Best item creation system

[Shinizak]

I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

[Quertus]

I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

Hmmm… here's the item creation systems I remember off the top of my head, and the things I like / remember about them.

I love that, with 2e D&D's item creation system

• creating items was a pain, meaning that items were rare and special;
• creating items took actual materials, and cool ones at that.

Also, 2e Psionicists had to make their items out of formerly-living things. None of this 3e crystal aesthetic.

Older D&D has Huptzeen.

I liked that item creation in Rifts

• had up-front pricing;
• was as completely unbalanced as the rest of the system.

WoD Mage item creation was hecka expensive, and couldn't expand your character's capabilities: oh, look, 52 XP for an item to cast a spell I already can. Such items made great gifts for others, and didn't cost XP if you traveled back in time to… dark ages? The other one? So, that was kinda neat.

WoD Mage also had the semi-auto cad-cam, at something like Matter 5, Correspondence 5. It was one of my favorite powers to take on a starting relic. Combine two things, with the properties of one, and <successes> properties from the second. Then nWoD made it a Matter 3 power, "Jury Rig".

Other WoD spats had almost no rules for creating items… except the absolutely crazy awesome Thaumaturgy 8 ritual Blade of the Forbidden Flower - the closest thing to a Snap Blade I've found outside of Tactics Ogre.

Mutants & Masterminds made items significantly cheaper than inate powers, and had the concept of "mundane items", so that was nice. Heroes/Champions… gave great discounts for items the XP for which were lost if the item was destroyed.

Marvel facerip was a train wreck, and their item creation system was a… highly exploitable (and not in a fun way) train wreck, as well.

Scion… has some rules, but they seemed boring.

I'm pretty sure Exalted had some crazy item creation rules, but I never used them.

Battletech, of course, has Mech construction rules, and I'm rather fond of those.

-----

End result: I like making items in 2e D&D (and Battletech, but they're not *magical* items). And I often force other items (especially WoD) to have 2e's cool aesthetic.

[Zhorn]

Last time I was talking with someone about this, the concept of the 'production triangle' came up

Things can be

• High Quality
• Cheaply Affordable
• Fast to Produce

And you can only have 2.

If you want something to be higher quality; it will either cost more to make, or take longer to produce.
If you want it to be cheaper; it will either be a lower quality, or take longer to produce.
If you want it to be made faster; it will either be a lower quality, or cost more to make.

Sliding scales of coarse, so it can be part of one and part of another, but the general principle holds. Sliding one of the scale affects the other two, so holding one scale still while slide another will send the last drastically in an opposing direction.

When talking about crafting in game, the same general concept is what I look at. There' no single locked in time and cost element, a player should be able to scale up or down elements of cost/speed/quality to suit what they are able to do within the bounds of the campaign they are playing.

Have long stretches of downtime; you can do the minimal progress rate and produce it as a lower price.
Need something in a rush, throwing more resources into it to up the production rate should be an option.

[Kaptin Keen]

I'll just post the counterpoint:

Item creation is basically the tool that takes control away from the game master, and places it in the hands of the players, with mostly disastrous results. Although a given value for disastrous results may be a tremendous amount of fun, and precisely what you aimed for.

And then someone is going to say 'something something player agency something something'. And that's not wrong, but there needs to be GM agency to balance things, and in order for an RPG to be anything but a free-for-all, wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest, there needs to be more GM agency.

So in my games, items can be crafted only by the greatest effort, and not bought at all. Not everyone likes that, but it does a wonderful job of shifting the focus away from items.

[Tvtyrant]

I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

I like the 5E artificer system, I had something similar for E6 where characters could make "masterpieces" and get items above the set limit at different epic markers. If I was making a system something like the 5E artificer where they make magic items as they level up and the items are attached to them, and then make a permanent magic "artifact" 1-2 in their career would be my approach.

[Quertus]

I'll just post the counterpoint:

Item creation is basically the tool that takes control away from the game master, and places it in the hands of the players, with mostly disastrous results. Although a given value for disastrous results may be a tremendous amount of fun, and precisely what you aimed for.

And then someone is going to say 'something something player agency something something'. And that's not wrong, but there needs to be GM agency to balance things, and in order for an RPG to be anything but a free-for-all, wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest, there needs to be more GM agency.

So in my games, items can be crafted only by the greatest effort, and not bought at all. Not everyone likes that, but it does a wonderful job of shifting the focus away from items.

Player Agency? I'll be that someone!

(Of course, I *like* the idea of items being crafted with great effort, and not (really) being able to be purchased, so… despite my love of Player Agency, I may not exactly be your "target audience".)

(And I'm bothering to go into this because I think it's actually germaine to the thread.)

So, first, you have this strange notion implicit in your statements that something - presumably wealth and more specifically the existence and exact distribution of magical items - is, by default, inherently in the hands of the GM.

Even in D&D, that is not the case. In the editions I've played, by default, magic item distribution resides primarily in the hands of Arangee. Secondarily, it resides in the hands of the module writer (who may happen to be the same person as the GM, but they are still technically different hats). Only once you reach at least the tertiary level does the GM access item distribution, as a balancing tool.

So, sure, if somebody brings a Fighter to a Wizard's duel (or a low-op Wizard to an übercharger duel), then the party is not balanced. If balance is actually a problem, you *could* solve this by giving the weaker PC(s) pity artifacts.

But, personally, I'm a lazy GM. Why would I put forth effort solving this problem when, instead, I could look at my players and say, "fix it"?

So, in the hands of players who follow my "balance to the table" mantra, item creation, like *any* Player Agency, leads to a better-balanced game, not the "wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest" you inaccurately guaranteed.

And, I certainly agree, in groups that don't care about the stranglehold of tight balance, increased agency can, indeed, lead to "tremendous amount(s) of fun".

-----

So, obviously, what kind of game your group enjoys will impact what item creation systems are suitable for them. 2e gives you "rare", "hard work", and "high fluff". Rifts gives you "balance? Lol, what?". 3e gives you a commodity. WoD Mage gives you "are you insane?!". Etc etc.

[NigelWalmsley]

There is no "best item creation system". How the system should work depends on what you want it to do. How much should having a particular magic item define a character? How common should magic items be? How much time do you want to spend in downtime activities? Should magic items be unique and special, or cheap and interchangeable? There are lots of different things you could want from a magic item system, and there's no way to say which is best absent some criteria.

[Jorren]

I'll just post the counterpoint:

Item creation is basically the tool that takes control away from the game master, and places it in the hands of the players, with mostly disastrous results. Although a given value for disastrous results may be a tremendous amount of fun, and precisely what you aimed for.

And then someone is going to say 'something something player agency something something'. And that's not wrong, but there needs to be GM agency to balance things, and in order for an RPG to be anything but a free-for-all, wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest, there needs to be more GM agency.

So in my games, items can be crafted only by the greatest effort, and not bought at all. Not everyone likes that, but it does a wonderful job of shifting the focus away from items.

In 40 years of playing rpgs, I have never seen a disastrous result as a function of item creation rules. Disastrous results were 100% the result of giving out an item out in treasure, not in allowing a pc to build one.

In almost every case where an item was made, it was with DM oversight and working with the player to balance the item. The items that I saw made were almost universally low-power utility items, not powerful ones. Almost all creation systems allow for such oversight in the form of legality, scarcity of resources, and just flat DM vetoing items based on discretion.

[LordCdrMilitant]

In 40 years of playing rpgs, I have never seen a disastrous result as a function of item creation rules. Disastrous results were 100% the result of giving out an item out in treasure, not in allowing a pc to build one.

In almost every case where an item was made, it was with DM oversight and working with the player to balance the item. The items that I saw made were almost universally low-power utility items, not powerful ones. Almost all creation systems allow for such oversight in the form of legality, scarcity of resources, and just flat DM vetoing items based on discretion.

Well, one time we were playing Traveller, and we designed our own ship(s) at the start. That was where it started to go wrong, and why A: players are no longer allowed to design their own ships and B: why players must all contribute their ship shares towards one ship. [That short event is also why space pirates are no longer a thing, now and for forever.]


As for item creation, I like creating cars in Car Wars and ships in Traveller. That said, I wouldn't really call them item creation systems. Most of the time I use Pathfinder's.

[Kaptin Keen]

In 40 years of playing rpgs, I have never seen a disastrous result as a function of item creation rules. Disastrous results were 100% the result of giving out an item out in treasure, not in allowing a pc to build one.

In almost every case where an item was made, it was with DM oversight and working with the player to balance the item. The items that I saw made were almost universally low-power utility items, not powerful ones. Almost all creation systems allow for such oversight in the form of legality, scarcity of resources, and just flat DM vetoing items based on discretion.

Disastrous results were 100% the result of giving out an item out in treasure, not in allowing a pc to build one.

Like I said: For a given value of disastrous.

Sometimes the item creation systems are just bad. A player of mine in a Shadowrun game way back in the day used the crafting rules to build an off-road bike. While slow on the road (like 120kmh - I dunno, this was in the 90's), by the rules it could do 320 kmh in rugged terrain. While not in itself overpowered, it's just incomprehensibly dumb. It was OP for other reasons tho.

But the point of my post is that your mileage may vary: A lot of players hate the games I GM, where item economy simply doesn't exist, gold can frankly best be spent buying a home, you cannot create any items by any means except story - just as I actively avoid games as soon as I see other players start bargaining back and forth about 'can I pre-craft this and that and the other thing.'

Again, it's right in my post: Counterpoint.

Player Agency? I'll be that someone!

(Of course, I *like* the idea of items being crafted with great effort, and not (really) being able to be purchased, so… despite my love of Player Agency, I may not exactly be your "target audience".)

(And I'm bothering to go into this because I think it's actually germaine to the thread.)

So, first, you have this strange notion implicit in your statements that something - presumably wealth and more specifically the existence and exact distribution of magical items - is, by default, inherently in the hands of the GM.

Even in D&D, that is not the case. In the editions I've played, by default, magic item distribution resides primarily in the hands of Arangee. Secondarily, it resides in the hands of the module writer (who may happen to be the same person as the GM, but they are still technically different hats). Only once you reach at least the tertiary level does the GM access item distribution, as a balancing tool.

So, sure, if somebody brings a Fighter to a Wizard's duel (or a low-op Wizard to an übercharger duel), then the party is not balanced. If balance is actually a problem, you *could* solve this by giving the weaker PC(s) pity artifacts.

But, personally, I'm a lazy GM. Why would I put forth effort solving this problem when, instead, I could look at my players and say, "fix it"?

So, in the hands of players who follow my "balance to the table" mantra, item creation, like *any* Player Agency, leads to a better-balanced game, not the "wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest" you inaccurately guaranteed.

And, I certainly agree, in groups that don't care about the stranglehold of tight balance, increased agency can, indeed, lead to "tremendous amount(s) of fun".

-----

So, obviously, what kind of game your group enjoys will impact what item creation systems are suitable for them. 2e gives you "rare", "hard work", and "high fluff". Rifts gives you "balance? Lol, what?". 3e gives you a commodity. WoD Mage gives you "are you insane?!". Etc etc.

Ahh, but from my post you might realise RNG has nothing to do with magic items - and I don't run modules, I run only my own stuff. But magic items aren't solely in the hands of the GM in my games. If a player wants something, and it's a reasonable request, they can have it. For, like, the price of a song, or a kiss, or a promise of a future favor, or a lock of hair, or ... you know?

It's not about denying players power - or agency. It's about removing the automatic 'oh, I have my 45.000 gold, I'll pop down to Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe for my Holy Avenger I've been saving for!' In my games, that's never going to happen.

I've played the occasional rocket tag game, and it's a lot of fun, I have no objection to it, even if it fails to hold my attention for very long. And not saying that item creation automatically leads to rocket tag either - just I've seen that happen, on occasion.

In DnD, something as basic as scrolls and potions can destroy game balance. It's just a question of where you want that balance to be. The truth hides somewhere in the space between 'no, mages are meant to have all their spells available at all times forever with no restrictions' and 'you can cast 3 first level spells, and 1 second level spell per day.'

[Anonymouswizard]

I like superhero-style gadgeteering: you can whip up a 'power' in a few minutes/hours, but it'll serve it's purpose and be gone again soon. If you want it to hang around you or a party member can buy it with XP.

Then again, I've yet to have a GM who's allowed the combat engineer/ritualist build in M&M (with stacking your skill fairly high, buying Inventor, Artificer, or Ritualist, and then stacking Quickness (Limited to item/Ritual creation) you can get to the point where you can semi-reliably create a 30 point power in a combat round or less*, it's pretty much the only viable buffer I've come up with).

But yes, my general rule is 'if a PC is going to be hanging onto it, and especially if they can get make or get a new one fairly easily during downtime, then it should cost permanent character resources'. I think of it as the 'Cleric's holy symbol' principle, while a Cleric can't cast their spells without one if they lose it they can get a properly blessed one at almost any temple for a donation of treasure or act of penance (world-building element from a setting I have lounging around somewhere).

* After the 'one attempt per round' build was vetoed I didn't even try the one who did it in Time Rank -5.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

It's not about denying players power - or agency. It's about removing the automatic 'oh, I have my 45.000 gold, I'll pop down to Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe for my Holy Avenger I've been saving for!' In my games, that's never going to happen.

I've played the occasional rocket tag game, and it's a lot of fun, I have no objection to it, even if it fails to hold my attention for very long. And not saying that item creation automatically leads to rocket tag either - just I've seen that happen, on occasion.

In DnD, something as basic as scrolls and potions can destroy game balance. It's just a question of where you want that balance to be. The truth hides somewhere in the space between 'no, mages are meant to have all their spells available at all times forever with no restrictions' and 'you can cast 3 first level spells, and 1 second level spell per day.'

Personally, I find all the attempts to enforce "magic items are super rare and valuable and can't be purchased for any amount of gold because reasons, but NPCs will buy them off you just fine because more reasons" and similar to be much more immersion-breaking than any kind of magic item shop. There's a market for super-yachts and private jets for the super-rich in the real world, after all, and neither of those can even teleport or turn invisible!

Also, note that the "shop o' endless magic items" idea is just anti-buying-items hyperbole; no edition ever says that any sort of magic item Wal-Mart exists, just that magic items can be bought and sold at all and gives guidelines as to where one might do so. The idea is much more reasonable and thematic if you assume, as I do, that you can pick up potions at the local apothecary, buy scrolls from the local wizards' guild, commission a magic sword from the temple of the local god of crafting, and so forth rather than getting everything in a one-stop shop.

If players being able to buy or create potions and scrolls is a game balance issue, the problem there is with the potions and scrolls, not with buying items or item creation. After all, if having 10 scrolls of teleport or whatever is game-breaking then it doesn't matter whether they were bought, crafted, placed in a module treasure hoard, or rolled up by the DM, the PCs still ended up with them and the problem is the same. Much better to change or restrict the "broken" items in that case than prevent the PCs from accessing them proactively.

[Kaptin Keen]

Personally, I find all the attempts to enforce "magic items are super rare and valuable and can't be purchased for any amount of gold because reasons, but NPCs will buy them off you just fine because more reasons" and similar to be much more immersion-breaking than any kind of magic item shop. There's a market for super-yachts and private jets for the super-rich in the real world, after all, and neither of those can even teleport or turn invisible!

Also, note that the "shop o' endless magic items" idea is just anti-buying-items hyperbole; no edition ever says that any sort of magic item Wal-Mart exists, just that magic items can be bought and sold at all and gives guidelines as to where one might do so. The idea is much more reasonable and thematic if you assume, as I do, that you can pick up potions at the local apothecary, buy scrolls from the local wizards' guild, commission a magic sword from the temple of the local god of crafting, and so forth rather than getting everything in a one-stop shop.

If players being able to buy or create potions and scrolls is a game balance issue, the problem there is with the potions and scrolls, not with buying items or item creation. After all, if having 10 scrolls of teleport or whatever is game-breaking then it doesn't matter whether they were bought, crafted, placed in a module treasure hoard, or rolled up by the DM, the PCs still ended up with them and the problem is the same. Much better to change or restrict the "broken" items in that case than prevent the PCs from accessing them proactively.

Um, well - I didn't mention immersion. Or market economy. I didn't claim any edition ever presented it's economy as anything like a magic item wallmart. But you're inaccurate assumptions aside, I see your point. I'm just not sure you see mine?

It's not about any of that. It's about taste. You like a californian cabernet, and I like an italian barolo. And neither is wrong, or right, or inherently better than the other.

Now, what it is about is creating a magical story. And a magical story is different things to different people. To me, nothing is less magical than a magic item convenience store. Most certainly, if anything is less magical than a magic item convenience store, it's crafting magical items like they're goddamned muffins.

But I'm not saying that's the right way, or the only way - just that it's my way. Also, as I stated at the outset: This is the counter point. And I feel it should be mentioned, for the sake of completeness.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Um, well - I didn't mention immersion. Or market economy. I didn't claim any edition ever presented it's economy as anything like a magic item wallmart. But you're inaccurate assumptions aside, I see your point. I'm just not sure you see mine?

It's not about any of that. It's about taste. You like a californian cabernet, and I like an italian barolo. And neither is wrong, or right, or inherently better than the other.

Now, what it is about is creating a magical story. And a magical story is different things to different people. To me, nothing is less magical than a magic item convenience store. Most certainly, if anything is less magical than a magic item convenience store, it's crafting magical items like they're goddamned muffins.

But I'm not saying that's the right way, or the only way - just that it's my way. Also, as I stated at the outset: This is the counter point. And I feel it should be mentioned, for the sake of completeness.

This gets into the realm of the threat about "is magic no longer magical", and I think that a world feels more magical if magic items are more common and more available.

Having magic and exploring how the world uses it is what gives the world a magical air and makes it fun and fantastic as opposed to just a generic medieval world with one party member who can break reality randomly.



As for item creation, I as the GM usually make the most use out of item creation systems. Players are happy to receive what I hand out to them.

[Kaptin Keen]

This gets into the realm of the threat about "is magic no longer magical", and I think that a world feels more magical if magic items are more common and more available.

Having magic and exploring how the world uses it is what gives the world a magical air and makes it fun and fantastic as opposed to just a generic medieval world with one party member who can break reality randomly.

As for item creation, I as the GM usually make the most use out of item creation systems. Players are happy to receive what I hand out to them.

Well ... clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes. But that discussion is a sharp right turn from the topic of item creation. Although item creation systems are a huge help in making magic into muffins, of course.

[Martin Greywolf]

There are two facets to this really, and one of them tells you why a generic system can't really handle it all that well.

Facet 1, Setting Options

Your setting dictates what you can or can't do. As an example, I have a character in Harry Potter setting, and I managed to replicate the Itachi of Naruto fame turning into a flock of ravens. This was only possible by a clever combination of in universe things: an enchanted item that uses conjuring to create a flock of ravens, triggered by my character's animagus transformation.

This sort of system is pretty good because it requires you to create interesting solutions to problems the exact same way your character does, there is no outside of game knowledge of +1 bonuses or anything of the sort. It's almost independent of system.

Some systems handle it better - FATE is generic enough to have no problem - but it is based almost entirely on agreement at the table, and what's worse, estimating how difficult or costly an item is is problematic. (The example above was managed by someone in his 6th year fairly easily, but it was for a joke, how better to respond to a prank war challenge than with "Foolish little otoutou")

Facet 2, Systems Blanace

Second facet is system-specific. The issue here is that, should you have a sword of better swording, you need to translate it into mechanics somehow, and having a thorough grasp of probability is needed to understand what that +1 really means. And no, it's not 5% more likely to hit in DnD 3.5, it's a lot more complicated than that. Demanding your DMs and players to understand it is... kind of too much, so rules exist to give you an idea of what numbers are appropriate for what levels, especially when related to monsters you will be fighting.

Problem is, this gives you hard lmimits that are often arbitrary, and while the designers are hopefully better at design than you, they aren't better than all of us, so odds are they overlooked something, and broken combos are possible, especially in splatbook-rich environment.

Conclusion

Probably the best approach is to combine both, use the mechanical item creation as guidelines, especially when considering what an ability is mechanically worth, but don't get too bogged down in it.

Ideally, you'd come up with an interesting way to combine it with in-universe system, which brings us to the original question. A recommendation for good item creation ruleset.

Contestant one, FATE

Sadly, you can't cannibalize it easily, FATE has something called FATE fractal, which to put it simply means you can use the same ruleset to describge everything - PCs, nations, items. So an item can have skill, FATE's equivalent to HP and so on. This also gives you a good gauge to tell how powerful an item is, because it's essentially an NPC (that may or may not act on its own).

Contestant two, Items of Legacy

Splatbook for DnD 3.5, the idea is that if an item was used for something important, it gets magic on its own, affected by what exactly it was used for. It gets more powerful as you go along, and you need to learn its history in more depth to unlock its powers. Some mechanics are a tad too feat-tax-heavy, but it's an easy thing to fix, and it keeps magic items more magical, even if there is more of them, because everyone has its own story you need to uncover.

[NigelWalmsley]

Well ... clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes.

That's just not true. Avatar isn't "less magical" than The First Law. If anything, it's more magical precisely because magic is more common. Really, which setting feels more fantastical: one where your next door neighbor might be a spirit, or one where there's a guy you've never met who is a wizard?

[Quertus]

Well ... clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes. But that discussion is a sharp right turn from the topic of item creation. Although item creation systems are a huge help in making magic into muffins, of course.

If I walked out my front door, and found that my neighbors had a flying carpet parked in their garage, had polymorphed their dog into a Dragon with a Wand/Potion, were wearing Bracers of Gardening +4 and a Hat of Endless Shade while using Flaming Frost Shock Dancing clippers… I think that that would make the world *more* magical than the 0 magical items I perceived them using yesterday.

As far as "muffins" go - have you looked at 2e item creation? For an example…

Once upon a time, a party of PCs were all abducted from their individual home worlds. My character, Armus, collected soil samples from everyone's boots, and got a GP (from their home realms) from each PC. As he adventured, Armus collected various components he thought might be useful, including sand from a moving island, an Angel's hair, Dragon scales, and a shard of… something let's pretend is analogous to a TARDIS.

Eventually, I presented Armus' recipe to the GM. It involved creating red glass from the sand and gold, imbedding the Angel's hair, using the TARDIS shard to etch runes for each destination, making a paste of powdered Dragon scales and Archmagi blood & combining it with the corresponding soil sample to "paint" each world rune. Or something like that. This was… quite some time ago.

The end result was a custom, "not so cubic" Cubic Gate, keyed to 10 different prime material worlds.

Does that sound like a muffin to you?

[Kaptin Keen]

Allow me to reply thusly:

If I walked out my front door, and found that my neighbors had a flying carpet parked in their garage, had polymorphed their dog into a Dragon with a Wand/Potion, were wearing Bracers of Gardening +4 and a Hat of Endless Shade while using Flaming Frost Shock Dancing clippers… I think that that would make the world *more* magical than the 0 magical items I perceived them using yesterday.

Muffins. Common as muck, not magical. It's no more magical than a powertool or a dishwasher. 100 years ago, we had neither. Did the world become magical with their advent? No - it got more muffins.

Once upon a time, a party of PCs were all abducted from their individual home worlds. My character, Armus, collected soil samples from everyone's boots, and got a GP (from their home realms) from each PC. As he adventured, Armus collected various components he thought might be useful, including sand from a moving island, an Angel's hair, Dragon scales, and a shard of… something let's pretend is analogous to a TARDIS.

Eventually, I presented Armus' recipe to the GM. It involved creating red glass from the sand and gold, imbedding the Angel's hair, using the TARDIS shard to etch runes for each destination, making a paste of powdered Dragon scales and Archmagi blood & combining it with the corresponding soil sample to "paint" each world rune. Or something like that. This was… quite some time ago.

The end result was a custom, "not so cubic" Cubic Gate, keyed to 10 different prime material worlds.

Does that sound like a muffin to you?

Not a muffin.

You seem to have missed the point where I stated that magic, in my games, relies on story - and little else. No gold, not necessarily any work or checks. Just story. So were you playing a game of mine, your cubic gate might very well be an acceptable item.

Look. Magic is not the act of casting a fireball. Magic is the act of doing something extraordinary. Any time - the very instant - it's no longer extraordinary, it also ceases to be magical. Instead, it's just convenience.

We are so off track in terms of the topic of item creation.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Um, well - I didn't mention immersion. Or market economy. I didn't claim any edition ever presented it's economy as anything like a magic item wallmart. But you're inaccurate assumptions aside, I see your point. I'm just not sure you see mine?

I do see yours. The bit about immersion was responding directly to your point about getting a magic item for a song or a favor being somehow better than getting it for gold pieces. "Magic items are so rare and valuable they're only swapped for other items or intangibles, not mere gold" is a common trope, and that conceit makes very little sense in-setting when item creation is possible at all. D&D magic items are well below private-jet-and-super-yacht territory, and they all have their price. It can make sense for un-creatable and irreplaceable items like artifacts, maybe, but even then a bunch of minor artifacts like the talisman of Al'Akbar or hammer of thunderbolts could easily have a price put on them 'cause they're really not all that impressive.

And you did at least invoke a "magic Wal-Mart" setup with the Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe bit, which is again a tired trope and, as you say yourself, isn't actually how any edition handles buying or selling items.

Look. Magic is not the act of casting a fireball. Magic is the act of doing something extraordinary. Any time - the very instant - it's no longer extraordinary, it also ceases to be magical. Instead, it's just convenience.

We are so off track in terms of the topic of item creation.

"Magic" in the sense you're talking about has two meanings, as far as fantasy RPGs go. You have things that are extraordinary relative to the in-game reality and things that are extraordinary relative to the real world but mundane relative to the in-game reality, and either or both can be labeled as "magic" depending on how you want to flavor things. For instance, the Hulk is the first kind of magical in the MCU because "can tank artillery shots with his manly chest" is something that needs superpowers to justify, while high-level fighters and barbarians are the second kind of magical in D&D because "can fall from orbit and walk it off" is a thing that just happens when you reach a certain level.

Dragons and fireballs and +1 swords are magical in the latter sense, mundane in-setting despite their magical flavor, and in D&D that kind of magic is not and cannot be magical in the former sense; it's immediately rendered pedestrian by the very fact that every group of PCs ends up half magic-users or thereabouts and every monster you face past the low levels is magical to some degree. You might as well complain that interplanetary starships aren't extraordinary in Star Wars when part of the setting conceit is that they're so common and easy to pilot that a 16-year-old can buy a used one with his allowance.

And that's very relevant to the topic of item creation, because when you're talking about what makes the "best" item creation system, what's "best" for each type of magic is very different. In LotR, Sting is a legendary weapon with unique powers and centuries of history, and in D&D it's a +1 orc-bane short sword, and the kind of system you want to use to create the exact same item is going to vary dramatically based on which setting you're talking about. A system that requires you to jump through hoops and go on three different story sidequests to craft a basic magic weapon that every fighter will want in their repertoire is completely inappropriate for D&D, and a system that lets you hand Celebrimbor a watermelon-sized chunk of gold and get a magic sword back two days later is completely inappropriate for LotR.

[Kaptin Keen]

I do see yours. The bit about immersion was responding directly to your point about getting a magic item for a song or a favor being somehow better than getting it for gold pieces. "Magic items are so rare and valuable they're only swapped for other items or intangibles, not mere gold" is a common trope, and that conceit makes very little sense in-setting when item creation is possible at all. D&D magic items are well below private-jet-and-super-yacht territory, and they all have their price. It can make sense for un-creatable and irreplaceable items like artifacts, maybe, but even then a bunch of minor artifacts like the talisman of Al'Akbar or hammer of thunderbolts could easily have a price put on them 'cause they're really not all that impressive.

And you did at least invoke a "magic Wal-Mart" setup with the Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe bit, which is again a tired trope and, as you say yourself, isn't actually how any edition handles buying or selling items.

I'm not saying immersion isn't part of the issue, but it's not the point I'm after. I'm a notoriously un-immersed player, a problem-solver and meta-gamer of the worst type. So I'm not likely to hit others over the head with the immersion hammer.

The value and common-ness of magic items is up to the GM. Since any magic item is uncreatable (at least in the traditional sense - and excluding potions and scrolls), it does make sense. Also, keep in mind that the average income is something like ... a silverpiece a week. Making the yearly income of Joe the Commoner 52 silver a year (with living expenses propably around 40-50 silver), placing even the most mundane longsword +1 pretty squarely in the Private Space Yacht territory.

And yea - Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe does invoke market economy, though I intended it simply to show how anything you can trade in bulk is about as magical and special as .. muffins. It's the yawing gulf between The Maiden holding aloft Excalibur in the lake .. and buying a 3-for-the-price-of-2 special on detergent at Walmart. I aim for the former.

But I doubt you'll find any place I'm saying one is better than the other. I have my preference, sure. But I'm not trying to tell anyone they're doing it wrong. Only different.

"Magic" in the sense you're talking about has two meanings, as far as fantasy RPGs go. You have things that are extraordinary relative to the in-game reality and things that are extraordinary relative to the real world but mundane relative to the in-game reality, and either or both can be labeled as "magic" depending on how you want to flavor things. For instance, the Hulk is the first kind of magical in the MCU because "can tank artillery shots with his manly chest" is something that needs superpowers to justify, while high-level fighters and barbarians are the second kind of magical in D&D because "can fall from orbit and walk it off" is a thing that just happens when you reach a certain level.

Dragons and fireballs and +1 swords are magical in the latter sense, mundane in-setting despite their magical flavor, and in D&D that kind of magic is not and cannot be magical in the former sense; it's immediately rendered pedestrian by the very fact that every group of PCs ends up half magic-users or thereabouts and every monster you face past the low levels is magical to some degree. You might as well complain that interplanetary starships aren't extraordinary in Star Wars when part of the setting conceit is that they're so common and easy to pilot that a 16-year-old can buy a used one with his allowance.

And that's very relevant to the topic of item creation, because when you're talking about what makes the "best" item creation system, what's "best" for each type of magic is very different. In LotR, Sting is a legendary weapon with unique powers and centuries of history, and in D&D it's a +1 orc-bane short sword, and the kind of system you want to use to create the exact same item is going to vary dramatically based on which setting you're talking about. A system that requires you to jump through hoops and go on three different story sidequests to craft a basic magic weapon that every fighter will want in their repertoire is completely inappropriate for D&D, and a system that lets you hand Celebrimbor a watermelon-sized chunk of gold and get a magic sword back two days later is completely inappropriate for LotR.

See - this I disagree completely with.

If you're playing with me as your GM ... there is only one +1 orc-bane sword. You will never - ever - see a dublicate of any magic item. And I play 3.5 D&D almost exclusively (although not by choice). Oh, and DH.

But I do discard most of the D&D assumptions out of hand. There's that. No monster I run is ever as presented in the MM - and mostly I don't run monsters anyone else came up with, I make my own.

[ExLibrisMortis]

See - this I disagree completely with. [...]
But I do discard most of the D&D assumptions out of hand.

I think you're disagreeing with PairO'Dice based on different uses of "D&D". We might safely say that you're not playing "D&D--the setting" (since you explicitly reject some of its core assumptions that POD is talking about), though you are using "D&D--the system version 3.5".

I think you're also using a bit of a narrow definition of "magic". It seems that for you, magic must be extraordinary, unrepeatable, even in-universe--basically, magic must be miraculous as well as magical. Generally speaking, that is not required for something to be "magic". Magic rituals are a reliable way to do things*, and they are common as dirt, historically speaking. For example, warding your house by placing a horseshoe on the door is something that just works. It's a commonly accepted technique, people know that it works, and many people will even know why it works. Requiring that magic be miraculous is a pretty specific restriction on magic. Which, I should stress, I have no problems with whatsoever, but it is worth bearing in mind that your statement "clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes" is not the default.

*We may not agree that there's cause or proof to believe this, but the people who perform(ed) these rituals certainly do (did).

[InvisibleBison]

Also, keep in mind that the average income is something like ... a silverpiece a week

Not if you're playing 3.5 it isn't. There's nothing stopping average people from using the Profession skill, which means that your typical human farmer is going to have an annual income somewhere between 260 and 442 gp.

[Kaptin Keen]

I think you're disagreeing with PairO'Dice based on different uses of "D&D". We might safely say that you're not playing "D&D--the setting" (since you explicitly reject some of its core assumptions that POD is talking about), though you are using "D&D--the system version 3.5".

I think you're also using a bit of a narrow definition of "magic". It seems that for you, magic must be extraordinary, unrepeatable, even in-universe--basically, magic must be miraculous as well as magical. Generally speaking, that is not required for something to be "magic". Magic rituals are a reliable way to do things*, and they are common as dirt, historically speaking. For example, warding your house by placing a horseshoe on the door is something that just works. It's a commonly accepted technique, people know that it works, and many people will even know why it works. Requiring that magic be miraculous is a pretty specific restriction on magic. Which, I should stress, I have no problems with whatsoever, but it is worth bearing in mind that your statement "clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes" is not the default.

*We may not agree that there's cause or proof to believe this, but the people who perform(ed) these rituals certainly do (did).

I still 100% disagree.

We do many many things that are entirely mundane, and do nothing. Hanging horseshoes, blowing on dice, knocking on wood, hanging dreamcatchers, throwing salt over our shoulders. There are non-magical things we do for non-magical reasons, we all know they don't do any damned thing - but we do them regardless. It's like a pacifier (except babies might actually think milk may eventually come out of them - I dunno, my baby isn't answering questions).

If you want a definition of magic - and I'm still not going into semantics - it's when you do something, anything, that really shouldn't be possible, but you do it anyways. That's magic. Whether reading minds, casting fireballs, speaking with the dead. No matter.

Now, in D&D, magic is not impossible. Magic is like electricity: If you know how to use it, it's basically as common as muck. A fireball is essentially no more magical than a hand radio or a remote control.

That's ... the system. That's 3.5. Or you know, any of the others.

I don't want that. So in my games, there are certain things you can rely on. There are very few characters with class levels. There are no dublicate magic items. You will never fight the same monster twice. And some other things, less relevant to our discussion here - you cannot play elves or dwarves, and they're nothing like the PHB races - there are strictly no dragons ... and so on.

For having less magic, my world is more magical. And by giving a lot less direct player control - player characters are substantially more powerful. Although it's generally a problem for me to convey that fact: If you have three levels of fighter, and a bit of magical gear, five of the King's Men aren't much of a challenge to you.

[ExLibrisMortis]

If you want a definition of magic - and I'm still not going into semantics - it's when you do something, anything, that really shouldn't be possible, but you do it anyways. That's magic. Whether reading minds, casting fireballs, speaking with the dead. No matter.

Sorry, you're involved in semantics already . But it's a useful to clarify what words mean, so don't despair.

We do many many things that are entirely mundane, and do nothing. Hanging horseshoes, blowing on dice, knocking on wood, hanging dreamcatchers, throwing salt over our shoulders. There are non-magical things we do for non-magical reasons, we all know they don't do any damned thing - but we do them regardless. It's like a pacifier (except babies might actually think milk may eventually come out of them - I dunno, my baby isn't answering questions).

That doesn't change my point. For the purpose of our discussion (which is about the meaning of the word), magic is something that works, not because there's an objective physical reality that confirms it (we don't need to refer to any external reality, objective or not, because we're talking about the meaning of the word, not the reality of the referent), but because people treat it as such. It's a technology--it gets used, taught, people get it wrong, and so on. A magical ritual is a reliable way to get something supernatural done, and that has been the general use for millenia (literally--the word can be traced back to Old Persian, with very little change to its general meaning (though exact practice varied quite a bit, I imagine)). Magic is not "something that really shouldn't be possible"--generally speaking, people don't assume that one-off exceptions to natural laws are a thing. If it worked once, it'll work again, as long as you follow the exact same ritual steps, say the exact same words, and so on. This ancient concept (tradition, cultural quirk, whatever) is what D&D magic--and typical fantasy magic in general--is based on.

Again, I don't have a problem with your setting and the supernatural events that occur in it. I am, however, disagreeing with your assumption that magic is "obviously" rare, unique, non-reproducible, and so on. That's a very non-standard approach to magic, and if you're saying that D&D magic is not "magical" because of it, you're misunderstanding how the word gets used. I suggest using "miracles" for what you call "magic" instead.

[Tvtyrant]

Sorry, you're involved in semantics already . But it's a useful to clarify what words mean, so don't despair.


That doesn't change my point. For the purpose of our discussion (which is about the meaning of the word), magic is something that works, not because there's an objective physical reality that confirms it (we don't need to refer to any external reality, objective or not, because we're talking about the meaning of the word, not the reality of the referent), but because people treat it as such. It's a technology--it gets used, taught, people get it wrong, and so on. A magical ritual is a reliable way to get something supernatural done, and that has been the general use for millenia (literally--the word can be traced back to Old Persian, with very little change to its general meaning (though exact practice varied quite a bit, I imagine)). Magic is not "something that really shouldn't be possible"--generally speaking, people don't assume that one-off exceptions to natural laws are a thing. If it worked once, it'll work again, as long as you follow the exact same ritual steps, say the exact same words, and so on. This ancient concept (tradition, cultural quirk, whatever) is what D&D magic--and typical fantasy magic in general--is based on.

Again, I don't have a problem with your setting and the supernatural events that occur in it. I am, however, disagreeing with your assumption that magic is "obviously" rare, unique, non-reproducible, and so on. That's a very non-standard approach to magic, and if you're saying that D&D magic is not "magical" because of it, you're misunderstanding how the word gets used. I suggest using "miracles" for what you call "magic" instead.

I don't think I agree here. It is about as common as magic being standardized science. Magic as a kind of art vs. magic as a science are both fairly common approaches to the genre.

[Elbeyon]

I like apocalypse world style crafting

Choose which of the following your workspace includes. Choose 3: a garage, a darkroom, a controlled growing environment, skilled labor (Carna, Thuy, Pamming, eg), a junkyard of raw materials, a truck or van, weird-ass electronica, machining tools, transmitters & receivers, a proving range, a relic of the golden age past, booby traps.

When you go into your workspace and dedicate yourself to making a thing, or to getting to the bottom of some ****, decide what and tell the MC. The MC will tell you “sure, no problem, but…” and then 1 to 4 of the following:

• It’s going to take hours/days/weeks/months of work.
• First you’ll have to get/build/fix/figure out —— .
• You’re going to need —— to help you with it.
• It’s going to cost you a ****ton of jingle.
• Thee best you’ll be able to do is a crap version, weak and unreliable.
• It’s going to mean exposing yourself (plus colleagues) to serious danger.
• You’re going to have to add —— to your workplace first.
• It’s going to take several/dozens/hundreds of tries.
• You’re going to have to take —— apart to do it.

The MC might connect them all with “and,” or might throw in a merciful “or.”
Once you’ve accomplished the necessaries, you can go ahead and accomplish the thing itself. The MC will stat it up, or spill, or whatever it calls for.

[Tyrrell]

I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

It sounds like you're looking for something different to drop in to your D&D campaign. Is that right? Because as far as your question, which item creation system is the best, my suggestions would be impractical to use for D&D.

I believe the best item creation system (IMO) is in Ars Magica 5. This is because creating an enchanted device in that game takes into account the creator's understanding of the specific magical arts for the effect that they're trying to enchant, it takes into account the creator's understanding of fundamental magic theory, it incorporates their relevant virtues and flaws, it works in the aura of the location where the device is created and the virtues and flaws of the laboratory where the work is done. The commonly used (and cool) concept of a specific object or phenomena that you need to acquire in order to craft your device is flipped on its head, rather than saying I need to gather the eyes of storm eagle to enchant my crystal ball, characters end up in the situation where they're asking , we've got the eyes of a storm eagle, what should we make from them?. It's really flexible, but not so flexible as Hero system where you say I'm dumping these points into an obvious accessible focus - it has less flexibility because it demands that the player use their character to provide the tools to make the item, the crafted item is an outgrowth of the character.

Although it's a different conversation I believe that the best magical items are in exalted 3rd edition.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I don't think I agree here. It is about as common as magic being standardized science. Magic as a kind of art vs. magic as a science are both fairly common approaches to the genre.

"Art" and "science" aren't two totally different ways of doing things. As anyone who went to art school will tell you, there's a lot of set techniques to learn, even if you're very creative. As any scientist will tell you, coming up with the right experiments requires a great deal of creativity, even if you understand a lot of theory. The difference between the two is more a matter of function/goal than a fundamentally different approach.

Now, I understand that when people say "it's more art than science" they're basically saying there doesn't seem to be a good way to figure out what works and what doesn't, but there's still people who are just "better" at it, implying that there's something to be figured out, even if it's only understood to a limited degree or even just subconsciously. It's a matter of incomplete knowledge of how magic works, not a matter of fundamental limits on the understanding of magic.

[Kaptin Keen]

Sorry, you're involved in semantics already . But it's a useful to clarify what words mean, so don't despair.


That doesn't change my point. For the purpose of our discussion (which is about the meaning of the word), magic is something that works, not because there's an objective physical reality that confirms it (we don't need to refer to any external reality, objective or not, because we're talking about the meaning of the word, not the reality of the referent), but because people treat it as such. It's a technology--it gets used, taught, people get it wrong, and so on. A magical ritual is a reliable way to get something supernatural done, and that has been the general use for millenia (literally--the word can be traced back to Old Persian, with very little change to its general meaning (though exact practice varied quite a bit, I imagine)). Magic is not "something that really shouldn't be possible"--generally speaking, people don't assume that one-off exceptions to natural laws are a thing. If it worked once, it'll work again, as long as you follow the exact same ritual steps, say the exact same words, and so on. This ancient concept (tradition, cultural quirk, whatever) is what D&D magic--and typical fantasy magic in general--is based on.

Again, I don't have a problem with your setting and the supernatural events that occur in it. I am, however, disagreeing with your assumption that magic is "obviously" rare, unique, non-reproducible, and so on. That's a very non-standard approach to magic, and if you're saying that D&D magic is not "magical" because of it, you're misunderstanding how the word gets used. I suggest using "miracles" for what you call "magic" instead.

Well. We could go around the block once more on this, but it seems pointless. You define magic as 'a thing that gets a thing done' and I define it as 'something extraordinary'.

My point is: A rainbow is magical. A thousand rainbows are meh.

You point is: A rainbow is magica. A thousand rainbows are a thousand rainbows. They are all magical.

I don't think there's a reason to debate that any further.

And I appologise if you don't feel I hit the nail on the head with the rainbow thing. It just feels like a somewhat humorous way of describing the difference in our points of view.