[3.5] requiring PC research for magic item creation.

[Pancritic]

Hi, all.

I'm running a campaign where one of my characters acquired the Craft Wondrous Item feat and now wants to create items.

I want him to discover the 'recipes' to create wondrous items through some sort of research instead of having all required knowledge automatically appear in his head.

That said, I also want the research to be more of an extra step in the process and a tool to provide extra roleplaying possibilities instead of a hindrance or obstacle to the item creation.

I tried searching for threads addressing this, but the search wasn't cooperative, and as such any ideas would be welcome.

Cheers in advance.

[LaughingRogue]

Hi, all.

I'm running a campaign where one of my characters acquired the Craft Wondrous Item feat and now wants to create items.

I want him to discover the 'recipes' to create wondrous items through some sort of research instead of having all required knowledge automatically appear in his head.

That said, I also want the research to be more of an extra step in the process and a tool to provide extra roleplaying possibilities instead of a hindrance or obstacle to the item creation.

I tried searching for threads addressing this, but the search wasn't cooperative, and as such any ideas would be welcome.

Cheers in advance.

The problem with doing something like this is in my opinion is that you are nerfing crafting which considering the downtime it takes to actually make crafting viable in the first place...probably isn't a good idea to begin with. Now if you are insistent on dong it, it's going to require some extra leg work on your end. You're going to have to have certain people in town with knowledge that may have been passed down through their family (and how many commoners are really going to possess such knowledge to begin with, ... probably not many to begin with), but if you're insistent on doing it then that's one way to do it... the further problem is with the amount of things that are available to be crafted through craft wondrous item you're going to run into the problem of there are just far too many "recipe's" to begin with. Lastly the problem is that since there are so many things you can create with craft wondrous if you don't find a way to give out recipe's in incredible bulk you are going to end up gimping/nerfing the feat ridiculously,

With all that being said, I understand where you are coming from with this and wish you the best of luck on your search here: hopefully others will have better ideas than me...

[Darrin]

I want him to discover the 'recipes' to create wondrous items through some sort of research instead of having all required knowledge automatically appear in his head.

That said, I also want the research to be more of an extra step in the process and a tool to provide extra roleplaying possibilities instead of a hindrance or obstacle to the item creation.


While this is fine for unique or signature items, I'd advise against this for minor or disposable items such as gloves of dexterity, handy haversack, pearls of power, elixir of fire breath, etc. Creating magic items already requires a great deal of "down time" where the rest of the players are sitting there with nothing to do, bored out of their skulls. If you add on even more complicated sidequests to track down recipes, find rare ingredients, and setting up the appropriate lab/workshop, you're just wasting the other players' time rather than adding anything unique or flavorful.

If you're going to go this route, then do what you can to involve the other players. If the item is being crafted for another player, then they should be involved in finding the recipe/ingredients and helping with the crafting process. Work in NPCs from the character's backstory to provide ingredients that are meaningful to the character ("three strands of your mother's hair"). If this can't be done, then try to schedule a one-on-one session with the crafter's player or take it to email/skype to hammer out the details so the other players don't have to sit through something that doesn't involve them.

To get the whole party involved, then make the item an important plot point so the entire party has a reason to help with the research: the villain's armor renders him invulnerable to all attacks, unless he's standing under the glowing light of the Gem of Glittering Awesomeness. But the last Gem was destroyed 300 years ago in the War of the Evilness Not Being As Dead As You Thought He Was. Can the party assemble the ingredients and create a new Gem in time to stop His Evilness from destroying the world?

The other option is if you want to create an elaborate sidequest to research recipes/ingredients, then hand out pregen NPC/monsters to the other players and have them play the antagonists for the crafter. Reward the players with extra XP/GP for good roleplaying, even though their primary PCs were "off screen".

The crux of it is this: did the rest of the players show up for the session expecting to watch someone else spend the entire night tracking down "blue moonspider silk" to make himself some slippers of spiderclimbing, or did they show up to smash through dungeons, slay evil beasties, and grab some phat loot? While it may be more immersive and flavorful to roleplay out the research/ingredients/crafting/etc., that doesn't necessarily make the game more interesting if the players are expecting an entirely different experience.

[Keneth]

Like the posters above said, this isn't really viable in the 3.5 crafting system. If you're gonna introduce recipes, then you're gonna have to overhaul the crafting system as a whole. It sucks as it is anyway. :smallsmile:

[Alienist]

Personally I think this sounds like a cool idea. I don't think that the negative reception is warranted.

Have you had a look at the metamagic components variant rules? That might provide some inspiration.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/metamagicComponents.htm

[gkathellar]

If you're going to do this, than you should cut it out of the normal crafting time - that way, you're not penalizing your player for adding a bit more flavor.

[CTrees]

Maybe allow at least the items in core to be made without additional research? After all, presumably taking the feat is representative of undertaking a fair amount of basic research?

Also, as others have said the normal (long) crafting times may be assumed to include time to figure out how to actually build the thing. *shrug* regardless, I don't like the idea, though strangely I could easily accept needing to find specific, rare components/materials/ingredients in order to make items, as opposed to simply "10k gp worth of misc stuff."