Why Forge Ring when you can Craft Wondrous?

[Staffan]

Just to add: the neat thing about AU's item creation system is they don't have to be those kinds of items. Wanna make a ring with 50 fireballs? Just use the Charged Items feat. Wanna make a staff with an always-on power instead of charged spells? Use the Constant Items feat.

Well, what I mean is that mechanically spell-completion items work like scrolls, charged items like wands, etc. They don't have to look like them, but they work the same. I.e. to use a spell-completion item you need the spell on your spell list, and run the risk of misfire if you're too low level, and such.

 

[orangefruitbat]

Personally, I like the following:

Craft Arms and Armor (Minor, Medium and Major)

Craft Rods, Staves and Wands (Minor, Medium and Major)

Craft Wondrous Items (Minor, Medium and Major) - this includes rings

Each catagory has three feats, that have the lower levels as prereqs.

Scribe Scrolls and Brew Potions I would leave as single feats though, unless you really want to limit magic in the game.

The revised Elements of Magic has three magic item creation feats.

Craft Wondrous Item - Anything with a constant effect

Craft Charged Item - Anything which has a limited number of uses (or at least limited per day)

Craft Permanent Spell - These special permanent spells can emulate both of the above feats, but not on items. You can place permanent spells on areas or creatures, but you can't use it to make items to swap between friends. It's a nice way to make things like magical traps, to create magical tattoos, and to create golems.

 

[Angcuru]

Personally, I like the following:

Craft Arms and Armor (Minor, Medium and Major)

Craft Rods, Staves and Wands (Minor, Medium and Major)

Craft Wondrous Items (Minor, Medium and Major) - this includes rings

Each catagory has three feats, that have the lower levels as prereqs.

I see a problem with this is that you end up with nine item creation feats. I think it would be better to just increase the potency of the crafting once the prerequisites are met. OR you could have each of these be their own feats starting as minor, and have them take the feats Craft Meduim/Major Magic Item in order to increase the potential potency of their creations.

Afterthought: Shouldn't this be in the house rules forum?

 

[jester47]

stop!!! you are going to make me buy Arcana Unearthed!!!!

Aaron.

 

[Psion]

If you feel like the core rules make no sense (I don't), you can pick up an alternative - Mystic Eye Games' Artificer's Handbook. It has rules that allow you to replace the core feats with basically three - create minor, create moderate, and create major item.

I dig the Artificer's Handbook, but one thing I eventually decided not to use was their feat layout (and if I was to alter the feat layout, I'd use the one in plot and poison.) After considering alternatives from a variety of sources, it seems to me that boiling down all item creation feats to such a simple set strips some flavor from some character options (particularly those whose forte is some special item they can create, such as the WotC crystal master and Bastion's Jewel Mage) and "breaks the fourth wall" by expressing character choices in game terms.

 

[Psion]

In my campaign we've folded Craft Ring into Craft Wonderous (although you still can't make rings 'till 12th level, but you don't need to purchase a new feat for it).

We've also folded Craft Staff into Craft Wand in a similar manor.

That sounds like a simpler, better solution than "genericizing" the feats.

In fact, I think I'll make it a house rule. Thanks.

 

[Voadam]

Forge ring allows you to have two slotted items of the same type on your person (i.e. you can have two rings functioning happily alongside each other), where in all other cases you can have only a single item in any given slot.

On a similar note craft rod allows you to create non-slotted items (rods) that have market value of slotted items. (That is, rods don't use one of the body slots, but do not have the ×2 price modifier similar wondrous items would have.)

OTOH, rods cannot be always active, and rings can. Perhaps these are the reasons why the drsigners thought rings and rods needed the separate feats to create them? I wonder...

Regards!

I believe Monte Cook stated on his website that the item categories were because of the categorization in past editions. Rods and rings could have been done mechanically as wonderous but having them be their own charts on the magic items tables separate from the old "miscellaneous magic items" was a little sacred cow holdover they just didn't want to change for D&D. Later he made his alternate categorization system of categorization by function instead of form in Arcana Unearthed where a permanent ring uses the same feat as a permanent amulet.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I don't know, why not ask Sauron?

 

[Henry]

I don't know, why not ask Sauron?

Somehow, The One Ointment or The One Bag or The One Boot doesn't have as much panache...

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Somehow, The One Ointment or The One Bag or The One Boot doesn't have as much panache...

One ointment to rule them, one ointment to find them, one ointment to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Gotta agree with you there... a ring sounds so much more sinister.