Jon Tweet - Magic Item Creation

[WhatGravitas]

So a small lag in XP can eventually be overcome in 3.5.

Which makes the XP cost in the hand of a powergamer (or math/gearhead) much less important. Even as non-powergamer, I've experienced, that making some stuff is usually pretty worthwhile, because you get much more XP in the long run, while the items can help you a great deal (especially some handy scrolls).

Though I have to admit: XP cost is a pretty good psychological deterrent. Once you overcome the fear of losing some XP, it is pretty useful.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Choranzanus]

For a start, it shatters the idea that the amount of equipment you have should be dependent primarily on your level.

Take a party who has all reached 11th level (55k xp, 66k gp worth of equipment), except that one party member has been taking all of his treasure shares as gold and then crafting equipment on the side, so he actually only has 49,720 xp (about halfway between 10th and 11th level), but 132,000 gp worth of equipment (what a character midway between 13th and 14th level should have).

Is this a balance problem? Probably. Giving up half of a level to double your magic items seems problematic. It's even worse if you don't want to run a Magic Mart sort of campaign, so the other PCs are limited to what they manage to come across, whereas the crafter-PC gets to cherry-pick the exact items that fit his character.

Want to use a variant that other PCs can spend the xp if the item is being made for them? Great, that takes care of the issue of some PCs falling behind the others in level, but now everyone in the group effectively has more equipment than they should for their level.

It gets even worse in every-PC-for-himself type of situations, such as in RPGA campaigns. There, you have the 10th level crafter-PC (with 13th+ level worth of equipment) side-by-side with 10th level PCs with the expected level of equipment.

Can a GM stop this? Sure, easily. All you have to do is cut down on the down time, use a non-standard treasure distribution system, add special requirements to creation or otherwise generally admit that using the rules as written doesn't work.

The 3e magic item creation system was a step up from previous systems, but that says more about the previous systems than it does about 3e.

This analysis is correct, but it reflects that experience cost is too low, not that experience cost as a concept is bad idea.

Now, there are many people who do not track individual experience (there was a thread about this not too long ago) and for them this is an obvious problem, but when you track individual experience then I see no reason for not using experience as permanent cost (it is certainly more reasonable than using CON, etc.).

The current system has many problems related to how the costs are set (some of which you pointed out).