

How mythical are boots of flying and a helm of invisibility when your mage casts fly and invisibility from early on in his carreer?

How wondrous is a magic carpet when fly spells are cast by the mage routinely?

How much in awe of finding a +1 sword should i be when my cleric casts greater magic weapon routinely to give me a +2?

The whole notion of "mysterious and wondrous" magic items stems from the item being able to do something you cannot do normally. With the power IN THE SPELL LISTS from early on, you should not expect gushing bouts of wonder at items which don't do anything the PCS cannot routinely do themselves.

This may be an interested setup, were magic items are all rare and wondrous things, but to make it so you have to get beyond making said items +1 swords and instead make them do things the PCs will not be able to do with routine spells.

otherwise your world (PCs cast fly and invis all the time) and your expectations (helm of invis and boots of flying are ohmygod sense-a-wonder things and +1 swords are geewowholycow) are in direct conflict.

Thats why having PCs make items based on the spells they routinely throw is not cheapening magic items. The items were already "cheapened" by the spell availability itself.

and yes the system is designed with the notion of wealth is converted ro useful items... thats why they have expected wealth levels for character level.

 

[Geoff Watson]

The 3e Item Creation feats/rules are GREAT. (At least after you apply a house rule or two.)

Much better than the 2e rules. Better balanced, make more sense, allow PCs to make stuff without incredibly stupid and vague requirements.

"Mysterious Magic" doesn't work when there is a PC wizard.

Geoff.

 

[kenjib]

Before you deride what the system is "missing", ask yourself this: what is most useful to the largest number of people, a simple, bare-bones magic item design system that is trivially easy to modify and adapt to any level of magic in your setting, or a campaign-specific, assumption-ridden monstrosity that requires you to extensively reverse-engineer to change anything?

- Sir Bob.

I'm not sure if you are referring to my post, but in case you are I don't see how implementing something like the following simple changes would be a "campaign-specific, assumption-ridden monstrosity that requires you to extensively reverse-engineer to change anything."

1. To create an item you must have access to a sufficiently large market to purchase the necessary components. If the GP limit of the city where you are acquiring the components is equal to or greater than the gp cost of creating the item then it can generally be assumed (DM permitting of course) that the necessary components can be found.

2. You need access to a magical laboratory for the creation of magic items with a total amount of highly specialized equipment worth at least 1/2 the cost of creating the item. This equipment does not get consumed during the item creation.

3. Each item requires an item creation treatise which details the process required to create the item. The effective spell level of the treatise for scribing purposes is based on the caster level listed in the item description (caster level + 1) / 2 (e.g. caster level 5 equates to a 3rd level spell, 7 equates to a 4th level spell, etc.). These treatises can be gained in one of three ways: a) Taken as one of a wizard's spells gained upon advancing a level. b) Copied from another spell caster's research journal as per the wizard rules for scribing a spell. Even non-wizards must maintain a research journal to enchant items. c) Researching the item creation method as per the wizard rules for inventing a new spell.

That's all. They need some tuning of course and it could probably be streamlined/simplified for #3 but that's the general idea. Now all of a sudden that all of that gold that mysteriously vanishes goes somewhere and you can explain why casters can make certain items without requiring meta-game knowledge of the entire magic item list in the DMG. Furthermore it could be a variant rule (#3 especially) so people who don't want the added complexity can ignore it.
I can see why some people might not like it though. Point taken. I still think the current system is kind of video gamish unless the DM introduces variant rules or expands on the current though. Basically you sit down in any quiet spot, erase a gp amount and xp from your character sheet, fast forward the game clock, and *poof* the item is suddenly magical. In my opinion that goes beyond "bare-bones" and easily into the realm of "insufficient" but obviously this is a subjective matter.

 

[seankreynolds]

And don't tell me that the level of money was factored into CRs, thats BS, you know as well as I do that CRs were designed by what is essentially the same thing as "Guess the number of marbles in the jar".

You're wrong. All of the Monster Manual monsters had an estimated CR, which was adjusted after extensive playtesting. Furthermore, money _is_ factored into CRs. Characters are expected to have a certain value of gear by level X, so the fighters can be expected to have a +Y magic weapon, and therefore have a reasonable chance of harming a monster of CR X with damage reduction Z/+Y. Without tracking gear, you can't know what sort of stuff an average party might have and therefore you can't really know what sort of creatures they should routinely be able to handle in a fight.

 

[Numion]

They suck IMHO too, but for quite different reasons. Who's ever going to bother to pay xp for a magic sword when GMW does the same trick for 1 hour / level? No one in my games, thats for sure.

+4 sword isn't very my impressive for my group, since the cleric already has +5 weapons and armor.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My current campaign is a relatively low magic world, and this is reinforced by my house rule that exp costs for creating magic items are all multiplied by 5 across the board. This is why magic items are rarer here - it is more of an investment to create them.

The only other change that I made in the end was to split "Craft Wondrous Item" up into three separate feats - "Craft Minor Wondrous Item", "Craft Major" and "Craft Legendary Wondrous item". Each has the previous level as a prereq. Despite the names, these allow the crafting of minor items (up to 7,400gp value), medium items (up to 29,000gp value) and major items (30,000 gp value and up). I did this because I felt that the single feat was far too good - it offered a vast range of magic items, with far more flexibility than any other item creation feat. This way it is possible for someone IMC to focus on creating powerful magic items, but very powerful miscellaneous items will *only* be created by those who have invested a lifetime in it.

Naturally this would not work for everyone - but it works well for me. To date I have not had a problem with item creation destroying the faux verisimilitude of my current campaign. If I ever run a FR campaign I might do it differently again.

Cheers

 

[LostSoul]

One great thing about the magic item creation feats is that they allow the players to become proactive. If they want to make Boots of Striding and Springing, say, the DM might inform the Wizard that he needs to make the boots out of Slaad hide. Now the characters have a goal - one they decided on thier own - and the DM can come up with the adventure.