Creating Special items

[Hitman187]

The "rules" in the book are just to help guide the DM, he has the power to make whatever he wants happen however he wants it to. I honestly wouldn't want a DM that took this to an extreme that made the game no longer fun, but limiting what items can be crafted/bought versus found through advancing plots does not sound like a big issue. What I would do is just say you aren't allowing items from the Magic item compendium into your game and just make up your own items "very similar" to those in the book.

 

[nijineko]

one of my dms found a quick and simple method for limiting the crafting of magic items. in addition to the gold and xp cost, he assigned an additional cost of 1 permanent loss to con per item crafted, which loss cannot be recovered or restored in any way. this con loss could only be supplied by the crafter of the item.

this both explained the rarity of items and prevented scads of items from being crafted. it also made single use items really rare. iirc, many of them were converted to once per day effects instead.

if one wishes items to be even more rare than that, up the con loss, or make it one con per ability of the item.

 

[Greenfield]

That's a severe version of the 1E limit.

If I were a crafter in that game, everything I made would be as close to Epic as I could make it. If a +1 Sword and a +5 Vorpal cost the same in CON...

Try this: Lose 1 CON until you recover the spent EXP.

Or go all the way back to 1E and have each permanent crafting have a chance of costing a CON.

 

[nijineko]

wasn't my game, and i wasn't playing in that particular game, but yeah, everyone had a tendency to craft swiss army objects.

i would lean towards temp con loss but have the dwell period be something like a year or more in game time before your first saving throw to shake it off, and another like period for your second saving throw.

i recall one system where such intense magical activity threw off a fairly powerful signal and that attracted all sorts of inter-planar nasties who would then fight you for the finished item, or even show up mid craft and try to eat everyone....

another system i recall had mandatory flaws for all crafted items, the more powerful the flaw, the more quirky and irritating the resulting requirements in order to use the weapon. sort of like portal keys, only worse.