Artificer, Downtime, and Magic Items

[Lupine]

Hello GitP forum folks. It's been a while!

Cutting to it, I am one of the DMs in a shared campaign. Artificers are allowed. Downtime is a thing, and now we're in a position of needing to determine (a), how downtime should work, when not everyone plays the same amount, AND not everyone plays every week
(b) How to balance artificers and their ability (esp at high level) to make magic items in such a way that magic items are fair for everyone.

How does the forum do it?

[Kane0]

In my sig i have my personalized downtime rules, and depending on campaign Artificers can multitask and work on two magic items concurrently. If players arent present they can be using their downtime to assist or generate income to cover costs.

My rule of thumb is common grade magic items can be made without needing special recipes; uncommons you can generally purchase recipes for; rare and higher you need to go out and adventure for to hunt down. Artificers that pick up the infusions to replicate magic items are like personal research breakthroughs, so those particular items they have recipes for.

[Psyren]

Their crafting ability affects speed and cost, but you still have control over the (permanent) items they can make. Recipes/Formulae are only available when you say so, and you can even make them limited-use if you want. The artificer will still benefit from their feature but you don't have to worry about them flooding the market or the party's coffers.

[BoutsofInsanity]

I'm a big fan of using Xanathar's Guide to Everything item crafting rules. I think they are just the best. If you want to give Artificers some extra oomph in crafting, just allow them to count as two people crafting instead of one. Enabling them to increase the speed at which they craft without stepping on other peoples ability to craft and help.

[Greywander]

This isn't RAW, and I haven't had a chance to actually put this to use yet, but here's my own house rules for magic item creation.

A recipe is treated as one step rarer than the item it's for. Crafting a recipe is basically researching it yourself. You do need a rare ingredient, which can be large amounts of the materials used to craft the item, or you can use the item itself and reverse engineer it. Doing so destroys the item.

Rare ingredients can be bought using the rules for buying magic items. (This means you won't always be able to find one for sale, and even if you can, you'll have to ask around to find a seller.) Treat the ingredient as one step more common than the item it's for.

Artificers can use infusions to aid in magic item creation. An infusion known counts as having the recipe for that item. Spending an infusion slot on the item while it's being crafted counts as supplying the rare ingredient.