Crafting magic items - new system

[Kerrick]

I'm working on a new crafting system where crafting times are not tied to price. The main part of it's done, but as I was working on it, I thought, "Why not apply this to magic items too?" Instead of basing the crafting time on the price, like the old crafting system, magic items could be brought into the new system also, making everything unified under one umbrella.

I haven't hashed out all the specifics yet, though I do have a rough framework; I wanted to get some opinions on this idea before I proceeded further. As you can see, I'm a little divided on the issue myself, so I put the good and bad points up.


The good points:

Everything will be unified under one system, and crafting times won't be based on price - this is especially helpful for those epic items that cost umpteen million gold, or even the high-end non-epic items that cost 75,000+ gp.

One skill will take the place of a bunch of feats with questionable level requirements (questionable meaning that people don't always agree that the levels listed are what they should be - I, for example, am in favor of three levels for wondrous items, one for minor, moderate, and major).


The bad points:

Unifying everything under one umbrella would necessitate making a new craft skill for magic items - in this case, Craft (artificing).

All those feats will either have to go away or be modified, and people who've taken them will have to make changes to their characters.


So what do you think? Good idea, bad idea, don't care?

 

[ValhallaGH]

One feat: Craft Magic Item. You are able to bind the powers of magic to otherwise mundane items, regardless of the form of those items.

This would work really well in standard D&D since there is still the many different types of items (wands, staves, rings, scrolls, boots, cloaks, armors, weapons, etc) that all have their own crafting skills. I'm not sure how well it will work in your system as I am unfamiliar with your changes to Craft.

 

[Kerrick]

One feat: Craft Magic Item. You are able to bind the powers of magic to otherwise mundane items, regardless of the form of those items.

One feat could work, too. Since each item has its own "minimum creator level" (i.e., the caster level for the spells that go into it), it's not really breaking anything. The problem is, there aren't quite skills for all magic items - scrolls, for instance, most rods, or a good number of the wondrous items (what does a brazier of commanding fire elementals fall under?)

This would work really well in standard D&D since there is still the many different types of items (wands, staves, rings, scrolls, boots, cloaks, armors, weapons, etc) that all have their own crafting skills. I'm not sure how well it will work in your system as I am unfamiliar with your changes to Craft.

You can check out my old craft rules here. The new version is only slightly different - instead of crafting times based on price, I made set times for things, with an optional modifier the DM can tack on (1d4, 1d6, whatever). I was also going to have synergy bonuses for those other craft skills - you know, Weaponsmithing grants a +2 bonus to make magic weapons, Alchemy for potions, etc.

Another thing I thought of this morning - having a skill-based system allows for failures, which provides a justification for cursed items to come about. The way things are set now, you can deliberately make cursed items (because we all like to make items that we can't use), and there's a chance (5%) that a magic item you find will be cursed, but there are no rules for getting a cursed item while making one. There used to be, in previous editions; you made the item, cast the spells to go into it, cast permanency if you wanted it permanent, and after all was said and done, there was still a chance that you'd fail and make a cursed item. With the d20 feat system, there's no chance of failure, which is bogus, IMO. Sure, it's no fun to waste all that gold and hard work and XP on a bad die roll, but the normal crafting system uses it, and it makes more sense, IMO, than a system where there's no chance of failure. The XP cost is the kicker - I think a rule where you only lose half the XP on a failed roll would work. Course, I'm one of those folks who think that burning XP for making items is stupid anyway...

 

[Kerrick]

Okay, I've got all the rules done now. The new crafting system can be found here; the new artificing system can be found here.

In a nutshell: the crafting system is pretty much the same as before (where items are classified by size and complexity, and Craft DCs are based on that), but I've assigned base crafting times for items, then applied modifiers for size and complexity - a set of Huge masterwork plate is going to take a fair bit longer to make than a set of Medium normal plate.

The artificing system has a base feat - Craft Magic Item - and a Craft (artificing skill) along with it, like Track and Survival. The skill lets you recharge and repair magic items, and make potions and scrolls only; to make anything better you need the feat. Like normal items, magic items are assigned DCs and crafting times based on their "complexity" (basically, how pwoerful they are), with a modifier to the crafting time of (price/5,000 gp) days. I haven't really tested this extensively (I'm kind of brain-burnt right after all that), but I think it'll work fairly well. At the least, it cuts down on the absurd crafting times, especially at epic levels.