WBL -- are you supposed to be able to craft pre-game to increase your stuff?

[Gavinfoxx]

Hi there... I was wondering if Wealth By Level intentionally says, 'this is the amount of value of stuff you have, regardless of how you got it', and if a character is capable of stealing/crafting/making/getting a cheaper way of buying stuff, is it assumed that they don't actually go beyond the wealth by level, regardless of how they obtained their stuff, or are you supposed to have more stuff if your character is competent at crafting (say a mundane crafting focused Factotum or any Artificer ever)? How about stealing? How about the various ways of lowering purchase prices for things?

[Kelb_Panthera]

This is left vague enough that you'll really have to ask your DM.

I probably wouldn't allow it but I can say with some certainty that there are other members of the forum that would.

[Mnemnosyne]

I don't think there's actually any stated position on this in the books, but from my point of view, crafting would be kind of pointless if it didn't. After all, you're using up a feat to get that ability to craft, the entire point is that it makes some of your money go twice as far. An artificer that wasn't allowed to use their craft feats to stretch their wealth by level, for instance, would be losing a lot of the benefit of the class when the game starts. Sure, they'll catch up because they're tier 1, but it's still not entirely fair to them, because their whole shtick is making magic items for cheap.

The various ways of lowering purchase prices might be reasonable, but they're a lot less unfair if they're not allowed. You've given up very few character resources for those, they're not the core aspect of any class, and so on. ...well actually I vaguely remember some kind of merchant class or something with cost reducers baked into it, but that's pretty obscure, I don't recall it precisely. So, outside of that class which may or may not exist/be official, it's not really a core part of the character.

Stealing is far too situational to have included in your initial wealth by level. There's no way to account for all the ways it could turn out badly, so there's no way I, as a DM, would allow you to have free items when the game starts because you say you stole them. You'll have to do your stealing in-game, where actual negative consequences can befall you.

[navar100]

If you spend a feat on item creation it's fair to ask for two or three items at half-cost provided you could make them. Don't push it.

[Cranthis]

This falls directly under the "Ask your dm" category. Some may allow it, some may not, some may allow partial.

[Gavinfoxx]

What about mundane items? Poisons, trained animals, crafted masterwork gear, alchemical gear, the masterwork or dwarvencraft or odd material parts of your enchanted weapons, etc. etc.?


I ask because it never occurred to me to not craft that stuff, if the character is a skillful intelligence based character, or has any crafting feats or anything like that at all...

[Muktidata]

I've always crafted everything taking a 20 at character creation. I leave rearing animals the hell alone though, because it's just that busted.

[Mnemnosyne]

If you can craft it by taking 10, then yeah, fair to craft stuff you have craft skills for. Otherwise there would be a chance of failure and ruining your materials. If your DM wants to have you roll it that's fair, but you shouldn't auto-succeed if you couldn't have just taken 10.

[Ashtagon]

I'd go with the following:

You have "N" days per level as "downtime" pre-game ("N" is chosen by the GM; I'd suggest 3 days per level as a baseline point for consideration). These downtime days can be spent crafting, training animals, researching spells, or whatever. All of these downtime days are spent with the skills and abilities of your final character level immediately before the campaign begins.

Characters who want to make Craft skill checks must take 10. If they want to receive an aid another bonus, recruiting is assumed to take no time, cost is one silver piece per apprentice per day for their salaries. You can't hire apprentices to manufacture stuff without your guidance (ie. only the PC can be the lead worker in any project).

Time spent shopping does not count against this downtime.

If you pick a magic item crafting feat, you may purchase magic items at a discounted rate, subject to having the necessary feats, levels, spells, or whatever. However, pay careful attention to the amount of time it takes to craft all this gear.

Any character may choose to spend time haggling, shopping around, or whatever it takes to get the best deal. Each day you spent searching for a bargain allows you to reduce a single item's price by 1%, to a maximum percentage reduction equal to the highest of your Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidation skill. (Yes, this is a trivial reduction, but it throws a bone to the non-casters).

All the above assumes the party starts off in a relatively civilised area.

[Oscredwin]

The solution I like is to give a player an XP total to start at instead of level X. That way they can craft all their WBL (for the level their unmodified XP total implies)to custom gear at the cost of some XP (and maybe start down a level or two). This is powerful, they can get double (or more) WBL if they do this, but they can't use "XP is a river" so that might it out.

I expect it to take a full day or two to make a high level artificer that used his whole crafting pool at each level.

[ksbsnowowl]

I generally account for 75% the base price of a crafted item when totaling up the WBL values for my PC's (I'm the DM). That gives them benefit for having spent the resources on the item crafting feat, but also keeps things from getting out of hand.

One of my PC's bought a Periapt of Wisdom +2 (4,000 gp). After gaining Craft Wondrous Item he improved it to a +4 item (difference of 12,000 gp). When accounting for it in his WBL, it is treated as a 13,000 gp item. ([0.75*12,000]+4000)

[Mnemnosyne]

I absolutely give players X amount of XP total, and what they do with it is their business. I hate it when DMs tell me that 'you start at level X' because they usually don't even think about craft xp. Then they complain when I get a bunch of crafted stuff, or when I have permanencied spells or other things that required an XP expenditure.

I would not agree with giving them an amount of time, though. And definitely not such a short amount of time as 3 days per level. D&D campaigns these days seem to proceed at an absolutely ridiculous pace, with players gaining many levels over the course of months. It's totally absurd to me. Sometimes I'm tempted to say that a character starting above level 1 has spent no less than 9 months per level, and ensure their age is appropriately adjusted, but I haven't quite gone that far yet. When I'm DMing, I try to make sure there are downtimes of several months in between adventures, or even a couple years if the PC's gained a lot of xp on that last adventure. Because going from 1-20 in a couple years, to say nothing of less than one year, is absurd from my point of view. It should take a character a couple decades, at minimum, to gain as much mastery of their craft as being level 20 implies.

I should also note that I am vehemently against treating wealth by level as some kind of continuing guide. It's a starting point, and from that point onward, it should be up to the PCs and DM as to how much additional wealth they get. It may be slightly advantageous, at times, to see if the players are ahead or behind their 'expected' value, if the players seem to be stomping my encounters too easily, or they seem to be struggling, but beyond that, I would never try to ensure my players stayed within it OR kept up. If they're feeling poor and underequipped, I expect their characters to take reasonable in-game actions to deal with that, such as searching out more lucrative jobs. And if they've specifically gone for the lucrative jobs and thus amassed a greater than 'expected' wealth by level, then I think that's only reasonable, because they were specifically working toward making money.

[Khedrac]

Don't forget that if you argue that you should get a few items for crafting cost instead of book cost and they are magic items, you should also start down the xp it takes to craft them - if the campaign starts at 1xp into a level then you will be down a level on everyone else at start...

[Gavinfoxx]

Let's say you want to make -- say -- an Elvencraft Livewood Composite Longbow. Say you are an elf Factotum with a crazy high int (and an item that increases Int) and access to Magecraft and similar, and have spent time in forests in your backstory.

Should you get this item for cheaper than list? How much cheaper?

[ksbsnowowl]

D&D campaigns these days seem to proceed at an absolutely ridiculous pace, with players gaining many levels over the course of months. It's totally absurd to me. Sometimes I'm tempted to say that a character starting above level 1 has spent no less than 9 months per level, and ensure their age is appropriately adjusted, but I haven't quite gone that far yet. When I'm DMing, I try to make sure there are downtimes of several months in between adventures, or even a couple years if the PC's gained a lot of xp on that last adventure. Because going from 1-20 in a couple years, to say nothing of less than one year, is absurd from my point of view. It should take a character a couple decades, at minimum, to gain as much mastery of their craft as being level 20 implies.

Literary counter-argument: Wheel of Time.

The main characters all start as country bumpkins. They end the series, two years later, as:


Rand: the Epic Level messianic savior of the world
Perrin: a Lord, and the most experienced traveler in the World of Dreams that has ever existed.
Egwene: the "Queen" of mages in the world proper, and one of the most experienced dreamers in history.
Matrim: married to an Empress, and one of the top military generals in all the world.
Nyneve: one of the most powerful magic-users in the world, and has personally captured and killed several epic-level casters from the Age of Legends.


Just sayin'.

[andromax]

Just sayin'.

Wow thanks for the epic spoiler.. might wanna edit that.

[ksbsnowowl]

Wow thanks for the epic spoiler.. might wanna edit that.

Sorry. The last book's been out for 4 weeks. Figured most people would have digested it by now.

And I was still quite vague about things. If I spoiled anything for you... believe me, there's things that I didn't spoil.

[andromax]

I forgive you, I'm still on book 2 though.

[Prophes0r]

This was clarified a while ago.

If you are taking the crafting feats and making a higher level character you are allowed (and expected even) to make your own items during character creation. Furthermore, when adding up total party wealth, all items you made use their cost, not price.

That said, I like to use a small variant.

I make my players (and I played with this rule as well) make their characters one level at a time, including gear. That way they don't spend 9 levels naked, and "suddenly" happen upon all their 10th level gear at once. I let them sell back unused gear after they buy replacements at 10% price (+2% for every Cha mod they have). This leads to characters that make sense, and benefit properly from taking the item creation feats.