[semi-Rant] As a DM, does item creation ever get you down?

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

LOL I love this whole thing.
During 2E I played forgetten realms for about 6 months. My poor players had tons of magic items, but little cash. One memorable time, they had to pawn a +3 mace of disruption to get enough money to stay in an inn for the night. (That was after the well-remembered and almost "I got beat up for it" Red Dragon who collected chocolate coins" incedent)

Now, they've been light on magic items. Up till they took on and finally destroyed the assassin's guild out to kill them (They're finally 7th level) and managed to raid thier vaults.
Now they have: A ton of gems (all the gems I've been with-holding till now), a lot of cash (all of the monetary look they should have earned taking on assassin's 1-3 levels higher than them) and a bunch of magic items. That's not to mention the fact that they get to keep the assassins Guild Hall and estates.
So now they want to trade those magic items.
Oh, wait, they remember what happened last time, when they sold a +2 Good Bane broad sword. The guy that bought it sold it to someone who sold it to someone who used it on them. Oops.
OK, so now they want to buy a wizards lab.
Now the city wants thier taxes.
Oops.
Role-playing, training at the local guild halls, searching libraries and making copies of formulae and codex's, the sorcerer going on Dreams of Power quests, and the druid planting a sacred grove.
Collecting rare ingrediant, wanting to get the best out of it.
It takes 1 week to create a certian item they want.
Hmmm, I don't really want them to have it...
An assassin, out to avenge his slaughtered guild-mates, attacks the mage, in the lab, after 5 days. In the ensuing fight, the assassin is killed, the mage wounded, and the lab wrecked. And the PC's fined when the flaming corpse of the assassin flies out the window and lands on a nieghboring building's balcony, setting the building on fire.
So she got XP for killing the badguy, it offset the XP hit she took creating an item that got ruined.
Now thier not mad at me, but at the remnant of that guild.
"Oh, so that's how they want to play. OK, we'll show them."-Player.

To sum it up, I've never really had a problem with players buying stuff. It's either not there, wildly expensive, just out of thier price reach, or not worth the trouble.
They've decided it's easier to kick the face off of some bad guy and see if he's got it in his strong-room.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

For some reasons my players spend a great deal of their money creating wands and scrolls to deal with the adventure. Magic Item creation is often a time and money sink as they press on to defeat the next evil menace.

I am thinking about doing some tinkering with the magic item creation rules that require the use of skills, time, and xp. I will still allow my players to purchase magic items, but the gp costs for personal creation I may offset with additional time, a skill requirement, and xp.

To me, the item creation rules are just guidelines. It is up to me to come up with a more unique, interesting way to create magic items.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Re: Re

I am thinking about doing some tinkering with the magic item creation rules that require the use of skills, time, and xp.

Well, I left XP alone, but I hit the other two.

First, the individual codex/formulae method mentioned here earlier (combined with extending the research time, library and laboratory requirements, etc.) puts Knowledge (Arcane), Knowledge (Religion) and Knowledge (Psionics) to task (depending on the character doing the making)

Second, a concept called "Sympathetic Item Creation", meaning that an item being enhanced by any caster must be hand-crafted by that specific caster. This puts various Craft Skills to task.

To be fair, I don't dock XP until the actual enhancement of the item (which follows crafting), so if an item gets flawed in the crafting process, it's merely a matter of starting over (should the time be available, of course).

In addition, I use a True Ritual for the actual Enhancement process, which includes the regular chance of failure for True Rituals per the Ritual Crafting check (making Endurance a gosh darn good Feat for item creators).

I really should blow the dust off of the rough draft and finalize the darn thing...

 

[Katerek]

Hmmm... I've been using a "codex-concept" for some time now, but simply called them formulae.

Hope you don't mind me using that name from here on?

Flame on.

I love it when people use my ideas. That is why I post them. AFAIC everything original that I say is open game content.

 

[Illuminae]

AS a PLAYER, I HATE being magic-item dependent.

I feel character class abilities and skills fading away in front of 2000 GP.

Barbarians move X Boots of striding and springing, for example.

And I Hate my magic items not being unique, and giving me bonuses and replicas of spells instead of fun new options and abilities.

When I DM, there are no DMG magic items, and not by any chance, anything random.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

The main thing I hate is how the magic item creation feats are broken up. I wouldn't mind a world where magic items aren't needed and are rare. But in thsoe worlds you'd either need to nerf spellcasters or seriously beef non spellcasters so they can pull off epic/supernatural style feats of skill and daring at mid levels.

 

[Nail]

In my experience, the item creation rules are a great idea. You need to have rules for this area, or either the DM or the players will go nuts. And the rules have "RP" oportunity build in, so you can have that if you want it.

My only beef with the item creation rules is the glaring rules-hole called "spell duration". You can make an item that is continuous from a spell that has a 1 rd/lvl duration. (Dare I even mention Bracers of True Strike?) Absolutely ridiculous!

Now don't go shaking the "compare the new item to other items in the DMG to determine cost" rule at me. This sort of flaw is easily fixed, and not something you need to use "cost fudging" to figure out. I'm hopeful it will be fixed in 3.5e.

At present, I require "continuous" magic items to be based on spells that have a duration of at least 1 hr/level. Thus Expeditious Retreat as a 1st level spell (duration 1 minute/lvl) cannot be used to make Boots of Striding as in the DMG.

 

[kengar]

My only beef with the item creation rules is the glaring rules-hole called "spell duration". You can make an item that is continuous from a spell that has a 1 rd/lvl duration. (Dare I even mention Bracers of True Strike?) Absolutely ridiculous!

Actually, it was the True Strike item requests that was one of the major annoyances the other day.

 

[MerakSpielman]

make a post in the rules forum... "Bracers of True Strike... Creation cost?"

and stand back.... put on flame-retardant clothing....

This has been done to death (with Rings of True Strike, usually), but there are some reasonable arguements, based off of rules from the core books, that push the price into the hundreds of thousands of gp. Unfortunately, I don't remember them.

 

[Nifft]

Items that are NOT overpowered:
- "Disposable" items: wands, potions, scrolls
- Items which mimic offensive spells: they have sucky save DCs

Items that MAY be overpowered:
- Permanent buff items

Items which are PROBABLY overpowered:
- Emulate spell above level 0 "at will"

-- Nifft