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ayvango
2021-08-24, 07:54 PM
Magical item craft takes too much time. Even if a character would like to spend his hardly earned XP to improve character capabilities from wargear and has a spare feat the other party members would not wait for him.

Crafting +10 magic sword (200k gp) require 200 days to spend. Trivial alternative in killing one 10lvl a day would repay in 5.8k * 200 = 1160k gp. If character could trivialize 15th level encounter he would earn 4400k gp for the same period. Selling spellcasting service with 4 5th level spell a day would earn 360k in 200 days. Selling 4 7th level spell a day would earn 728k in 200 days

Craft is totally nonoptimal. One player could choose craft gamestyle for roleplay reasons, but it is hardly likely that entire party would wait for him.

So I'd like to introduce some house rules to mitigate this gap. I'm new to house ruling and in doubt. What is a natural way to introduce new crafting capabilities?

Non-magic craft could speed up significantly with the Fabricate (5th level) spell. May be some other spell should be introduced on a 6th level to do similar job for magic crafting?

Another method that I have thought of is to introduce craft speeding feats with supposed requirement of having any other magic item creation feat and reaching 10th caster level.

Or just say that time to craft is significantly reduced for all magical crafting activity: replace days for hours and hours for 10 mins. You pay with your exp for speeding up. And full-time crafting would allow you avoid any XP expenditures. Player could chose what he needs more: time or exp. NPC would choose time of course explaining why only PC prefer adventurer carrier.

Morphic tide
2021-08-24, 10:07 PM
Firstly, I'll give an SRD link to the Unearthed Arcanum answer (http://dndsrd.net/unearthedCraftPoints.html) to the problem. The TL;DR is that it gives a points pool for characters to just bypass the craft time, which increases with level and taking crafting feats. For example, by taking Craft Wondrous Item, you get the points to rush a 15k GP item.

Secondly, the core thing about crafting is that it's a way to get the exact item you want, rather than being at the whims of treasure rolls. If your campaign doesn't have a Magic Mart, then the Artificer('s portable hole) becomes the Magic Mart.

Thirdly, and onto the houserule, it should be a smooth progression from a character attribute, not giant leaps like days to hours, nor should it be tied to specific spells. At the simplest, this would be something like 250gp*CL^2. At 20th level, this gives 100,000gp per crafting period, while 4th level has 4,000gp per period. To stick this particular example in a referential table:




level
crafting
wealth


1
250
NaN


2
1,000
900


3
2,250
2,700


4
4,000
5,400


5
6,250
9,000


6
9,000
13,000


7
12,250
19,000


8
16,000
27,000


9
20,250
36,000


10
25,000
49,000


11
30,250
66,000


12
36,000
88,000


13
42,250
110,000


14
49,000
150,000


15
56,250
200,000


16
64,000
260,000


17
72,250
340,000


18
81,000
440,000


19
90,250
580,000


20
100,000
760,000




Note that the pre-Epic limit is 200,000, so all the way down at level 13 when you can theoretically afford the GP cost of materials it takes five crafting periods. Which could be modified other ways from the 8 hour "work day". And a +6 enhancement item becomes a single period at 12th level. You can also go with just flat-out 1/6th the WBL, so the suggested 1/3rd limit on any single item always takes two crafting periods. This does add up to quite a bit of campaign clunk if you're pushing it constantly, but do note how often there'll be one-day jobs of upgrades and "minor" items.

Throw in having this be the total for stuff worked on in the day instead of being limited to one item and it gets a lot better. E: A major example here is that at level 17, by the formula, you could make 18 9th-level scrolls in a single crafting period, and by the 1/6th WBL suggestion you could make 14 of them. Provided, of course, the GP float to actually put it into crafting. Wands are slightly more expensive for their GP to spells rate, but have more support and the quite solid convenience factor of not rummaging through stacks of 50 scrolls.

Maat Mons
2021-08-25, 05:49 AM
There already is a feat that reduces crafting time for magic items by 25%. It's called Exceptional Artisan, and it's not well-liked, largely because Dedicated Wrights exist.

I absolutely think high-level characters should be able to craft any given item faster than low-level characters. And I don't think it should cost any extra feats. In fact, I think crafting in general should require fewer feats. But that's another discussion.

I mean, if you had a group of 4 20th-level characters all decked out in 760,000 gp of gear, all crafted by one party member, that poor guy has spent more than 8 years crafting all those items. A human Cleric can roll 27 for his starting age. Those 8 years put him at 35, and the middle-aged age category. Now he's got a -1 to all physical ability scores, and the best years of his life are behind him. Time to retire from adventuring.

I propose that crafting speed be multiplied by character level, or possibly just by level in spellcasting classes (with artificer levels counting too). So a 1st-level character would require 1 day per 1,000 gp, but a 20th-level character would require 1 day per 20,000 gp. That gets the time of the +10 sword down to 10 days, for a 20th-level character.

Some might tell you that magic item crafting speed has to be limited because it's a way of turning time into gold. But it's really not. There are lots of things that turn time into gold, but magic item crafting isn't one of them. Magic item crafting is a way of turning xp into gold, and that's a much more valuable resource. You're essentially getting 12.5 gp per xp spent, and that rate doesn't change if the exchange is made faster.

Slow magic item crafting isn't just an issue with PCs crafting either. I mean, imagine if the party Fighter wants to pay an NPC to upgrade his +9 sword into a +10 sword, to get ready for the big boss fight. The NPC will, of course, tell him that it will take 38 days to complete the upgrade, and that he'll nee to leave his sword at the shop for that whole time. The big boss isn't going to hold off on destroying the world for over a month just because the Fighter needs some time to get ready for the fight! And even if the world weren't about to end, there are dragons to slay and maidens to save. He needs his sword to do that, and he can't just take a month off. Think of all the maidens who would get eaten in that time! And that's just for a simple +1.