Group Crafter and/or Ways to gain extra experience and gold?

[Gwazi Magnum]

I've always felt like playing as a character that could help people.
One who the rest of the party really liked because he did stuff that helped them a lot.

But sitting back and buffing/healing all the time isn't exactly my style...
So I'm thinking of going crafting where I can make a lot of magic items to make the team more powerful.

Any main advice for this?
How to make items for cheaper?
Best ways to make extra gold and experience to be able to craft more?

Note: Two different build concepts for this though.

1) Generic single class character, any class acceptable
2) Gestalt, but can't use Cleric, Druid, Psionics, Wizards, Sorcerers or Artificers *Preffering this one get's answered first*

[dascarletm]

I've always felt like playing as a character that could help people.
One who the rest of the party really liked because he did stuff that helped them a lot.

But sitting back and buffing/healing all the time isn't exactly my style...
So I'm thinking of going crafting where I can make a lot of magic items to make the team more powerful.

Any main advice for this?
How to make items for cheaper?
Best ways to make extra gold and experience to be able to craft more?

Note: Two different build concepts for this though.

1) Generic single class character, any class acceptable
2) Gestalt, but can't use Cleric, Druid, Psionics, Wizards, Sorcerers or Artificers *Preffering this one get's answered first*

So you can't use those classes? Why not get your crafting from Midgard Dwarf (Frostburn)? You take that race as one side of the gestalt, and whatever you want on the other side. You now can craft arms, armor, wondrous items, and rings. You can also be pretty much any class on the other side.

Eberron has feats that reduce the cost for creating items (one for gold, XP, and time each).

If you want to be evil as well, dark craft gold and XP from the BoVD is also an option.

[Fouredged Sword]

Well, an artificer is the go to crafter. There are handbooks for that. I think you can cut the cost of building stuff down to something like 5% or so of the list price. It gets silly.

Then the alternative is farming ecstasy or whatever the good version of liquid pain is. One dose is worth some free EXP towards crafting. Keep piling on doses and you can make stuff basically for free. Sell stuff to make money to get more stuff.

[Tvtyrant]

1. Warlock 12/Chameleon 2 can make any item in the game. The chameleon levels grant you s floating feat that you can change daily, so pick item crafting feats. Warlock 12 allows you to ignore CL and spell prerequisites. You aren't an Artificer, or even a Wizard shapechanging into a Midgard Dwarf, but you are pretty good.

2. I assume that rules out Archivists as well? Because otherwise go Archivist on one side.

For cost reductions. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7274.0)

[Gwazi Magnum]

So you can't use those classes? Why not get your crafting from Midgard Dwarf (Frostburn)? You take that race as one side of the gestalt, and whatever you want on the other side. You now can craft arms, armor, wondrous items, and rings. You can also be pretty much any class on the other side.

Eberron has feats that reduce the cost for creating items (one for gold, XP, and time each).

If you want to be evil as well, dark craft gold and XP from the BoVD is also an option.

Any good roleplay ways to go across the BoVD in a party of good characters?
Also would there be ways to hide the evil taint it leaves?


Well, an artificer is the go to crafter. There are handbooks for that. I think you can cut the cost of building stuff down to something like 5% or so of the list price. It gets silly.

Then the alternative is farming ecstasy or whatever the good version of liquid pain is. One dose is worth some free EXP towards crafting. Keep piling on doses and you can make stuff basically for free. Sell stuff to make money to get more stuff.

I'm unfamiliar with the farming ecstasy thing you're referring to.


1. Warlock 12/Chameleon 2 can make any item in the game. The chameleon levels grant you s floating feat that you can change daily, so pick item crafting feats. Warlock 12 allows you to ignore CL and spell prerequisites. You aren't an Artificer, or even a Wizard shapechanging into a Midgard Dwarf, but you are pretty good.

2. I assume that rules out Archivists as well? Because otherwise go Archivist on one side.

For cost reductions. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7274.0)

Thanks for the Link.

So the idea here is though to bypass requirements and swap crafting feats?

What if I'm making more than one item at once?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Any good roleplay ways to go across the BoVD in a party of good characters?
Also would there be ways to hide the evil taint it leaves?There's a mess of ways to conceal your alignment from various magical detection methods. Unless one of those magical detections is use, just don't get caught and have a patsy in case you do.




I'm unfamiliar with the farming ecstasy thing you're referring to.Ambrosia is an substance produced by a 5th level spell from book of exalted deeds (I forget the name). When crafting magic items you can expend a dose of ambrosia to knock 3xp of the cost of crafting. If, for example, you were making a fifth level scroll then you'd need 45xp as part of the cost of crafting. You could instead use 15 doses of ambrosia and pay -no- xp.

Farming it refers to setting up a place where there's a magical trap producing that spell in the center of the area that triggers every round someone's in range and ensuring that people both want to stay in range and are experiencing the necessary joy for the spell to take effect and produce the ambrosia.




So the idea here is though to bypass requirements and swap crafting feats? You're not bypassing any requirements and you can only work on one item on any given day. Almost all of the crafting feats have only a caster level as a requirement and the 12th level class feature of the warlock allows them to craft items as though they had the necessary spells.


What if I'm making more than one item at once?

See above.

Edit: the name of the spell is distilled joy.

[Gwazi Magnum]

I know there are ways to hide my own alignment.
I mean hiding the weapons taint if created through evil means.

Also, the pain and soul gathering methods seem interesting, along with the sacrificing.

I'm not interested in cheesy infinite xp tactics but are there ways a character could use the techniques above in a campaign secretly? Is there I can do it on the go so I'm not staying in town for weeks on end to gather it and/or have followers gather the experience for me?

Are there also any ways to trap/collect souls without having to be a high level caster?

[Kelb_Panthera]

You can use BoED's rules for redeeming evil items and use ambrosia instead of agony for the XP cost. Though if you're going to do that you might as well just use the ambrosia in the first place.

Souls are automatically captured by a weapon made of thinuan, a special material found in complete warrior. Beware though, if you're slain while carrying a thinuan weapon your soul will be trapped inside.

[Gwazi Magnum]

You can use BoED's rules for redeeming evil items and use ambrosia instead of agony for the XP cost. Though if you're going to do that you might as well just use the ambrosia in the first place.

Souls are automatically captured by a weapon made of thinuan, a special material found in complete warrior. Beware though, if you're slain while carrying a thinuan weapon your soul will be trapped inside.

The idea is that the evil means give more exp and that it also allows me to do sacrificial rituals.

I'll be sure to take a look at complete warrior.
I've gotten an idea of using leadership to have a kind of cult of followers make a hidden base though where they can kidnap civilians, wanderers and what not and torture/sacrifice them for experience while my guy is away.

How do you think such a thing could be done in a campaign? Also, any idea how to keep said place secret so no one stumbles in and discovers them?

[ArcturusV]

I honestly wouldn't worry so much about Crafting XP. It really is almost a drop in the bucket. By the time you're actually spending hundreds (Or thousands) of XP, you're at the levels where XP is measured in hundreds of thousands, or millions. Even when I go insanely overboard, crafting wondrous items, scrolls, staves, wands, armor, weapons, etc, not only for myself but for the party? I don't even end up a single level behind them for longer than the time it takes for a single encounter. Maybe two encounters.

You have to REALLY try to piss away your XP for the need to worry about Thought Bottles, Ambrosia, Agony, etc, to ever really be a concern. And I do mean piss away. Things like during your downtime between adventures you go and craft as many high level items as you can just to sell them to the local Magi-Mart. If all you're doing is supplying your team... shouldn't even have to worry about it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The idea is that the evil means give more exp and that it also allows me to do sacrificial rituals.

I'll be sure to take a look at complete warrior.
I've gotten an idea of using leadership to have a kind of cult of followers make a hidden base though where they can kidnap civilians, wanderers and what not and torture/sacrifice them for experience while my guy is away.

How do you think such a thing could be done in a campaign? Also, any idea how to keep said place secret so no one stumbles in and discovers them?
In response to this:

I honestly wouldn't worry so much about Crafting XP. It really is almost a drop in the bucket. By the time you're actually spending hundreds (Or thousands) of XP, you're at the levels where XP is measured in hundreds of thousands, or millions. Even when I go insanely overboard, crafting wondrous items, scrolls, staves, wands, armor, weapons, etc, not only for myself but for the party? I don't even end up a single level behind them for longer than the time it takes for a single encounter. Maybe two encounters.

You have to REALLY try to piss away your XP for the need to worry about Thought Bottles, Ambrosia, Agony, etc, to ever really be a concern. And I do mean piss away. Things like during your downtime between adventures you go and craft as many high level items as you can just to sell them to the local Magi-Mart. If all you're doing is supplying your team... shouldn't even have to worry about it.

^this

Arc here is absolutely correct in this assessment.

If you should actually manage to get yourself one level behind the rest of the party, you'll be getting about 20% more experience than them from each encounter thereafter. Far more than enough that you'd almost be unable to drop significantly further if you were actively trying to tank your experience by crafting.

In answer to your question on hiding this den of iniquity though; underground complex hidden half a day's travel from a trade road that's neither too busy nor too sparsely trafficked. This setup will make it take a fair while but ultimately places like this are -always- found. Count on having to defend or abandon it after an unspecified period of time (that's largely dependent on how okay your DM is with you pulling these shennanigans.)

[Gildedragon]

Warlock is also a good option for magic item crafting if the standards ( wiz, cler, artificer) are out the window.

[Waker]

If the aforementioned T1/2 classes aren't available for crafting items, you have a few options. Bards, Warlocks, Ironsoul Forgemaster PrC, Battlesmith PrC, Beguilers, Warmage, Dread Necromancer and probably a few others can give you what you need to craft items.
Certain other PrCs can be useful by adding spells to a characters list, such as Mage of the Arcane Order, Sublime Chord and so on.

[unseenmage]

How do you think such a thing could be done in a campaign? Also, any idea how to keep said place secret so no one stumbles in and discovers them?

The Enveloping Pit from MIC pg 159 is a really big portable hole that you could potentially hide both your crafting workshop and a Dedicated Wright in.
Dedicated Wright is a homunculus from Eberron whose sole purpose is to craft for you.
The EPit requires you to be evil to open it but a UMD check will get around that fairly often. The entrance to it can be constricted down to a 1 foot opening so another option is to just put it at the bottom of a normal (if somewhat large) backpack. It is 50 feet deep though so pack a ladder.

As for xp farming. Remember that when you want to sell a dose of Ambrosia/Liquid Pain it takes you one day to find a buyer. If you want to sell more you're selling in bulk and you'll only get 1/4 MP instead of the usual 1/2 MP. I found this info in MIC pg 231 and am using it to "balance" giving my Dedicated Wright his very own Spell Turret of Ambrosia farming.

On xp faming. I enjoy the Spell Turret (PH2) because it's simpler than a Magic Trap. It is however very specific. You must use 4 spells. They must be of 4 different schools. And they must all be the same level.
For mine I used Elation, Distilled Joy, Heroism, and Suggestion. (Heroism and Suggestion are in mine because I installed it in a craft-themed Temple in a city I saved. Free Ambrosia for everyone! Just obey the Suggestion and come back tomorrow.)
The Spell Turret will cast each spell in order over 4 rounds then use the 5th round to heal itself. Meaning it makes one dose of Ambrosia twice a minute. Which makes healing yourself for 1 point of hp with 1 dose of Ambrosia a viable option out of combat. The Turret can also be programmed to target specific creatures or types of creatures I believe.
Spell Turret creation math: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128846

As to the "need" for xp farming. You could also find yourself in a Monty Haul Campaign. That's my situation. You get more gp than you know what to do with and begin wishing you had enough xp to go with it. In a case like that time becomes your new treasure. Every stretch of travel time, every bit of study time begins to matter.
This is especially true if you decide to take the time to research custom spells and items. Researching custom spells could just mean you want a spell of a certain level but with a different school for implementation in a Spell Turret. Researching a new spell takes a Spellcraft check of DC 10+ SL, SL*1000gp, and one week per SL.
Researching custom items isn't specifically called out as necessary by the rules but I always found it to be flavorful and act as a balancing factor. It works just like researching a new spell only you use the item's CL in place of Spell Level.

I hope some of this helps. I've been bashing my forehead against magic item creation for weeks now trying to relearn it all so forgive me if I missed something or scrawled a mistake in the above.

[mattie_p]

If you are really concerned about XP costs, make the person you are making it for pay the XP themselves. Pick up or make a Talisman of Transference (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060526a) or three.

[Fouredged Sword]

Oh, that reminds me that I made a cool iron soul forge master build at one point.

Rogue 1 / Dwarf Paragon 3 / Fighter 2 / barbarian 1 / Iron soul forge master 10 / Anything X // Incarnate 20

Feats
lv1- Toughness
lv3- Roll with it
lv6- Roll with it
lv9- Roll with it
lv12- Roll with it
lv15- Roll with it
lv18- Roll with it

Shape Astral vambrances at low level for DR4-6/magic, stacking with your 3rd level roll with it to grant DR 2/- and DR6-8/magic.

At high levels you have a natural DR12/-, Tons of energy resistance, and tons of HP. You also have access to tons of soul melds and essence.