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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7752335" data-attributes="member: 82106">I disagree that AD&D's solution is 'primitive'. I think it could be tweaked slightly but it did work quite well. Items had a 'sale value', but since it was impossible to make most items this was really a SALE value, which is basically quite high, but something like what a player might actually agree to part with an item for. Purchase of items is left more as an exercise, but in practice the sums quoted in the 1e DMG are large enough that the most likely scenario is barter, trading one item for another. Items are VERY difficult to make. This precludes magic item manufacture as either a business proposition, or as a way to achieving some huge stockpile of items. Some things are notable:Scrolls are not cheap, but PCs can pen spell scrolls at costs which make them worthwhile, and this is by far the most common type of item PCs produce. Potions are also feasible. There's a high up front cost for a lab, but the most difficult aspect is ingredients. Still, there are scenarios where a PC might have access to one or a few specific ingredients in quantity sufficient to make the option feasible. Non-permanent items are unfortunately ALL level-gated to 14th or higher level by the Enchant An Item spell (or similar restrictions on clerics). This could probably be fixed such that non-permanent items could be produced using a family of spells which gated on XP value or something like that. 3e DID try this, but they simply didn't set the values correctly here. Note also that in AD&D there is a big difference in that you can't simply endow ANY arbitrary spell into any arbitrary form of item. Components are of course the GM's mechanism for creating a restriction, which 3e also failed to adhere to (at least in practice).Permanent items universally force the maker to sacrifice a point of CON (for wizards anyway, clerics are a bit fuzzier, but they don't get to make a wide variety of these items to start with). This is OK, except there's no reason why a level 14+ wizard would sac a CON point to make an item unless it was a VERY powerful item! In effect things like +1 daggers are never going to be produced at all. Again, some gating could be put in place, so your level 7 guy could make a +1 item. It would still be a bit painful, but at least the option would exist. There should also probably be some way to reacquire the CON point. 3e went for an XP sacrifice, but this was problematic, too low and at the same time disruptive of play. I think AD&D had the right idea, they just should have level gated weaker items to allow them to be fashioned by somewhat lower level PCs, and maybe provided some guidelines to make it clear that these weaker items should have less ridiculously obscure components (especially in 2e where this was not at all made clear). I'd also note that AD&D totally eschewed the concept of a 'range of levels' of an item. Every item in AD&D is unique and exists in only one form (there are a few exceptions though). This tends to mitigate the whole issue somewhat.</blockquote>

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