Any alternative rules for Item Creation that Grants XP instead of makes you lose it?

[SinsI]

One of the most WTF rules in D&D is that a character that spent weeks and weeks researching spells and creating magical items ends up losing XP, instead of gaining it.
Are there any alternative/homebrew rules that do the opposite?
Also, is there any system that would reward XP for "downtime" spent on training? I.e. a character has managed to find a legendary figure and convince her to be his instructor, or has passed a difficult exam and became a student in an extremely prestigious academy.

[Sagetim]

You could always implement 2nd edition rules where classes got rewarded based on their type:

There were four types: Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Priest

Warriors got bonus xp for getting killing blows on monsters, +10xp per hit die of slain monster

Rogues got bonus xp for disabling traps (which is handled by traps having CR's in 3.5) and they also got bonus xp on a 1 for 1 ratio for the gold value of things they Stole. Not looted stuff from dead bodies, but STOLEN objects, like what you might lift from a person in a busy marketplace, or burgle from a house without hurting anyone (you know, other than having taken their stuff).

Priests got bonus xp for casting spells that further the agenda of their faith, on the order of 100xp per spell level per spell.

Mages got xp for learning spells, and for crafting magic items. Something like 500 xp for crafting magic items and I think it was 100xp per spell level for each spell they learned/researched. Though Baldur's Gate 2 gave you 1000xp per spell level per spell earned, but that was also shared with the party. ****ing party members stealing shares of my hard earned xp that I bought with party funding.

[DrMotives]

2nd Edition D&D did all that, but all versions of 3rd go rid of it. Closest there is in published books is the optional story award XP, which is mentioned but not encouraged. Of course, if passing the test is some sort of skillcheck or series of them, it can have an EL like a trap would, much like some campaigns that are low-combat use social encounters to award XP.

There's also some DMs who don't track XP so much, and just allow everybody to get a level up after so many encounters / adventures. The DMG mentions the system is supposed to award 1 level after every 13 or so party-level appropriate challenges, which is a good starting point of you want to try that.

*Edit to respond to SageTim, who is clearly a faster typist than I. The 2e system also gave XP out on a 1 for 1 basis for gp of treasure won through adventuring to the party, so a thief could get their solo XP award for stealing stuff, plus their share of the group's XP award for the party taking the money, assuming the stuff they stole went into party funds. It was basically double-dipping.

[NevinPL]

One of the most WTF rules in D&D is that a character that spent weeks and weeks researching spells and creating magical items ends up losing XP, instead of gaining it.
Yes it is. But if you look through all the: "Help me kill gods at 1st level" threads, you can understand why all the "handicapping".
My fix is easy - no XP loss for creating stuff. And if someone wants to spend all his day making stuff, instead slaying the dragon, and laying the princess, it's his decision. And if my "good nature" would be abused (make - sell - buy, make - sell - buy, repeat at nausea), it would simply end.


Also, is there any system that would reward XP for "downtime" spent on training? I.e. a character has managed to find a legendary figure and convince her to be his instructor, or has passed a difficult exam and became a student in an extremely prestigious academy.
Closest to what you describe is the Mentor - Apprentice bits from DMG II, or retraining form PHB II, but I don't remember anything that will grant you XP for training per se, sans the Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness artifacts from DMG.

[Nifft]

I dunno how I'd feel about rewarding a PC for making an item which is itself also a reward.

I'd be okay with eliminating XP expenditure entirely, maybe charge "downtime points" which you use for either crafting or spell research, and other PCs can use for different things.

[Milo v3]

Pathfinder's downtime rules allow you to Earn Xp, also crafting magic items do not use up XP in the ruleset.

[SinsI]

Yes it is. But if you look through all the: "Help me kill gods at 1st level" threads, you can understand why all the "handicapping".
That can be solved by making magical items require components that can only be gained from XP-rewarding tasks, i.e. Eye of a Basilisk or a Unicorn Horn, or maybe even "magicite cores" that are found in xianxia novels to not restrict the source of materials that much ( every monster would have inside it a magic stone of grade proportional to its CR, and items would require WBL-appropriate stone instead of XP. And by crafting it you'd get some bonus XP).

[Yogibear41]

There is very little incentive to go out and adventure to gain xp and gold, when you can just sit at home with relative safety and greatly increased luxury to accomplish the same thing.

[Gabrosin]

There is very little incentive to go out and adventure to gain xp and gold, when you can just sit at home with relative safety and greatly increased luxury to accomplish the same thing.

The incentive to go adventuring is going adventuring. This is a game, not a wealth management simulator.

[Yogibear41]

You don't role play much do you? Why would anyone risk their life for something when they can sit back and do it relatively risk free? Obviously if something happens that you HAVE to go handle that is different.


If I was a playing a long lived or immortal race and I was a first level wizard, using XP gaining for making magic items, I'd tell the DM I'm going to sit in the city and make scrolls until I'm level 5, then Im going to make wondrous items till I'm level 17, then once I have 9th level spells I might go on an adventure or two.

This is an Extreme exaggeration but you get the point.

[Gabrosin]

You don't role play much do you? Why would anyone risk their life for something when they can sit back and do it relatively risk free? Obviously if something happens that you HAVE to go handle that is different.


If I was a playing a long lived or immortal race and I was a first level wizard, using XP gaining for making magic items, I'd tell the DM I'm going to sit in the city and make scrolls until I'm level 5, then Im going to make wondrous items till I'm level 17, then once I have 9th level spells I might go on an adventure or two.

This is an Extreme exaggeration but you get the point.

Sounds great. I as a DM would accept your desire to sit in a safe, protected space and power-level your way up to 9th level spells. Then I would de-invite you from future gaming sessions, since your presence has been voluntarily reduced to "optional spectator", and carry on with the rest of the party as they go on actual adventures and play the actual game.

When you show up again when the party reaches level 17, months or years of real time later, you can explain to them why they should let you come with them the rest of the way. Assuming the campaign lasts that long, which most don't.

[Yogibear41]

Campaign I am in has existed for over 30 years. You play the game the way you want to, I will play the way I want to.

[NevinPL]

On that later part probably everyone (at least publicly) can agree.



That can be solved by making magical items require components that can only be gained from XP-rewarding tasks, i.e. Eye of a Basilisk or a Unicorn Horn, or maybe even "magicite cores" that are found in xianxia novels to not restrict the source of materials that much ( every monster would have inside it a magic stone of grade proportional to its CR, and items would require WBL-appropriate stone instead of XP. And by crafting it you'd get some bonus XP).
No need for all that. It can be solved be knowing the difference between "using", and "abusing", maturity, etc.

[Telonius]

In 3.5, item crafting is a powerful strategy, assuming you have sufficient downtime. Let's say you have an Artificer in the party. If you don't have the XP cost, he could make the entire team's gear and sell it to them for 75% of the market price. Then everybody takes the money they would have spent if they'd paid market value, goes over to Ye Olde Magick Item Shoppe, and spends the rest. Meanwhile, the Artificer has gained 25% of the collective worth of the rest of the party. This isn't even being particularly abusive, just doing what you'd expect an Artificer to do for a group of allies. You can get even more return on the GP if you use the Artisan feats. Obviously Artificer is kind of an extreme example of this, since they get all the crafting feats free; but the same thing would be at work for anyone who takes Craft Magic Arms and Armor, or Craft Wondrous Item. Those are the big-ticket items that just about everybody in the party would be buying often.

If you're the DM, you'd have to either completely alter some of the game's core assumptions (Wealth By Level and the amount of treasure each encounter gives out), severely limit item availability in the Magick Shoppe, or make sure to decrease or eliminate downtime, to accommodate that. Otherwise, the power level just gets completely out of hand. Using XP cost is one way of making sure that sort of thing doesn't happen; it just generally means less work for me as DM.

[ahenobarbi]

There is very little incentive to go out and adventure to gain xp and gold, when you can just sit at home with relative safety and greatly increased luxury to accomplish the same thing.


The incentive to go adventuring is going adventuring. This is a game, not a wealth management simulator.


You don't role play much do you? Why would anyone risk their life for something when they can sit back and do it relatively risk free? Obviously if something happens that you HAVE to go handle that is different.

Adventuring is a quick, plot relevant, and money-efficient way to get money and XP.

On speed: even if you gained the amount of XP you are currently loosing for crafting you're still limited to getting 500 XP/day. While this is a good way to get XP at low levels, it's significantly slower than dungeon-exploring (reaching level 20 via adventuring takes ~80 days. By crafting you'd be at level 9).

On money-efficiency: at level 9 (by adventuring) you get WBL of 36 000 gp. By crafting you stay at whatever you started with (yes, you craft for half a price but sell for half the price too).

On plot-relevance: crafting is really unlikely to move plot in direction you want it to.

So yes, there are reasons to go adventuring even if crafting adds XP instead of substracting it. And those reasons are the same reasons adventurers had in the first place (get powerful quick, get rich quick, make the world do what *you* want it to).

[ahenobarbi]

In 3.5, item crafting is a powerful strategy, assuming you have sufficient downtime. Let's say you have an Artificer in the party. If you don't have the XP cost, he could make the entire team's gear and sell it to them for 75% of the market price. Then everybody takes the money they would have spent if they'd paid market value, goes over to Ye Olde Magick Item Shoppe, and spends the rest. Meanwhile, the Artificer has gained 25% of the collective worth of the rest of the party. This isn't even being particularly abusive, just doing what you'd expect an Artificer to do for a group of allies. You can get even more return on the GP if you use the Artisan feats. Obviously Artificer is kind of an extreme example of this, since they get all the crafting feats free; but the same thing would be at work for anyone who takes Craft Magic Arms and Armor, or Craft Wondrous Item. Those are the big-ticket items that just about everybody in the party would be buying often.

If you're the DM, you'd have to either completely alter some of the game's core assumptions (Wealth By Level and the amount of treasure each encounter gives out), severely limit item availability in the Magick Shoppe, or make sure to decrease or eliminate downtime, to accommodate that. Otherwise, the power level just gets completely out of hand. Using XP cost is one way of making sure that sort of thing doesn't happen; it just generally means less work for me as DM.

That's true nut that's comparing active power accumulation (somewhat clever item crafting) to idleness. Alternatively group could have just refused to sit idle for prolonged time and went adventuring when plot does not compel them to act (there is an unexplored dungeon with little risk and loads of money out there - planes are big) and get GP & XP even faster.

(well if you get Dedicated Whights to do the crafting (thus eliminating time from item crafting cost) this does get a little silly)

[Crake]

The way I handle magic item crafting is by limiting sources of crafting materials. If the players want to make a cloak of displacement, well, they need to go out and find a displacer beast to skin for the cloak, cause none of the shops nearby are selling what they need. Want to make a belt of giant's strength? Better go find some giants to kill, etc.

[ahenobarbi]

The way I handle magic item crafting is by limiting sources of crafting materials. If the players want to make a cloak of displacement, well, they need to go out and find a displacer beast to skin for the cloak, cause none of the shops nearby are selling what they need. Want to make a belt of giant's strength? Better go find some giants to kill, etc.

So now they have to use even less gold for crafting? Sounds like this makes crafting more powerful, not less.

[Milo v3]

So now they have to use even less gold for crafting? Sounds like this makes crafting more powerful, not less.

It still would cost the same amount since the materials your getting from the displacer beast and similar creatures would count towards the persons treasure, it just means you have to go on an adventure to afford the item crafting rather than just spending money to begin with.

[Arbane]

The way I handle magic item crafting is by limiting sources of crafting materials. If the players want to make a cloak of displacement, well, they need to go out and find a displacer beast to skin for the cloak, cause none of the shops nearby are selling what they need. Want to make a belt of giant's strength? Better go find some giants to kill, etc.

IIRC, this is pretty much how it worked back in AD&D 1st edition. Making magic items was such a long, complicated process that going into a deathtrap and killing monsters to find old magic items was the EASIER approach.

[Crake]

So now they have to use even less gold for crafting? Sounds like this makes crafting more powerful, not less.


It still would cost the same amount since the materials your getting from the displacer beast and similar creatures would count towards the persons treasure, it just means you have to go on an adventure to afford the item crafting rather than just spending money to begin with.

This is generally it yeah, the crafting materials they gather from their enemies counts as part of the treasure of that encounter.


IIRC, this is pretty much how it worked back in AD&D 1st edition. Making magic items was such a long, complicated process that going into a deathtrap and killing monsters to find old magic items was the EASIER approach.

That's where I got the inspiration from yeah. I run a fairly low magic world (low magic in the sense that magic is not very prevelant in societies, not that the world itself doesn't have many magical aspects), so I've had players go hunting all over the world for specific creatures, fighting horrific giant aberrations that can kill you with their gaze, just to make an item of +10 concentration. Some of the things I like to make interesting too, like "a bottled nymph's kiss" for a cloak of charisma, so not everything needs to involve killing.

[Necroticplague]

Making a magic item is a reward in and of itself, you've gotten an exact item you want at lower cost than you normally would. Why need to add XP on top of that?

[Knaight]

You don't role play much do you? Why would anyone risk their life for something when they can sit back and do it relatively risk free? Obviously if something happens that you HAVE to go handle that is different.

It's also a reasonable expectation that people will make characters that have a reason to go adventuring. What characters get made is influenced by the rules, but there are a whole bunch of reasons they might go adventuring even though they could be maintaining a wealthy lifestyle with ease - starting with just about any motivation that isn't "make money".

[ShurikVch]

1. Multiclass a lot
2. Get your multiclassing XP penalty over 100%
3. Congratulations! Now you will get XP for making items. (And casting spells with XP component too)

[SinsI]

Making a magic item is a reward in and of itself, you've gotten an exact item you want at lower cost than you normally would. Why need to add XP on top of that?

If you are brewing your hundredth potion of Heroism, no XP reward is necessary (though it is still strange to lose it). But if you spent weeks and numerous attempts (wasting time and money), and for the first time managed to craft something that never existed before in-universe? I expect my character to learn something from that.

As for "if you allow to gain XP by crafting there is no reason to adventure" - crafting still requires money, and they don't grow on trees, you would have to go on adventure to earn $$$. Selling items is an unreliable source of money, as DM is free to make the player lose money on crafting - unless that character had an order from the buyer even before the item was made he should be able to sell it only with a very big discount.

[ahenobarbi]

It still would cost the same amount since the materials your getting from the displacer beast and similar creatures would count towards the persons treasure, it just means you have to go on an adventure to afford the item crafting rather than just spending money to begin with.


This is generally it yeah, the crafting materials they gather from their enemies counts as part of the treasure of that encounter.

Ok, that should work (it means large chunk of WBL PCs get are raw crafting materials though, so they will be crafting or fall far behind WBL).

[Crake]

Ok, that should work (it means large chunk of WBL PCs get are raw crafting materials though, so they will be crafting or fall far behind WBL).

Not necessarily, I typically have the monsters they hunt be wilderness encounters, so it's a choice between hunting things for materials to craft what you want, or delving into ruins and fighting dungeon denizens and overcoming traps for random loot.

[Milo v3]

Ok, that should work (it means large chunk of WBL PCs get are raw crafting materials though, so they will be crafting or fall far behind WBL).

Well, they could see the materials, or ignore it and pick up other stuff later. WBL isn't hard to give out.

[Grod_The_Giant]

So now they have to use even less gold for crafting? Sounds like this makes crafting more powerful, not less.
Even if it was cheaper gold-wise, such rules make crafting consume much more of the most valuable resource in the game: real time.

As for the original question, I believe it's because experience points (and by extension, character levels) are filling two roles. They track how practiced your character is, such, but they also serve a measure of your vitality-- sort of your spiritual strength. That's why you lose levels coming back to life, or when a vampire drinks your blood. That's why crafting consumes exp: you're pouring your literal life into the item to make the magic stick.

Also, crafting isn't difficult from a real life perspective, which is usually what exp is based on-- how hard it is for the player to accomplish something, not the character. If a wizard looks up a recipe in a book and makes an item, well, that's nothing special. But if he had to wrest the secrets from an ancient dragon? Well, that was an adventure. That's worth experience-- story, if nothing else. Same for getting accepted to a prestigious school.