Streamlining Item Creation Feats

[CleverNickName]

Over the weekend, one of the players at my table asked an interesting question, and I couldn't think of a good answer. Why are there so many item creation feats? Scribe Scroll and Brew Potion are great for low-level casters, and the magic items they create are simple enough to stand alone. But given that the Craft Wondrous Item feat will allow a character to create such a wide variety of magic items...from single-use oils and magic feathers, to flying carpets and helmets that shoot laser beams...well, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch for that same feat to allow a character to also make magic shields, swords, wands, and rings. Why do we need so many Craft feats?

I want to combine all of the item creation feats (except for maybe scribe scroll) into a single feat called "Craft Magic Item." The caster level requirements, spells, and other components required to make a particular magic item seem to be balancing enough without needing to require a variety of feats as well. Does this seem balanced? Or am I missing something completely obvious here?

[SBLOCK=Craft Magic Item]
Prerequisites: caster level 3
Benefit: you can craft any magic item whose prerequisites you meet. Enchanting a magic item takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in its price. To enchant a magic item, you must spend 1/25 of the item's price in XP and use up raw materials costing half of this price.

You can also mend a broken magic item if it is one that you could make. Doing so costs half the XP, half the raw materials, and half the time it would take to craft the item in the first place. The base cost of a magic item is one-half its value, as calculated in the SRD.

Some magic items incur extra costs in material components or XP, as noted in their descriptions. These costs are in addition to those derived from the item's base price. You must pay such a cost to create an item or to mend a broken one.[/SBLOCK]

 

[Edheldur]

Monte Cook, in his Unearthed Arcana book also tried to strealine Item Creation feats, and broke them down to what they mechanicallly did. Thus, in that book there are:
Craft Charged Item, Craft Constant Item, Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Single-use Item and Craft Spell-completion Item.

 

[Spatzimaus]

What we did, IMC, was similar to the UA version but more sequential. In our opinions, the key drawback of the current system was that one or two Feats was all you need, meaning there was really no room for a feat that could create "weak" items like potions or scrolls. So, we had each feat build off of a weaker one.

An item's abilities determine its Item Value (IV). The first 200k of IV translates directly to Market Price (MP). The second 200k of IV counts double towards MP. The third 200k is x3, and so on. MP determines the GP AND XP costs of the final item.
(So, an item whose abilities would be worth 500k, by the book, would cost 200k + 200k x 2 + 100k x 3 = 900k.)
We got rid of the x10 Epic divide this way. Since the non-Epic item creation feats can't make items with IV > 200k, this never comes up in non-Epic play.

Also, any Wondrous Items in the DMG had long since been altered; none of them give permanent or at-will spell effects in our world. They had all been changed to either 5 Standard Action activations per day ("command activated"), or 4 Free Action activations per day ("use activated", counts as a quickened spell). The nicest part of this change is that caster level on items actually matters again.

Enchant Trinket
Prerequisite: Caster level 1
The caster can place a one-charge enchantment on any slotted item, with an Item Value of 999 gp or less. Creating the item takes 1 day per 1 kgp of Market Price.

Enchant Minor Item
Prerequisite: Caster level 5, Enchant Trinket
As Enchant Trinket, except that the maximum Item Value increases to 10 kgp. These items may either have a finite number of charges, or can be used 1 time per day. Creating the item takes 1 day per 2 kgp of Market Price.

Enchant Moderate Item
Prerequisite: Caster level 10, Enchant Minor Item
As Enchant Minor Item, except that the maximum Item Value increases to 50 kgp. Slotless items may be created, at double the slotted cost. These items may be used a finite number of times per day. Creating the item takes 1 day per 3 kgp of Market Price.

Enchant Major Item
Prerequisite: Caster level 15, Enchant Moderate Item
As Enchant Moderate Item, except that the maximum Item Value increases to 200 kgp. These items may be used an unlimited number of times per day. If the creator wishes, it is possible for an item to be intelligent; for every 20 kgp of the item's Item Value, there is a cumulative 1% chance the item will have intelligence. Creating the item takes 1 day per 4 kgp of Market Price.

Then there's Minor Artifact at 21, Moderate Artifact at 35, and Major Artifact at 50.

 

[sirwmholder]

We use EoM-R's Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Charged Item and Craft Permanent Spell... Craft Wondrous Item is any permanent effect... +4 enhancement to armor, fly on a carpet whatever... Craft charged Item is any thing that has charges... Wand of Fireballs, Scroll of Haste, Ring of 3 Wishes, Minor Healing Potion... Craft Permanent Spell takes up one of the 12 slots without the need of an item. Works great for our games

Hope this helps,
William Holder

 

[evilbob]

Honestly, the way the rebuilding rules from the PHBII work, I think streamlining the magical item creation process is a fine idea. As it stands, you could take Brew Potion and Craft Wand at low-to-mid levels, then trade them out for Wonderous Items and Arms and Armor later. Then, if you had a few feats that had no level reqs and could switch stuff around again, you could grab staves and rods. Once someone is caster level 12, there aren't any feats they couldn't take, and if they were really min/maxing, they could switch them around each level. Why not avoid the whole issue and make the item creation feats easier?

Not to mention that many of the feats have nonsensical level requirements compared to the items themselves (like armor with a requirement of caster level 2 when the feat is a caster level 3 requirement, or a ring with a caster level 8 req when the feat is caster level 12, etc.)!

 

[CleverNickName]

Honestly, the way the rebuilding rules from the PHBII work, I think streamlining the magical item creation process is a fine idea. As it stands, you could take Brew Potion and Craft Wand at low-to-mid levels, then trade them out for Wonderous Items and Arms and Armor later. Then, if you had a few feats that had no level reqs and could switch stuff around again, you could grab staves and rods. Once someone is caster level 12, there aren't any feats they couldn't take, and if they were really min/maxing, they could switch them around each level. Why not avoid the whole issue and make the item creation feats easier?

Not to mention that many of the feats have nonsensical level requirements compared to the items themselves (like armor with a requirement of caster level 2 when the feat is a caster level 3 requirement, or a ring with a caster level 8 req when the feat is caster level 12, etc.)!

I would like to keep Scribe Scroll separate, since (in my campaign, anyway) scrolls aren't "magical" items...they are just written instructions that get used up when the spell is cast. Sort of like a material component with instructions printed on the side.

But I think that all other items, since they are actually infused with magical energies and use the same rules for magic item creation, should be handled with one feat. The cost, caster level requirement, and spell requirements take care of any balance issues. Even if you wanted to include scrolls under this feat, it wouldn't be a game-breaker.

I think it would make the whole item creation process more appealing to the players, and easier for their characters to qualify for.

 

[Quartz]

Not to mention that many of the feats have nonsensical level requirements compared to the items themselves (like armor with a requirement of caster level 2 when the feat is a caster level 3 requirement, or a ring with a caster level 8 req when the feat is caster level 12, etc.)!

Hmmm... I thought the creator of the item didn't have to cast the spells himself but could get others to cast the spells, which is where such caster level requirements would come in.


It got lost in the great crash, but I posted my own suggestion: Craft Paper / Scribe Scroll, Craft Fluid / Brew Potion, Craft Wood (instead of Craft Wand and Craft Staff), Craft Metal (for rings, arms, armour etc), and Craft Mineral (for everything else). Items with more than one category would require both feats. For instance, a ring that was a metal band with three rubies would require Craft Metal and Craft Mineral.

 

[Terraism]

It got lost in the great crash, but I posted my own suggestion: Craft Paper / Scribe Scroll, Craft Fluid / Brew Potion, Craft Wood (instead of Craft Wand and Craft Staff), Craft Metal (for rings, arms, armour etc), and Craft Mineral (for everything else). Items with more than one category would require both feats. For instance, a ring that was a metal band with three rubies would require Craft Metal and Craft Mineral.

While I could see that being a really neat system, wouldn't it a) either necessitate the exact form of every magic item, or b) just mean nobody makes a ring using metal and gems? (And similar combinations.)

 

[Quartz]

It was never playtested, but sure, you could have a wooden ring or wooden armour.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Monte Cook, in his Unearthed Arcana book also tried to strealine Item Creation feats, and broke them down to what they mechanicallly did. Thus, in that book there are:
Craft Charged Item, Craft Constant Item, Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Single-use Item and Craft Spell-completion Item.

[nitpick]His [Monte Cook's] book is called Arcana Unearthed, the pregenitor to Arcana Evolved[/nitpick]