creating stuff.. is it worth spending feats and resources on it?

[dehro]

time comes for my cleric to pick his next feat.
I have a strong temptation to pick "craft wondrous item (http://dndtools.eu/feats/players-handbook-v35--6/craft-wondrous-item--483/)" and use it (with further developments down the road) to create items that compensate for the flaws in my character or those of his companions...or maybe just for the flavour value of those items..

the resident gaming expert in our party however claims that it's a total waste of resources because the sheer cost in experience (ultimately levels, and I'm already a level behind), materials and so on would make it not worth doing.

so.. this leads me to 2 questions:

1) if it's so costly, is it worth doing for anybody? is there a class or feat-chain or other combination of factors that can lower the costs, making it a worthwile avenue of character development?

2) can the creation of an item (especially one with magical properties) be a group effort? as in: 1 puts in the smithing talent, 2 puts in the magic spell they want to associate to the blade, together they make a +1 blade.. is that even possible? and how does one manage the costs in exp and such?

[sleepyphoenixx]

1) Yes, it's worth it, since by RAW you get more experience if you're at a lower level than the rest of the party. So you catch up relatively fast.
There's also feats that lower cost but that's only worth it if you craft a lot.
If your DM doesn't bother to properly calculate xp and gives everyone the same regardless of level that's another story.

2) Yes, you can get the requirements from multiple characters. The xp cost is paid by the crafter (the one with the feat). The gold cost can be paid by anyone.

[dehro]

gotcha..
as a matter of fact, we don't know our xp count, because we just get told when it's time to level up (my cleric died on the day his friends levelled up, so that's why he's 1 level behind behind, having caught up a little already).

[LordBlades]

1) Yes, it's worth it, since by RAW you get more experience if you're at a lower level than the rest of the party. So you catch up relatively fast.
Actually, if you time your crafting right, you might still end up with more xp than the rest of the party. Let's say Xp gets awarded, and you get enough to level up +10 xp. Instead of leveling up you decide to craft 20 xp worth of stuff. Odds are that, due to being a level lower, until the next time you get awarded xp you will have gained more than extra 20 xp over the rest of the party.

[eggynack]

gotcha..
as a matter of fact, we don't know our xp count, because we just get told when it's time to level up (my cleric died on the day his friends levelled up, so that's why he's 1 level behind behind, having caught up a little already).
Well, since your XP is in a black box, we can't really tell you how effective crafting is in your game. All I can say is, in a by the rules game of D&D, XP is a river. This may not be true in a game that isn't by the rules, but crafting XP isn't as big of a cost as it initially appears, due to the increased leveling rate of low level characters.

[dehro]

mmmh if not for straight away, this may become something for the character to explore..
I'll have to see what the GM thinks about it.

[dehro]

well....
http://magnetifrigo.com/files/2012/02/fuuuu-rage-guy-150x150.png

not only did I not get to level up and explore the issue, my cleric character "fell from grace" and now has no clerical power whatsoever.. and I'm also a tad cheesed of as to how it happened.

after a number of sessions in which the player of a druid member of the party complained that my spell selection sucked, me being rather inexperienced with magic wielders, I let him pick the spells.
we did debate that my character had some restrictions in that he couldn't select any necromancer domain spells.
the god Kruk (my cleric) worships is pure neutral, but Kruk himself is neutral good.
one of the spells was raise undead II.
I cast it without checking it's description too accurately so I didn't notice that yes, it's not explicitly necromantic, but it IS evil, and despite my god being neutral, my character being neutral good forbade me from doing this.

the game master didn't say anything and let me walk right into it, the guy who suggested the spell in the first place didn't think of the consequences (I'm reasonably sure that he doesn't really care but that he also didn't do it in bad faith. I'm one of 2 newcomers to the group, but they seem good guys and we've been doing social stuff together since we started gaming..so, there is no bad blood or anything)... the net result however is that any subsequent spell or use of a wand failed and that now I am stuck with a fallen cleric.. who is also turned pure neutral because of this act.
whilst in rules terms I'm sure there are ways to climb out of this pit, from a gaming perspective I am disappointed and a bit mad. had I known (or had I checked better, it IS my fault ultimately), what casting that spell meant for the character, I would never have done it because it's also against how I have played and envisioned the character so far, him being a bit of a goody two shoes striving for virtue, who uses what he "can" use for the greater good and so on.
I'm also something of the chronicler of our party, what with Kruk keeping a diary of events as he lives them and as he sees them. now I'm stumped as to how to put the events in character in the diary.. the only reason why he cast that spell was an offgame misunderstanding of the rules and limitations..
meh.. I'm stumped.


/rant.

[eggynack]

I'm pretty sure that what happened shouldn't have happened from a rules perspective. The line in the book is, "A cleric can’t cast spells of an alignment opposed to his own." Thus, instead of finding out that you shouldn't have cast the spell afterwards, you should have just been fundamentally incapable of casting the spell in the moment. In other words, I don't think you can lose cleric powers for casting particular spells, at least not in this case. So, they were wrong, and you should lay a claim to your spells, on the assumption that you didn't cast the spell, because you couldn't cast the spell. If that doesn't work for whatever reason, try to pick up an atonement (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/atonement.htm). That's basically the fundamental RAW way to retrieve your powers.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I agree with Eggy, your not prohibited from casting evil spells your utterly incapable of it.

[dehro]

clearly the game master disagrees and gives the rules a different interpretation. be it as it may, I can't ask them to undo the end of yesterday's session.
we're suspending the game until september when everybody comes back from holidays and such, so..I'll see if in the meantime I can bring this argument forward.. the easy reply to this could be that the location of events allowed this to happen (we're stuck inside a parallel dimension inside a sentient jewel).
this may also give a way out once we break free from this place..but.. meh.. I don't see it going down that easy.
I don't want to cause an argument because I'd rather keep the game going and not cause bad blood, playing the cards I'm dealt than upsetting any balance and mark myself out as a troublemaker. I like these guys and think it's mutual...current events notwhitstanding

[eggynack]

It's not so much a vague rules interpretation as just what the rules are, but it's irrelevant. You know the pertinent information that you'd need to argue this case, because honestly, there isn't all that much of it for this one. It's really your choice what you do with that information. You should probably raise the issue, at the very least, because you were hit from both a metagame perspective and from a game perspective, which is a bad place to be. You don't have to start any wars over it, but it might be worth starting a skirmish, or maybe a duel. I tend to be faster with the rules arguments though, cause it's just a thing I care about in bunch like quantities. Such is the nature of things.

[Deophaun]

The question needs to be asked: Why would your god grant you a spell that would cause you to lose the connection with him? Is your god a trickster deity?

Anyway, there are other issues relating to item creation feats, such as the availability of magic items and the amount of downtime you have. In a low-magic setting, for example, item creation feats are incredible.

[dehro]

The question needs to be asked: Why would your god grant you a spell that would cause you to lose the connection with him? Is your god a trickster deity?

Anyway, there are other issues relating to item creation feats, such as the availability of magic items and the amount of downtime you have. In a low-magic setting, for example, item creation feats are incredible.

1) the god is The Traveller from the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting, a rough equivalent to Fharlanghn. he has no problem with good or evil spells per se, as long as they adhere to the gaming choice (allignement chosen by the player for his cleric).
there is also a religious theme going on that I know little about, because a bunch of stuff happened behind the back of my character.
he died and was restored to life in the body of a gnome for a while. unsatisfied with this, he asked help to the abbot of his church, who directed him to another abbot far away. once there, said abbot performed a rite whereby the gnome body exploded and a dwarf who didn't look like he was volunteering for the jobs was "infused" with Kruk's soul. Kruk knows nothing about this though, as he was unconscious throughout the rite. in payment for having "returned him to dwarfdom", the shady abbot has saddled him with an accolyte who is also doing stuff behind Kruk's back (using ancient symbols of the Traveller to talk to yet another shady guy). trouble is, Kruk has only vague notions of all this.
so.. is all of this a planned theme by the GM? is he bent on shaping Kruk into something else? is it just playing off of my dumb decisions?
it's all a bit of a puzzler.

2) we actually have a reasonable availability of magic items, the GM being rather generous in terms of what we can find in shops...given enough downtime. most of our sessions played out in a big city. now however we're on a sea-trip and only occasionally touch down to restock. whether we'll keep finding enough resources remains to be seen.

my main issue now, once I've "swallowed" the current events, is that my character deals the least damage, doesn't have the most hitpoint, probably not even the highest AC, doesn't cast spells anymore and even when he did, he wasn't the most endowed, spellswise, what with there being a bard, a sorcerer and a druid in the party, most of which are more damage-dealing and/or spell endowed than Kruk even when he's at his best (and he's one level behind). he wasn't the main healer despite being a cleric (on account of magic wands)..and now I doubt he could be the main tank/damage taker either.
..so I thought that giving him something unique to do might give him some sense.. then the fall from grace happened.

meh.

[Deophaun]

so.. is all of this a planned theme by the GM? is he bent on shaping Kruk into something else?
If true, kindly ask the DM to stop. If he wanted to play a PC, he shouldn't be DMing, and he certainly shouldn't be hijacking your character.

[dehro]

I'm actually not opposed to a plot that makes him discover the corruption within his church and having him act as some holy warrior cleaning up shop. It would be an awesome subplot to play through ( if made a little difficult by current events).. so if that's the case I don't want to spoil it by spoilering/speculating.
I am however a mite confused about things now.

[Abaddona]

Is he doing similiar things with other players (druid losing his spell components due to bad weather) etc.?

Because as for me the attitude "let's wait silently till the newbie does something stupid and then screw him over" is one of the definitions of "being a jerk DM". Especially since the others players didn't knew it will come to this. So basically - tell your DM that playing with your character concept/backstory etc. without your prior agreement is not his role.
Personally in such situations I tend to escalate the issue a little (my current DM got a warning that next time he will threw something stupid at us I will say goodbye to my character (basically expert crafter) and create half minotaur mineral warrior barbarian) but this is usually bad thing to do (especially if you are new in the group). But still - you should remind him that the whole point of DnD is to have fun, and when some cosmic force of universe do whatever it wants (hey, in character: your cleric was able to prepare and cast this spell without problems, so certainly he didn't know about consequences - for him the rules of universe just changed without cause, or his god abandoned him without cause etc.) with your character fun tends to fly away rather quickly.

[dehro]

Is he doing similiar things with other players (druid losing his spell components due to bad weather) etc.?

Because as for me the attitude "let's wait silently till the newbie does something stupid and then screw him over" is one of the definitions of "being a jerk DM". Especially since the others players didn't knew it will come to this. So basically - tell your DM that playing with your character concept/backstory etc. without your prior agreement is not his role.
Personally in such situations I tend to escalate the issue a little (my current DM got a warning that next time he will threw something stupid at us I will say goodbye to my character (basically expert crafter) and create half minotaur mineral warrior barbarian) but this is usually bad thing to do (especially if you are new in the group). But still - you should remind him that the whole point of DnD is to have fun, and when some cosmic force of universe do whatever it wants (hey, in character: your cleric was able to prepare and cast this spell without problems, so certainly he didn't know about consequences - for him the rules of universe just changed without cause, or his god abandoned him without cause etc.) with your character fun tends to fly away rather quickly.

nah.. that's not the vibe I'm getting from the situation. also, there's another guy who joined us after me, and he's getting plenty of goodies (in exchange of being pretty much in the thrall of the afore mentioned sentient jewel) so no, this doesn't seem to be a case of "let's mess with the newbie"
anyway, I did write a mail explaining that I'm not quite sure where to go from here or how to crawl back to the character being as is. (truth is, the other newbie is becoming central to the main plot with his link to the stone, but my character has the potential of epic side-plot, more so than any of the other 3 characters.. and this situation does fall into that plot, so I'm not too eager to let it go just yet).
I don't expect an immediate reply though, because yesterday's session was the last one before the summer pause.

[Abaddona]

Well, there is this rather common misconception about Dming that DM is a storyteller, especially inexperienced DMs fall into this and start thinking "hey, I have this great story to tell - everyone surely will like it, so i must do everything i can to tell it correctly" (where "correctly" often means "stop stupid players from interfering"). It's often done with good intentions cause hey - things like "falling from grace of your deity"/"losing your powers"/"getting all your equipment stolen" sounds really good, unfortunatelly from mechanical point of view all of this things suck pretty hard.
Probably the best thing you can do is ask DM what can you do with this situation - if he don't want to give you answer... well - in low optimization groups broken character can find his place (but considering your group is T1 - T3...) - you can ask others about their opinion on whole situation (for example if they are willing to protect PC reduced to essentially being a NPC class warrior till he get atonement).

[dehro]

Well, there is this rather common misconception about Dming that DM is a storyteller, especially inexperienced DMs fall into this and start thinking "hey, I have this great story to tell - everyone surely will like it, so i must do everything i can to tell it correctly" (where "correctly" often means "stop stupid players from interfering"). It's often done with good intentions cause hey - things like "falling from grace of your deity"/"losing your powers"/"getting all your equipment stolen" sounds really good, unfortunatelly from mechanical point of view all of this things suck pretty hard.
Probably the best thing you can do is ask DM what can you do with this situation - if he don't want to give you answer... well - in low optimization groups broken character can find his place (but considering your group is T1 - T3...) - you can ask others about their opinion on whole situation (for example if they are willing to protect PC reduced to essentially being a NPC class warrior till he get atonement).

not familiar with the T1-T3 terminology..
that aside, I see what you mean ..
asking the other's to weigh in isn't viable. one is his girlfriend and has minimal knowledge of the game (and not much more interest in it, she takes part to be with him, mostly).. then there's the other newbie who's in a great place with his character but who is somewhat conditioned by the sentient stone, and the other 2 players are a couple, and the DM's friends.
I do get the feeling they'll try to keep me alive. not being able to contribute all that much is more of a beef for me than for them.
I myself don't mind favouring plot over stats, as long as I get some sort of indication where to go with it, as to the extent of my character, which is roughly what I asked him for..
I'm hoping I won't be terribly punished for this though.

[Abaddona]

Tier system -> http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5256.0
basically tiers are a (developed by players) way to show which class has more means to contribute to the party. For example - fighter basicaly can only hit things with a sword and even that requires certain optimization so he can do it efficiently, at the same time rogue as a skillmonkey can be a party scout, search for traps and disable them etc. and then we have wizard who have a spell for almost everything which needs to be done (in other words - when fighter during social encounters can only try to not be bored wizard gets charm/dominate line of spells and still be of use).
Thing is - being fighter or monk can be fun, but if said fighter is in the party of wizard there is danger of him feeling overshadowed (because everything he is good at can be simply substituted by one spell from summon monster line or something similiar like druid companion) - it's not definite that this will happen and many players don't concern themself with this, but this can be a problem. Players commonly say that difference of two tiers (for example T1-T3, T3 - T5 or T2-T4) is safe margin.
Of course if other players won't have a problem with weaker party member then there is much more place for solving this situation (such as quest to regain favor of your deity).
As for favouring plot over stats - thing is DnD is builded with certain assumptions - such as that you should be able to do certain things at certain level (for example have acces to magical weapon or means to gain the ability to fly) and when crippling PC for plot reasons may seem a good idea it often ends in PC doesn't meeting this assumed requirements (for example in low magic low wealth setting PC may not have acces to means of bypassing Damage Reduction which will lead to monster with DR being much more dangerous that intended by their creators).

[alchmst1259]

I would say roll with it. At this point the DM knows you're upset and it's a pain in the ass for *him* to have a useless PC floating around to deal with. Plus, you've just been set up for the badass triumphant comeback. Yeah, you might easily be stuck sucking for the next session or two. As long as your DM isn't terrible, and you pursue getting your powers back in character with gusto, this could be a great story element that comes out putting you ahead for a bit. A good DM knows when a certain character is in a slump, and I feel like those slumps usually lead to them having a moment of complete badassitude and getting their powers back along with sweet new item/power/blessing/whathaveyou in order to totally save the party's ass from nowhere.

A fine example of this in action happened when my house played a Last Airbender campaign (using the rules that were formulated here some time ago). In a party with a sandbender, a firebender, and a rogue, my waterbender was the only one who was really resource-dependent. As a result I would often have a few sessions in a row in which my access to water was pretty minimal, and I could only produce the most basic of effects, and I got stuck with my taichi sword (badass though it was). Further down the road, though, we'd have an encounter where I had all the water I could use and a full-moon to boot, and I would be able to go beast-mode all over everything while my party was busy getting raged. I would turn into mega-tank-healer-grappler all at once and for the most part end up being the saving grace of the party for the encounter.

Right now, it sounds like you're in the same boat. A waterbender in the desert. Give it a couple sessions, and I'm sure the DM will give you all the water you need, restoring your deity's connection at the right time to make you the critical story component. Just make sure your character is doing what he needs to in order to make it happen. The only thing more awesome than the fall from grace is the triumphant return to it, sun streaming from behind your billowing cloak and all that.

As for magic item creation, I've often had this debate as well, since we use the "you guys gain a level" system in our house as well. The way we fixed XP costs on item creation and certain spells was by creating an item that could only be "found" rather than bought (IE was too rare to find in a store). X-amount of this item would be moral equivalent to a certain amount of XP, IE one ounce of "XP dust" counts for 10/25/50/100 XP. Whatever form this "XP-dust" takes in your campaign is up to the DM, but you might want to talk with him about it if you aren't using normal numbers for XP. It works pretty well for us, as long as you remind the DM occasionally that you do need it (so he doesn't forget to let you find it).

[dehro]

that avatar analogy does sound pretty much the way I hope the situation is..
@Abaddona as for the Tier system.. I shoulda known that that was what you meant by T1... that said, I was a bit hazy on the subject so haivng it explained so exhaustively has been a help, thanks

[Abaddona]

Good advice but it depend on what kind of DM dehro's DM is. If he says "don't worry, I have a plan" - well, then there is no need to worry (well, maybe a little). Worse if he answers with "your character screwed up, so it's now your problem".
As to original question - well, I personally like item creation - it let's you create fun custom items which can't be found in books - starting with robes which looks exactly like you wanted them to look like (intead of like they are described in book) and ending with items with new effects not described anywhere (well it depends on DM). But if your concern lies in being able to contribute to the party - ask your DM if he let's his players take leadership feat - if he doesn't ban it you can get yourself your own item creating cohort (just don't abuse it anymore by ordering him/her to create magic items when all your party is adventuring) - it's kinda cheesy way to eat a cookie and have a cookie at the same time :-).

[Lightlawbliss]

Leadership actually sounds like the perfect feat for right now (IMO). That will let him get some assistance to the party built up over time and gives plenty of diversity.

When isn't a good time to take leadership if it is allowed?

[Blackhawk748]

Go have atonement cast on you, that should get your spells back, then you can return to your clericness, and maybe remind your DM that Good gods cant grant Evil spells to clerics. Just saying. If its a thing that can happen in his campaign world, well then now you know lol