A question about warsmiths

[Inevitability]

So, the Warsmith background from dragon magazine 366 has always been regarded as weak, hasn't it?
I was just wondering, the text says:

'You can construct your own weapons or tools...'

Does this mean you can construct magic weapons?
Does this mean you can construct magic weapons that are Rare?
Does this mean you can construct *shudder* Artifacts?

I mean, nothing in the text seems to prevent it, and the things I mentioned above are weapons...

[Badgerish]

You can construct your own weapons and armor, given proper tools and raw materials. Making a weapon takes two days, and making armor takes four days. Doing so confers no economic advantage, however. the item ultimately costs the same as it would if you’d purchased it directly. And you can cast Creation rituals as if you had the Ritual Caster featThe 1st part of the benefit is for non-magical items, creating magic items is covered by the 'creation rituals' in the last line.

So you create magic items as per the 'enchant magic item' ritual. No artefacts (but making an artefact sounds like a suitable personal quest for higher levels). Rare items? Ask your GM.

[Sol]

weak is the wrong term for it - all background benefits are designed to be relatively weak compared to really any other rule item. Even the worst current violator of this is worth a few HP, which is relevant at level 1, but not really by level 10.

At its worst, the warsmith background's effects are duplicated by a ritual caster in your party. At its best, it mitigates a large portion of the need for a ritual caster in your party, which is a great thing if you know you won't have one.

The item creation rituals are all precisely the same economically as purchasing the items, but some DMs are more flexible about helping you locate the proper item reagents and make your own things than they are about finding precisely what you want at some random marketplace vendor's stall. So the benefit of having these rituals available at all depends entirely on your DM.

But I don't think it's a weak benefit compared to +2 to streetwise checks.

[Inevitability]

The question I'm asking; and which I haven't gotten a satisfying answer to, is: 'Can warsmiths create magic items?'

The errata to enchant magic item made it impossible to create anything but Common items, so if Warsmith allowed you to bypass this...

[Kurald Galain]

The thing is, you're mixing up rulesets.

The warsmith is a 4.0 element, and the philosophy in 4.0 is that players can always get exactly the items they want (of their own level). So the warsmith has precisely the same effect as the Enchant Item ritual, or indeed as going to the local magic shoppe. This is why the background spells out that it gives you no economic advantage; the raw materials for smithing cost exactly the same as the store price of the item, or the residuum cost to create it magically.

Now rare items are a 4.4 element, and the philosophy in 4.4 is that players will not get the items they want, except as randomized loot or by DM fiat. This is why rituals like Enchant Item were errata'ed to generate only commons; WOTC has simply forgotten to update this background. That happens; there are some other things they've forgotten to update, and technically 4.4 doesn't have backgrounds anyway.

Either way though, (1) although the rarity rules state that rare items are much more powerful than uncommons, this isn't actually the case; so it's not that big a deal to craft rares; (2) you certainly can't create artifacts, because the rules on artifacts say so, and that's a clear case of Specific Trumps General; and (3) it clearly doesn't work in LFR because the LFR rules prohibit such, and in home games you can always try to convince your DM.