Creating Creative Wondrous Items

[missmvicious]

So I'm in a 3.5 campaign now as level two and I am setting myself up to take the Craft Wondrous Item feat next level. I'm super excited about it especially because the DM is against XP sacrifice for crafting. So I have been looking through the book at the sort of things you gain the ability to make at level 3. Which I can't say there is a lot, and some of them I can't make because of racial requirements or skill point requirements. So I am trying to get creative on things that I could make with out breaking the bank.
A few things I had been pondering over were the following:
Eyeshadow of Disguise- functions similarly to hat of disguise but would be less expensive to make, also would have limited number of uses
Ventriloquist Lipstick- also limited uses but would prevent people from being able to read your lips
Alchemical Romance- not a wondrous item but I also took craft alchemy and I love My Chemical Romance- DM approved this to be a satchel containing things that would be kicking off pheromones that would make others like you more granting you a +1 on Diplomacy and Bluff

And I was wondering if anyone else had some ideas for other cool stuff

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Check Magic Item Compendium, there are tons of cool/interesting items in there.

[missmvicious]

Do you know where I can find the 3.5 version without in any way shape or form involving a torrent? (last time I tried using a torrent I gave my mac a virus and its so difficult to fix those)

[Chilingsworth]

One thing to remember as far as crafting requirements go: You can get help meeting them. Crafter needs to be a certain race? Get someone of that race to help you! Need a certain skill? Get someone with that skill to help! Also, spells.

[Hoboshank]

just in case you haven't already checked here. Obligatory link to SRD
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#elixirofSneaking

[missmvicious]

One thing to remember as far as crafting requirements go: You can get help meeting them. Crafter needs to be a certain race? Get someone of that race to help you! Need a certain skill? Get someone with that skill to help! Also, spells.


For reals? Sweet! it wont help the racial thing anytime soon because I come from a village that thinks that dwarves and elves are made up creatures but the skill based ones will be a breeze now

[Ayedi_Star]

Another awesome tip that'll save you some gold in crafting: remember, you can arbitrarily add the "must be [alignment] or [race]" tags to the items in return for cheaper construction costs, the rules are in the DMG (AFB, not sure exactly where), so if the item is for you personally, make it exceptionally difficult for anyone but yourself (or a few UMD checks) to use it, and make it real cheap!

At caster level 3 you will not get many items, sadly, simply due to virtue of only having just began your crafting career, but what you WILL get the oppertunity to make is useful.

What class are you taking this feat as? the default is usually Wizard or maybe Cleric, due to how crafting this stuff works - Artificer gets it for free, which is always awesome.

EDIT:
Tyckspoon does make a fair comment, and you should check with your DM before utilizing the restrictions for your own benefit - then again, you should be checking with your DM on everything you're making anyway, just because some of the items you can make can be very balance-shifting.. maybe not at level 3, but it's probably better to get used to the idea before it actually matters.

The fact you're not going to be paying XP costs (as it sounds, at least) will mean the other restrictions (GP cost, Time cost) will matter more.

[tyckspoon]

Another awesome tip that'll save you some gold in crafting: remember, you can arbitrarily add the "must be [alignment] or [race]" tags to the items in return for cheaper construction costs, the rules are in the DMG (AFB, not sure exactly where), so if the item is for you personally, make it exceptionally difficult for anyone but yourself (or a few UMD checks) to use it, and make it real cheap!


I wouldn't recommend actually doing that, not without checking if your DM is ok with you getting stuff absurdly cheap- you're already getting a 50% discount over market by making it yourself, and the restrictions will make it so inexpensive that you're likely to provoke some negative reactions from your DM if it's not cleared first.

[house.au]

Another awesome tip that'll save you some gold in crafting: remember, you can arbitrarily add the "must be [alignment] or [race]" tags to the items in return for cheaper construction costs, the rules are in the DMG (AFB, not sure exactly where), so if the item is for you personally, make it exceptionally difficult for anyone but yourself (or a few UMD checks) to use it, and make it real cheap!

Oooh that sounds really useful! If anyone who has their DMG on them would care to post the details that'd be really cool... I'm a bit lost as to the costing of CWI myself though I'm considering taking it at level 6. Definitely see the wisdom in talking to your DM/not abusing this particular feature though.

[marcielle]

Another awesome tip that'll save you some gold in crafting: remember, you can arbitrarily add the "must be [alignment] or [race]" tags to the items in return for cheaper construction costs, the rules are in the DMG (AFB, not sure exactly where), so if the item is for you personally, make it exceptionally difficult for anyone but yourself (or a few UMD checks) to use it, and make it real cheap!

At caster level 3 you will not get many items, sadly, simply due to virtue of only having just began your crafting career, but what you WILL get the oppertunity to make is useful.

What class are you taking this feat as? the default is usually Wizard or maybe Cleric, due to how crafting this stuff works - Artificer gets it for free, which is always awesome.

EDIT:
Tyckspoon does make a fair comment, and you should check with your DM before utilizing the restrictions for your own benefit - then again, you should be checking with your DM on everything you're making anyway, just because some of the items you can make can be very balance-shifting.. maybe not at level 3, but it's probably better to get used to the idea before it actually matters.

The fact you're not going to be paying XP costs (as it sounds, at least) will mean the other restrictions (GP cost, Time cost) will matter more.

WARNING! IIRC a lot of these DON'T STACK. However, the rules that say so are obscure. Best to just ask your DM what he'll let you get away with cos I think there was literally a line that say if the restriction do not handicap your team they cannot actually be used. Like say you can only use race retriction if you are the only one of that race on your team.

[Ayedi_Star]

I have yet to be able to check my own DMG on the subject but a quick search SUGGESTS it is 30% per restriction, now, bare in mind I am AFB so do check it for yourself, but I would -think-, after reading marcielle's post, it does actually have to be a restriction, but I'm not sure about the stacking of them. that's an exercise in viewer / DM discussion or rules research.

Base price of, say, a powerful magic item with the market cost: 20,000 GP
Restricting it to Wizard only: -30% cost:
20000 *0.70 = 14,000
Restricting it to lawful good / chaotic evil / SOME specific alignment:
14000 *0.70 = 9,800
Making it yourself:
9800 *0.50 = 4,900

If they don't stack, just pick one and it's suddenly "only" 7,000 GP to make.

I have no idea if the following also applies, because I normally play an artificer with the Artisan feats, but if the restrictions reduce ALL associated checks and not just the GP cost:

Normal time to make? 20 days.
with this? 14 or 10 days (with both restrictions).

normally 800 XP to make it.
with this? 560 OR 392 with both.

the "race" restriction I mentioned may in fact be "class"; not entirely sure.

there's also a "must have X skill" restriction, which is 10% off again but I've no idea on the rules of this and so it might not be worth it.

Yes, this is insane. Yes, this is VERY powerful. you still won't get the caster level / magic to do so until normal levels, but the sheer amount of stuff you will have available to make because you just saved somewhere in the region of 13,000 GP in making it.... Hell, PAY a wizard / cleric to cast the necessary spells for you, if need be. it probably WON'T cost as much as that!

one of the most definitive methods for finding out ways of doing this at all will be the cost reduction handbook on BG; be warned that the handbook treats all these as stackable and thus arrive at something silly like 4% of market price for final cost if you managed to get them all.

If in doubt, grab an eberron campaign setting book and grab the X artisan feats: a flat -25% cost in market price when you make it yourself, which probably will stack with at least one of those restrictions and even if it doesn't, it has no restrictions attached and thus saves you a good chunk of the money no matter what.

The Magical artisan feat will reduce the final crafting price by an additional 25% and that WILL stack with eberron's artisan feats - but only for ONE crafting feat, such as CWI.
Still, if you know you only want that one "kind" of crafting feat... the 20,000 item, between the Magical Artisan / X Artisan feats, you'd only pay 5,625 GP.

[graeylin]

i always envisioned the restrictions = less cost rule to be derived from the idea that someone is crafting these things for sale in a marketplace. Thus, a wand that everyone can use is more likely to be sold than a wand that only a gnome with a missing finger can use, and thus, Gygax reduced the cost of the specific, so that a wizard could turn a profit.

Only one gnome like that in the world, so the odds of buying are slim. thus, cost is less, so the maker can still make a small profit even though the item has to sit in inventory for years. Or, he can make generic, at a bit more cost, but sell a dozen, and profit from high volume/turnover.

My DM's have never allowed the restriction deductions to work on items crafted FOR a particular person. As noted, that can make these items insanely cheap. YMMV.

[Ayedi_Star]

Okay, after checking the DMG, the restriction is actually race OR class and makes no mention of stacking more than one restriction of this type, ergo I will assume this means it is not possible.
it is, however, a flat 30% discount as was suggested.

This information is available on the DMG in the "Behind the Curtain: Magic Item gold peices value" section.

the "skill" value to use is a flat 10%, non-restricted in usage aside from obviously having to use that skill. YMMV indeed and requires a DM to adjudicate just what kind of skill check is necessary.

these can't be stacked to make a "only a male human who is chaotic neutral, has been a ninja and a bard and has ranks in intimidate (you activate the item by YELLING REALLY LOUD) can activate this device" but then again that would never be allowed even IF the rules suggested you could.

Be sensibe with it, but also be smart with it. there's no reason why you can't beg or come up with innovative, cool or just funny ways to earn those reductions.

"I have a magic armor that can cast animate dead, and I want to earn at least a little price reduction."
"fine, it requires a perform:dance (check of 16? just in general?) to do the thriller and make it work. take 10% off the market price before you halve it for crafting costs"

"And Fred wants his magic axe to have the power of sonic damage on hit."
"He has to pull out his axe and use it like a guitar, perform:string instrument to get a mighty riff and light the weapon with sonic vibrations. it lasts until sheathed, another 10% off."

[missmvicious]

At caster level 3 you will not get many items, sadly, simply due to virtue of only having just began your crafting career, but what you WILL get the oppertunity to make is useful.


Actually if you are really willing to dig you can find a lot of really great stuff you can make at level 3. I have been searching every book I can get my hands on it to check it out and a few examples of the really useful ones I found were Goggles of Night which allow darkvision. Heward's Fortifying Bedroll which allows you to get 8 hours of rest in just 1 hour reseting all your spells and everything. And the Quill of Scribing which is in fact a quill that will scribe scrolls for you while you are doing other stuff. I found over 30 things so far in the DMG Complete Arcana and Complete Mage. Those are just some of the ones that I really want. Well and the boots of levitation. That would be cool

Anyways I am a wizard class and my DM is not making me give up any XP except on very specific occasions. He has enough story for all of the players to reach epic level if we pursue it and he is trying to keep us leveling up regularly. Its a really nice change of pace for me because I'm used to DMs not giving out any gold or roll playing XP and penalizing you for not killing ever single friggin monster.

[Doug Lampert]

Actually if you are really willing to dig you can find a lot of really great stuff you can make at level 3. I have been searching every book I can get my hands on it to check it out and a few examples of the really useful ones I found were Goggles of Night which allow darkvision. Heward's Fortifying Bedroll which allows you to get 8 hours of rest in just 1 hour reseting all your spells and everything. And the Quill of Scribing which is in fact a quill that will scribe scrolls for you while you are doing other stuff. I found over 30 things so far in the DMG Complete Arcana and Complete Mage. Those are just some of the ones that I really want. Well and the boots of levitation. That would be cool

Anyways I am a wizard class and my DM is not making me give up any XP except on very specific occasions. He has enough story for all of the players to reach epic level if we pursue it and he is trying to keep us leveling up regularly. Its a really nice change of pace for me because I'm used to DMs not giving out any gold or roll playing XP and penalizing you for not killing ever single friggin monster.




You could point out to him that in the event that crafting ever sets you back a level, then BY THE RULES you get to advance faster. You CAN'T fall behind by crafting over the long run. Simply can't be done unless you deliberately go out of your way to burn XP.

XP is a river. He shouldn't worry about you spoiling his epic story by not advancing fast enough.

By the way, the cost reductions for restrictions are all in the how to price magic items section of the DMG, which even in the DMG which is all for DMs has ANOTHER explicit statement that these are guidelines for GMs and a clear statement that even when the GM uses these guidelines he should throw out the result if it doesn't match with existing items prices. If a player of mine used those without my permission I'd simply inform him that his CURSED item doesn't do what he thinks it does, and I'd be 100% in the rules to do so and he'd be 100% in violation when he made that item without permission.

Read the entire chapter, not just the paragraph you like.

[missmvicious]

You could point out to him that in the event that crafting ever sets you back a level, then BY THE RULES you get to advance faster. You CAN'T fall behind by crafting over the long run. Simply can't be done unless you deliberately go out of your way to burn XP.

XP is a river. He shouldn't worry about you spoiling his epic story by not advancing fast enough.

By the way, the cost reductions for restrictions are all in the how to price magic items section of the DMG, which even in the DMG which is all for DMs has ANOTHER explicit statement that these are guidelines for GMs and a clear statement that even when the GM uses these guidelines he should throw out the result if it doesn't match with existing items prices. If a player of mine used those without my permission I'd simply inform him that his CURSED item doesn't do what he thinks it does, and I'd be 100% in the rules to do so and he'd be 100% in violation when he made that item without permission.

Read the entire chapter, not just the paragraph you like.


I have and so has the DM. He created his own crafting rules because he thinks that the ones laid out are rubbish. He laid them all out for us before we even made our characters. There is a percentage chance that what we make will be accidently cursed anyway. But I'm actually a pretty considerate player. I run any questions, ideas or concerns I have about crafting by him first. I even go as far as to warn him during the week which way I am thinking of going during the game because he is one of the DMs that really needs to plan all of his stuff.
And with the original rules you can't really say that XP is a river. If you have to refrain from leveling up so you have enough XP to create an item or cast a spell and you don't get any outlined experience from crafting how do you level up? You are technically a high enough caster at level 3 to make a Cloak of Displacement. To make it you must spend 2000 XP. At level 3 you have a whopping 3000 XP to your name and it only takes 3000 more to level up. So if my party gets the 2000 XP that I would need to craft it that would put me back at the start of level 3 and my party would start leveling up ahead of me very quickly. And the rules don't even make sense, why would you get less experienced by doing something? I've been knitting since I was 9 and I am getting better at it by crafting. You should get XP not spend it.

[tyckspoon]

By the time you should have access to enough *gold* to craft something, the XP cost of it is quite manageable. The Minor Cloak of Displacement, the one with a default CL of 3, has a market cost of 24,000. So that'd be a normal craft cost of 12,000 GP and 960 XP. Wealth-by-level doesn't give you enough assumed treasure to craft that until level 6, and it isn't at all practical until 9, at which point it's still 1/3 of your value.

(Also the default caster levels on wondrous items are basically meaningless as far as crafting goes; they're not a prerequisite, they're just fairly random numbers that tell you how hard it is to suppress the item with a Dispel Magic if you find one randomly.)

[missmvicious]

I negotiated for lower gold costs too. :smallwink: I placed the argument based on the boots of levitation. Its mostly a wilderness campaign and I was like why on earth would a pair of boots and a spell cost you almost 4000 gp? Especially because the spell focus for that is a loop of leather.
The trade off is that we aren't necessarily going to be successful. I could mess it up and end up with a cursed item, destroying my components or even take brain damage depending on how I mess it up.

[tyckspoon]

"Miscellaneous magical ingredients" used to bind the magic to the item in a more permanent fashion. At least, that's the default fluff explanation; more powerful magic effects require more magical junk to tie them into an item, resulting in a more expensive process of enchanting.

The actual reason is of course that 3.0/5 decided to make character wealth a measure of character power; characters get an assumed amount of money to play with at each level, and the prices of items are (theoretically) calibrated so that they can be reasonably acquired at a time when they would be appropriate for that level. So Boots of Levitation (market price 7.5k) cost that much because at-will levitation is considered an appropriate ability for characters to acquire around the level 8-10 range, when they can fit into WBL without being an excessively huge piece.

[missmvicious]

Then I wish more DMs gave out the rewards they should. My team of 3 (at level 2) ended up fighting dozens of driders (leaving us at level 4 afterward) now treasure for a drider is double standard. We had to fight literally dozens of these guys and defeat a high priestess of theirs in order to get 70pp. with just a dozen drider the encounter level is 14. So not counting the high prestess it should have been an 18th level encounter. that means that we should have been granted at least 13200pp.
how does one have any money if DMs are giving out far less a hundredth of the reward?
I don't play with that DM anymore

[tyckspoon]

Ah.. usually, if your DM has a serious hard-on for 'low wealth' or 'low magic' without properly considering how that changes D&D's assumptions? You break out the Vow of Poverty Druid or Incarnum-using character. (It's better if you can get him to talk it out and point out that having a fairly high amount of money and magic items is actually what 3.5 is *built* on, so if he's going to stiff you on everything you at least need to be dealing with weaker fights to compensate.. but VoP Druid is a character that can do well for itself naked if it has to.)

Edit: Although I'd guess that if a short-handed underleveled group survived dealing with driders and drow, you probably had some significant beneficial houseruling and/or fudging in your favor as well. 1 Drider should be highly lethal to level 2 characters, multiples is a "huh, the DM wants to kill us and he's not even being subtle" thing.

[Onikani]

Edit: Although I'd guess that if a short-handed underleveled group survived dealing with driders and drow, you probably had some significant beneficial houseruling and/or fudging in your favor as well. 1 Drider should be highly lethal to level 2 characters, multiples is a "huh, the DM wants to kill us and he's not even being subtle" thing.


More likely the DM has no idea whatsoever on how to properly design encounters and/or play monsters...
...also evidenced by the fact that he has no idea about how much gear to hand out.
*sigh*

[missmvicious]

Edit: Although I'd guess that if a short-handed underleveled group survived dealing with driders and drow, you probably had some significant beneficial houseruling and/or fudging in your favor as well. 1 Drider should be highly lethal to level 2 characters, multiples is a "huh, the DM wants to kill us and he's not even being subtle" thing.


not saying he was the best DM but I have had DMs openly try to just kill us off. But we did loose our NPC partner in the encounter and there were a lot of things that were just luck. My hubby leveled up to level 3 by facing a drider alone (because his character didn't know that a drider would seriously hurt him) and managed to crit with a silly improvised weapon he made at the start of the game knocking a drider to its death a hundred feet below.

[Randomguy]

Has anyone mentioned boon traps yet? You can make a boon trap using the craft wondrous item feat that hits whoever has your arcane mark on them with bulls strength/watever spell you want instead of making a belt of giants strength. To my knowledge, those don't have caster level prerequisits, but you still need to be able to cast the spell you plan on putting into the item.

[Ayedi_Star]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that at level 3 or 4 you will get hardly anything worth making, just that the list will be severely restricted from the total possible amount.

This won't matter for use of Craft Wonderous Item, but if you ever get Craft Magic Arms and Armor?
Another rule you have to keep in mind is that you can't enchant things above a certain grade until you hit a certain level: from the SRD, your level has to be tripple the enchantment you want to use when making weapons and armor:
IE, you have to be at least 3rd level to enchant +1 and level 6 to enchant +2.
I can't find the exact wording for some reason in the book so I can't find out if that's +2 weapons / armor total or if you can bypass the "total" enchantment on an item by burning it with +1 upgrades only.
I think probably not, however.

And Doug Lampert? Nobody in the thread suggested OR advocated going above the DM on any of this: the DM by the very definition of the word gets to adjudicate whether or not you can find the materials to make it in the first place, or whether you can even take the crafting feats to begin with.
If a player in my DMing sessions ever started getting tacky with their interpretation of the crafting stuff, I make it so that any time they sit down to craft, a marching band of bears began striding past, ruining any concentration needed until they stopped trying.

But if a player's got a serious desire for a particular kind of equipment peice and the DM (be it yourself or someone else) doesn't give out stores to buy this kind of thing or allow "you find a magic item worth 2,500 GP each! make sure you tell me EXACTLY what it is before next session!" or some other method of personallised accumulation of wealth and power, then crafting is a serious and useful addition for you and the rest of the team as long as the DM doesn't mind them having that.

And by all means, they really shouldn't. By the conclusion of the game, there's two statements (just as an example) that players can make.

Option 1:
"Man, last night was tough. We were barely equipped, our wizard was out of spells, the skeletons and the zombie dragon were just imposible. the tank had no protections for half the fight, total party wipe except for the rogue who ran the hell away so that we can carry on with new characters next week."
"Gonna make something up for then?"
"eh, man, I dunno... maybe. I might have something to do instead by then."

Option 2:
"Oh Man last night was great! we busted into the crypt loaded with our +3 gear, fought through a small horde of undead, finally reached the ruined cathedral with the zombie dragon! it was hard, we nearly died like 3 times but the barbarian's cloak of acid resistance kept him up! the rogue was dodging blows like crazy and the Wizard was almost out of spells until he remembered that wand of lighting he'd crafted just a day earlier!"
"remember when you misfired during that grapple and hit me? I was at -3!"
"Yeah but the rogue was right next to you and had a wand of cure critical wounds the cleric had made for him"
"Thank gods he keeps his UMD skill high!"

As a DM and as a player, Can you guess which one I prefer to hear and say?

[missmvicious]

Nobody in the thread suggested OR advocated going above the DM on any of this: the DM by the very definition of the word gets to adjudicate whether or not you can find the materials to make it in the first place, or whether you can even take the crafting feats to begin with.
If a player in my DMing sessions ever started getting tacky with their interpretation of the crafting stuff, I make it so that any time they sit down to craft, a marching band of bears began striding past, ruining any concentration needed until they stopped trying.



Don't worry, no one had to suggest it. I live with the DM so all week I have been talking to him about what I am trying to do and seeking approval. Like last night he approved my Alchemical Romance (a MCR ref) after some debate about what exactly it should do and what exactly it takes to make one. Though we forgot to figure out how much it would be worth.

But the stuff about crafting arms and armor sounds rough. I guess it will be a while before I can make a Great Ax of Reduce Person