Magic Item Creation

[painandgreed]

Basically, my biggest problem is this: In order to reap a benefit equivalent to, say, empower spell, I need to craft myself up 1.5x the usual x gold worth of magic items per level just to stay equal. That costs xp. But I lose xp and the rest of the party doesnt, so I am double penalized. First, for not having the feat I would have had in its place, and second, by not having as much xp as everyone else. It also assumes enough breaks in the action to do reasonably serious amounts of crafting, and grotesque amounts of gold I never seem to have, so I end up with less xp, less feats, and less magic items than even a normal person of level x should have.

Preaching to the converted here. The entire spend XP part of magic item creation is a hastely implimented kudge that has no bais int eh D&D system and generally doesn't work. If D&D was a system like Shadworun where you get XP and then pay it back out for advancement, it would make sence. In D&D where you have a single total that increases, it doesn't and is the only example of such a mechanic. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do as a balanceing mechanic and it end up with stupid situation such as going up a level but not able to create magic items till you run off and kill some orcs. Typically, I get around this with power components that they gather themselves or pay more money for (power components can also be used in place of the money needed also). If a player wants to spend XP as per RAW, they're still free too.

As for time spent, if I feel either way it's that magic users get off too easy with the short amounts of time needed to research spells and create magic items. Of course, in my games there tends to be lots of downtime anyway because nobody really wants to go adventuring in the fall, winter or spring. Between cold, rain, muddy roads, snow, and impassable passes, there's about six months out of the year that isn't prime adventuring weather. It's possible but it takes longer to travel anywhere and if caught in the mountains while it's snowing a foot every hour, it could be a very short adventure. Typically, I've found that other players have similar things they want to be doing while the magic user is creating magic items or the time simply passes quickly enough that it doesn't affect the game. If nothing else, I've been known to let other players pre-train which gives them some XP.

If I was to change the rules to a more complex system, I'd end up giving out XP for magic item creation. Fighters hsould get Xp for fighting. Rogues should get XP for using their skills. Wizards should get Xp for creating new spells and magic items. I'd also require some sort of role for successful creation and probalby even a chance of mistakenly creating a cursed item and getting caught by it if they sought to go too far out of their range of power (say, by failing a creation roll by 10 or more).

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Speaking personally, my necrotheurge uses his Craft Wondrous Items feat for the other characters in his group, but he does charge them something for it. (Typically he'll craft them an item for 80 percent of book price.) Everybody is happy with this ... they get items more cheaply, and my necrotheurge gets more money to invest in his own items. Similarly, when my ranger used to hit up his dwarven weaponsmith friend for items, back during RttToEE, I didn't expect to get the benefit of the feat free ... I paid for it, again about 80 percent of book price.

IMO, the crafting feats were designed and balanced with this sort of arrangement in mind. Without the XP cost, the feats are too powerful ... wizard PCs would be able to make profits of hundreds of gold pieces per day. Even if they had allowed a distributed XP cost, the basic problem would still remain ... the XP costs would be so diluted as to have much less of an overall balancing effect.

So yes, I think the current system is fair, and I say that as a player who makes extensive use of it. The only change I would like to see is the use of "function-based" item creation (as in Arcana Unearthed), as opposed to "form-based" item creation.

 

[Squire James]

I like Eberron's solution: grant the feats as class abilities for a special Artificer class. If someone really wants to make items, he takes some Artificer. The only problem here is that it takes a LOT of Artificer levels to be an effective item creator. This fits for Eberron, but for other campaigns I suggest making it a prestige class and compressing the many of the class abilities into 10 levels.

A wizard could still make 1-2 kinds of items if he wants to, but he's stuck with the old rules. If you want a generalist who can do nearly anything, find a high-level Artificer.

 

[Staffan]

In my experience, item crafters rarely if ever make items for the rest of the party at cost. They do give a discount, but generally charge something like 75% of the market price ("At cost" would be 70% of market price: 50% of market price in materials, and 20% in XP using the 1 XP = 5 gp formula). This (a) improves the party's capabilities in general, and (b) gives the crafter extra gold to spend on magic items for himself, balancing out the XP loss.

 

[der_kluge]

As the guy who was the lead developer for Artificer's Handbook, I can offer some opinions on the matter. Because, after all, I literally wrote the book on magic item creation.

When writing AH, it was painfully clear to me, at least, that the WoTC rules are built around a model of pure laziness. We came up with numerous more clever, and more imaginative ways of balancing magic item creation with having to resort to XP costs.

The rules in the AH can be used with the core rules very easily. You don't even have to alter the item creation feats. Personally, I think it's idiotic to require one feat to make a ring of water walking, and another feat to make boots of water walking. That's why we replaced them with alternate feats which make much more sense.

Aside from the oddities associated with XP costs, there are also limitations to it, say you're a 5th level wizard who has been making scrolls and potions ever since 1st level. Now suddenly you're 6th level, and have the exact amount of XP you need to be 6th level. Now suddenly you have no more disposable XP, and suddenly you can't make potions and scrolls anymore. That makes no sense.

Personally, I'll never use any item creation rules other than the rules in the AH. They're balanced, they're expandable, they include a lot more rules (socketed items, gestalt sets, rechargable items), that I'd never go back to the core rules. They're just plain idiotic in my opinion.

The other benefit of the AH rules is with the formula based approach, you can alter the amount of gold required easily. It's also scaled with level in mind, so that a brand new 5th level mage who -just- learned the fireball spell, and can only cast one of them per day, can't go and make a wand of fireballs. So, those rules are a bit more appropriate for low magic campaigns, and can be controlled a lot more effectively.

If you haven't taken a look at it, I'd highly recommend it. And no, I don't make any money if you buy it, as cool as that'd be.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

I'd say the biggest problem with item creation I have seen is the time it takes to make the items. I've had parties leave the Wizard behind while her was crafting items becasue they got impatient..

That's why my next campaign will use the "Craft points" variant from Unearthed Arcana.

 

[Seeten]

Reading your posts on the Pet Peeves forum and Crothian and Joe Kushners reviews of the Artificers Handbook are what brought me to actually post in the first place, Die Kluge, so I appreciate all of your posts here. I am in 3 D&D campaigns with 2 total mages, and both have at least 2 item creation feat(scribe scroll, and create wondrous, for one, scribe scroll, create wondrous and craft magic arms/armor for the other) and I just find it makes the whole thing worse, not better.

I am going to create a set of house rules which take the best parts of each system, and make it as balanced as I can. But finding out how the RAW works for other parties is great also, it shows what might or might not be needed, beyond what works just for my group.