Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder: Item Creation and Wealth

[Kaisoku]

XP costs were removed because of the XP table for leveling in Pathfinder.

There's plenty of other justifications. Here's some developer comments on a good thread about the subject (link):

Sean K Reynolds: "The wizard who takes a day off to make a big scroll ends up LESS experienced with magic than the wizard who takes a day off to get drunk. That doesn't make sense." (link)

James Jacobs: "We removed the XP costs because we thought they were unfair. Wizards, in particular, were tripple taxed for doing their thing—in 3.5 they had to pay gold, time, AND XP in order to take advantage of their class features (scribing scrolls and crafting magic items). Furthermore... it always felt nonsensical to me that you would "spend XP" (and thus grow LESS experienced) for successfully building a magic item, which to me feels like something that you should actually become MORE experienced at. It's non-intuitive and wonky to say "I spent all my life building magic items, and as a result I am less experienced than all those spellcasters who never built a single thing in their entire lives!" (link)


Ultimately though, the real reason was explained by the head honcho, Lead Developer himself...

Jason Bulmahn: "When we were redesigning some elements of the game, one that we took a look at was the XP progression chart. The 3.5 chart was not open content and we wanted a progression that allowed for simpler design without having to cross reference a chart to figure out how much XP a monster was worth relative to the group. After a few drafts and a lot of reverse engineering, we came up with the charts you see today.
One thing you might notice.. the xp values balloon up quite quickly. We liked this fact, it made it feel a bit more epic when your high level PCs got 80,000xp for an adventure.
Now, back to the point at hand... when it came to XP costs, the existing system MIC system, combined with the reworked charts, meant that the XP costs quickly became mostly irrelevant to higher level characters and after a bit of math, it was mostly irrelevant in the old system too, except in the odd case where the spellcaster was a game behind in leveling with the rest of the group. This "cost" was hardly worth the effort. The real cost here is the feat and time costs, which we kept." (link)
and
"The XP costs in the old system topped out at about 4,000xp for a 200,000gp item, which is pretty paltry to a high level character that needs 500,000xp to get their next level (especially considering the time requirements). We did, at one point in time, consider a complicated scaling system to keep the xp costs and keep them relevant, but it was just more trouble than its worth. The MIC system is already convoluted and open to abuse without careful monitoring by an active GM. In the end, we decided that the sort of "fake" cost paid to make items and cast spells was simply not worth the design space for the payout it was supposed to simulate.
XP costs for spells and magic items will not be coming back. If you feel you need them for your game, by all means, add them back in, but they will not be returning to the core mechanics." (link)



Finally, here's the FAQ on Wealth and Crafting Feats:

PC Wealth By Level (page 399): If a PC has an item crafting feat, does a crafted item count as its Price or its Cost?

It counts as the item's Cost, not the Price. This comes into play in two ways.
If you're equipping a higher-level PC, you have to count crafted items at their Cost. Otherwise the character isn't getting any benefit for having the feat. Of course, the GM is free to set limits in equipping the character, such as "no more than 40% of your wealth can be used for armor" (instead of the "balanced approach" described on page 400 where the PC should spend no more than 25% on armor).
If you're looking at the party's overall wealth by level, you have to count crafted items at their Cost. Otherwise, if you counted crafted items at their Price, the crafting character would look like she had more wealth than appropriate for her level, and the GM would have to to bring this closer to the target gear value by reducing future treasure for that character, which means eventually that character has the same gear value as a non-crafting character--in effect neutralizing any advantage of having that feat at all.

—Sean K Reynolds, 01/13/12
(link)


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So there you have it. The justifications, the real reason, and the official stance on the issue of XP Costs, Wealth and Crafting Items.

 

[Salthorae]

At the end of the day, after having read all of that, I still disagree with them on pretty much all their points, which is fine I suppose.

It doesn't make sense to count crafted items at their cost rather than their price to me. Their "market value" and their real in game value are at their price, not their cost. For everyone else in the world a +4 Belt of Dex is worth 16000. Because a character takes 1 feat, suddenly that Belt is now worth 8000gp? No. It's still worth 16k, but because that character has Craft Wondrous Items, they only paid 8000gp.

Because of 1 feat, you have two characters, one fighter and one wizard/crafter each with 16,000gp to spend and get the following result: The fighter is able to afford 1 Belt of Dex +4. The crafter wizard on the other hand is able to afford a Belt of Dex & a Headband of Int both +4. Per the FAQ above, these 2 characters have the same WBL. That is a steaming pile to me. The Crafter quite obviously has twice the Wealth of the Fighter in this situation, or a better way to say it, he with 1 feat has doubled his purchasing power over other characters in the game.

EDIT: to add on to my point above, the fighter and Wizard go to sell their respective items that they bought with their 16,000gp. The fighter receives 8000gp for selling at 1/2 market price. The wizard on the other hand receives 16,000gp for selling 2 items at half market price and has lost... what? a little bit of game downtime? Whereas the fighter has lost half his investment in that initial Belt.

*Shrug* I don't like PC crafters as I have seen too much abuse of it in gaming groups I've been in, and I suppose I've been scarred by that. Maybe my reactions are too far to the other side, but I think it should penalize a wizard for crafting. 3.X rules weren't nearly as hard on crafters as previous editions were, I thought it was much more fair to say that they were investing portions of themselves in the item they crafted, hence the XP drain. It's not that they're less experienced per se, it's that they have had to give of themselves to power the magic, thus lessening themselves. To me, awesome and that is how it should be... casters are already much more powerful than Fighters in any edition, doubling their purchasing power with one feat is just piling it on to me.

 

[DaveMage]

In my experience, Pathfinder assumes that you're running an AP or that your campaign doesn't have extended periods of down time. The time issues is usually the biggest deterrent to crafting. If you only have a week to craft items and you have an entire party to craft for, you're going to have to make some hard choices. I've noticed no significant change in WPL over the course of an AP, which manages time in a way that prevents mass item crafting.

I think you're exactly right.

This has actually been one of the things that I've hated about the APs - the lack of in-game downtime (well, I've only been in two APs, but both had the time issue).

 

[N'raac]

It doesn't make sense to count crafted items at their cost rather than their price to me. Their "market value" and their real in game value are at their price, not their cost. For everyone else in the world a +4 Belt of Dex is worth 16000. Because a character takes 1 feat, suddenly that Belt is now worth 8000gp? No. It's still worth 16k, but because that character has Craft Wondrous Items, they only paid 8000gp.

Because of 1 feat, you have two characters, one fighter and one wizard/crafter each with 16,000gp to spend and get the following result: The fighter is able to afford 1 Belt of Dex +4. The crafter wizard on the other hand is able to afford a Belt of Dex & a Headband of Int both +4. Per the FAQ above, these 2 characters have the same WBL. That is a steaming pile to me. The Crafter quite obviously has twice the Wealth of the Fighter in this situation, or a better way to say it, he with 1 feat has doubled his purchasing power over other characters in the game.

So what did the Fighter do with his feat? Does he have no abilities the Wizard lacks, or does he have an ability that is not measured into wealth by level, that still impacts his power as a character? Perhaps he has Great Cleave, an extra attack when taking down an opponent, or Combat Reflexes granting extra attacks of opportunity. Why, those can get him an extra attack, or more, every round - that's more than a Haste spell on at all times!

 

[N'raac]

A further thought.

Why can Wally Wizard craft wondrous items? Well, because he took the feat Craft Wondrous Items. Now his wealth by level is different from the other characters, so he's breaking the rules!

Guess what - THAT IS WHAT FEATS DO! They are a "change the rules for my benefit" card.

Some can be more powerful in the right hands. My halfling rogue gets +5 to hit with his dual short swords from a single feat. 8 STR vs 18 DEX (now 19, soon to be 20) changes your chances to hit pretty markedly when you buy Weapon Finesse.

Wealth by Level's not that precise anyway. If PC 1 gets a +1 magic sword, and PC 2 buys wands of Enchanted Weapon, after we run through half a dozen wands, who has more wealth per level? Sure, PC2 did something inefficient. We can take inefficient feats as well.

How do we add in the fact that two players with arcane spells swap spellbooks, so they each get twice as many free spells per level? Does that get added to their wealth?

Streamofthesky refers to item feats as "selling your feats for cash", which is basically the result - thanks to those feats, you get a bump up over your wealth per level without the feats. Just like other feats enhance other abilities, bonuses and resources beyond those granted by your level.

 

[Kaisoku]

I think the whole thing is strange from a different perspective. In a very short amount of time, PCs are sky rocketed into an economic level that is beyond anything normal.
Going by Kingmaker standards, high end magic items are the equivalent of buying and selling small nations.

The problem is that they aren't comparable things, magic items and nations.

I don't really have a fix to this (a limiter other than gold pieces for magic items), but I can recognize the silliness of the situation.

 

[Salthorae]

A further thought.

Why can Wally Wizard craft wondrous items? Well, because he took the feat Craft Wondrous Items. Now his wealth by level is different from the other characters, so he's breaking the rules!

Guess what - THAT IS WHAT FEATS DO! They are a "change the rules for my benefit" card.

Some can be more powerful in the right hands. My halfling rogue gets +5 to hit with his dual short swords from a single feat. 8 STR vs 18 DEX (now 19, soon to be 20) changes your chances to hit pretty markedly when you buy Weapon Finesse.

Wealth by Level's not that precise anyway. If PC 1 gets a +1 magic sword, and PC 2 buys wands of Enchanted Weapon, after we run through half a dozen wands, who has more wealth per level? Sure, PC2 did something inefficient. We can take inefficient feats as well.

How do we add in the fact that two players with arcane spells swap spellbooks, so they each get twice as many free spells per level? Does that get added to their wealth?

Streamofthesky refers to item feats as "selling your feats for cash", which is basically the result - thanks to those feats, you get a bump up over your wealth per level without the feats. Just like other feats enhance other abilities, bonuses and resources beyond those granted by your level.

You can be snarky all you want. I've already said that I think that the design thinking on crafting is wrong. You obviously think it is right. Great.

IMO Items, certainly in 3.X, and to a lesser degree but still applicable to this discussion, in Pathfinder have much more to do with a character's capabilities than do their feats. If you double the amount of items that a character can afford via one feat it is giving far more power to the character with that feat than a simple Combat Reflexes or Weapon Finesse.

A Fighter is going to take almost all combat related feats, and great in combat they are awesome against their one opponent at a time or the very situational uses of other feats like Combat Reflexes (how many of us have actually gotten to use more than 1 or 2 extra AoO's in a round anyway?). The Wizard with Craft Wondrous Items is going to be awesome in combat too with his spells and then he's got his double WBL number of items to be awesome in all the out of combat stuff as well, twice as much so as the Fighter in these examples.

People on RPG boards have long complained about the power inequality between the Wizard Class and other classes and how there is no point to being many other classes past a certain point because the wizard can do it as well or better. That is only more so true in the case of crafter wizards.

As I said earlier, I have seen first hand the abuse that can come through crafter wizards in multiple games I've been in and that was in 3.X where it DID cost you something other than a feat to craft. With the rules in Pathfinder, any wizard character would be stupid not to have at least Craft Wondrous Items for a long running campaign.

The only way to really counter the abuse of crafting is to limit downtime as has been mentioned, but then you get into the "unrealism" of skyrocketing levels and power and wealth where a group gains 15 or more levels over the course of a couple of months in an AP or something and then retires.

Back to the OP: the FAQ if not the rules clearly say that you count it at cost, I argue that is crazy. At the end of the day though it's your game so count it as you will...

You can reduce the amount of actual gp wealth they are finding, but then you still have the 1:1 exchange rate issue. I would just make it harder for items to be transacted if it does worry you, alternately hand out less wealth per encounter in general and that stuff that is there make it a higher percentage of items other characters in the party would want to keep/use until the crafter character is back in line with WBL or your desired WBL

 

[AsmodeusDM]

As the OP just wanted to weight in on the discussion:

re: XP for crafting

I played a heavy item-crafter wizard in a 3.5 campaign. I spent a TON of experience to make items for the rest of the party, the designers are quite right that I was being "taxed" in experience no less! for choosing to play a part of my class. But you know what? I loved it. I felt like I was really doing my part for the group.
Also my group had kind of an experience point theory around 3.x. In-so-far as you lost experience when you died or got negative levels.

- Wizards lose xp to crafting and GP to expensive material components (stoneskin for the party!)

- Rogues lose xp to death from super nasty death traps beginning at CR 7) and failing fort saves vs. negative energy levels. Lose GP to raise deads.

-Fighters lose xp from death due to "holding the line" and safeguarding the rest of the party and for getting hit by all the nasty incorporeal undead that cause negative energy levels. Lose GP to raise deads.

- Clerics didn't really have an XP "sink" (unless they crafted, which was kind of a rarity) but we played 2e before playing 3e where the Cleric XP chart was extremely favorable. We assumed that not dying/losing XP all the time was sort of your "reward" for playing the cleric.


re: The logic of losing XP

I actually agree with the Paizo staff. I liked in 1e/2e where a wizard who created a magic item actually GAINED experience... of course it was a harrowing experience mostly determined by DM fiat... hardly the "scientific system" that arose in 3.x.

[I should add that those tables in the back of the DMG giving guidelines on how to create and prie magic items lead to the creation of some of the most wonderfully broken magic items (and hence characters) ever to grace an RPG.. My favorite? A player noticed that a bonus-type that could grant AC was "Insight." Utilizing the frequently-not-used "Face" slot the character ended up creating "Glasses of Foresight +5" granting +5 Insight Bonus to AC as the character saw ever-so-slightly into the future....sigh..]

re: time availability

This is the sad truth of APs and games like them; there is no downtime as downtime and cinematic pacing usually don't go well together. As a group we tend to prefer "sandbox" games for precisely this reason, we like downtime, we sometimes like YEARS to pass between adventures. We've had characters create armies and form business.. getting married, having kids... even had some half-orc PCs die of old age! The road to level 20 is a long one indeed.

The AP ideal of 1-20 in 3 months just doesn't really sit well with our group. Even in our 4e campaign.. the group took like a 3 year hiatus between Heroic and Paragon and a twenty year break between Paragon and Epic (all those Kingdoms and godly abilities don't just appear overnight)!

Rushing through play, I think, really robs the game of some of it's strategic impact. I'll never forget how disappointed a player of mine was in an Eberron game I ran years ago. I was playing the 3-part series that game out with the campaign setting in 4.x which in-adventure and between-adventure was very tightly paced. Of course Eberron also introduced the Artificer, a class which was designed around making magic items, included a pool of use-it-or-lose-it "free" xp to build from. So much of that xp just went to waste I felt terrible about it, and eventually just let him "build" magic items during the group's morning 1hour spell prep time (which ended up being kinda cool actually).

 

[Munktar]

I think the basic wealth per level is wrong!! Sure you can use it for a guideline but i never ever use it for it is a Meta gaming device.

This mean for example that if a Rogue of first level manages to rob a Jewelers Store in a large city (Such a store might just have 20-50k in Gems and jewelry)
Sure he is in a lot of trouble afterwards, but he does have large amounts of cash to see if he can get away with it.
According to the rules this can never happen (or the Rogue get enought XP to gain 8 levels)

I did really like the old 2nd edition rules that individual monster had eiteher 2-8 coppers and a lair had a treasure type. Sure this means that a lvl 1 party might stumble upon a Great +5 Vorpal Sword, but the sword will be known and it might bring them more trouble than usefullness. (aka like finding a priceless Rembrandt painting, it might be difficult to sell, unless youre willing to take cents on the dollar).

For crafting sure the main problem in TIME. That is a rare commodity. if the first level rogue gets away with 50k and want his mage friend to craft some items for him. He will have to be at the same place for 50 days to confert the money into magic.

I prefer to roleplay making magic items out. Aka the Rogue wants to have a magical shroud of the betrayor, therefor the wizard must contact several morgues to find a nice piece of cloth used to cover the body of a betrayor, so that his magic might hold onto it transforming it into a magical device.
This means that he is bribing people in morgues, traying to get a betrayor killed, etc etc. Then needs to find the right gems and other stuff. this all cost money and time, and might sometime make player change their mind on what is usefull to make.

So forget wealth per level. Try to see that some people are richer then others. if the campaing takes place in a desolate desert, then the treasure might be very very rare, but playing in a wealthy city, money may come easy.

Try not to force equllity on the party, some characters care for items and money and some dont.

In my campaign a lot of money goes into the wizard, so that he can support the party better...

I hope this helps

 

[N'raac]

IMO Items, certainly in 3.X, and to a lesser degree but still applicable to this discussion, in Pathfinder have much more to do with a character's capabilities than do their feats. If you double the amount of items that a character can afford via one feat it is giving far more power to the character with that feat than a simple Combat Reflexes or Weapon Finesse.

Show me how to build an item that grants +6 to hit for both weapons of a two weapon fighter using the Craft system and we'll discuss comparability.

A Fighter is going to take almost all combat related feats, and great in combat they are awesome against their one opponent at a time or the very situational uses of other feats like Combat Reflexes (how many of us have actually gotten to use more than 1 or 2 extra AoO's in a round anyway?). The Wizard with Craft Wondrous Items is going to be awesome in combat too with his spells and then he's got his double WBL number of items to be awesome in all the out of combat stuff as well, twice as much so as the Fighter in these examples.

I think you overstate the case.

This assumes, first, that the Wizard invests all of his wealth in Wondrous Objects and, second, that he always succeeds in Crafting the desired items, which means restricting himself to those items he can Take 10 on. If he wants greater breadth, he needs more crafting feats.

It also means that he only crafts items whose prerequisites are the free spells he gains for rising in levels, since his WBL should include any scrolls, purchased spells and captured spell books. That's going to sharply constrain his options, even within Wondrous Items, since he needs another 5 Spellcraft ranks for every prerequisite spell not available to him. And a lot of those prerequisite spells are not as great in combat, so he will become less awesome in combat.

It finally assumes no party co-operation. In most games I've played, any Crafter will Craft items for the team, not merely for himself. You want that Fighter to use his feats and combat prowess to defend your scrawny wizard butt? Maybe you should Craft some objects to help him with that task, multiplying his WBL as well.

Back to the OP: the FAQ if not the rules clearly say that you count it at cost, I argue that is crazy. At the end of the day though it's your game so count it as you will...

Other approaches could exist. If we accept that a core assumption is that some portion of party magic items will be items found and retained, not sold for half price, and another percentage will be crafted by party members, then 50,000 gp worth of gear includes some acquired at a discount.

If 5,000 gp value of your items was found, and usable as is, 15,000 value (not cost) was crafted, and 30,000 was purchased, then you needed to find items with a total value of 80,000 gp to have the correct WBL (the $30k being doubled as you had to sell those objects for half price and buy new objects for full price).

But I still ask why WBL doesn't include expendable items you had, but expended. They helped along the way, and they drained off some of your gold, so they definitely have an impact on your accumulated wealth. If one character spent no money on expendable items, wouldn't he have more wealth than others who did spend money on expendable items? Which one has the right wealth for his level?

I don't think you can balance characters purely by the gp value of their magic items. Even with precisely equal wealth, and exactly identical characters otherwise, some items will serve the character better than others. How useful is that Quarterstaff, enchanted to a +7 equivalency on both ends, to a Wizard versus a Fighter who specializes in 2 Weapon Fighting with a Quarterstaff? The cost doesn't change. The utility sure does!

In all fairness, I may not be the best judge of character to character balance. Our players have always looked at the team, not the individuals - if we can make one character more powerful so the party benefits, go for it. Find the synergies - the Oracle who cast Bless and the Witch who Evil Eye'd the opponent's AC down two points allowed the Magus to confirm a critical hit on an exact roll (either of the support character missing, wouldn't have been a critical). So which of them was the "powerful" one who took that opponent down? That Item Crafter will help out the whole team, in our games, not just himself.