Fighter uses own XP to help craft magic item!

[Trainz]

Personally, IMC we let the person who will benefit from the item pay the XP. Why should the wizard spend a feat on craft Arms and Armor, PLUS pay the XP, for items he will never benefit from ?

The wizard says to the fighter "Sure, I'll create a keen sword for you, but your life-essence will be needed to create it. You will have to be present for the whole ritual, and transfer your life-force into the sword as I imbue it with power".

Hell, IMC the wizard can even ask someone for his life-force to create an item for himself (the wizard) or somebody else. It has to be done absolutely willingly though, and only the darkest of rituals can take the XP from an unwilling creature (which usually dies/ages to venerable/suffers in the process).

We find that it isn't really such a big deal, because the DM controls how much money the PC's find, and thus how many items are created.

 

[frankthedm]

the XP cost of items is very important to keep the item power levels sane, if you really feel the need to let others contibute to the XP costs, I would recomend it be very taxing for the non item creators. Perhaps doubling or even tripling the cost in xp for the portion they pay; so fighter has to pay 400 or 600 xp to cover 200 xp worth of cost on his Vorpal, All energy burst swordchucks.

An idea i like is using the magic bound within items to make new ones, draining an item of enchantment to use the xp value of the item for a related item's creation. A staff of fire may be used to generat the XP for a triple inferno flametounge...etc.

 

[Klaus]

The current Rules of the Game article by Skip Williams is about crafting magic items. In the first part he mentions that in part 7 (!!!) he will talk about cooperatively creating magic items and splitting the XP cost.

 

[Trainz]

The current Rules of the Game article by Skip Williams is about crafting magic items. In the first part he mentions that in part 7 (!!!) he will talk about cooperatively creating magic items and splitting the XP cost.

Oh well... I guess it's worth the wait.

I will be following that RotG closely, as creating magic items is a topic that indeed needs further clarification. A good part of the posts in this very forum is "help me price this item" and such.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

*waits for dcollins ...*

 

[shadowlight]

OK just threw in the newpaper style headline to get people's attention. I don't know if these has been raised before but one of my players wants to sacrifice his own fighter character's XP so a wizard can make some magic items for him at a reduced cost.
Is there any official rules for this?
If there isn't should it be allowed?
If you think its OK then how much of a discount should the character get on cost?
Any help would be appreciated.
Heinrich Uberlich

The thing I hate the most about the 3.0 & 3.5 rules are the experience point costs of creating magical items. That said, I totally love this idea (and I'm going to suggest it to my players)!

I'll be recommending a 1 for 1 trade of XP (so the fighter could pay 10 XP and it would count as 10XP) up to 50% of the total cost. If more people participate they could all share an equal amount of the cost.

The only thing I'd add would be to make sure there is a long ritual involved, and maybe throw in some kind of encounter (like maybe all the members of the creating group go into some kind of trance and have to solve a puzzle or defeat some creature -- on some freaky mental demi-plane)... I just love that kind of stuff