Magic item 'recipes' ?

[Sindal]

Hi yall.

So this hasn't really been a dire need to have, as non of my current players have interest in craft at all (Mostly because they looked at how it's done, by the book and went EEEHH)
But in the event that someone does:

Q:
How do you handle the acquiring of magic blueprints to make magical items in your games?

Are they dropped? Sold by merchants? Re searchable in downtime? Deconstructing a already magical weapon?
Do you even make it necessary? Unless i'm missing something, the game doesn't directly specific where they come from.
Though it does specify they are needed.

[Zhorn]

If a player has a type of profession/tool skill, then I put them in the mix for treasure hoards the same way i would include scrolls and spell books.
In towns, they can buy recipes for 4x the price of the item they are for (this is mostly for consumables).

For more persisting items like armor and weapons, the recipe is a bit more of a nebulous concept. They can learn (via a mixture of means, as it is RP driven) how to infuse magical essence into their crafting, or how to work with exotic materials.

It could be they learn of special technique to naturally preserve the resistance proporties of the hides of particular animals. They can craft resistance arour as long as the material they are working with is suited to the type of craft and comes from an appropriate creatue (eg: winter would making a fur coat of cold resist).

Others could be inscription skills in combination with spells known, giving a weapon an elemental damage type.

Don't fall onto the trap of being too specific with how to run it. Look at what your players have and justify how that could be used to achieve something greater than the mundane.

[stoutstien]

The eberron book is supposed to have crafting recipes as loot items so soon we will see something to work with other than ask DM very new nicely.

[Sigreid]

Personally I'd allow it to be a drop, a quest item or a downtime research or purchase activity.

[Slipperychicken]

because they looked at how it's done, by the book and went EEEHH

That's the intended reaction, to make players run away screaming from the crafting rules so that they continue playing as adventurers instead of artisans. If you actually want them to do it, you're basically going to end up homebrewing.

I'd have recipes generally be part of dungeon treasure so it's a discovery rather than a medieval DIY project, but using the guidelines for purchasing magic items would be appropriate too.

Not sure what the recipes should actually be, since the grindy "collect the skulls of 30 giants" type quests work really poorly in tabletop roleplaying where combats typically exceed 30 minutes in length. I'd rather just name several ingredients that they can buy in a town without issue (i.e. 50gp of ruby dust, 1gp of thistle, 10gp of salt, etc), plus one that they have to do a sidequest for (i.e. collect a rare purple lotus that only grows in the courtyard of a temple full of minotaurs)

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I will ask my players what they think can be made from something they got.

"Alon, what do you think you can make from this shadow dragon heart you got?"

They have good ideas most of the time.

I pot the gold cost in the other parts of the crafting,ay it be a special fual for the forge or dome expensive metal or an army of 50 craftmans.

I can make sure they pay the cost of the crafting and they search for cool stuff.
Everyone have fun this way.