Item Creation House Rules, anyone?

[Bozidar]

Has anyone had any good experiences with alternate rules for item creation? My DM and the group are looking for some good ideas on how to work on this, as most of us don't agree with the XP cost for item creation (not myself, but the rest mostly). Let me know.

-- Bozidar

 

[Planesdragon]

House rules not necessary

House rules aren't necessary to avoid the XP cost.

Look up "Power Points" in the DMG. In a nutshell, use special components instead of XP -- you get the same hard limit to items (an easier to control hard limit, if anything) and no one drops in XP.

(You could also allow anyone with a Craft skill to help in the creation of a magical item -- thus letting that fighter pick up "Craft (Weaponsmithing)" and pay the XP for their magical weapon.)

 

[der_kluge]

Your group needs to get a copy of the Artificer's Handbook by Mystic Eye Games.

 

[woodelf]

Has anyone had any good experiences with alternate rules for item creation? My DM and the group are looking for some good ideas on how to work on this, as most of us don't agree with the XP cost for item creation (not myself, but the rest mostly). Let me know.

-- Bozidar

Check out the Artificer's Handbook. Or, first check out Psion's review of the Artificer's Handbook--it's the best i've seen yet for D20 System.

Also, you may want to take a look at the Everquest books (probably mostly the GM's guide)--thei'r treatment of craft skills for item creation is really good, allowing a lot of low-level magical items to be created with other craft skills, rather than just alchemy.

 

[FireLance]

If you don't like XP costs, you could do what the RPGA does - item creation feats allow you to obtain the item at 75% of the market price if you could make the item yourself. So, a 1st-level wizard with Scribe Scroll could obtain a scroll of any 1st-level spell in his spellbook (caster level 1st) at a cost of 18.75 (say, 19) gp instead of 25 gp.

 

[Treebore]

If the item costs 15,000 gold or less there is no xp cost. Otherwise I calculate it as per the DMG. I do it this way because I think it is non-sense that low power items are infused with part of your life force. In 3 years of using this house rule I have never felt it to be game breaking. Of course I have never had a player intentionally try to abuse it.

 

[Garnfellow]

I'll also chip in my vote for Artificer's Handbook. Even if you didn't use the spell slot creation system, I find it invaluable in pricing out magic items.