When do you find the time? Item Creation Feats

[Girshtop]

With all the vampire lords taking over cities, princesses being kidnapped, dragon attacks, and Armageddons, when do you have time to stop for at least a couple days and make some rods, wands, armor or even scrolls?

Please someone explain it to me, I would really love to make some items for future and even current characters.

Apparantly Artificers are great for item creation, I'm going to check it out right now, but for any other character, how can I make this work?

Thanks!

[Tvtyrant]

Retire to the mountains between adventures! "I need to go practice/decipher my soul" and then craft stuff works pretty well I find.

[Girshtop]

Between adventures, do you mean between sessions, or after you finish a campaign, and are about to start a new one?

[Baka Nikujaga]

For scrolls there is the Quill of Scribing or the Autoscribe (which should never be used). If your DM allows Eberron material then there are the homunculi (or more specifically the Dedicated Wright) and the Exceptional Artisan feat. If your DM allows Forgotten Realms material there is the Magical Artisan feat (though I believe it's more restrictive than Exceptional Artisan). And finally there is the Maester class feature that changes the gold to day rate for magic item creation.

[Knaight]

Between adventures, do you mean between sessions, or after you finish a campaign, and are about to start a new one?

It depends entirely on the pace of the game. Some, more structured games operate with short quests where there are relatively few actions, and the characters begin and end in some sort of base. Item creation could be done pretty routinely in these. Others will have long time frames, where most of what characters are doing is more personal stuff, often related to administrative or research tasks, with breaks from this being addressing absolute emergencies. Item creation is again useful here. Other campaigns have adventuring the norm, but encounter down time in extended travel, such as aboard ships traveling from place to place, where item creation is very doable. So on and so forth.

[Graytemplar]

what i find nice is to acquire the raw materials for an item u think u'll like, then as have ur party wizard summon a demon, angel, or whathave you to do it while u adventure on ur merry way. After slaying a few ne'erdowells, ur item should be ready, i myself never take item creation feats unless doing so is vital for a prestige class. There's always something better to take, skill wise and feat wise.

[TroubleBrewing]

I don't find time, I make time.

Genesis is a beautiful thing for crafters. 1 year/round is usually what I suggest.

You'll want to be undead/Warforged/otherwise immortal for this, though. Those years add up quick.

[Kol Korran]

as was mentioned before, it all really depends on the pacing of the group. that said, in my campaign time is pressing, and my players find time to scribe on jounries from place to place, or take a few days to prepare for a certain local (such as water breathing scrolls for an under water campaign and such).

next campaign will be quite different i imagine.

[SleepyBadger]

Between adventures, do you mean between sessions, or after you finish a campaign, and are about to start a new one?
There are times when you can't afford to make magic items. E.g. if your party has to stop an evil overlord who will perform his dreaded ritual in midwinter and you have only ten days to go. Otherwise your party should agree on staying in town for a few days so that you can create your items.

[Kantolin]

In most of our games, we have no real time limits but tend to pseudo-hurry from place to place. Whenever I (or the other PC who likes crafting) asks for downtime, we tend to just, "Okay, A month passes" and move on with our story. :P

Sometimes we're pressed for time and cannot (You have three days to stop the moon from falling!). Other times we just handwave it and assume it happened at some point during some unspecified downtime in the recent past, so we can go back to what we were doing ^_^

[Feytalist]

We generally have down time between adventures, something like a week down for every two weeks on the road. Down time is good not just for item crafting, but also for roleplaying/characterising. Not just the wizard might want time for his scrolls, the cleric might catch up on his duties at the nearest church, the rogue might want to make contact with the thieves' guild (and get some extra cash on the side, hey why not), and the fighter might want to sharpen his skills at the training grounds. Or perhaps help the wizard in exchange for enchanting his weapon some more.

It's not necessary to spend a whole session on this, but every so often a nice "you've got a week to rest, spend it wisely" before the next mission is a good idea.

[Larpus]

Scrolls are easy as long as you're not hopping to locations, so couple hours before sleep for some time and you should be good to go.

The other stuff...as others mentioned depends on the pace, but most DMs give couple months of gap between a campaign/quest and the next, which is quite good for crafting.

[KingofMadCows]

Get a cohort.

[Ravens_cry]

It depends on the campaign. In a Pathfinder campaign called Kingmaker, there was beyond lots of time to craft. I had a character who was able, using the Craft rules, make a thousands of gold mundane item that literally took years of crafting time. It was a rifle if you must know.

[Skaven]

Really, it depends on the DM to make downtime for your characters to do the things they need to do.

[Saintheart]

Use the Craft Points variant rules, and pull your items out of hammerspace as the adventure goes on: "Oh, hey, I was making this in between rounds during the last fight."

[Gnaeus]

When you are thinking about taking Crafting feats, ask your DM.

"Is it worth taking this feat in your game?"
"Could I get crafting supplies and craft on the road? Alternately, will I be able to have downtime?"
"How transferable is crafting material? Could I buy 20,000 gp in "Crafting supplies" or do I need to list it as 6000 gp to add x to y, 4000 for an amulet of x and 10,000 for a wand of z?"
"Are items like "dedicated wright" or the "quill of scribing" available to be made in your game?

The DM's answers will help you more than ours will.

[phlidwsn]

There's also the "Dedicated Wright in a Portable Hole" trick from the Artificer's Handbook. Set up a lab inside a portable hole, set the wright to working for you. Then when x days have passed open up the hole and grab your new shiny while starting the next item.

Note: setting your wright to the creation of a bag of holding may have some small side effects when done inside a portable hole :)

[Ravens_cry]

Note: setting your wright to the creation of a bag of holding may have some small side effects when done inside a portable hole :)
Famous last words: "I'm done!"

[Girshtop]

Wow, huge amounts of help here.

I'm definitely feeling better about these feats, and will use them for sure now.

As for my games, they're usually on some sort of timer (not a 3 days until the world ends thing, but still some kind of hurry), so I'll speak to my DM about maybe some downtime.

I never thought of using traveling time as crafting time. Don't you need supplies with you? Eg. Wouldn't an alchemist need to bring his table with him to make potions? I guess that could be fixed by bringing along a wagon..

[RndmNumGen]

As others have mentioned, it really depends on the pacing of your game. In my current game, our party has been playing for roughly 3 months in-game, a good 70-80% of which has been travel and such. This provides a perfect opportunity for crafting.

I also recall rules somewhere for crafting items in your downtime, that is, instead of spending a dedicated 8 hours a day crafting, you only do it during breaks and stuff, but it takes 4 times as long.

[Andorax]

...and the key is communication, both with the DM AND with the rest of your party. If, the day after you defeat the BBEG, you're settling in for a month of crafting of stuff (all for yourself, of course) and the halfling ranger says "screw this, I'm bored" and goes and finds the next adventure the very next day, you've got yourself a problem.

So make sure you get buy-in from the party, even if it's just offering to pay their inn and tavern tabs for a month on top of your normal crafting costs.

[Gnaeus]

I never thought of using traveling time as crafting time. Don't you need supplies with you? Eg. Wouldn't an alchemist need to bring his table with him to make potions? I guess that could be fixed by bringing along a wagon..
"Alchemist’s Lab

An alchemist’s lab always has the perfect tool for making alchemical items, so it provides a +2 circumstance bonus on Craft (alchemy) checks. It has no bearing on the costs related to the Craft (alchemy) skill. Without this lab, a character with the Craft (alchemy) skill is assumed to have enough tools to use the skill but not enough to get the +2 bonus that the lab provides. "

I usually suggest to the DM that this item (500 gp, 40 lbs) is a good template for a portable lab for crafting. I have had good success with this request. YMMV.

[Curmudgeon]

We've always had crafters stay behind and do their item creation thing while the rest of the party goes out for more adventuring. That smaller group tends to burn through more consumables (mostly potions, and wands via Use Magic Device) to cover for the missing spellcaster, but pulls ahead of the crafter in treasure anyway. And of course earning XP while the crafter is spending XP makes for a significant difference. If the crafter is creating custom items for themselves they generally figure lagging behind is worthwhile. If they're creating custom items for another party member, that person expects to pay a hefty premium over the crafting expense.

In a group that's comfortable with some characters having LA while others don't, having spellcasters drop behind in XP isn't a big deal. Gear, gold, abilities, and experience are all interchangeable to various extents, and there's no rule that says all these categories have to match for all the PCs. And, speaking for myself, it makes games more interesting when there's some variation.

[Gamer Girl]

You can always add in time if you need it. For example, say the group has a treasure map for the next adventure. Instead of heading out at dawn, you just say as a group, that we are resting in town for a week. Then you can craft. As long as you don't have the ''oh, as you sit in town an orc horde attacks!'' type of DM, this should work fine.

[Coidzor]

We've always had crafters stay behind and do their item creation thing while the rest of the party goes out for more adventuring.

That sounds pretty harsh. :smalleek:

[Curmudgeon]

That sounds pretty harsh. :smalleek:
Actually, it's the best option given that the two players who most commonly run spellcasting characters have more scheduling difficulties than others in the gaming group. If the players don't show up, their characters sit out the adventuring and craft stuff.