Anybody else HATE item creation feats?

[333 Dave]

Oh, and thank you for pointing out the real problems (with spells like GMW making +1 swords useless). I think I'll start coming up with solutions now.

 

[PenguinKing]

Thanks for the replies everyone. But along the lines of "Is every chacracter from fantasy a grave robber" or whatever, think about it. Excalabur was given to Arthur from the Lady of the Lake. None of the hero's in LotR ever even thought of making magic items, they were all made long before they were even alive. Oh sure, there's a difference between having a broken sword that your dad gave you and his dad gave him etc reforged and taking the sword of your archnemisis, but they still didn't make it origionally. I didn't see Gandalf making swords, even he used one he found (in a troll-cave to boot!).
Don't tell me that most magic items in liturature are made by the people themselves, they are much more often gifts.

Yeah, Arthurian legend and The Lord of the Rings are the be-all, end-all of fantasy. Riiiiiight.

(You want a legendary precedent? How 'bout Norse mythology? Those dwarves/dark elves cranked out artifact-level magic items like they were going out of style! )

- Sir Bob.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

The only thing I dislike the feats is how they are divided up. I would of prefered a create trivial/minor/average/major/absurd magic item feat chain, instead of wonderous, arms and armor, scrolls etc. I especially dislike this considering how much overlap exists with wonderous items and virtually every other feat.

Side note I disagree with petrosion on the costs in gp being applied against the community availability. I think the line, "are genreally commonly available" is letting you know that it's made up of a bunch of commonly available materials as in able to find it virtually anywhere with a market for components. And not see the gerneral rule on availability. So I think his version is a house rule, though I think its a perfectly valid house rule.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Yeah, Arthurian legend and The Lord of the Rings are the be-all, end-all of fantasy. Riiiiiight.

(You want a legendary precedent? How 'bout Norse mythology? Those dwarves/dark elves cranked out artifact-level magic items like they were going out of style! )

- Sir Bob.

Yeah, and that's pretty much all they did. The movers and shakers were the guys using the stuff, not the ones making it. There are very few precedents in literature, legend, or mythology for characters who do both.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Yeah, and that's pretty much all they did. The movers and shakers were the guys using the stuff, not the ones making it. There are very few precedents in literature, legend, or mythology for characters who do both.

Maybe not in fantasy literature, but gadgeteers are a staple of sci-fi, and comics. Wanting to apply the same gadgeteer concept to a spellcaster is a fairly logical extension. And I'm sure people who read a wider range of fantasy novels than I do probably do know of characters who make things and yet still adventure. The only one I can think of though I can't remember the name of. The series was about a incompetent court wizard who invented a magical phone system accidentally. And he always seems to get caught up in adventures.

 

[Petrosian]

And i believe the line does indeed mean see the general item availability rules and that adding in "these are the only purchases in DND 3e not inculded and limited by the availability rules."

i see that latter as a house rule and, frankly, a bad one.

When i loom at that 'house rule" or alternate interpretation", I find it inconsistent that in a small enough thorpe of say 50 people i could not buy a longbow or a potion of cure light wounds and could not find more than 1000 gold in cash in the village BUT i can automatically BUY from them all the materials i need to make 100 vorpal +5 keen great axes with no hitch as long as i have the money. Heck, taken even at face value, the "no market limit" rule means i can find these from a single starving farmer as long as he is willing to part with the barn full of magical components.

i am relatively sure even Shard would not agree with the above examples IN HIS GAME. This means he is willing to draw up his own limits for how many vorpal sword component piles the farmer with his vegetable cart has for sale.

Me, as far as i can see, those rules are already provided for me. I just need to decide what special cases i want to allow.

to each his own.

Side note I disagree with petrosion on the costs in gp being applied against the community availability. I think the line, "are genreally commonly available" is letting you know that it's made up of a bunch of commonly available materials as in able to find it virtually anywhere with a market for components. And not see the gerneral rule on availability. So I think his version is a house rule, though I think its a perfectly valid house rule.

 

[PenguinKing]

Yeah, and that's pretty much all they did. The movers and shakers were the guys using the stuff, not the ones making it. There are very few precedents in literature, legend, or mythology for characters who do both.

So? It's still a pretty big precedent for magic item creation not being sole province of forgotten secrets of ages past - and by extension, a precedent for the idea that the knowledge of how to make those items would still be both extant and accessible in the setting's present day.

(And another thing... so the dwarves were never portrayed as the movers and shakers? Big deal - they didn't write the history books (so to speak), of course they'd have been glossed over. The Norse considered making magic an "unmanly" practice, tho' just using it didn't carry the same stigma. )

- Sir Bob.

 

[kenjib]

Whatever you want for your campaign is okay - how could I dispute that? I'm just speaking in general. However, when I speak of "assumptions", one must realize that there are layers of assumptions that must be made - levels of abstraction, as it were. In this particular case, spelling out an explicit research requirement for magic items is possibly inconsistent with other elements of the magic system. For example, it isn't explicitly spelled out where the "automatic" spells acquired by a wizard or sorcerer come from - they just know them.

My variant rule neither corrects this nor exacerbates this. This is a hole left in the core system that has nothing to do with my variant. I just added to the rules as they are. However wizards get these bonus spells is the same way that they can learn a treatise on item creation, should they choose one instead of one of their "free" spells. The only inconsistency is in the core rules themselves.

In a related issue, how about clerics? Since they automatically have access to all known spells they're of sufficient level to cast, is it logical that they automatically have access to all known item creation formulae they'd be able to use? Or isn't it? You can argue it either way, but which way is "right"?

- Sir Bob.

That's the purpose of rules, isn't it? To define which of the many ways, all potentially correct, is to be implemented. That's what all of the core rules do and that's what differentiates them from GURPS or Exalted or any other system. The fact that clerics prepare most of their spells like a wizard and spontaneously cast heal/inflict spells like a sorcerer is a good example. Again one could have argued that the game designers implement it one way or another. They made a choice and went with it. I already made this call in my initial description and went with it. In my variant all casters use the same rules - I think this is essential for balance reasons.

The fact that any spell caster knows how to create any magic item under the sun, provided they know certain spells that may or may not match the power(s) of the item to some arbitrary degree is just as much an assumption, using your definition of assumption, as requiring that spell casters learn how to create each type of item. Speaking "in general" as you did, I would say that both ways are completely fine. The D&D designers implemented it one way and I would have preferred another way, thus a variant rule that I can use. From previous discussions I have heard other people mention house rules similar to this one. In any case, it's probably not worth all this fuss.

 

[PenguinKing]

Oh, it's always worth the fuss - with no one to play the devil's advocate, one would never be able to separate the workable ideas from the brainfarts.

- Sir Bob.

 

[Voadam]

I forget what the Second Law is, except that it had something to do with entropy.

What was that law ... it just seems to have dissipated ... I can't summon the energy to recall it ... all is ennui.