D&D (2024) Magic Item Crafting oddities

[MerricB]

To craft a broom of flying... 200 gold pieces.
To craft a potion of flying... 10,000 gold pieces.

I just had a look at the changes from 2014 to 2024 with magic item crafting. I'm sure they said something about crafting being a selling point of 2024. I'm not misremembering that, am I?

Cause it's mostly what was in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. (One good change, one bad change).

I've just ranted a bit about how gold is mostly worthless in current D&D on my blog, but I was wondering if you've been using any resources to get better prices - and rarities - for magic items. I know there are some out there, just wondering what is popular with you.

Do you even use crafting in your games? (I have at times, but nowhere near as much as during the 3E days).

Cheers!

 

[DrJawaPhD]

My thoughts on a few separate questions you asked:

The new crafting rules are likely a selling point for many people. Not really for me since I had my own homebrew crafting rules - I'll incorporate some aspects of the 2024 DMG rules, but mostly stick with what I already had.

DnD Magic Items are not particularly consistent in their Power vs Rarity, although these flying items are indeed some of the most egregiously unbalanced. Broom of Flying and Winged Boots being Uncommon are major outliers in my opinion, I change them to Rare. Now that you mention it, Potion of Flying as Very Rare is an outlier in the opposite direction and I never noticed (probably because no one ever wanted to craft/buy one before).

I also hate how gold is mostly worthless, I attempt to solve that by making magic items MUCH cheaper than rules as written (similar to Baldur's Gate 3 if you've played it), but then also reduce how much gold is awarded to players. My average pricing is 20g for common, 100g for uncommon, 500g for rare, 2000g for very rare, 10k for legendary (with +/- 50% modifiers for particularly weak/powerful items within each category). I find that players actually spend their money when they feel like the prices aren't ridiculous, which then in turn makes gold feel useful since it actually gets spent.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

My thoughts on a few separate questions you asked:

The new crafting rules are likely a selling point for many people. Not really for me since I had my own homebrew crafting rules - I'll incorporate some aspects of the 2024 DMG rules, but mostly stick with what I already had.

DnD Magic Items are not particularly consistent in their Power vs Rarity, although these flying items are indeed some of the most egregiously unbalanced. Broom of Flying and Winged Boots being Uncommon are major outliers in my opinion, I change them to Rare. Now that you mention it, Potion of Flying as Very Rare is an outlier in the opposite direction and I never noticed (probably because no one ever wanted to craft/buy one before).

I also hate how gold is mostly worthless, I attempt to solve that by making magic items MUCH cheaper than rules as written (similar to Baldur's Gate 3 if you've played it), but then also reduce how much gold is awarded to players. My average pricing is 20g for common, 100g for uncommon, 500g for rare, 2000g for very rare, 10k for legendary (with +/- 50% modifiers for particularly weak/powerful items within each category). I find that players actually spend their money when they feel like the prices aren't ridiculous, which then in turn makes gold feel useful since it actually gets spent.

The boots are great.
The broom way less so... who except witches and maybe mages with a little bit of self respect uses brooms. Imagine a knight in armor and a shield balancong on one of them and even trying to cast spells.

The potion is a bit too rare though, when it is just based on a 3rd level spell...

 

[MerricB]

The boots are great.
The broom way less so... who except witches and maybe mages with a little bit of self respect uses brooms. Imagine a knight in armor and a shield balancong on one of them and even trying to cast spells.

The potion is a bit too rare though, when it is just based on a 3rd level spell...

The brooms are all the rage in my game, for some reason!

Anyway...

Broom of Flying - uncommon, fly 50 ft, unlimited use, attunement
Winged Boots - uncommon, fly 30 ft, 1 hour, 4/day, attunement
Wings of Flying - rare, fly 60 ft, 1 hour, attunement
Carpet of Flying - very rare, fly 30-80 ft, carries 4-1, unlimited use, no attunement

Potion of Flying - very rare, fly your speed, 1 hour

The rarer consumables often shouldn't be in this edition, especialy the potion of flying.

 

[NotAYakk]

Sigh.

Broom of Flying should be a vehicle. Giving it an order to go to a location should be an action, which it proceeds to do each turn until it reaches that spot and then halts. Taking damage should force a dex save or be knocked off (DC=damage done).

Winged Boots should impose disadvantage on all of your d20 tests while in the air, require a concentration check to cast spells (DC 15), and grant advantage on attack rolls against you. It is very awkward being held aloft by your feet.

Carpet of Flying should also be a vehicle, but 1 rider can pilot it for other riders. Knock-off rules identical to Broom.

There we go; Wings of Flying is no longer stupid. And the Broom/Boots/Carpet are still good items (even with those penalties!).

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

The boots are great.
The broom way less so... who except witches and maybe mages with a little bit of self respect uses brooms. Imagine a knight in armor and a shield balancong on one of them and even trying to cast spells.

The potion is a bit too rare though, when it is just based on a 3rd level spell...

What if the Flying Broom is "reskinned" as a hoverboard-like object, but is mechanically the same? Would it be the most popular Uncommon magic item in the game?

 

[Lazybones]

I would make a broom of flying a Rare item, especially considered in comparison to the other items that grant a fly speed. And I agree that the potion is overvalued; it should be Rare at most (I have a hard time thinking of any potion being worth 20k gp).

 

[Hexmage-EN]

The potion of flying doesn't require attunement and uses the character's speed, which makes it more situationally versatile than the others. Not certain if that makes it worthy of being a Very Rare item, though.

 

[billd91]

Potion pricing is one of the pain points of the rarity price schedule. Even at half-price, they're still unreasonably expensive for certain kinds of potions.
3e's price values based on utility was, I think, a reasonable direction to go from a conceptual standpoint. But I never felt it did a particularly good job. Too many items were overpriced compared to the Big 6 so, of course, they got immediately sold for a Big 6 item. And that sucked. Badly. Warped the hell out of D&D in too many ways.
Generally, I favor 5e's system of magic item economy in that it requires downtime to make, purchase, or even sell an item. I just think it could use some additional granularity to better handle cases like the too-expensive potion of flying compared to the broom of flying.

 

[Weiley31]

So, which Item Crafting system is better: 5E 2024 or Tales of the Valiant?