Ideal Magic Item/Weapon Crafting Rules

[badintel]

Now that the DMG has seen limited release I've noticed that, in general, people seem displeased with the rules for crafting magic items/weapons. I'm hoping this thread can end up being a resource for those of us that would like to consider alternatives to the DMG crafting rules.

What would your ideal magic item/weapon crafting rules be?

[Scirocco]

Any that are strictly for DM use.

[Person_Man]

I personally prefer RPG where you need to buy magic items with character resources (as opposed to gp/wealth), i.e. being able to use a magic item (whether you find it and Attune yourself to it somehow or craft it yourself through treasure or crafting) requires spending one or more Feats, Refresh Points, Experience Points, Traits, etc.

Any system that allows a character to freely generate magic items without a commensurate cost in character resources is inherently broken. If they're too generous then players who craft are inherently imbalanced. If they're too onerous then players will almost never craft magic items. The current "split the difference" rules basically results in a game where everyone should have +1ish magic items but no one can get +3ish or better ones without DM fiat. And if the rules involve a high degree of DM fiat anyway, then don't even bother with magic item rules. Just have a series of guidelines about the impact of high/low magic items campaigns and suggested methods that could be used to accomplish your desired results.

[MadGrady]

Another alternative would be something akin to taking your current gear, and making it legendary based upon actions committed with the weapon/item by the player.

"As Unfirth drove the blade into the dragon's heart, it pierced the beast's wretched soul, and infused the blade with an essence of the dragon's spirit"

Perhaps now the blade is a +1 sword, or perhaps now it is a flaming sword, or whatever (ignore the part about a non-magical blade piercing a dragon's heart - just go with me on this ok? lol)

Not only does it make roleplaying an epic moment something worthwhile, but it allows players to build their own legend. This also lets them take that heirloom weapon they took as their weapon at 1st level, and build it's powers up without having to discard it from use as soon as a +1 comes along.

This is simply an idea I've been toying around with recently. I have no real mechanics past this but I'm sure we could come up with something.

Some ideas I've had are:

For a +1 weapon, you must slay a beast that is at least 3 CR's higher than your own level

For +1 armor, you must survive where others have perished

Something like that. It's full of holes, and the like, but I really am starting to like the idea of making this more of a story based progression of items vs simply I spend the gold and time and now I have it.

I want my players to have weapons like LoTR - where swords have names, and epic deeds told about them. Or Armors withstood the might of armies.

[Xetheral]

I personally prefer RPG where you need to buy magic items with character resources (as opposed to gp/wealth), i.e. being able to use a magic item (whether you find it and Attune yourself to it somehow or craft it yourself through treasure or crafting) requires spending one or more Feats, Refresh Points, Experience Points, Traits, etc.

Any system that allows a character to freely generate magic items without a commensurate cost in character resources is inherently broken. If they're too generous then players who craft are inherently imbalanced. If they're too onerous then players will almost never craft magic items. The current "split the difference" rules basically results in a game where everyone should have +1ish magic items but no one can get +3ish or better ones without DM fiat. And if the rules involve a high degree of DM fiat anyway, then don't even bother with magic item rules. Just have a series of guidelines about the impact of high/low magic items campaigns and suggested methods that could be used to accomplish your desired results.

Out of curiosity Person_Man, why do you not view wealth as a character resource analogous to feats or experience points? Obviously accumulation of worldly value isn't quite the same as innate resources from the characters' perspective, but it would to me that from a game mechanic standpoint a character's gold piece total is just another accumulated resource like XP.

[MaxWilson]

Out of curiosity Person_Man, why do you not view wealth as a character resource analogous to feats or experience points? Obviously accumulation of worldly value isn't quite the same as innate resources from the characters' perspective, but it would to me that from a game mechanic standpoint a character's gold piece total is just another accumulated resource like XP.

Beware... that way lies madness. And GURPS.

I like the way you phrased that BTW. "Just another accumulated resource like XP." Note however that power scales roughly as the square root of XP, whereas using the crafting rules and/or hireling rules, power scales roughly linearly in wealth. It's much more cost-effective to forge +1 bows for all of your skeletal minions than a +3 bow for yourself.

[Inchoroi]

Beware... that way lies madness. And GURPS.

I like the way you phrased that BTW. "Just another accumulated resource like XP." Note however that power scales roughly as the square root of XP, whereas using the crafting rules and/or hireling rules, power scales roughly linearly in wealth. It's much more cost-effective to forge +1 bows for all of your skeletal minions than a +3 bow for yourself.

As a DM, I do like the idea of spending xp to craft magic items; as a player, though, that would be like nails on a chalkboard to me.

If I were to really design my own system, though, I'd have it be something similar to Pathfinder's version, although with much less entry feats into it, because that's crazy.

EDIT: What I mean is that each 'magic item' would be a collection of chosen enchantments, so if you wanted a +1 weapon that sucked hp and healed you when you killed someone, then that's two (or three) separate enchantments, and you pay xp + some gold and time for each enchantment, adding them together to make the item as a whole. Then again, I like fiddly magic item creation.

[Kyutaru]

Depends on what kind of challenges you're throwing your players against. The official campaigns released have very, VERY few magic items that the party is supposed to acquire on their quest to stop the goddess of all evil dragons. If players attempting to thwart the she-devil herself while allied with notable factions like the Harpers and the Zhentarim (guys who have even put aside differences just to work together!) are still this severely magic deprived by the time the adventure concludes, allowing rampant item creation may in fact break the game. At the very least you'll have to finagle the XP encounter chart to accommodate how stupidly powerful the characters are. Unlike 3rd edition, if you allow characters access to suitably powerful magical items for every single equipment slot available to them, they kind of break the game.

Crafting magic items should be a DM-quest thing, not an every day occurrence.

[jaydubs]

I'd lock the number and power of magic items to the level of characters, and a second variable related to how common magic is in the world (determined by the DM). Then players get to pick what magic items they want based on that (essentially a magic item point buy that scales with level). And then the DM and the player work together to come up with an interesting story on how that item is acquired.

A cleric might have have a sword delivered by a servant of his deity. A fighter might forge a greatclub from the femur of a giant. A wizard might develop an amulet as the culmination of years of research he's been doing. A rogue might tinker open an ancient lockbox, sealed for thousands of years to discover a magic dagger.

But at the end of the day, the power and number of magic items available would be determined by the DM. The actual selection would be left to the player. And the fluffy bits are a collaborative effort.

If/when items are lost or destroyed, you get the points back, but have to wait for a plot-convenient point to get a similar (or different) item.

Money becomes a tool to exercise narrative, rather than individual, power. Hire armies, bribe officials, build castles. But after a fairly early point, it would stop adding pluses to any of your rolls or stats.

[Baptor]

I can only explain how I let my players craft items through example.

In one game my players were exploring a dungeon that was a mad wizards laboratory. In one section they found an active portal to Hell. They went through to find that the portal was held open by a magical device whose focus was an astral diamond locked in a tower (yes I stole this from Oblivion). They sacked the tower of devils and took the crystal. The wizard took his staff (a focus made from the burnt out house where his parents died), the chief devil's heart (which he cut out) and the diamond and forged them together, sacrificing a point of Intelligence (this was a wizard, remember) and a point of Constitution to imbue it with magic. This was all his idea.

I gave him a staff of power. (Well, my best approximation of one in 5e anyways.)

In another game a player has found a vampiric sword that feeds on blood to fuel its magic. As of now it is (+0) and heals him whenever he kills a creature. We haven't yet played that game again yet but when we do he plans to feed it a point of Constitution to see if its power can be improved permanently. I am not sure what I'll have it do, but I'm thinking of giving it the honest vampiric power from Magic Item Compendium (still +0, deals 1d6 necrotic on hit and heals him for this damage).

I've got some great players. It helps to have great players.

[Kyutaru]

Let's not forget my favorite magical item crafting ingredient...

Your immortal soul!

...or at least a small sliver of it.

[Atmosk]

Id like to see a system where you permanently reduce your stat's to create or use a magic item, that would complicate things.

[archaeo]

Out of curiosity Person_Man, why do you not view wealth as a character resource analogous to feats or experience points? Obviously accumulation of worldly value isn't quite the same as innate resources from the characters' perspective, but it would to me that from a game mechanic standpoint a character's gold piece total is just another accumulated resource like XP.

Just venturing a guess here, but I would say Person_Man's position seeks to maintain a measure of balance. By requiring a feat, XP, a skill selection, or some other non-economic resource, it makes it so that every time you craft an item, the mechanical bonus you get is offset somewhere else in your character build.

Of course, actually making that balancing mechanism effective would be difficult without seriously simplifying character advancement and magic items alike; ideally, the math would be flat enough that you could actually peg the "value" of a magic item and its corresponding PC trait/resource.

Personally, I think these crafting rules are fine if you accept the lengthy downtime assumptions of the system as a whole. It's a little disappointing the DMG doesn't suggest a "crafting dial" for a high-magic setting, at least not that I've heard. Of course, it's trivial to houserule, so I bet many people will.

[Teulisch]

i like to have more crunch to play with for item creation. the DMG rules are more of a simple list that lacks a lot of clarification... can i make +1 mithril armor? technically that would be two separate magic items. and is mithril full plate cheaper and faster to make than the regular kind? the crafting rules seem to think so.

to make matters worse, the best items would take a lone caster 54 years to make. there is no way you can make those during the downtime of a campaign. more casters will make it faster, but getting 4 casters to work together for 14 years to make one item seems unlikely and is still too slow for downtime. you cant just hire people to make this stuff for you, its not practical in any sense. and on top of that, if you find a legendary magic item you dont need, you cant even sell it.

so, compared to previous editions, the high-power magic is impossible to make or buy during the game. the low-end stuff you can make yourself with a month of downtime, which makes sense, but the exponential increase in requirements to make more powerful stuff is a bit ridiculous.

[badintel]

too slow for downtime.

Perhaps making modifications to the recipe could make the crafting process faster. It takes 50+ years to make if you are just working with yourself and the metal. But if you go out and find this special kind of ore, it makes it X amount of time faster. If you then coat the blade in the blood of X creature then more time is taken off.

This would send characters on hunts around the realm for certain materials that, if all are applied to the item being created, shortens the crafting requirement to a reasonable amount of time.

[odigity]

I have no idea how to craft a balanced set of crafting rules, but I did want to make one quick point:

Players should eventually be capable of doing anything that other mortals can do. If other mortals can make magical items and build giant fortresses, the characters should eventually also be able to if that's what they want to put their efforts towards. Otherwise, where did all these things in the world that already exist come from? Unless you're playing Tolkien style where everything is a unique mystery with no consistent physics of any kind behind it, consistency requires adhering to this guideline in some form.


Another alternative would be something akin to taking your current gear, and making it legendary based upon actions committed with the weapon/item by the player.

"As Unfirth drove the blade into the dragon's heart, it pierced the beast's wretched soul, and infused the blade with an essence of the dragon's spirit"

Perhaps now the blade is a +1 sword, or perhaps now it is a flaming sword, or whatever (ignore the part about a non-magical blade piercing a dragon's heart - just go with me on this ok? lol)

Not only does it make roleplaying an epic moment something worthwhile, but it allows players to build their own legend. This also lets them take that heirloom weapon they took as their weapon at 1st level, and build it's powers up without having to discard it from use as soon as a +1 comes along.

How about whenever you roll a crit without advantage or disadvantage, there's a 1 in 100 chance of magical imbuement? That would be every 2000 swings on average. (Ammunition weapons would get the enhancement on the weapon, not ammo.)

Side-effect:
- Champions have a better chance of having this happen, but that seems thematicly appropriate; plus most people here thing Champion is too boring and/or under-powered

[odigity]

to make matters worse, the best items would take a lone caster 54 years to make. there is no way you can make those during the downtime of a campaign.

Unless the whole party is Elven. But even then, the whole world will have changed... NPCs dying, nations rising and falling, etc. Pretty annoying if you've world-built at all, which how could you not by high level?

[MaxWilson]

Personally, I think these crafting rules are fine if you accept the lengthy downtime assumptions of the system as a whole. It's a little disappointing the DMG doesn't suggest a "crafting dial" for a high-magic setting, at least not that I've heard. Of course, it's trivial to houserule, so I bet many people will.

The DMG actively encourages you to tweak the crafting costs, which includes your "high magic crafting dial." It doesn't give an example but you might try leaving costs the same but making times scale geometrically instead of exponentially with rarity.

[Xetheral]

The DMG actively encourages you to tweak the crafting costs, which includes your "high magic crafting dial." It doesn't give an example but you might try leaving costs the same but making times scale geometrically instead of exponentially with rarity.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Geometric growth is a type of exponential growth (i.e. exponential growth that happens to form a geometric progression). Actually, I don't have a copy of the DMG, but my understanding is that the times are powers of ten, which is already geometric.

[MaxWilson]

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Geometric growth is a type of exponential growth (i.e. exponential growth that happens to form a geometric progression). Actually, I don't have a copy of the DMG, but my understanding is that the times are powers of ten, which is already geometric.

It turns out that I misused the term "geometric growth." I had in mind quadratic or cubic growth (because duh, those are geometries) but it turns out that "geometric growth" typically is associated with "geometric progressions" which have exponential growth. I have no idea why they call this "geometric", but in any case I had in mind a quadratic or cubic progression for time cost. Something like:

Common: 50 gp and 1 day
Uncommon: 500 gp and 8 days
Rare: 5000 gp and and 27 days
Very Rare: 50,000 gp and 64 days
Legendary: 500,000 gp and 125 days

For a standard-magic campaign, multiply all these times by 5. For a low-magic campaign, multiply by 20.

This is still a little bit broken as crafting rules go because some things that aren't very good at all (Sovereign Glue) are still Legendary items costing a king's ransom to create--but it would at least let you create a Staff of the Magi in less than a human lifetime, if you had the gold + ingredients for it and a suitable formula.

[archaeo]

The DMG actively encourages you to tweak the crafting costs, which includes your "high magic crafting dial." It doesn't give an example but you might try leaving costs the same but making times scale geometrically instead of exponentially with rarity.

Ah, that's good to hear. Even if it doesn't give examples, the fact that it explicitly suggests playing with the scale is a point in its favor, in my opinion. It's a really easy way to customize the system to whatever your table likes, which seems like a core 5e design goal.


This is still a little bit broken as crafting rules go because some things that aren't very good at all (Sovereign Glue) are still Legendary items costing a king's ransom to create

Compare sovereign glue with, say, a very expensive espresso machine. For the amount of money you could spend on one of the high-end models, you could buy yourself a laptop, an automatic drip coffee maker (or stovetop espresso maker), and enough coffee to keep you wired for months. But if you want consistent, excellent espresso and a machine that will either never break or will be covered by the manufacturer indefinitely, it's worth the money.

Sovereign glue does one thing, but it does that one thing extremely well. It isn't even hard to come up for reasons why bottles of the stuff are knocking around in your campaign setting; maybe the ancient civilizations made it for spaceship (astral ship?) construction, or whatever.

[Person_Man]

Just venturing a guess here, but I would say Person_Man's position seeks to maintain a measure of balance. By requiring a feat, XP, a skill selection, or some other non-economic resource, it makes it so that every time you craft an item, the mechanical bonus you get is offset somewhere else in your character build.

This, exactly.

Treasure is highly variable. DMs give out wildly varying amounts. Treasure can be lost. Magic items can be destroyed. Some builds can benefit greatly from certain magic items, others basically ignore them. So I prefer for them to be integrated into the overall resource economy, instead of it being an open ended and poorly defined variable.

[Xetheral]

Just venturing a guess here, but I would say Person_Man's position seeks to maintain a measure of balance. By requiring a feat, XP, a skill selection, or some other non-economic resource, it makes it so that every time you craft an item, the mechanical bonus you get is offset somewhere else in your character build.

This, exactly.

Treasure is highly variable. DMs give out wildly varying amounts. Treasure can be lost. Magic items can be destroyed. Some builds can benefit greatly from certain magic items, others basically ignore them. So I prefer for them to be integrated into the overall resource economy, instead of it being an open ended and poorly defined variable.

Thanks for going into more detail! I agree entirely that character wealth varies a great deal more between campaigns than the other resources do. On the other hand, I'd always felt that uniformity between characters within a given campaign meant that money was just as useful a balancing tool--I care about intra-campaign balance a great deal, and care not at all for inter-campaign balance. However, your point about the differing utility of items to different builds is a good one, and one I'm kicking myself for not having considered in this context. I'll have to give my perspective a rethink. Thanks again!

[Invader]

How exactly does crafting work. I've seen it mentioned here and there but haven't quite figured it out. I originally was under the impression that pcs weren't even able to craft their own magic items anymore.

[SliceandDiceKid]

Another alternative would be something akin to taking your current gear, and making it legendary based upon actions committed with the weapon/item by the player.

"As Unfirth drove the blade into the dragon's heart, it pierced the beast's wretched soul, and infused the blade with an essence of the dragon's spirit"

Perhaps now the blade is a +1 sword, or perhaps now it is a flaming sword, or whatever (ignore the part about a non-magical blade piercing a dragon's heart - just go with me on this ok? lol)

Not only does it make roleplaying an epic moment something worthwhile, but it allows players to build their own legend. This also lets them take that heirloom weapon they took as their weapon at 1st level, and build it's powers up without having to discard it from use as soon as a +1 comes along.

This is simply an idea I've been toying around with recently. I have no real mechanics past this but I'm sure we could come up with something.

Some ideas I've had are:

For a +1 weapon, you must slay a beast that is at least 3 CR's higher than your own level

For +1 armor, you must survive where others have perished

Something like that. It's full of holes, and the like, but I really am starting to like the idea of making this more of a story based progression of items vs simply I spend the gold and time and now I have it.

I want my players to have weapons like LoTR - where swords have names, and epic deeds told about them. Or Armors withstood the might of armies.

Aside from loot, this is how my first DM handled things. This is the spirit of 5e, I think.

I do think casters should somehow have a say in the items they might obtain. Especially if a DM is looking to hand out a wand. It's more realistic to get something specifically themed, but it's so rewarding to obtain something you really want/need.

My 3.5 spoiled brat syndrome aside, any magic item is awesome in a magic drought setting.

[MadGrady]

Aside from loot, this is how my first DM handled things. This is the spirit of 5e, I think.

I do think casters should somehow have a say in the items they might obtain. Especially if a DM is looking to hand out a wand. It's more realistic to get something specifically themed, but it's so rewarding to obtain something you really want/need.

My 3.5 spoiled brat syndrome aside, any magic item is awesome in a magic drought setting.

Agreed - this idea was not meant to replace A. General looting of a sweet hoard or B. Certain item creations (very hard to forge an epic legend of a scroll or something like that)

My idea was more of a supplement to graft on to a foundation of already established guidelines.

[SliceandDiceKid]

Agreed - this idea was not meant to replace A. General looting of a sweet hoard or B. Certain item creations (very hard to forge an epic legend of a scroll or something like that)

My idea was more of a supplement to graft on to a foundation of already established guidelines.

This is what makes me miss DMing. I love making my players light up with excitement or surprising them.

[MadGrady]

This is what makes me miss DMing. I love making my players light up with excitement or surprising them.

It too is my favorite part. One of my DM friends is much more of an antagonistic DM - he seems to enjoy making PC's struggle and even at times killing their character. This is against my general bent - I much prefer a cooperative game where the players help me tell a fantastic story.

Do hardships come about, and deaths sometimes happen - of course (what epic story would be so epic without such things), but they should never be your starting goal lol.

[SliceandDiceKid]

It too is my favorite part. One of my DM friends is much more of an antagonistic DM - he seems to enjoy making PC's struggle and even at times killing their character. This is against my general bent - I much prefer a cooperative game where the players help me tell a fantastic story.

Do hardships come about, and deaths sometimes happen - of course (what epic story would be so epic without such things), but they should never be your starting goal lol.

Totally agree. We come together, laugh (more than anything else), come up with exhilarating narration, and priceless comedic blunders for our mistakes. Of course we love succeeding in combat and overcoming adversity, too.

[Totema]

For one thing, I'm enforcing that a magic item crafter would need tool proficiency for the actual item they're making. You can't make a set of magic armor if you don't know how to make regular armor. I'm also implementing something akin to a tool proficiency that would allow noncasters to craft magical items, as long as those items don't expressly mimic a spell to some degree. So a magic blacksmith can make +1 plate mail or a flame tongue but not a wand of magic missiles or ring of invisibility. This kind of proficiency cannot be obtained from any kind of racial or background trait, but can be learned from another magic crafter (in a manner similar to training for a skill) or, alternatively, from spending a feat.

[MaxWilson]

It too is my favorite part. One of my DM friends is much more of an antagonistic DM - he seems to enjoy making PC's struggle and even at times killing their character. This is against my general bent - I much prefer a cooperative game where the players help me tell a fantastic story.

Neutral (sandbox)/antagonistic DMing is not mutually exclusive with good stories. The best stories are about surmounting insurmountable odds, which virtually requires you to be up against something that the DM thinks is totally going to kill you... and then doesn't.

(This doesn't necessarily mean the DM is trying to kill you. Maybe you just decide to do something insane, like charge a fortified position head-on or fight a Fire Giant solo using only Unarmed Attacks. A cuddly DM might tone down the Fire Giant, but a neutral/sandbox will shrug and roll the dice, and be amazed if you survive.)

[Kyutaru]

Even MDK DMs can be fun to play with! It's like playing the old Dragon's Lair game in tabletop with a wicked overlord watching over all. Sure, the party is bound to die over and over again, but they'll learn from their mistakes and be forged into master adventurers in the process. Can't beat the feeling of knowing you FULLY DESERVE this victory!