What do you think about magic item creation times?

[Kerrick]

I recently got a copy of the Artificer's Handbook, and that led me to look over my variant artificing rules, and I wondered - are the creation times too long? I mean, to make an item, you have to a) be a spellcaster; b) take a feat; c) spend lots of money; d) burn XP; and e) take lots of (down)time to make it.

Now, I'll agree that the first two make sense and are necessary; the third one could be tweaked a bit, but it's still within acceptable levels; the fourth I don't totally agree with, but that's a discussion for another thread; but the fifth, time, gets to be a little much, especially when you get to the higher-level items. You want to make a holy avenger? Sure - but it'll take you 4 months. Epic items are even worse, with their costs in the millions - it'd take upwards of 3 years to make a simple set of +10 amor (1 million gp). Granted, such things aren't often seen, but still - the prohibitive costs in gold and XP should more than balance out the PCs' ability to make lots and lots of them, without having to take absurd amounts of time also. What do you think?

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

One thing that always annoyed me about item creation times is the 1 item at a time limit. You can crank out a 750 gp potion of cure serious wounds in a day, but cant brew 2 50 gp potions of cure light wounds in the same time. We changed it to let people brew multiple doses of the same potion at the same time with craft: alchemy checks.

 

[Graybeard]

I haven't run into that issue in any of my games yet. However, one of the players in my homebrew game wanted to make some scrolls and potions. After discussing it with him, we decided the rules didn't make any sense. It takes a whole day to scribe one scroll? Seems a bit extreme. So for my game we modified the rules. I allow him to make up to 4 1st level scrolls per day (avg day = 8hrs) or up to 4 1st level potions per day. Basically, the ruling is 2hrs per spell level. The higher the level spell scrolls and potins he wants to make, the longer it will take. Also, to make potions in my game, the PC needs ranks in Craft-Alchemy as well as the Brew Potion feat.

 

[billd91]

I have no problem with the time constraints. I think too few campaigns have enough built in down-time anyway. Everything's at too hectic a pace to fit in any normal life.

Besides, long downtimes making magic items are great ways to spend the winter when passes close with snow, foraging is impossible, and stormy weather makes sailing too dangerous.

 

[Crothian]

I like that it takes time. Anything that promotes downtime is good.

 

[Lanefan]

The time is the most important consideration! Why? Because it's the only serious discouragement to PC's constantly churning out items. Gold, ExP, etc.; these can be relatively easily found or earned...but time, not so much.

PC's should not be making items, they should be finding them on adventures. (I should make this my sig, I've said it so often...)

Lanefan

 

[Wolfwood2]

The time is the most important consideration! Why? Because it's the only serious discouragement to PC's constantly churning out items. Gold, ExP, etc.; these can be relatively easily found or earned...but time, not so much.

PC's should not be making items, they should be finding them on adventures. (I should make this my sig, I've said it so often...)

I don't think the rules on how PCs can create magic items should be built around the point of view that PC shouldn't create magic items.

As for the OP, I agree. I think the solution might be to add a last step to the process where the total number of days is divided by the caster level or some fraction of the caster level.

I kind of like the idea of keeping the one day minimum, though. It doesn't hurt scrolls since you can create one scroll with multiple spells on it. And a high level caster should realize he's wasting his time spending all day to churn out a CL-1 potion of mage armor.

Buy it at the magic Wal-mart like everyone else.

 

[Slife]

I kind of like the idea of keeping the one day minimum, though. It doesn't hurt scrolls since you can create one scroll with multiple spells on it. And a high level caster should realize he's wasting his time spending all day to churn out a CL-1 potion of mage armor.

Of course a high level caster should be able to access planes with different time traits, so it may be one day for him, but it's significantly less for everyone else.

 

[Delta]

If anything, I would elongate magic item creation times.
(a) Scale should be longer than real-life making chainmail, for example.
(b) It's one of the very few things to help PCs not going level 1-20 in a few months game time. (Also: wilderness travel, variant training times.)

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think the rules on how PCs can create magic items should be built around the point of view that PC shouldn't create magic items.

"Rules on how PC's can create magic items" implies that PC's should be able in-game to do so; a premise with which I disagree. Magic item creation (and by this I mean true items, not scrolls and potions) should be the most arcane of endeavours, not undertaken lightly and only done by those who have spent years researching their craft. In-game, using the current (bad) rules, most PC's can make items after less than a year in the field; I find this somewhat ludicrous.

The reason it's there, of course, is so players can custom-build the exact items their PC's want...rather than going out and adventuring for them. Very sad...

Lanefan