Whats the Point of the Craft Rings Feat

[Solomani]

OK no doubt people have asked this question before and had it answered. But doesn't the Craft Rings feat seem ridiculously hard to attain compared to what it does. Looking at the table of magical effects in the Tomb and Blood and DMG books it seems that any effect that can be placed into a magical ring can also be put into a wonderous Item, a ability that is attainable at 3rd level (as opposed to 12th) and would seem to make the rings feat just a way to get use of 2 extra magic item 'slots' on a person (bearing in mind the 12-15 other slots available). It seems to me that if a caster was of the level were his wonderous items filled every slot but his ring slots it would be easier to simply pay the double cost for making unlimited items.

Also whilst I'm on this topic. Wands can only use 1 spell, staves can use multiple spell within themselves. Rods seem to be largely covered again by Craft Wonderous Item or other feats what makes Rods special?

 

[Ziggy]

Essentially your analysis is correct, Craft Wonderous Item is quite unbalanced against most of the other craft feats. However there are a few situations where Craft Ring/Rod become useful:

1. If you are limited to items in the DMG, there are a few unique effects that can only be attained by rings and rods (e.g., Ring of Wizardry). This limitation is not uncommon as a house rule, especially in tournament play.
2. If you cannot buy magic items you need the craft skill to make items for the ring slot.
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   Personally I think that Rod, Staffs and Wands should be one item creation feat (similar to Craft Magic Arms and Armor), and that some limitations should be put on the effects you can put into wonderous items.
   
   .Ziggy

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Monte Cook has said that, if he knew how accepting the DnD community would have been about 3e changes, that he would have made Forge Ring and Craft Rod unique. Right now both can be covered with Craft Wonderous Item.

 

[dcollins]

But doesn't the Craft Rings feat seem ridiculously hard to attain compared to what it does.

This is only a problem if the DM allows the players to arbitrarily design their own magic items. If the DM uses just the core rules, allowing the "create item" feats to just replicate existing magic items (and restricting the "create new item" rules in the DMG to the DM only), then the Forge Ring and Craft Rod feats look a lot more desirable, as originally intended.

 

[shurai]

Okay, forgive me:

There are many rings of power in the world, and none of them should be taken lightly!

Seriously, most of the rings in the DMG are quite powerful. Less than half of them provide spell-like effects, and, like, less than half of them are less than 10,000 gp, if memory serves. Okay, sorry again.

So the crux of the argument is that the rings do strange non-spell things and many of them are very powerful and expensive, so they have a very high caster level for the feat.

Also, rings are unique in that they are tiny little items and you can have two at once. Even wondrous items are rarely smaller and more nondescript than rings. If a mage has an ornate staff, chances are you know there's trouble to be found when he points it at you. But who notices something as small as a ring?

Maybe in the game world, to force that much power into that small of an object is very difficult, but the payoffs are very great. Seems to make sense.

-S

 

[Immortius]

A comparison between existing rings and wonderous items shows that only rings have permanent spell effects such as Endure Elements. Why the rules by no means cover this, perhaps this should be the difference between the two? At any rate this is a moot point - its more of a house rule then anything else.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Salutations,

I dropped the craft feats from my games a while ago- they made no sense to me why you could enchant a sword, but not a ring. A wand, but not a staff.

I replaced them with something along the following:

Craft Minor Magic Item: (for items that used 0-3 level spells)
Craft Moderate Magic Item: (4-6)
Craft Major Magic Item: (7-9)

I left Scribe Scroll and Brew Potion alone.

Each Craft feat was a prereq for the one involving higher levels.

I did the above for a few reason-

1) It made more sense to me to seperate the creation of such items, not by what kind of item, but the amount of magic involved.

2) It allowed a spellcaster to not waste a lot of feats to have the option of making a variety of items.

3) In hopes of getting my hack/slash players to try a spellcaster.

edit: 4) Because there are some low level rings- and the need to be high level to make low level rings seem particularly silly.

FD

 

[Epametheus]

Probably because a lot of the Rings are rather beefy. Spell-turning, Counterspelling, and Evasion all come to mind.

If you allow players to make wondrous items with the effects of the rings in the DMG (such as a wondrous item that grants deflection bonuses, or more drastically, a wondrous item that grants Evasion), then no, there is no point to the Craft Ring feat.

You could lower the level requirement for the Craft Ring feat.

Or you could just say that Wondrous Item includes rings; the psionic feat Craft Universal Item does cover psionic rings.

 

[BBrendolfus]

The magic creation rules annoy the begeezes out of me.

I dislike calculating rot when I dm and so add me to the list of dm's that allow only items from the dmg to be crafted. It took me about an hour to design and price an intelligent staff, maybe I am a monkey but that was far too long and not fun.

As far as craft rings, well already there are grumblings from players that their characters want some...

 

[BluWolf]

I replaced them with something along the following:
Craft Minor Magic Item: (for items that used 0-3 level spells)
Craft Moderate Magic Item: (4-6)
Craft Major Magic Item: (7-9)

FD,
What level requirements did you set for these feats? Any skill requirments for certain items (i.e. Craft weapons or craft armor)?

I like this approach. It seems logical.