Magic Item Creation

[Centaur]

Been a long time since My Last post... I see things have evolved a bit...

I was wondering if anyone has used an variations on the costs for creating magic Items in the D&D 3.0/3.5 system.

What I am refering to is the Time/XP/GP costs generaly associated with creation of such items.

I ask because in the games that typicaly get run in the gamming group I have been a member of for 20 years now, Time is a very preciuos comodity. Our campaigns usually jump from event to event with little to no downtime between adventures or quests. This makes it almost impossible to actualy make your own magic items.

I had two possible options on how to manage this in a fast past campaign like ours.
1) Make the cost of creating magic items a 2 out of 3 proposal, where you need to provide 2 of the 3 components. Most of the time I would think the GP component would be mandatory, but the XP and Time component could be optional.

This would alow the PC adventurer to make the magic items in say, one day as opposed to 1 day/1000gp. It would also get rid of the question of where the NPC magic item maker in the city is getting his XP from as he takes time to do the work instead of spending the XP

Or
2) Keep the time component but reduce it's impact on any given day. Instead of it taking the majority of a wizards day to create a magical item, instead have it take only an hour or two out of his day.

This would be at the begining of the day, immediatly following spell preperation, and would result in the spells nessecay as prerequisites be then missing (spell slot expended) for the day, but at leaste it would still allow magic item creation to be part of the game.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Alexander123]

For crafting, an artificer with a few Eberron feats to reduce, gp, xp, and time costs along with a homunculus which can do all your crafting for you.

Take a look at this The Complete Cost Reduction Handbook by Bastian with PlzBreakMyCampaign's help.

 

[Nomnath]

Hi there,

I personally think there is potentially plenty of time for a wizard to make items with a little creativity. The SRD mentions that all you really need are the materials, a steady place to work, and good lighting and that any place that you can prepare spells in, also can be a place you can work in. So, considering that you need 9 hours a day, 8 for rest and 1 for preparing spells, you have 15 hours to do the adventuring and crafting, easily done with some creative multi-tasking.

-if your groups spend more than 8 hours in a night, use the rest for crafting in your tent with the lamp on.

-when traveling between areas, craft in the carriage, or have someone drag your floating disk around while you sit and craft on it.

-work during meal times, or lulls in the action.

I'm fairly uncertain about changing actual requirements for costs. Maybe convince your DM that you could break the time costs into minimums in hours instead of days and that you can put more or less in every day with a minimum number of days as listed? So a 4000g item would be 4 days minimum but you can split the 32 hours however you want so long as you don't finish in less than 4 days.





Or you can just cheeze it with an artificer with a crafting homunculus that is stuffed into the bag of holding.

 

[Alexander123]

Yes, cheesing is the way to go!

 

[Nomnath]

yea I took way too long to post and didn't realize you posted while I was still thinking through my typing. Generally, that is the most effective way of doing it, even if it is more character limited.

 

[Centaur]

I will take a look at the Eberron material...

I always presumed from the material I had read, both in the core books and elseware that as the area needed had to be suitable for memorizing spells, that it needed to be quite and relatively free of disruption or distraction to be effective. Therefore bouncing around in the back of a wagon or being pulled around on a floating disk would not be suitable.

And after 8 hours of travel, you're going to be failry exhausted... so that time would also be unsuitable, unless I suppose if you did it after sleeping before you travel, but then that means sleeping in the early evening and getting up in the middle of the night to start your crafting work... and who likes to get up at midnight to start work!

I suppose also part of the advantage of my option 1 is to allow for some theatrical flare. think of some of the movies you may have seen where the hero suddenly needs to make a sword. sure some of them may take time, but some don't.

Imagine the party presented with a situation of major proportions, and they take a day off so the mage can complete an enchantment in order to make a item to help defeat the enemy! Although I suppose that cold be a reason also to not allow short shift the time requirement. if the party can just create an item on demand to deal with any situation... maybe add a formua component...

 

[Greenfield]

There are Feats that speed up crafting of certain items from 1,000 gp/day to 10,000 gp/day.

You could also pro-rate times. That is, if the item has a cost of 125 or less, it can be crafted in one hour. (i.e. each 125 gp of final value calls for an hour of crafting time, for a total of 1,000 gp per day.)

I'd still limit you to a single item per day, but now a crafter can spend an hour after dinner every evening for 8 days, and they'll have achieved a single day's worth of normal crafting.

Considering those rapid crafting feats, you could introduce special tools that act like Feat rods, speeding the crafting of certain classes of items.

Of course, they're rare and highly prized, all but legendary. Hmm, sounds like the goal of an adventure, doesn't it?

 

[jefgorbach]

I will take a look at the Eberron material...

I always presumed from the material I had read, both in the core books and elseware that as the area needed had to be suitable for memorizing spells, that it needed to be quite and relatively free of disruption or distraction to be effective. Therefore bouncing around in the back of a wagon or being pulled around on a floating disk would not be suitable.

Perhaps, but those are more-or-less the same study guidelines for any mundane task IRL ... however since -I- always found it easier/more productive to study WITH the radio/tv than without, presume it might be true for PC's as well, so have no qualms about allowing memorization/reading while at the pub, in a wagon, etc. Actual crafting would have a negative modifier reflecting bumpy roads/etc; offsettable by leviating/etc.

Another option for high level PCs would be finding/creating a demiplane with a different time-differential providing the neccessary "time" while little (if any) passes in the Prime plane. ie: Crafter goes to work for a few months while the rest of the group take care of their biological functions, returning with a brand new wand/etc needed by whomever.

 

[Alexander123]

What does IRL mean by the way?

 

[billd91]

It's been my experience that the XP cost is almost never a limiting factor. It's usually time and money keeping the magic item creation to a reasonable level. Personally, I'd be loathe to rule away either of those two costs.