Item Wizards

[Stryyke]

I've always been really leery about doing an item wizard, because of the XP cost for creating magic items. As such, it's something I've never done. Since I'm running out of ideas for new characters, can someone sell me on the idea of an item making wizard? Obviously making items is great, and always having a wand for every situation seems handy; but this game is very lean on leveling to begin with. I worry that I would quickly fall behind the group if I'm using all my XP on making items.

[ryu]

I've always been really leery about doing an item wizard, because of the XP cost for creating magic items. As such, it's something I've never done. Since I'm running out of ideas for new characters, can someone sell me on the idea of an item making wizard? Obviously making items is great, and always having a wand for every situation seems handy; but this game is very lean on leveling to begin with. I worry that I would quickly fall behind the group if I'm using all my XP on making items.

Did you know that if you are behind the party in level when facing encounters you get more XP than them for being lower level? And that unless you're crafting super heavily will likely naturally catch up fairly quickly? Sometime if you you were really close to leveling but still behind maybe even get slightly XP ahead? Or that at the higher levels thought bottle can make crafting way less XP intensive? Or just farming ambrosia with distilled joy spell from book of exalted deeds for essentially substitute crafting XP?

[Gildedragon]

There's a first or second level spell called transference from a Web article.
It makes targets share XP costs for item creation.
Use it to keep the party circa the same level

[tyckspoon]

Think of it this way: If you could play a Sorcerer with two to three times as many items as you would normally get, would you be willing to make that trade? That's kind of what being a crafter gets you; you're sometimes a level behind in your spell progression, but you have significantly more gear (and if your DM is a randomized loot/not much magic item shopping type, it's all the stuff you picked out personally.) Since equipment in 3.5 is just as much a means of progression and character power as XP and class leveling is, this is usually a pretty good trade.

It does need a little bit of accommodation in the game type, tho - crafting any major item needs a fair amount of time, and it's hard to do during a typical adventure. You need something like reasonably lengthy breaks between adventures, longish periods of travel where not much interesting happens. Or something like the Craft Points variant, which lets you quickly craft a limited number of items.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You can also go Artificer and suck crafting experience out of unwanted magic items. But yeah, generally the increased experience for being lower level will catch you up quickly.

[Zancloufer]

Another interesting option is having a Cohort to help you craft. From level 6 when you get them until level 20 they have about 50k EXP that just gets lost because they are not allowed to out level you. That is about 1.2 mil in GP worth of items BTW.

[Saffron-sama]

In the Ebberon campaign setting book there is a feat which reduces EXP cost, while not super effective it can reduce xp cost by 25%.

Legendary Artisan is the name of the feat.

The table says on page 49 in the book says you can take it multiple times and its effects stack.
Along with Exceptional Artisan which reduces the time cost by 25% and Extraordinary which reduces its gp cost.
Its really expensive unless you are playing an Artificer which gets bonus feats.

[Coretron03]

In the Ebberon campaign setting book there is a feat which reduces EXP cost, while not super effective it can reduce xp cost by 25%.

Legendary Artisan is the name of the feat.

The table says on page 49 in the book says you can take it multiple times and its effects stack.
Along with Exceptional Artisan which reduces the time cost by 25% and Extraordinary which reduces its gp cost.
Its really expensive unless you are playing an Artificer which gets bonus feats.

The stacking part was errated out. At least, my book doesn't say that they stack but I remember hearing about it somewhere.

On topic, Read this if you can.
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1000.0
Its a handbook that lists alot of the ways you can reduce costs, from feats and class features and such

[Stryyke]

As an item creator, is it better to focus on one type of item (rings, wands, scrolls, etc), or get as many as possible? Obviously it's really feat intensive to get a bunch of different crafting specialties, but is the cost worth it?

I'm guessing that it's best to specialize in 1 or 2 types. Given that, which are the best to focus on? My guess would be rings and wands; but I can see potential in virtually every type.

Is it best to craft for cash? Or is it best to craft for usage?

[Zancloufer]

Wounderous Items and Magical Arms/Armour does grant you the largest variety of items. Tbh I don't see why Forge Ring is it's own feat as it ask your DM if it can be folded into Wounderous Items as it is as insane as making Craft Magic Shoes it's own feat.

If you want to be an item Wizard failing Artificer (which not only gets most feats for free, gets free feats for cost reductions, can suck power out of bad items and gains a free EXP pool) I would say Wounderous Items + Magical Arms/Armour would get your pretty far. Since you can make stuff at about half market price the party will be running around with optimal gear that way. Wizards get Scribe Scroll for free so you can get some decent millage out of that for those really useful but not every day spells.

Straight attacking with items? Wands are probably your best bet.

[rel]

First of all, you are a wizard so you are by default winning the optimisation game. You could spend all your feat slots on crafting feats and still be a serious powerhouse through carefull spell selection.

However, some crafts are more valuable than others.

Craft wonderous is the most powerful since it covers pretty much everything.
If you only take one crafting feat take craft wonderous.

You get scribe scroll for free and for you it is effectively identical to brew potion since you can reliably activate any spell you can scribe with as much ease as drinking a potion. So skip brew potion.

craft wand is a good pick because wands provide spells cheaply and there are a lot of spells that benefit from being spamable. My go to example is cure light wounds and lesser vigor which effectively remove HP as a between encounter resource.

Craft arms and armour help the fighters much more than they help you. So the decision to take it depends mostly on your groups dynamic. My rule of thumb is if the party is sharing costs for group consumables like knock, detect secret doors and lesser vigor then I take craft arms and armor.

Craft rod is in general to specific to be worthwhile.

craft staff is garbage

Forge ring seems nice but only comes online at very high levels so I honestly don't have much experience using it.

going outside of core craft contingent spell is a strong pick

I'm not sure I understand crafting for cash. Please elaborate?

[Gildedragon]

Wondrous items and arms and armor
Or Wondrous Item and Contingent Spell

[tyckspoon]

craft wand is a good pick because wands provide spells cheaply and there are a lot of spells that benefit from being spamable. My go to example is cure light wounds and lesser vigor which effectively remove HP as a between encounter resource.
...
craft staff is garbage


For Craft Wand (and some of Scribe Scroll) don't forget that you can collaborate on crafting; this allows you to make wands and scrolls of divine spells by providing the relevant Craft feat and having another caster provide the actual spell. This is particularly useful with some of those high-value utilities that arcane magic doesn't have very good access to.

The default staffs are kind of garbage; you're paying a lot for not especially useful spells. Staffs can be pretty good if your DM accepts that you can create them with custom spell loadouts, since the staff allows you to use your own caster level; if you want a spell at higher than Caster Level 8 (the minimum a staff can be created at), creating a minimum CL staff for the spell(s) is going to be cheaper than creating a wand at the desired CL.