D&D 5E Legendary Item Creation

[SilverfireSage]

Having received the DMs Guide and perused it briefly, something interesting stood out to me. In the item creation rules, a magic item takes a day per 25gp that the item is worth to craft. Legendary items, vorpal swords and the like, cost 500,000 gp. So with rough caculation, it would take 54 years for you to craft this item on your own. This is a long, long time, and to me, it's indicative of two things:
1. This is the amount of time it takes to become a master smith. Mostly, I've always been hesitant to have characters be able to make the greatest magic items ever that only a handful of people have been able to create. Player characters spend their lives adventuring and fighting and really shouldn't have the skills to create something of that caliber. So I can definitely see it taking that long to become a master of that craft.
2: they really don't want PCs to be able to make their own magic items. Unless you're an elf or a dwarf, this isn't going to be feasible.

anyone have any thoughts? Is this a terrible thing that needs to be expunged immediately or a fair rule that truly shows the value of magic items?

 

[Ahrimon]

I think you can work together. So, 27 years for two, and 13.5 years for 4, etc. That would make it a bit more manageable.

 

[Gilladian]

It means that the DM is free to have legendary items be created at the pace of the plot. No "you can't do it that fast!" complaints, nor are there reasons it would have been "already done last week". If the DM says "legendary smith so and so has been working on this for 53 years", then the item is ready. Otherwise, it isn't. Or, he can say "54 expert dwarven smiths working day and night under the guidance of the infamous Wizard Canute can forge this item in six weeks, just in time for..." I love it. And the absence of pre made, concrete formulas means that I can adopt what I need to fit my campaign, without having to strip away fluff that doesn't match.

 

[Blackwarder]

Why do you think arch-wizards get apprentices and great priests get acolytes?

Warder

 

[MortalPlague]

1. This is the amount of time it takes to become a master smith. Mostly, I've always been hesitant to have characters be able to make the greatest magic items ever that only a handful of people have been able to create. Player characters spend their lives adventuring and fighting and really shouldn't have the skills to create something of that caliber. So I can definitely see it taking that long to become a master of that craft.

Noteworthy to think that a given smith will only produce one such item in their entire career. This makes a legendary magic item a life's work (a sentiment that fits well with fantasy lore and mythology). Even an elven crafter would only produce twenty or so of these over a thousand year lifespan. That makes legendary items very rare.

2: they really don't want PCs to be able to make their own magic items. Unless you're an elf or a dwarf, this isn't going to be feasible.

I think you can work together. So, 27 years for two, and 13.5 years for 4, etc. That would make it a bit more manageable.

Ahrimon has it right; you can combine your efforts, which could make it feasible for PCs to do it. As a DM, I don't want my PCs cranking out legendary items every time they have downtime available, so I think the amount of time is a feature, not a bug.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I've heard it estimated that it takes about 100k man-hours to assemble an Airbus 320. So that's about 34.25 years at 8hrs a day for one person.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I would look at legendary items in two ways - in one, the item is literally a wizard's life work, something that they begin working on as a young man and finish up just as they die (dramatically no doubt). In the other, the creation of a legendary item might happen almost spontaneously, based on the special nature of a particular situation - a sword bathed in the blood the world's oldest red dragon become a sword of dragon slaying, the armor of a legendary king becomes legendary itself upon his death.

I'd never expect a PC to be able to craft such an item via the first method, for obvious reasons. But if a player came to me with the desire for a particular item, and I thought it was appropriate, I'd be open mutually coming up with a scenario that could lead to a spontaneous creation. I could even see saying (in a suitably epic game) that each player would get a "legendary item card" that they could call in at a suitable time to create such an item.

 

[ccooke]

The rules in the DMG leave open lots of space for good storytelling, I think. There's the spontaneous creation of legendary weapons as [MENTION=93]Kid Charlemagne[/MENTION] said. There are also special ingredients, tools or workshops. The characters might seek out a demigod-smith (Think Hephaestus) to help them construct something, or find an ancient forge blessed (or constructed) to multiply the efforts of those who work in it.

Setting a very high - but attainable, especially with Dwarven or Elven lifespan - baseline time cost for powerful magic items not only preserves the uniqueness of magic items, it also provides a huge amount of story room for how you can overcome the base expectation.

 

[Anth]

My view on legendary items:
Say that you are playing a modern day RPG and your players say that they want to build an Aircraft Carrier, like USS Nimitz, all by themselves. You would say that's impossible.
The same with legendary items: they are items of legend; like the pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge. They are legendary because nobody today know how to build them.
If you want smaller IRL items, take a look at the crystal skulls:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_skull
Even if they are fakes and only a couple of hundred years old they are still legendary because nobody can replicate them today.
So legendary items get their price tag, not because they take time to do, but because nobody today can do them. Because if somebody could do them today they wouldn't be legendary and wouldn't cost that much.

 

[BearStormblade]

Something to consider. Some high level casters can create pocket dimensions. The creator can decide how fast or slow time passes in their dimension. A fellow PC, in a campaign that reached very high levels, was a witch with high level crafting. He was essentially immortal due to a slight case of vampirism. He created a pocket dimension where a year passed for every hour in the outside world. He used it to create wondrous items in just a couple days game downtime.