Item creation feats

[Feldar]

In D&D 3.0/3.5 item creation costs 1/25th of the total market price in experience. The bonus is that you get the item itself for half-price. It appears (please correct me if I'm wrong) that Pathfinder completely removes the experience cost for creating magical items and replaces it with a skill check.

Personally, I've always felt that creating magical items in 3.0/3.5 was too cheap in terms of experience given the power boost that creating the item provides the character. For example, a character six +4 stat boosters never has to use a 2nd level spell slot for a stat enhancement again, freeing up those slots for other things. I have personally always thought that a much higher experience cost should apply for that reason. The apparent Pathfinder method appears to me to throw any semblance of balance and real cost out the window.

How do you handle item creation in your home game? How do you keep characters with item creation feats becoming much more powerful than the other members of the party? Doing this only by controlling wealth is extremely difficult IMO.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Usually a player who takes item creation feats also crafts items for the rest of the party, so you can just balance encounters for their new powerlevel.

Also in my experience players are usually deadly opposed to anything that would cost them XP or even using one-shot items (believing them to "waste" WBL).
I've seen more than one player pay out the nose for an unlimited or uses/day item that they only ended up using a handful of times, if that.
Simply put it hasn't ever really been a problem i've had to "deal" with.

That aside the only mechanical balancing factor is the time it takes to craft things.
If it's turning out to be a problem in your game you can either keep the party too busy to take full advantage of crafting feats or sit them down OOC to talk about it.

[Psyren]

Doing this only by controlling wealth is extremely difficult IMO.

It's really not, but you're forgetting that the GM controls another important resource - time. The players can only craft as much as you give them downtime to do so; past the lowest levels, crafting a single item can take days or even weeks depending on its cost. The BBEG and/or plot is under no obligation to wait around for them to do that.

PF removing XP costs was a conscious choice because it made it so you don't need to track XP moment to moment anymore - this makes character level easy to audit (simply look back at the encounters they've had and you should have no trouble reconciling what level they're supposed to be and how far they are from the next one). More importantly for many tables however, it lets you dispense with XP tracking entirely and simply have story or milestone-based leveling, since it's not used as a resource for anything.

This is not saying that 3.5's crafting system is bad, it comes down to personal/table taste, but I much prefer not having to track XP myself.


The apparent Pathfinder method appears to me to throw any semblance of balance and real cost out the window.

How do you handle item creation in your home game? How do you keep characters with item creation feats becoming much more powerful than the other members of the party?

The primary power concern here is that crafted items are half the cost of purchased ones, which on the surface looks like crafting characters get to double their WBL. But that's not how you're supposed to play it, and PF even specifies this. The recommended is that characters with crafting feats get anywhere from 5-15% more WBL depending on the number of such feats they possess.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The primary power concern here is that crafted items are half the cost of purchased ones, which on the surface looks like crafting characters get to double their WBL. But that's not how you're supposed to play it, and PF even specifies this. The recommended is that characters with crafting feats get anywhere from 5-15% more WBL depending on the number of such feats they possess.
You could probably have them on standard WBL and crafting feats would still be worth taking.

At least to me the ability to customize your equipment instead of having to use what you can find is far more valuable,
though obviously YMMV depending on how easily specific magic items are available in your campaign.

[Silent Alarm]

Also in my experience players are usually deadly opposed to anything that would cost them XP or even using one-shot items (believing them to "waste" WBL).

This philosophy is awful. All campaigns inevitably end, whether it be due to everyone parting ways in real life, or the adventure concluding. As controversial as it might be, an item that helps you out of a singular encounter out of say 100 potential encounters across an entire campaign is gold well spent. When you're at 6hp at level 3, that potion of cure light wounds is starting to look mighty affordable.

[aglondier]

For most groups I've run or played with item creation was never about half price items, it was about having items that fit your concept/playing style. After all, what is the liklihood of finding a bec de corbin with the ability to set like a rod of immobility on the random item charts? Nil.
If you are worried about the players not earning their manufactured items, make them quest for the rare materials needed to craft them. Plenty of ready built adventure fodder right there...

During the last 3.5 campaign I played, the gm allowed me to create a feat that would allow me to use another person to pay the xp component of crafting. It was a very dark and potentially corrupting feat, since the target didn't need to be willing, just present, although you could use willing donors as well. One feat to offset an annoying cost, or at least allow the fighter to pay the xp cost for his items...it worked for our game...

[BlackOnyx]

Personally, I've always felt that creating magical items in 3.0/3.5 was too cheap in terms of experience given the power boost that creating the item provides the character. For example, a character six +4 stat boosters never has to use a 2nd level spell slot for a stat enhancement again, freeing up those slots for other things.



As someone who's migrated more and more to "round down" E6 over standard 3.5e, I've found myself experiencing some similar thoughts while DMing my own campaigns.


My feelings toward permanent magic items have started to wane a bit, particularly those items that continuously add +X to attribute Y. Rather than character defining heirlooms, they've started to feel more like prerequisites that every player goes in expecting to get their hands on in order to stay competitive.


Personally, I've found that limiting access to permanent magic items tends to promote more caster/non-caster interplay. When buffing can't be outsourced to magic items, it requires the players to take a more team-oriented approach to combat.


Similarly, in parties where a caster isn't present (or is unable to reproduce the desired effect), requiring players to manage their consumables effectively adds another layer of depth and strategy to combat.


In both situations, you still have access to the desired effects when you need them, but there's always going to be a limiting factor involved, be it duration, availability, or opportunity cost. From what I've seen, this helps to keep things from devolving into a "magic weapons arms race" scenario where some players are left in the dust.




This all in mind, the sort of magic item reworks that I'd suggest (namely in an E6 setting) include:


- Nixing permanent item creation feats (at least for PCs)


- Alternatively, imposing restrictions that stretch the timescale for creating permanent magic items over weeks or months (reduced magic item crafting speed, in-game monthly maximum xp expenditure, etc.)


- Making magic items scarce (relic-esque) for both enemies and allies (focusing more on masterwork items and uncommon materials for differentiation)


- Offering players a monthly regenerating xp pool (based on HD) for crafting consumable magic items (limits the amount of items any one player can pump out in a given period while keeping them from feeling as if they're "wasting" xp on one-time-use items)


- Nixing most +X to Y magic items and focusing on those that affect the environment, rather than boosting the player (i.e. Bag of Tricks, Personal Oasis, Tenser's Floating Disk)

[Feldar]

The fundamental issue is that item creation feats depend on some form of control to limit their effectiveness.

The suggestion of using rare components is fun, but introduces a whole new set of record keeping and encourages characters to become walking body-part emporiums. To keep it original, it would also require additional record keeping because while there are most certainly components that are common to many items, it really demands keeping track of which "recipes" are available to the characters in order keep it fresh and to keep track of what items are required for each recipe.

Controlling time means potentially filling each and every day of the campaign with some activity. Lots more record keeping and work.

One of the things I've been doing in the current game is allowing a discount on the enchantment of the item if the enchanter personally creates the item (i.e., forges the ring, carves the wand, sews and dyes the cloak, forges the weapon). This creates a choice between a skill or a time cost for the character.

I actually kind of like the approaches that require more record keeping and work. I just wish I had time to do all the work!

[Vaern]

Once you factor in the established gold piece value per point of experience (5 GP to 1 XP), paying 1/25 the item's cost in XP ends up being worth 20% of the item's total value in GP. On top of paying half the market value in materials to craft the item, the real discount you're getting for creating the item yourself ends up being a grand total of 30% off the market value. The immediate tradeoff of saving a bit of extra gold is that you level up later and progress more slowly than the rest of the party. If that's too broken for you, the easiest solution would be to simply not let your players take item creation feats to begin with. Why would you let players pick a character option if you never intended to let them use it to begin with?

It also takes time to craft gear. The character needs access to a laboratory or magical workshop in order to make use of item creation feats, which means they need a considerable amount of downtime in town. You don't need to fill every day with diversions to keep them from crafting their item while they're on the road unless they're carrying a workshop with them. You only need to restrict the time between adventures. If a player starts crafting an item that takes a month to craft, interrupt them two weeks in with an adventure hook. They'll have to wait until they come back into town to resume crafting that item. That's assuming, of course, that you don't want to let him finish crafting the item, which brings up the question: Why did you let your player choose a character option if you did not intend to let him use it?

There's also the matter of the feat investment. There are price formulas for metamagic rods, but item creation feats and other feats in general are harder to put a GP value to. The feat spent on item creation could have been used for something like metamagic, or access to spontaneous casting which may arguably be worth much more than the gold they're saving on their gear. They're setting themselves back on character advancement not only by sacrificing XP, but also by giving up a feat slot in order to save a bit of extra gold. To that end, it seems rather rude to prevent a player from doing what they've built their character to do. Preventing someone who wants to craft items from utilizing his abilities is like throwing nothing but undead, oozes, and constructs at a rogue who just wants to sneak attack something. It's something the player has built into with the expectation of using at some point, and trying and being blocked from using it at every turn is not fun. It's not fun for the player to deal with you preventing him from crafting items, and it certainly sounds like it's not going to be fun for you to try coming up with new ways to interrupt the crafting process. Do not let a player choose a character option and then prevent him from using it.

Requiring rare components sounds like a good idea, except that that's already the case. That's why crafting magic items is expensive. It would be interesting, though, to note particularly interesting things that the players find to give them ideas for new items to create - not as a requirement to make use of the feat, but as inspiration for new applications of them. They've already sunk a feat into the ability, and are paying GP and XP on this item. Sending them on a fetch quest as an additional crafting requirement on top of the downtime that they already need to have between adventures is overkill. It makes the whole endeavor more of a chore than an ability, and at the end of the day all of the extra work and the unnecessary risk that's likely involved with your side quest probably isn't worth the discount. It's almost like you let them choose a character option and then decided you didn't want to let them make use of it.

I really don't think item creation feats are at all overpowered as far as the discount to crafting items. If you think about it, it makes sense. Someone needs to craft the gear, and shopkeepers are going to sell it at a markup. If crafting the item costs more, the market value is going to increase so the NPC artificers can profit. But on the other hand, depending on your setting, if Ye Olde Magick Mart™ doesn't exist and options from NPC vendors are limited, the benefit of the feat might not be the gold discount of the items so much as the availability of magical equipment in and of itself. If that were the case, I wouldn't have any complaints about, for example, nixing the XP cost of crafting items and making item creation cost the full market cost rather than half, as the feat is still immensely helpful in breaking you and your party free of the limitations of the market. That's assuming, of course, that you give them the opportunity rather than setting up road blocks every step of the way. Seriously, do not let your players choose character options that you do not intend to let them use.

[Kayblis]

I'll echo the above. Don't allow players to burn feats on things you won't let them use.

Also, on OP's point about the +x items. What I have to say is... Really? You think someone in their right mind would craft six items with a base price of 16k to save on a second-level slot? Most people never cast these +4 Enh spells even without the items! The bonus is decent if it's your main stat and you got a couple extra slots to spare, but this has never been a first option for any spellcaster I played. Also, you could just, y'know, make a lv2 Pearl of Power for 4k. This is a concern that doesn't actually come up.