Do you like XP costs for magic item creation?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I voted "Yes," but there is a cavat.

I let the XP cost be payed by anyone. Thus, the magic item creator need not necessarily expend his XP to create the item, and IMC, the magic item cost reflects the XP investment being split evenly between the caster and the customers or patrons. If the XP investment is fully borne by the caster, then the GP cost rises. If its fully borne by the customer, the price drops.

 

[Shroomy]

My concern stems more from practical concerns instead of thematic ones, and applies to XP loss in general. I don't like all the potential recalculations that XP loss can entail (though this applies more to level drain, as I've never seen or heard of a PC crafting there way into level loss) and I don't like intraparty level disparity in the modern versions of D&D.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Somewhere buried in the rules may (or may not) be a clause about not being able to do so, but regardless, I don't let anyone craft an item that would cause them to drop a level, so that's never an issue.

 

[Psion]

I don't mind it as an option, but I'm not really keen on it being the only way or even the default way to make magic items.

Yeah, I'm a big believer in power components. And in my xp-less house rules, I steal a page from Pkitty and let players trade action points for an xp "essence" pool.

I think that rare component are a better/more flavorful way to restrict item creation, but seriously, that's not what I always want the adventure time to be about. So, the way I slice it, PCs can tap into their essence, but most NPCs lack the personal essence for such tasks and must rely on power components.

 

[Shroomy]

Somewhere buried in the rules may (or may not) be a clause about not being able to do so, but regardless, I don't let anyone craft an item that would cause them to drop a level, so that's never an issue.

Yep, you're right, I just checked the SRD.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ah! Good to know I'm not totally "off the reservation!"

 

[Aus_Snow]

I voted "Yes," but there is a cavat.

I let the XP cost be payed by anyone.

Hey, same here!

Well, not anyone. But there is some flexibility there, at least.

 

[Runestar]

Yes and no.

Yes because it makes sense from a internal consistency POV. There is clearly no point to crafting an item for say, 10000gp and selling it to the PCs at the same price. But there are really only 2 resources in dnd - xp and gp. So item crafting makes sense from a economics sense - you spend 5000gp and 400xp crafting a magic item worth 10,000gp, then sell it to the PCs for that much, netting a profit of 5000gp.

No, because xp loss actually turns out to be a readily abusable mechanic in 3.5. Why? Because the lower level you are, the more xp you get from overcoming an encounter compared to the rest of your higher-level party. So what happens is that the party crafter (say an artificer or wizard) can just elect to consistently stay 1 lv behind the rest of the party (using xp-draining effects such as spells or item-crafting to maintain this as need be). The result is that he ends up getting a disproportionate amount of xp compared to the other PCs, which he can use to effectively subsidize the cost of crafting magic items, thus netting the party much more magic eq than their wealth guidelines would otherwise suggest.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I do.

But, as I realised when posting in another thread just now (and as I wrote there) I think sometimes that I must be one of the only gamers in the world who does!

So. . . anyone else? And yeah, there's a poll - so vote!

Apparently you are not the only one.

I dislike it strongly.
o Absurd situations. If you just gained a level, you might be unable to create magical items just because you can't spend the XP.
o XP (like levels) are metagame concepts that shouldn't be used in the game world
o They suck a a balancing mechanism
- In 3.5, people that lost effectively a level on their party, the XP reward guidelines would allow them to recover quickly. In fact, they might come out better if the difference is still low.
- Generally, you lose out on one level in extreme cases, but you can get a lot of magical items.
You spend permanent resources for something that has only a temporary worth - for example, Scrolls, Potions or Wands. It - once again - makes the difference between an organically build character (who spent a lot of XP on items he no longer has) and a generated character at a certain level who didn't have to waste XP on old items.

I think the system _could_ work if spending the XP would basically give you something worthy of the resulting level differences. If the game was not a level-based system but something like a build point system, I can see spending n build points on a special ability or a magical item. (The difference between a "gadget" hero and a self-powered superhero)

 

[Psion]

No, because xp loss actually turns out to be a readily abusable mechanic in 3.5. Why? Because the lower level you are, the more xp you get from overcoming an encounter compared to the rest of your higher-level party. So what happens is that the party crafter (say an artificer or wizard) can just elect to consistently stay 1 lv behind the rest of the party (using xp-draining effects such as spells or item-crafting to maintain this as need be). The result is that he ends up getting a disproportionate amount of xp compared to the other PCs, which he can use to effectively subsidize the cost of crafting magic items, thus netting the party much more magic eq than their wealth guidelines would otherwise suggest.

- In 3.5, people that lost effectively a level on their party, the XP reward guidelines would allow them to recover quickly. In fact, they might come out better if the difference is still low.

See, I am fully aware of that but don't have a problem with it. At high levels, XP costs really begin to hurt. Being able to get a kickback makes it fit better balance-wise AFAIAC.

But you can't get the xp back unless you spend time behind in levels. The upshot is the spending time behind in levels is the real cost.