Limits on Crafting Magic Items - Epic

[KoDT69]

It looks to me that once you get into Epic levels, if given time and gold resources, players can conceivably craft single items that put artifacts to shame. Let's say we have a 60th level caster making a belt with +20 to every ability score, weapons with +40 total stuff, etc... Is this to be expected or do my fellow DM's impose a total GP value for a single item to stop it from going out of control? Yes I do know Epic is broken, weird, unwieldy, rare, whatever but most of my old campaigns ran from 1st to far into Epic. Time requirements are really the only reason we didn't have the aforementioned items back then. Just another thought process I'm kicking around.

[Fizban]

In general, just because there's an open ended formula doesn't mean the players should be able to make open ended items. All custom magic items (and epic spells) must still be approved by the DM, and no printed material is going to account for non-printed items. Even the non-epic "formulas" are ridiculous when allowed without supervision, which is why new items require approval in the first place.

The answer has never been that epic is broken, but that epic requires even more DM input than usual to function. A DM who won't keep things in line only has themselves to blame. If your game would have been broken by arbitrarily high bonuses, then it's a good thing your DM didn't let you craft them (by never giving you time to do so) isn't it?

[KoDT69]

Let me clarify my question(s).

Epic crafting can net you items much more powerful than intended. Do you expect these items and adapt? Or do you impose a limit? If so, where is that limit?

I have in the past been responsible for using the custom crafting rules to make things with unexpected consequence on balance, with that DM wanting actually wanting to see how far I could push. I then would limit myself on use of those items as to not ruin other players' fun. That particular campaign was one of discovering limits in our play style though but that's a different convo.

[AvatarVecna]

Presuming that you're crafting off the formulas in the book, and that you're following normal WBL guidelines, and that your players aren't using a method to get around the costs, the XP and Time costs are going to cut into their budget. To put it simply, this is because what you pay of those resources to get your items scales faster than your ability to pay them. Let's show this off with an example: a series of Artificers of various levels, none of whom have any XP mitigation or ways around paying that cost, and let's see how much XP they'd need to spend to use item crafting to get exactly double their WBL in items:





Level
XP Cost
Total XP
Percentage


5
720
10000
007.20%


10
3920
45000
008.71%


15
16000
105000
015.24%


20
60800
190000
032.00%


25
168000
300000
056.00%


30
344000
435000
079.08%


35
632000
595000
106.22%


40
1088000
780000
139.49%




A real quick explanation of that table: the second column is how much XP you would need to spend at that level to make double WBL worth of items, the third column is the amount of XP you'd need to start with to be the level in the first column, and the fourth column is what percentage of your total XP the cost would be. The chart stops at 40 because that's when the 3.5 WBL charts stop too.

The chart also shows off the pattern I'm pointing out: the amount of gold you have available to spend on magic items grows a lot faster than the amount of XP you have to spend on items. If you don't have any mitigation at all, you could start crafting as an Artificer with just enough XP to be level 34 (561,000 XP), then you spend every last one of your 7,000,000 gp crafting items by hand (for 14,000,000 gp worth of items). That much worth of magic items, crafted by hand, would cost 560,000 XP. By the time you were done crafting all of those items, you would be level 2.

This brings us to the second factor: time. That level 20 artificer up there in the chart? Even ignoring that he's spending half of his career's XP on items, he's also spending 1520 days to craft them all; that's over 4 years spent crafting, day in and day out, and that's just level 20. At level 40, if you don't have an ability letting you mitigate the crafting time, you better have a long life span, because crafting that 27,200,000 gp worth of magic items is gonna take you 75 years.

This is, incidentally, why crafting mitigation is basically necessary at the higher levels even pre-epic: crafting anything just takes forever. Even assuming that the Artificer 40 was actually an Artificer 20/Master Arcane Artisan (http://www.realmshelps.net/charbuild/classes/prestige/epic/masterarcaneartist.shtml) 20, had the feats Exceptional Artisan (Craft Epic Wondrous Item), Efficient Item Creation (Craft Epic Wondrous Item), and was crafting items that could only be used by a true neutral Artificer with 43 ranks of Craft (Basketweaving), that still has him spending 81 days crafting all his items. 81 days - nearly 3 months, nearly 12 weeks - of time spent crafting, and that's with a ton of mitigation, some of which I'm not even sure can be legally stacked. Of course, there's similar mitigation you can do for XP to cut down on how much it's cutting into your real XP, but GP mitigation is the more common of the three in general...meaning that if you take all the mitigation, you'll still be paying about the same XP costs for a much bigger pile of items - but this still leaves you with the issue of paying the XP, which the chart indicates gets difficult at higher levels.

Now, there are ways of getting around these costs entirely, particularly for high-level PCs, and particularly for epic NPCs. Common solutions to time issues is usually "have a homunculus work on it in my portable hole while I'm adventuring, so it doesn't take up much of my time" in mid-high non-epic play, and then "be immortal and work on the item in a planar bubble with the fast-time trait" in high non-epic and epic play. Dealing with the XP cost can involve significant XP mitigation (similar to the time mitigation that turned 75 years into 81 days), paying with pools of crafting XP such as that of the Artificer or the Master Arcane Artisan, getting the recipient of the item to pay some of the XP (if you're not just crafting your items, but also those of your friends), using Thought Bottles to "save" your XP at (current XP-5000) and then reloading your mind to that XP value once you spent all your XP crafting, or possibly even setting up a way to farm ambrosia and/or liquid pain.

Knowing ways your players can get around the limitations on crafting - both the mitigation methods for lowering costs, and the bypasses for avoiding having to really pay the costs - can prevent your players from gaming the crafting system too much in epic. That being said, how much of a problem such abuse of the crafting system would be if left unchecked is largely going to depend on how cheesy your players are willing to get, and how much cheese you are personally willing to tolerate. Let's suppose our Artificer 20/MAA 20 (let's call him "Santa the Epic Artificer") is bringing presents to his party members that were on their wish lists (within a budge). Hulk the Epic Barbarian asked for Bracers Of Relentless Might, which give him +12 to Str and Con and +2 sizes for combat maneuver purposes, a 4384000 gp worth gift! Meanwhile, Zack the Epic Bard requested a neat ring that would let him temporarily stop time for everyone else when he spoke the command phrase "Time Out"; this at-will command word ability to cast a CL 20 Time Stop has a 324000 gp value, what a deal!

Alright, that's probably an extreme example, but it shows off why the formulas and existing items are very weird sometimes. Needless to say, somebody crafting an existing magic item is usually safe-ish (because wizard's items are largely garbage anyway, so they're probably overpriced as it is), somebody crafting a custom item that doesn't replicate a spell is probably fine but should have an eye kept on it, and custom items that replicate spell effects almost necessitate you communicating with the player on what is and isn't okay in your game. A game where the 324k at-will Time Stop item is allowed is probably one where nesting Time Stops isn't an unbeatable plan (whether via Stowaway Spell, the optional "Time Stop is now 'SR: Yes', even though that doesn't fit the fluff" rule in the ELH, some weird epic spell, DM fiat, or something else).

Please note, these abilities aren't impossible to deal with, but they definitely require more effort, for the same reason that a murder mystery requires more effort to make interesting when the players have access to things like "Scrying" and "Speak With Dead". Crafting items from scratch isn't necessarily what puts these items on the table - epic PCs, if high enough level, could probably pay off some demigod child of Haphaestus to craft it for them, or something, and just pay the full cost for their custom item - but crafting items yourself potentially puts those tools on the table a lot sooner than they'd normally be there.

[tyckspoon]

Let me clarify my question(s).

Epic crafting can net you items much more powerful than intended. Do you expect these items and adapt? Or do you impose a limit? If so, where is that limit?

I have in the past been responsible for using the custom crafting rules to make things with unexpected consequence on balance, with that DM wanting actually wanting to see how far I could push. I then would limit myself on use of those items as to not ruin other players' fun. That particular campaign was one of discovering limits in our play style though but that's a different convo.

If you're just making items with a bigger + bonus (+stat, +save, +enhancement to hit/damage or special abilities) I think that actually is intended and eventually expected - those items are built on a predictable, consistent formula that can be extended indefinitely. By the time a character can afford the necessary XP, GP, and time to actually make a +20 Belt of Strength or whatever, they probably do in fact need it to keep their statistics relevant to the level they're playing at. (Assuming the whole thing hasn't collapsed into Epic Spell freeform by that point.) Skill bonuses might be a bit weird, because those are fairly cheap to craft, but they may also be the only things allowing characters to actually use Epic applications of skills.

[KoDT69]

I'm looking at the possibility of Epic characters having nigh unlimited resources, because loopholes exist. The main question is do you draw a line somewhere, and where is it? I haven't had a game wrecked or anything, this is just curiosity at this point. I do plan on starting another long term game in which levels 30 to 40 may be fully possible.

[AvatarVecna]

I'm looking at the possibility of Epic characters having nigh unlimited resources, because loopholes exist. The main question is do you draw a line somewhere, and where is it? I haven't had a game wrecked or anything, this is just curiosity at this point. I do plan on starting another long term game in which levels 30 to 40 may be fully possible.

Every game should have a line drawn somewhere. Where that line is will vary from table to table. Some tables will balk at allowing custom items at all, even in high-epic. Some games won't mind custom items, as long as they're not too broken. Some tables don't mind broken items, 'cause the enemies have broken items too. The only people who can say that a particular item is crossing the line for your table are the people at your table, and you in particular. Generally speaking, if something makes one side or the other impossible to fight against (for example, using the at-will time stop from earlier, if the Epic Level Handbook isn't in play, that's three of the four methods mentioned for countering Time Stop gone, leaving DM Fiat). There's probably other methods of messing with it, though, but they're gonna be a bit more esoteric, require more system mastery to access. What matters is how far you're willing to go as DM to counter players, and how far players are willing to go to counter your villains. As long as everybody's still having fun, the line could be anywhere along the spectrum of charop levels.

[edathompson2]

I'm looking at the possibility of Epic characters having nigh unlimited resources, because loopholes exist. The main question is do you draw a line somewhere, and where is it? I haven't had a game wrecked or anything, this is just curiosity at this point. I do plan on starting another long term game in which levels 30 to 40 may be fully possible.

XP cost restricts their ability to create items. However, if your players find a way around that.....here are a couple of restrictions you can place.

#1 No epic item creation feats, including epic spells. They can only be found as they are creations of the Gods. This one really makes it simple. Then you as the DM get to use the rules and place items or create adventures centered around attaining those items.

#2 Caster Level restrictions. The following shows an example.

GP Value of item Caster Level
250,000 21st
300,000 24th
350,000 27th

and so on.

There are a multitude of ways to make it easy for yourself.

[KoDT69]

Sure, but I'm asking about where everyone else draws that line? I would hate to be TOO restrictive and make things too difficult. I'm sure I'll find out the hard way once the next campaign makes it that far!

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A +40 weapon is (40*40*2000*10) 32,000,000 gp base price. That costs half as much actual gold and 330,000 experience points to craft. It takes 32,000 days or roughly 88 years of dedicated work to create that item. That's the constraint, the experience cost and time required to craft such items.