Milestone Leveling & XP Use For Item Crafting

[BlackOnyx]

Currently DMing an e6 campaign that's sitting just shy of its 30th session.


Early on in the campaign, our group decided to level by milestones (that is, completing "arcs" or "tasks" that pushed the PCs' limits) rather than earning set amounts of xp per encounter. It's been great for keeping things simple and giving their progression a very natural feel.


This said, my players have just reached 6th level and one of them, a druid, is interested in crafting magic items. (Namely potions, wands, and wondrous items.)


While I don't mind the idea of him crafting magic items, I find myself unsure of how to approach the matter of xp costs.


Being a lower magic e6 setting, I like the idea of magic items being something special, labors of skill & willpower that take a bit of the caster's own energy to imbue/create.


If possible, I'd like to find a pratical way to incorporate some sort of xp cost into magic item crafting rather than just dropping the xp requirement or charging the players extra gold in materials.


This said, I've narrowed my options down to a few different approaches:


(A) Just charge more for materials or drop xp altogether


(B) Give each player an inherent craft reserve (modeled after the artificer) that can be supplemented by taking bonus feats that provide extra crafting xp


(C) Give each player an inherent craft reserve (based on player level) that recharges with each lunar cycle (30 in game days). Unused xp would not rollover/accumulate.



I find myself leaning toward option C, as it seems to be a good way of limiting the rate of magic item production without imposing a feat tax on the player. In dire emergencies, players could reach out to alternative xp sources (such as liquid agony or distilled joy) for a fair whack of gold.


This said, if I do go for option C, what might be a reasonable monthly xp allotment for a 6th level character? 30xp? 50xp? 100xp? (For perspective, a typical 3rd level scroll runs around 15xp.) Should their relevant casting stat perhaps play a role in this determination?


Any thoughts/suggestions on the matter would be appreciated.



****

Additional thought on Option C:

Magic items that required more xp than the monthly allotment would allow could be crafted over the course of months. (For example, with an allotment of 100xp/month, a caster could make most wondrous items worth 2500gp or less in one sitting. Anything more expensive than that would have to be delayed.)

[Saintheart]

If the element you want to introduce into your campaign is that magic items cost something "of" the creator - their skill, their willpower and so on - then why not just shortcut around the idea of it having to be linked to XP? The system you're proposing is one where the creator's capacity to make stuff regenerates every 30 days or so, so it isn't really costing something of the creator as such, it's just something they have to save up for over time. The issue is once you've put in milestone XP, there's no cost/benefit analysis the item creator has to make: do I delay my ability to do new things in a level's time in favour of doing something very specific right now? He never has to ask that question.

So maybe instead the thing might be to limit the player's abilities for a period of time instead, so the creator has to ask himself: do I nerf or make myself vulnerable for a period of time in return for being able to create something specific now?

For example: creating a consumable magic item like a potion or a wand causes CON (or, given it's a druid, WIS) damage. The CON damage is significantly proportionate to the cost of the item to be made, say (purely plucking a number out of the air) 10 CON damage per 500 gp of the value of the item to be made. The materials cost can be paid immediately, but the CON damage can be paid out either right at that moment or split up into a per-day price ... but either the item will not be available until the ability damage cost is paid in full. So a player could make himself weak as a kitten for some period of time, using maybe Lesser Restoration or other spells to fix himself up a bit faster, but he suffers an impost for his daring to try and contain the power of the gods in a mundane item, even for a short period of time. And the player gets to make a choice about how heavily he nerfs himself for that period.

And for items with a permanent effect - e.g. Wondrous Items - the price is more serious. If the gods are angered by a mortal daring to constrain their power into a mundane bit of matter which will eventually be consumed, they are driven pretty apoplectic by one who would steal their power and place that power in an item permanentlt. Whilst the CON price to be paid is less - let's say 10 CON per 2,000 gp value of the item - it is more serious because it's ability drain. This, in turn, means you have to rewrite how ability drain works, since in E6 Restoration spells are necessarily not available. Maybe instead you only heal ability drain once per month, at a rate of, let's say, 4 per month (on the date of the full moon, your stat regenerates to that point.) Once again you can pay the price in any bundle you want, but your CON score only regenerates at a rate of 4 per month. On this calculation, to add a +1 to a sword (say) will cost you at least 2.5 months of a reduced CON score, and the player still has a choice whether they pay that price as a -10 to CON at once and get the item immediately for use, and suffer for 2.5 months until the CON is fully regenerated, or pay the CON cost in bundles of 4 just before the full moon and have to wait to get the item at the end of that time.

But in all cases, the player is still constrained by his mortality. If his CON drops to zero, he dies, as he would under normal rules. If you use WIS or some other stat for this, it has the same effects as with the default game - loss of WIS means he can't cast spells of a certain level.

See what I'm doing there? The player has to make a choice, similar to how he did under the default item creation rules - he is still asking whether he makes himself less effective over a period of time in return for an item of a certain power. Of course the player will then move to buff himself or cast lots of Lesser Restoration or the rest of it ... and that's fine. (Indeed you might rule that Lesser Restoration doesn't heal this form of damage, because it's a cost the gods impose. That makes the player's choice fundamentally about how much time or downtime he wants to spend healing that damage or compensating by other buffs or workarounds. So long as he's paying some sort of price, making some sort of choice, then that's the essential of the item creation experience.)

[Quarian Rex]

Check out The Practical Enchanter (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/51242/The-Practical-Enchanter) (for the love of the babby jebus, it is free so you don't have any excuse). It has a lot of feat options that would be great in an E6 environment. One that you might be particularly interested in is Harvest of Artifice.



Harvest of Artifice (Item Creation)
You may tap into the energies of the world to empower your creations.
Prerequisites: At least two feats expended on Item Creation, Level 7+
Benefit: You may expend up to 100 XP per month on item creation or spellcasting at no personal cost. You cannot add these points to your personal total, accumulate them from month to month, or use them for other purposes.
Normal: A living (or sentient undead) creature must contribute all experience spent on items.
Special: Harvest may be taken multiple times, each time past the first allows the user to select two of the options given below.
Alchemic Mastery: You may distill the XP you harvest into alchemical compounds. These function as universal power components, storing those XP for later use by anyone. Unfortunately, this is only 50% efficient.
Gleaning: You may gather an extra 50 XP per month. This option may be taken repeatedly.
Philosopher’s Stone: This application requires both Alchemic Mastery and Transmutation. It allows both effects to be stored in an alchemical talisman, to be used at the option of the possessor. In the case of Transmutation, the holder of the item can use it to transmute materials even without possessing this feat.
Transmutation: You may infuse XP into material to transmute it into more useful forms. This costs 1 XP per 2 GP worth of equipment so produced.

Adjust the prereq's to taste but you now have a renewable craft reserve with further investment options providing a lot of potential added versatility. The entire book is a gold mine but it looks like you have been searching for this feat specifically.

[Mike Miller]

I know you said you would prefer not charging more, but there is a basis for it in the rules. 1xp = 5 go

And so you craft without xp

[BlackOnyx]

So maybe instead the thing might be to limit the player's abilities for a period of time instead, so the creator has to ask himself: do I nerf or make myself vulnerable for a period of time in return for being able to create something specific now?


For example: creating a consumable magic item like a potion or a wand causes CON (or, given it's a druid, WIS) damage. The CON damage is significantly proportionate to the cost of the item to be made, say (purely plucking a number out of the air) 10 CON damage per 500 gp of the value of the item to be made. The materials cost can be paid immediately, but the CON damage can be paid out either right at that moment or split up into a per-day price ... but either the item will not be available until the ability damage cost is paid in full. So a player could make himself weak as a kitten for some period of time, using maybe Lesser Restoration or other spells to fix himself up a bit faster, but he suffers an impost for his daring to try and contain the power of the gods in a mundane item, even for a short period of time. And the player gets to make a choice about how heavily he nerfs himself for that period.


The player has to make a choice, similar to how he did under the default item creation rules - he is still asking whether he makes himself less effective over a period of time in return for an item of a certain power.


I really like this idea, actually.


My intent (at least initially) was to place limits that would keep players from immediately flooding the world with magic items on a whim. Doing this by giving players a choice (temporarily hindering their adventuring performance in order to create) might not be a bad way to go about it.


At the very least, it would incentivize players to designate times to craft & plan beforehand.



Check out The Practical Enchanter (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/51242/The-Practical-Enchanter) (for the love of the babby jebus, it is free so you don't have any excuse). It has a lot of feat options that would be great in an E6 environment. One that you might be particularly interested in is Harvest of Artifice.


Adjust the prereq's to taste but you now have a renewable craft reserve with further investment options providing a lot of potential added versatility. The entire book is a gold mine but it looks like you have been searching for this feat specifically.


Huh. How eerily perfect. Good find there.


100xp at 7th level seems like a good starting point to work off of. I'd actually been considering something to the tune of...


Monthly XP = (Hit Dice x 10) + (Hit Dice x Relevant Casting Modifier)


...which would likely come out somewhere between 66xp and 84xp for a 6th level caster.



I know you said you would prefer not charging more, but there is a basis for it in the rules. 1xp = 5 go

And so you craft without xp


Without xp?...how barbaric.


(In all seriousness though, a fair point.)

[Calthropstu]

PF doesn't have xp crafting costs. Works fine. Even when I ran 3.5 I houseruled no xp costs and it ran fine.

Xp costs make zero sense to me as far as sustainability goes.

[Gemini476]

If you want something that will work pretty much exactly like the existing system, why not just add a feat that gives 5,000 crafting experience (i.e. the amount of XP you'd need to grab an E6 feat)?

[Elkad]

You could use magic item recycling. They have to break down junk magic items to get the crafting XP out of them.

[Bucky]

I'd suggest some mixture of:

A little free crafting XP every level (like an Artificer's, but less of it since it's a feat not a class feature)
Roleplaying XP
A resource (Liquid Pain equivalent) that's in the loot and can substitute for crafting XP.
Bonus XP (which may be in the form of the above resource) from optional sidequests.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I mean...you don't have to allow magic item crafting....

As long as the players can buy the stuff they want (within sensible limits), they don't need crafting.

I did my last campaign w/o formal xp, leveling up by milestones (in reality, I would list out planned and optional/potential encounters to make sure they were roughly doing enough between milestones to justify a level up) and decided from the start that one necessary casualty of the decision was PC item crafting.

Never liked just charging gold for making items, seemed to make it too trivial to just crank stuff out constantly. I know, "xp is a river," but if you're going that route and crafting frequently, you're committing to spending nearly your entire time one level below the rest of the party, which is at least a pretty tangible loss.

[Meditation]

Pathfinder took out xp costs.

Do you know what happened?

Nothing.

Correction: people complained, quite rightly, about a) the other crap that PF didn't correct when it was a layup and b) all the many, many things PF made far, far worse. Within a year, it was mostly (b), where (a) was brought up only when old-schoolers were reminding newbies why PF was problematic.

And everyone had all that energy to criticize because they weren't distracted by pesky xp costs.

So, practically speaking, my original answer was correct: nothing. Drop the costs and use the energy sunk into magic items for worldbuilding.

Here's the dirty secret of magic items in d20: the system you are looking for does not exist.

If you want a system where magic items are personalized and special, that’s not d20. D20 uses gold, primarily, to balance magic items and the more specialized ones are almost universally not worth the cost. Further, magic items, specialized or general purpose, are never personalized, unless they’re personalized to a designer’s character or an artifact (and the latter has no listed cost because it is by definition unbalanced by the designers). Which means the only way to get items unique to a PC is if the DM works with the PC to design it. Period.

Magic items are technology. They are equipment. Worse, they are necessary equipment. The best way to deal with necessary equipment in a rpg is to charge an appropriate character resource amount for them and move on.

Many, if not most, players of d20 are not looking for equipment, they’re looking for personalized character assets, much like class levels, feats, and skills, that just happens to be physical objects in the game world. The only time d20 comes close to letting you have those within its system, the system shatters (artifacts and Item Familiar).

So we need to separate magical items into equipment and trademarks, where the latter is signature items that personalize characters.

Let players just have the gear they need at the appropriate cost. Same for NPCs. It’s gear. It’s not the focus.

If the characters, or the world, have crafting equipment as a Serious Thing, treat it as a job and crank out some numbers for its worth in gold. Jobs in d20 are terribly managed, so that’s a separate thread. The equipment itself is irrelevant: unless it’s illegal, getting it is uninteresting. The absolute worst games you can consistently find are ones where players spend half or more of a session just shopping for utility items.

If characters, or the world, have trademarks as A Thing, then I would use the crafting rules as guidelines as to the time it takes to make the item and then work out what the item should do with the players. (Probably all the players, since it affects the table.) Feats that give gold breaks for items are basically broken: once your WBL is high enough, they pay for their feat costs in a direct and uninteresting fashion.

The fact of the matter is, no crafting cost is really real. If crafting seriously impacted the combat minigame and the items produced didn’t make up for the hits, you just wouldn’t produce the items in question. Downtime is only a cost if your adventure schedule penalizes players for working in the lab all day — d20 sourcebooks provide virtually no assistance to DMs looking to create a robust and consistent business minigame. I’d pour energy into making a quirky items for particular PCs, perhaps throwing in some quests for necessary ingredients, and eyeballing gold costs (with leave to readjust if needed in the future), then just charge straight gold for +3 vicious shocking greatswords.

And, by the way, another houserule I prefer (though this one probably won’t work for the OP since his game is already underway): in any game where being able to make magical items (equipment, trademarks, or both) has some kind of narrative currency, I push for crafting abilities to be limited to those who have a majority of levels in non-casting classes, obliterating the feat and construction prerequisites and requirements, such that blacksmiths and tradesmen are the ones making enchanted wonders. Wizards having to work with carpenters and jewelers to get their bling almost always feels better. Subjective, obviously.