What do you think about magic item creation times?

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

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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...

Yep. Giving control of the PCs to the players is bad. The game was so much better when the PCs were at the mercy of the DM.

I like the magic item creation rules as they stand. They explain why anybody would ever make a +1 sword, as well as ensuring that just because your DM doesn't put a magical spiked chain in any of his adventures doesn't mean that your specialization in the spiked chain is worthless. It's less cognitive work for the DM as well, since he knows he can put whatever treasure he feels like into an adventure, it'll work. (And I run the same adventure frequently for 2 different parties, so work savings is a good thing)

If anything, my complaint is that PCs don't make enough of their own items. My solution for that is to introduce craft points into my game.

 

[Imagicka]

Greetings...

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?

Simple? Who said that making +10 Armour should be simple? If magick was a simple thing, then everyone would be doing it. If it was simple to make a magickal item, everyone would have a +1 can opener.

I like the long times too. But then, I come from the view point that I'm a huge fan of Ars Magica, where researching spells, creating magick items and harvesting vis takes months to do.

I'm all for PCs making magickal items. But I don't think it should be quick and easy.

 

[Squire James]

If I ever got around to making homebrew magic item creation rules, I would probably implement a Craft Point system. Something like this:

Spend normal Craft points to create 1,000 gp worth of items in a day. Spend more points get more done faster. Spend fewer points to get less done slower. Craft points are used instead of XP, and normal cost is 1 point per 10 gp market value (a lot quicker to figure than 4%, and I can always scale the Craft points as needed to balance things out).

Increasing Craft points improves creation time by the square root of multiplier. Doubling the Craft points increases item creation speed to roughly 1,450 gp per day (square root of 2 times 1,000). Spending 4x the craft points doubles the normal speed to 2,000 gp per day. Maximum multiplier is equal to caster level, so a level 25 caster could create 5,000 gp per day if he doesn't mind spending Craft points equal to 2.5x the gp market value of the item.

Decreasing Craft points (for those not in a hurry) decreases item creation speed at the same rate. Spending 1 point per 20 gp market value slows creation to 500 gp per day. Maximum reduction is 1/X, where X is the caster level. That level 25 caster can spend 1 Craft point per 250 gp value, but will be slowed to 40 gp per day.

Multiple items per day can be made under limited circumstances. Multiply the cost by the square of number of items made for purposes of figuring multiple items per day (the actual cost of the items is not affected). That means, at normal crafting speed, 4 Potions of Cure Light Wounds per day can be crafted, since they count as 16 x 50 gp = 800 gp of item creation. More can be made by spending more Craft Points to cram more in that day.

How does one get Craft Points? No details yet, but a few things that might generate Craft Points are:

- Levels in the Artificer (or similar) class
- Item Creation feats
- Skill ranks in Craft feats
- Feats similar to Efficient Item Creation may artificially boost the creation rate independent of the Craft Pool rules
- Special actions or places might grant a lump sum of Craft Points, or affect item creation in other ways

 

[Vuron]

In general I have no problems with the magic item creation rules. A case could be made for one shot items being made in less time (in fact I think it would be workable to make batches of cure light wound potions that could be divided into seperate containers). For the most part the XP and creation time become a useful method for enforcing more downtime in campaigns. In my experience it's almost always handled off camera, "The Fighter and Thief spend the month getting drunk, engaging in myriad bar fights and wasting money on women of ill repute, while the Cleric spends the month scribing scrolls and the wizard creates a wand."

As for high end and epic level magic items I don't have any problem with it taking a huge period of time as it would not be unheard of for a master artisan to spend several years on a mundane masterpiece. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that pre-industrial societies needed significant time to create complex items (not to mention complex structures like cathedrals and castles) rather than the conveyor belt assembly lines of modern society. Consider that a epic magic item general has a cost greater than the entire worth of a decent sized community and you can understand why it might take a significant period of time for a high level spellcaster to collect the materials and enchant an item.

 

[MadMaxim]

I haven't had a whole lot of item creation in my games yet, but I think the rules are fine as they are. Magic isn't easy so making items using magic sure shouldn't be easy or fast but require lots of dedication.

 

[der_kluge]

As with all the formulas in the Artificer's Handbook, the formulas can be changed to suit your needs. Just modify the static constants, and voila!


I find the idea of someone sitting in a chamber for 3 weeks to be a tad ridiculous. If it's more than a handful of days for most basic items, it's simply going to get hand-waved. So then, what's the point?

 

[Vegepygmy]

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.

I like that magic items take time to craft (as Crothian said, anything that promotes downtime is good), but I agree the "one item per day" rule is annoying. My rule is that you can craft 1,000 gp worth of magic items per day, whether it's forty 1st-level scrolls, a +1 cloak of resistance, or one-sixteenth of a headband of intellect +4.

 

[delericho]

I like the rules as they stand. It feels right to me that powerful items should take a long time to craft.

Besides, it's only downtime. The DM can just say "three years pass", and it's done.

That said, it's also really easy for DMs to change the rules to reduce or even ignore the crafting times, and that's a good thing, too.

 

[Hussar]

How often do you see players actually crafting magic items? In all the time I've played 3e, I've only run into a couple of players who wanted to craft anything other than maybe a wand. Sword? Armor? Bugger that, who wants to waste a feat that you can never benefit from?

I've never seen a player craft anything more than a few thousand Gp item. Is it that common in your games?

 

[Li Shenron]

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?

I think crafting times are good, maybe they could be longer for the smaller items and shorter for the bigger ones, but generally speaking I like them being long enough.

Instant creation of items is absolutely no for my preferred style of games, so I like the idea that this is the core rule. I think it's easier to remove/ignore crafting times completely (in someone wishes) rather than the opposite (adding restrictions often gives the players a bad feeling).

Also, I like the fact that crafting times make a difference between BUYING and COMMISSIONING an item. To me it makes for a great tool in the setting to differentiate between what is "common tech" and readily available and what requires more patience.