Make it a +5 weapon. CL required: 15, DC 20, +5 for lacking the level, to a total DC of 25, easy to achieve at level 5 when you get Craft weapon and armor: take 10, class skill +3, 1 skill/level +5, +2 (or more) from intelligence of 14+ and crafter fortune +5 = 25.
[Edit: as Gauss pointed out, you need to use Craft weapon for this to work, but you can add a +2 for masterwork tools too that way).
25,315 gp to craft the weapon. Pricey for a 5th level character, so at that level you "only" make a +3 weapon, you need to wait till level 8 for your +5 (or equivalent) weapon, if you follow WBL.
In the meantime you can enjoy your +3 weapon,+3 armor, +3 shield and so on.
Actually have been composing some thoughts on this for a while but there was a sudden surge in other replies so don't want to let this get too far backlogged. Going to break it up into multiple posts to give the illusion that this wasn't one long post broken up into chapters and to clue you in when to decompress and exhale.
Quote:
25,315 gp to craft the weapon. Pricey for a 5th level character, so at that level you "only" make a +3 weapon, you need to wait till level 8 for your +5 (or equivalent) weapon, if you follow WBL.
I admit I may have missed a WBL increase aside from the +25% fair crafting increase which I apply myself but still that amount you are listing seems a bit high. I also have to say that all that downtime profit stuff kinda confused me a bit too, especially since I think we can work off of your example in a way that is less prone to be viewed as...an extreme way of getting it done.
Trying to respect Rynjin's views, for example, on keeping close to a 1/2 WBL per level guideline (with a fair +25% crafting adjustment) for figuring what amount a character can spend on gear, I will also go with the assumption that while the WBL acknowledges that a PC shouldn't have a single gear item above half WBL (because it screws up encounters), it does not actually say you should take away an item fairly earned or crafted, only that you shouldn't give it to them and if they do somehow get out of balance that you may have to give lower rewards. Obviously any GM can just 'take away' an object, especially if it's unbalanced, but to do that... you have to admit it's unbalanced.
For your 5th-level crafter, I would say that at 5th-level it's an adjusted WBL of 13,125, or a reasonable expectation that you can gather about 6,562 gold pieces to fund a project somewhere across that level (be that only once across the entire length of the level at arbitrary periods depending on how long someone spends within the level).
This means you couldn't make a +3 weapon, because it would be 9,000 gold pieces (I am purposefully neglecting the physical item costs, such as for a MW weapon because it makes the numbers easier to read I don't think anyone will disagree that a MW is easily within the procurement range of even a 2nd-level character.)
At best, with these guidelines, you could craft a +2 weapon, cost 4,000, well within the WBL range anyone here would agree is reasonable at 5th-level and which at 6th-level it would be valid to outright purchase.
Having said that, I have some points to make.
1) You are not actually creating a +5 weapon right now. Your DC is much lower. It is only CL 6 (that being 3 times the +2 bonus). So your base is actually 5 + 6 = DC 11.
2) Even though this hugely lowers the Caster Level requirement, as a magic weapon it still counts as a requirement, and you don't meet it at 5th, so +5 DC. Your final Craft DC to make the item is DC 16. If you want to wait one level it will be DC 11.
3) Your +2 weapon will cost you 4,000 gp, and 8 days to craft, requiring a DC 16 check, which I believe you cannot fail.
4) I believe that you could still add +5 to halve crafting time bringing it to a 21 DC after 4 days of crafting, which you are also unlikely to fail. 5 ranks + 3 class skill + 2 MW tools = 10, not counting Int bonus yet, which will be higher than one.
You now have a +2 weapon which took what anyone could say to be 'pretty much no appreciable time'. That's fine, a +2 weapon at 5th is close enough to 6th that it isn't unbalanced.
You take your weapon, do whatever you do with it, either use it yourself or have a more martial character use it, either way it aids the party. It still counts against your WBL technically, just because the best use of your crafted gear is in someone else's hands, it's still yours not his. The GM won't restrict his chance to find a sword or treasure of his own just because he's borrowing yours. This is fine.
<cont.>
During 6th-level, not necessarily right at the beginning, you begin enchanting your sword to +3. Your adjusted WBL at 6th is 20,000 gold pieces. Half of that, indicating a reasonable amount of liquid currency you will have at some point is 10,000 gold. A +3 enchanted weapon is 18,000 gold. The cost to craft one is 9,000 gold.
1) 9,000 is below half the WBL level, you will have the funds to do this during your level, reasonably, before you reach 7th.
2) A 6th-level PC otherwise cannot acquire a +3 weapon (barring finding it in a treasure horde, which if we treat this as a hard untouchable limit) will never happen because it costs 18,000 gold, which is more than their total WBL (16,000) to buy. Even if we gave them the same +25% fair adjusted value to account for a character having a crafting feat (20,000), as is suggested. They will not have access to a +3 weapon because buying it is still over half their WBL.
3) It's important to note that your cost is NOT actually 9,000 gold pieces to craft this +3 item. It is the difference between +2 and +3 which is only 10,000 gold. So you only need to actually gather 5,000 gold to perform this task. That is is not hard to reach it's only one-quarter of your expected WBL for that entire level.
4) Craft DC is Base 5 + 9 (3x bonus) +5 (you aren't CL 9) = DC 21. Taking 10: 10 + 7 ranks + 3 class skill + 2 MW tools + 2 Int (at least = 24.
5) You pay 5,000 and spend 10 days. You could cut it down to 5 days by attempting a DC 26 check, which may or may not be automatic depending on variables like whether you have a higher than +2 Int modifier, a racial bonus (gnome),. a skill bonus that isn't circumstance (wouldn't stack with MW tools), etc. For purposes of this, I will assume you do not unless it is an automatic success, so I will say you take 10 days (but maybe only 5)
Ten days is not a long down time. In order to keep things focused, I will address the issue of time elsewhere. DO NOT assume I am ignoring it or not addressing it. Trust me, I had it in here, right here, but want to keep this particular stream flowing so I'm sliding it down the list.
During 6th-level, not necessarily right at the beginning, you begin enchanting your sword to +3. Your adjusted WBL at 6th is 20,000 gold pieces. Half of that, indicating a reasonable amount of liquid currency you will have at some point is 10,000 gold. A +3 enchanted weapon is 18,000 gold. The cost to craft one is 9,000 gold.
1) 9,000 is below half the WBL level, you will have the funds to do this during your level, reasonably, before you reach 7th.
Yes, that's a reasonable thing to do. Making a +3 weapon at 6th level is absolutely possible. For a non-crafter, the 9000 gold can be spent on a +2 weapon and some minor magic item like a Cloak of Protection +1.
End result:
One character has +3 damage, +3 to hit and can bypass certain damage reductions.
The other character has +2 damage, +2 to hit, +1 to saves and a free feat.
Seems reasonable in my book.
EDIT: And for the example of 5th level, the other character would have a +1 sword, a +1 CoP and 1000 gp in other stuff available.
[cont.>
By 7th-level, your adjusted WBL is 29,375 gp. Half of that is 14,687 gp.
A +4 weapon is 32,000 gold, crafting cost is 16,000. Now, here's were personal GM calls come in. I know some will say they wouldn't let this happen by ruling it, but you will have to trust that some will.
Because you're only upgrading, the actual cost of the item that he is required to pay, is only the difference between +3 and +4. The difference is 14,000 gold (or 7,000 gp to craft.)
By WBL, you will have the required gold coming in at 7th level to craft a +4 weapon (technically upgrade from +3 to +4). Another 7th-level character expected to receive or purchase this item has a price valuation 32,000. Even if they are granted the same craft adjustment to WBL it won't be until Level 10 (77,500 gold) that it will be below half their WBL.
Even if at this point the DM disallows that the difference cost is valid and that the upgrade cost is too high, you've only stalled out for one level. You still have a +3 weapon at 7th-level, which based on the WBL charts a 'normal' character does not have a chance to receive until 9th level. 9th-level would also be the earliest a person could craft a +3 if CL was not ignorable. Coincidence? It must be.
So instead you spend this level upgrading your armor and other gear. I could press on to +5.
We could remove the +25% fair crafting adjustment which we've been using or say that because the crafter's gear shoots over the halfway point of their WBL rating in total that the item is illegal. Actually, it just says you then adjust treasure downward for them.
This sounds like an easy fix, until you realize that there are other players who you specifically instructed not to penalize for a crafting character's WBL, and it frowns on lowering WBL for crafter characters based on the fact that they are actually using their feat.
Quote:
Some GMs might be tempted to reduce the amount or value of the treasure you acquire to offset this and keep your overall wealth in line with the Character Wealth by Level table. Unfortunately, that has the net result of negating the main benefit of crafting magic items—in effect negating your choice of a feat.
You can certainly do if you find it unbalancing.
If you put a bag of 1,000 gold for the party, it's likely getting split 4 ways. If you were to even completely cut out that players share and say, leave a bag of 750 gold... it's still likely to get split 4 ways, your just punishing the others. Eventually you are going to have to agree that you are going to have to bring out the DM hammer (even if it's disguised as a 'social contract') and make a ruling for your game.
I admit the numbers might be off a bit, its way early here, but I am pretty sure that it will only shift by a one level difference.
1) you don't incant a masterwork piece of iron to a +3 sword in one go.
You enchant it as a +1 weapon: 2 days, 1.000 gp
Then you increase the +1 to a +2, 6 days, another 3.000 gp.
And then you spend another 12 days and 6.000 gp to make your +2 weapon into a +3 weapon.
Halve the time when you take the +5 to DC to increase craft speed.
2)
UCAmp wrote:
Adjusting Character Wealth by Level
You can take advantage of the item creation rules to hand-craft most or all of your magic items. Because you've spent gp equal to only half the price of these items, you could end up with more gear than what the Character Wealth by Level table suggests for you. This is especially the case if you're a new character starting above 1st level or one with the versatile Craft Wondrous Item feat. With these advantages, you can carefully craft optimized gear rather than acquiring GM-selected gear over the course of a campaign. For example, a newly created 4th-level character should have about 6,000 gp worth of gear, but you can craft up to 12,000 gp worth of gear with that much gold, all of it taking place before the character enters the campaign, making the time-cost of crafting irrelevant.
Some GMs might be tempted to reduce the amount or value of the treasure you acquire to offset this and keep your overall wealth in line with the Character Wealth by Level table. Unfortunately, that has the net result of negating the main benefit of crafting magic items—in effect negating your choice of a feat. However, game balance for the default campaign experience expects you and all other PCs to be close to the listed wealth values, so the GM shouldn't just let you craft double the normal amount of gear. As a guideline, allowing a crafting PC to exceed the Character Wealth by Level guidelines by about 25% is fair, or even up to 50% if the PC has multiple crafting feats.
You know, it is in Ultimate Campaign, the same book from which the downtime rules come. How it is that one optional rule become mandatory, while another is rejected and unacceptable?
You can do what you want in your campaign, but if you are discussing rules, claiming that one of two equally valid optional rules should be enforced and the other rejecter as the default assumptions of the game seem a bit hypocritical.
In any instance, it is a guideline, like wealth by level.
And the WbL guideline say:
"Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value."
More "you can have table variations" that that is hard to find.
3) Ilja, you have created your scenario to debunk it. It seem a habit in this thread.
To reply to your scenario:
Ilja wrote:
Look, I agree that with a certain specific subset of campaign styles crafting can be overpowered, but right now we're to assume:
- That WBL is ignored
WBL is not a religion. WBL is about placing treasure in the game. Unless you play "railroad, the game on tracks" character can take any action they want to earn money. It can have consequences, but you really go around saying to the rogue: "No, you can't pickpocket the people in the town market." or refuse any of the hundred ways with which the characters can make money outside of adventuring?
The GM role is to make the game fun. Forcing the players to follow a foregone path rarely is fun.
You steer them back on track with finesse, not with walls.
Ilja wrote:
- That there's plenty of time
Define plenty of time. The UCam rules don't matter, only the CRB rules.
With those rules my 3th level wizard with craft wondrous items can sell most of the loot from the last adventure and, if it is a typical AP, he would have approximately 2.000 gp, the difference from his level 2 WBL and a level 3 character WBL.
Now he go and make a cloak +1. 500 gp and 1 days, plus an amulet of natural armor +1, 1.000 gp, 2 days. Still got 500 gp in cash and 4.000 gp in equipment.
Now I am level 4, I have got another 3.000 gp from the adventure. Total cash 3.500.
Very well, I enhance my cloak to +2, 1.500 gp and 3 days.
7.000 gp of equipment and 2.000 in cash.
I have spend 6 days working on my stuff, it is "plenty of time"?
My total WBL is 9.000 gp, 150% of what is expected at my level, will you take away the excess? How?
remove loot from the adventure? How do you do that without penalizing the other characters?
Ilja wrote:
- That large cities are rare enough that there's an issue checking a bunch of them
First, to have major items you need a large town.
I have some serious issue with using the middle ages north Europe settlement sizes as the reference for the a fantasy world cities size, but in Golarion large towns are rare.
A large town has 1d4 major items, let's say an average of 3.
Chance of finding a scroll as a major item 10%.
Chance of that scroll being a 9th level spell: 5%
9th level spells in the CRB 45. 2 of them are what you want: wish and miracle.
Chance of finding them 0.1*0.05*2/45=0,00022 or 0.022%
With 3 items in each large town you need to hit 1,500 large towns to find a scroll of wish or miracle on sale.
If you visit only metropolis you have a 1/500 chance of finding a wish or miracle scroll.
So, unless the GM decide to drop a wish scroll in your lap because you want it, the chances of finding one are pretty slim.
Ilja wrote:
- That the 43k crafting material for the sword is considered lots of little items rather than as one unit
The rules support you in that for armor, scrolls, potions, where the rules say: "The creator must have prepared the spell to be scribed (or must know the spell, in the case of a sorcerer or bard) and must provide any material component or focus the spell requires. A material component is consumed when she begins writing, but a focus is not. (A focus used in scribing a scroll can be reused.)",
but strangely not for weapons and wondrous items, where they say:
"If spells are involved in the prerequisites for making the weapon, the creator must have prepared the spells to be cast (or must know the spells, in the case of a sorcerer or bard) but need not provide any material components or focuses the spells require."
and
"If spells are involved in the prerequisites for making the item, the creator must have prepared the spells to be cast (or must know the spells, in the case of a sorcerer or bard) but need not provide any material components or focuses the spells require.
Weird difference. Maybe it need an errata.
You can still rule that the material needed to enchant an item is a single piece of "something" worth as much as it is required to make the item, but ti seem a bit arbitrary.
Ilja wrote:
- That the campaign has an issue with low-level character getting access to a single-wish Luckblade but no issues with them getting access to the +4 Belt of physical Might, +2 Sword, Boots of Haste and +2 Armor they could buy with the cash they spent getting a single wish.
And where you have got this? Pizza Lord has used the luck blade as an example, I have used a +3 sword at level 5.
The luck blade is an extreme example of what you can craft, but even starting with the normal cash and items you find in an adventure you can easily increase your earning by 50-70% using 1 feat, craft wondrous items.
The only way Time prevents a character from making something is if they would never have had a fair chance to make it. That's not to say that you allow no downtime but only if there was never enough cumulative downtime in the entire campaign from when he starts making it.
A +4 weapon takes 32 days to make. You think it's easy to make an item in 32 days? Here look, there's never 32 days of downtime between events anywhere in this module.:
It's not whether he can finish it all at once. If he only has 3 days before he's called to action. He puts his 3 days in. During the next downtime (and we're assuming he's wasn't able to put in half days' work. ie. the adventure takes him away from the workshop) he puts in a little more.
Assuming he doesn't cut the crafting time in half to make it even shorter, as long as the adventure has 32 days of downtime in it (or lasts 64 adventuring days if he can access a workshop), he can make the item.
It isn't necessarily that he needs all 32 days. By upgrading his gear, he only needs to use the difference in Time. As in the example used above, based on Diego Rossi's post, he only needs 8 days to get a +2 weapon. That's not hard, and really it's more likely he can do it four. It's not even that he's sitting around all the time crafting. He only spent 4 days of an entire level. The entire rest of that level is just like any other adventure. During his next level, he only needs 10 days (really only 5).
He's still got to finish making the item, so until he gets it done it doesn't help and he's at a disadvantage:
He's not at a disadvantage. You probably think along the lines that while he's crafting a +4 or +5 weapon, until he's finished, all these adventures and events that interrupt him are harder on him than anybody else because he hasn't finished crafting.
It's not "Day 32, *Poof!*' and suddenly he has a +4 weapon when before that he was down 32,000 in Wealth by Level. It was, 'I am turning this +3 weapon into a +4. It will take me 14 (or 7 days). If I get attacked or go adventuring, I just take this +3 weapon, which is still better gear than any one else has, do my business, and then back to enchanting.'
There's no rule (that I am yet aware of, I certainly have been wrong before) that says his weapon cannot be used while being upgraded. Clearly it slows the crafting since he's adventuring and it does put it at risk of being damaged or destroyed, but that threat is almost nonexistent with the coddle player rules nowadays (Sorry, completely different rant.) You could certainly house rule in enchanting rules about having to keep an item pure or some-such, but that's beyond the scope here.
Time is a good indicator of item power level because a character doesn't have time to make one until the item is just right.:
Sometimes when an item is being made, a character will not actually be able to finish it at that level. That might technically seem to have 'prevented' an X level character from being allowed to have that item, but it's not reliable. For one thing, the reason he didn't finish it at that level... is because he went up a level. The fact that he went up a level based on a certain amount of time during an adventure has nothing to do with the fact that he was creating an item that took 8 days or 80.
What you actually see in play is experience advancement based on how the campaign is designed to progress, (which is based on encounter frequency and challenge) not time. And basing the power of items in relation to level is a good idea. Time alone is not the real factor.
I was running an adventure and when the 'event section' was supposed to start which should have ended downtime, the PC just wanted to finish crafting and didn't go with the others.:
This doesn't necessarily mean that the PC is not participating or is just ignoring the adventure, only that players do have their own ideas and desires. Characters accomplishing personal goals and revealing motivations shows that they are whole individuals, not just a collection of stats or simply the character everyone describes as 'the party rage tank' because that's all they ever get to see him do.
I am not saying that it would be okay for a player to ignore a goblin army running through the streets. Only that what you necessarily think of as an event that should 'interrupt downtime' may not actually do so because they don't know everything you do.
"It's been nine days since you broke up the slavery ring and came back home to heal and clean up the damage from the attack. A note arrives from your friend, Gariputto. It asks you all to meet him at the church of St. Cuthbert after lunch."
You may know that this will lead to a merry chase through town with kidnappers and wagons and result in two days adventuring into a mine to save their friend. A player doesn't necessarily know this. His character could say, "It's been 9 days, I only need 8 hours more work. That's 4 until noon, then only 4 afterwards to finish this goal. I will stay here and complete this task, it doesn't take all 5 of us to find out the information. You guys meet him, come back with the information and we'll decide where to go from there."
This isn't him being obtuse or petulant or ignoring the adventure, just him reasonably making a character assumption based on how plot was laid out in previous games or that his character legitimately believes there's no reason to think anything will go wrong in the middle of town, at the Church of St. Cuthbert, in the middle of the day.
That is just how I view it based on what I observe. You don't have to agree with it. I just don't see it being an effective gauge or barrier in item power. Not without some other, more definitive way to do so.
And where you have got this? Pizza Lord has used the luck blade as an example, I have used a +3 sword at level 5.
The luck blade is an extreme example of what you can craft, but even starting with the normal cash and items you find in an adventure you can easily increase your earning by 50-70% using 1 feat, craft wondrous items.
Indeed, Luckblade was my example, and while keeping it within the WBL at 'any level really' just based on the sheer material component cost is a factor. That only for people that feel the gold or time is an insurmountable power barrier.
The fact that it could be crafted and with pretty much no chance of failing right out of the gate is not even the issue.
For testing purposes though, it does look to be a poor example, though truthfully it is also one of the most expensive items in its category. I don't think that failing for that reason means that it isn't possible to craft unbalanced items before they should be in your hands.
Just to point it out, but I think anyone here know it:
PRD wrote:
Ring of Sustenance
Aura faint conjuration; CL 5th
Slot ring; Price 2,500 gp; Weight —
Description
This ring continually provides its wearer with life-sustaining nourishment. The ring also refreshes the body and mind, so that its wearer needs only sleep 2 hours per day to gain the benefit of 8 hours of sleep. This allows a spellcaster that requires rest to prepare spells to do so after only 2 hours, but this does not allow a spellcaster to prepare spells more than once per day. The ring must be worn for a full week before it begins to work. If it is removed, the owner must wear it for another week to reattune it to himself.
Construction
Requirements Forge Ring, create food and water; Cost 1,250 gp
Now I sleep 2 hours instead of 8 in a day.
To craft without suffering the reduced production I must allocate my crafting time in units of 4 hours.
I have got 6 extra hours for crafting during the night.
"The creator also needs a fairly quiet, comfortable, and well-lit place in which to work. Any place suitable for preparing spells is suitable for making items."
Net result: I can do half a day worth of crating every night even while adventuring as long as the camp isn't attacked by monsters.
Time isn't a big issue.
(I agree, using the ring this way is cheese. it is not the function for which it was created in 1st edition.)
WBL is not a religion. WBL is about placing treasure in the game. Unless you play "railroad, the game on tracks" character can take any action they want to earn money. It can have consequences, but you really go around saying to the rogue: "No, you can't pickpocket the people in the town market." or refuse any of the hundred ways with which the characters can make money outside of adventuring?
Sure, but if the game group does not ignore WBL but rather try to be in line with it there's no issue.
But on that, doesn't the rogue having pick-pocket show an example of an at least equally problematic situation? While the crafter crafts a luckblade for 43k, couldn't the rogue just pick pocket one for free?
Quote:
With those rules my 3th level wizard with craft wondrous items can sell most of the loot from the last adventure and, if it is a typical AP, he would have approximately 2.000 gp, the difference from his level 2 WBL and a level 3 character WBL.
Now he go and make a cloak +1. 500 gp and 1 days, plus an amulet of natural armor +1, 1.000 gp, 2 days. Still got 500 gp in cash and 4.000 gp in equipment.
Now I am level 4, I have got another 3.000 gp from the adventure. Total cash 3.500.
Very well, I enhance my cloak to +2, 1.500 gp and 3 days.
7.000 gp of equipment and 2.000 in cash.
I have spend 6 days working on my stuff, it is "plenty of time"?
My total WBL is 9.000 gp, 150% of what is expected at my level, will you take away the excess? How?
remove loot from the adventure? How do you do that without penalizing the other characters?
Honestly, I don't see a character having an extra +1 to saves is really that big of a deal. He's payd 2000 gp and a feat to have +2 to saves, instead of paying 2000 gp for +1 to saves and +1 to AC and having the feat left over. Seems a fair trade.
And the example is pretty far from having a luckblade.
Quote:
First, to have major items you need a large town.
I have some serious issue with using the middle ages north Europe settlement sizes as the reference for the a fantasy world cities size, but in Golarion large towns are rare.
Yeah, I was using "large cities" in the common meaning, not the game term meaning. Sorry for my sloppy writing.
Quote:
You can still rule that the material needed to enchant an item is a single piece of "something" worth as much as it is required to make the item, but ti seem a bit arbitrary.
This is all arbitrary. But I think that if one thinks crafting is potentially problematic, one should not argue it from the viewpoint of the widest interpretation.
Quote:
The luck blade is an extreme example of what you can craft, but even starting with the normal cash and items you find in an adventure you can easily increase your earning by 50-70% using 1 feat, craft wondrous items.
Sure. You absolutely can. But as long as the GM doesn't invent (or allow the players to invent) a lot of unbalanced items, the benefit will be kept in check. Costs increase exponentially; as shown above, crafting can allow you to get +1 to saves at 3rd level (and that's good for a feat!) for 1000gp (a +2 cloak for 2k rather than a +1 cloak for 1k). That's good, but I don't think it's broken good and I don't think it has much to do with the ability to ignore prerequisites.
Quote:
Time isn't a big issue.
I agree that time isn't a big constraint (at lower levels at least) as long as you keep somewhat to WBL guidelines; in fact I agree that time _shouldn't_ be the main limiter. Money should be. It is with the conversion of time to money via the down-time rules that you get the unbalancing, and that can't be done with the ring.
That said, leveling while adventuring is usually quite quick (at least for AP's and the like) so if you want to craft a larger item while adventuring, it's not unlikely it will be quite in line when you finish it. If it takes 30 days to craft something while adventuring, you might have gained two levels and practically doubled your wealth during that time anyway.
With those rules my 3th level wizard with craft wondrous items can sell most of the loot from the last adventure and, if it is a typical AP, he would have approximately 2.000 gp, the difference from his level 2 WBL and a level 3 character WBL.
Now he go and make a cloak +1. 500 gp and 1 days, plus an amulet of natural armor +1, 1.000 gp, 2 days. Still got 500 gp in cash and 4.000 gp in equipment.
Now I am level 4, I have got another 3.000 gp from the adventure. Total cash 3.500.
Very well, I enhance my cloak to +2, 1.500 gp and 3 days.
7.000 gp of equipment and 2.000 in cash.
I have spend 6 days working on my stuff, it is "plenty of time"?
My total WBL is 9.000 gp, 150% of what is expected at my level, will you take away the excess? How?
remove loot from the adventure? How do you do that without penalizing the other characters?
Honestly, I don't see a character having an extra +1 to saves is really that big of a deal. He's payd 2000 gp and a feat to have +2 to saves, instead of paying 2000 gp for +1 to saves and +1 to AC and having the feat left over. Seems a fair trade.
And the example is pretty far from having a luckblade.
So you agree that he having 150% of his WBL at level 4 isn't a problem?
Next level he will got another 4.5000 gp, for a total of 6.500 in cash.
Let's upgrade that amulet to +2 for 1.500 gp and add 6 fist level pearls of power.
16.000 gp in gear, still no problem?
Next level he add something new, still no problem?
With this kind of progression a character would have the gear of someone 1-2 levels above his without pushing wealth acquisition in any way.
If there is the time every character can have that kind of gear.
Still no problem?
Ilja wrote:
Diego Rossi wrote:
The luck blade is an extreme example of what you can craft, but even starting with the normal cash and items you find in an adventure you can easily increase your earning by 50-70% using 1 feat, craft wondrous items.
Sure. You absolutely can. But as long as the GM doesn't invent (or allow the players to invent) a lot of unbalanced items, the benefit will be kept in check. Costs increase exponentially; as shown above, crafting can allow you to get +1 to saves at 3rd level (and that's good for a feat!) for 1000gp (a +2 cloak for 2k rather than a +1 cloak for 1k). That's good, but I don't think it's broken good and I don't think it has much to do with the ability to ignore prerequisites.
30 days of enchanting mean a 60K item (being capable to take the +5 for double speed is almost a given). That is a +5 equivalent weapon.
Let's say you buy the masterwork weapon at level 5 and start working on it, making it +1, +2 etc. while using it (or while the martial use it).
A +5 equivalent weapon is appropriate around level 10 or so.
You think that gaining 5 levels in 30 days is the norm?
So you agree that he having 150% of his WBL at level 4 isn't a problem?
Next level he will got another 4.5000 gp, for a total of 6.500 in cash.
Let's upgrade that amulet to +2 for 1.500 gp and add 6 fist level pearls of power.
16.000 gp in gear, still no problem?
Next level he add something new, still no problem?
With this kind of progression a character would have the gear of someone 1-2 levels above his without pushing wealth acquisition in any way.
If there is the time every character can have that kind of gear.
Still no problem?
It seems the argument has moved on to more familiar ground.
Is or is not Item Crafting OP in and of itself?
Possibry.
They are working as intended though, in your scenario. The Item Crafting Feats are explicitly supposed to increase the wealth of the crafter by 50%.
The UCamp rulebook say a 50% increase of WBL would be appropriate for someone with multiple crafting feats, Rynjin.
In play a craft wondrous item alone will increase your WBL by more than 50%, multiple feats would increase your WBL by 75% or more.
The crafting feats effect increase in power as you increase in level, something that very few feat do.
As long as you can't "overcast" it is not a problem. If you allow people, as the rules allow them to do, to make items well above their CL, it can be a problem.
A amulet of +4 natural armor is fairly cheap. 8.000 gp (crafting cost) for a +4 to AC isn't a bad deal.
Making multiple items that stack is even better.
2.500 gp to make a dusty rose ioun stone for a +1 insight to AC? Deal.
Everyone in the group will have one. It will be cheaper than upgrading their protection ring from +1 to +2 and later it will still be stackable with the enhanced ring.
The best way (cost and time wise) to use crafting feats isn't the "one single big item", it is the "myriad of small items that stack together" or the specialized item that you will never find in a adventure.
If the GM allow overcasting I would start making dusty rose ioun stones at level 5.
I would recommend against using the stuff in Ultimate Campaign for most games. Ultimate Campaign undermines a lot of core concepts of the game, and tends to do so in ways which aren't very well thought out. It should be considered "variant rules" at best.
Diego Rossi wrote:
A amulet of +4 natural armor is fairly cheap. 8.000 gp (crafting cost) for a +4 to AC isn't a bad deal.
FYI the craft cost of such an amulet is 16,000. The Retail cost is 32,000.
In my mind one of the best roles of the crafter is upgrading items you already have. You probably don't need to buy a +4 amulet of natural armor or make one from scratch; you will probably find a +1 or +2 amulet - just upgrade that one.
Also, if your GM is cool with it you should look into taking effects of minor items and add them to other items, by increasing the base cost of the minor ability by 1.5. Check with your GM though.
To craft without suffering the reduced production I must allocate my crafting time in units of 4 hours.
I have got 6 extra hours for crafting during the night.
I might be missing it, (and I don't see any one mentioning it so far so possibly this might be some obvious Pathfinder exception that everyone else knows), but I'll bring it up, if only to told otherwise...
I don't see how the ring would help you craft faster. You can only spend 8 hours a day crafting whether you have 24 hours or 200 hours available. This would be the case even if you didn't sleep at all. An undead caster can still only complete 8 hours of work per day creating a magic item.
The work must be in 4-hour blocks like you said. Which means, in a normal crafting environment if you spend 6 hours and stop, then you get credit for 4 hours work that day. You can't work more than 8 hours or rush the process by working more.
If you need an in-game reason or explanation, some people like to have one ready in case a player asks, the process might require certain chemicals to settle, or rare ink to dry on a parchment before you begin drawing the next symbol over it. Beakers and alembics need to build to temperatures and boil...
Magic Item Creation wrote:
The caster can work for up to 8 hours each day. He cannot rush the process by working longer each day,...If the caster is out adventuring, he can devote 4 hours each day to item creation, although he nets only 2 hours' worth of work.
So if out in the field, it will take 4 times as long to create a magical item. Even though it's still done in 4 hour blocks, you're only allowed one 4-hour block per day, and it only deducts 2 hours of work. So it will take 4 adventuring days of crafting to equal one 8-hour 'work' day'.
However, you do still have that extra time, so you still get to do more things if you wish, spend an extra six hours killing things or gathering information or designing a new spell or posting in the forums...
You just cant work on a magic item for more than 8 hours a day with any benefit, 4 out in the field. I would recommend... spending that extra time figuring out a way to make shorter days... that would be a legal move.
Yes, use your extra time not sleeping to design a spell or ritual to magically shorten days down to 8 hours (any shorter and it doesn't really help, spells can't have been cast within that time, that's how long you'll have been working on a magic item and you still need your 2 hours, etc.) You could finish 3 work days of crafting in 24 hours in that case. Of course, everyone else would get a lot less accomplished with their day, (lazy other people, sleeping a whole day away out of every three...)
The thing is, "it increases WBL by 50%" says as little about power level as "we rolled stats and I ended up with a 30 pb worth"; if those 30pb are 14's across the board, a standard 20pb char will have more actual power in-game.
Likewise, it's not that relevant to look at the percentage of WBL increase but rather what you can actually get out of it. Even scribe scroll can double your WBL, if the only thing you own is scrolls. But having a very large part of your wealth tied up in scrolls, or even such a wide category as wondrous items, is less power than freely spending it.
Take two characters:
One has 10k gp and Craft Wondrous Items and two months to craft. This might end up increasing WBL by 50%.
The other has 15k gp and gets to spend it however she wants.
The second one would probably end up more powerful, since she can spend the cash on what she needs the most, regardless of whether it's weapons and armor or if it's wondrous items or potions or scrolls. Just like a char with a 20pb will end up more powerful than one who has rolled all 14's, despite that being equal to a 30pb.
But all of this is pretty much off-topic, as the amount of wealth increase is the same regardless of whether you can skip requirements or not - in fact, I'd say it's usually more beneficial to craft stuff that's somewhere around your level than spending all your cash on a single higher-level item, as costs increase exponentially.
A magic item crafter can spend 2k to craft a CoR +2.
A non-crafter can spend 2k to buy a CoR +1 and an armor +1.
A magic item crafter could instead craft the CoR +1, buy an armor +1, and also craft a belt of tumbling and a sleeve's of many garments.
So you end up with either:
+2 to all saves
+1 to all saves, +1 AC, 1 feat
+1 to all saves, +1 AC, +4 on acrobatics to tumble, can change clothes at will
The last one is possible for a wizard without skipping any prerequisites, and not noticably weaker than the first option.
I'd like to add that crafting can easily not result in a huge big disparity of power. As Ilja notes, the price increase with more powerful items goes up rapidly. In the games I play at least, the extra wealth often gets spent on some utility stuff which doesn't directly impact combat prowess.
The problem here is, this isn't about whether someone with crafting can get more gear, or more value for their money. That's what crafting is for. If someone's got crafting, they should have twice as many or twice as valuable items as someone who is equally wealthy. I continue to assert that value does not determine power.
It's about whether allowing the ignoring of requirements will allow access to items (of whatever value) that would be too powerful for the assumed level of adventuring which this game places at certain levels.
The wealth issue came up because some people insist that all powerful items will always be priced at a cost that means they are more powerful than another item of lower cost. As such, wealth (and time) will never allow an unbalanced item to be crafted, because there's no way in game for a character to have more money available at a certain level or ever have time.
I don't agree, I say that that wealth and time are not absolutes and that these 'barriers' are only arbitrary based on individual campaigns not any actual factor that will restrict power. Just because one adventure for 3rd-level players is set to play out over two weeks doesn't mean that its power level is in any way twice that of a 3rd-level adventure designed to wrap up in one week. If the players just move slow in the one week adventure that doesn't mean the power level has risen. The time and item costs for an item, while affected by the level of powers needed to craft an item, are not an accurate determination of power.
I believe that the best way to ensure that someone cannot easily access an item until a certain level is have a requirement that can't be met until a certain level.
Diego pointed out some methods that he felt fairly showed that a character could use to generate wealth, and he and Ilja are discussing that portion of it. It's not really the main focus, any more than Luckblade is the main focus, when it was just to show how easily the lowest level crafter possible could make the (arguably) most powerful weapon in the game.
Despite showing how it could be done, people cling to one string 'WBL' is a hard fast rule for what a character can do in game, they can't violate it.' and the sad thing is all Dev would have to say is, 'Even though WBL is guideline and allowing gear to end up in a PC's possession above it is unbalancing, it is not in fact a rule, because we cannot make such a rule based on how inaccurate wealth is and what available funds a character might have in any individual campaign, at any individual time, during the entire span of any individual level. It is a guideline we believe is important, but not in fact a restriction.'
At the point that happens, they're going to have a mad scramble of 'But... but... this! And this!' instead of, "Thankfully, even though I didn't agree at the time, we did take the time to look at some ways to address this if it did turn out to be the case, before it became "Now this needs to be addressed now!"
Just saying you'd solve it by agreeing with the players not to use their abilities to their best advantages or that you'd have a social contract really amounts to having a House-rule, which is not the same as actually fixing the system.
The hard part with convincing someone there may be a problem is that they want you to connect every dot for them. You try and give an example and rather than saying, "That isn't actually possible because of this but it could if instead you had said X." Instead they just point to some other item or restriction and say how that's even-more unbalanced.
Wealth not being an absolute limiter is just as much a problem if there is no crafting. Nothing stops a 1st level character from buying a Ring of Wishes except money and the DM. Crafting is no different.
I'm suspecting that the trouble I'm having is that I suggested their might be something wrong. I bet if I had just made a post asking people like Rynjin for help and to post the most powerful item they believe a reasonable 8th-level crafting character could make with a reasonable chance of success it would have been much different.
I guess I could just ask everyone to post the most powerful item their 8th-level crafter can make using Craft Wondrous Item or Craft Magic Arms and Armor. I am using 8th-level because that's when a non-caster could have both item creation feats with Master Craftsman and allows for the ability increase to your character.
We'll set the crafting cost at at a loose 16,500 gold. That's half WBL but with some leeway if you have a good one that should be mentioned which just squeaks past and to take into account costs that might not directly apply, like masterwork weapon price, etc. Also this isn't to represent someone just building the character and starting with that or amount of wealth, but rather having access to a reasonable amount of wealth at some point during the entire span of that level.
This isn't about creating an overpowered item or whether an item itself is 'overpowered', just what you think the most powerful item your character would create. We can debate whether it would be overpowered of it the time it would take is too much or too little at a different time. Also, this isn't about berating people if there example isn't THE most powerful item.
Here's my example, just quick thrown out there.
"I think the most powerful item that can be made is:
[b]Amulet of Natural Armor +4[/i]
It's right at the 16k gp mark for crafting. Natural Armor is almost never gonna get wasted (overlapped) and hard to come by typically (other than naturally and this stacks with it).
It would be a DC 20 check (Base 5 + 5 CL). Another 10 because I will say that this crafter doesn't have barkskin and doesn't meet the requirement of being level 12 (3 times the bonus).
By accepted FAQ rules I could reduce the CL to 3 because that is the minimum level needed to cast barkskin which isn't a big difference in this case but worth noting.
It would take 32 days to craft this, but I don't think anyone could argue that the DC 25 for accelerated is even failable on a Take 10, so really only 16 days.
The luckblade is only the most powerful weapon in the game for one round.
But yes, it's true, WBL is a guideline, not a rule. If the DM gives the PC's extra wealth, the PC's will be able to have better items. This has nothing to do with crafting and everything to do with the fact that that's what "extra wealth" means.
Pizza, you seem to think that spending all 16k on one item is a good deal. IT IS NOT. Heck, it's cheaper to get +4 to AC by making multiple cheaper AC boosters. And it is a bad idea if you have 16k+ wealth to spend it all on just one thing.
Wealth not being an absolute limiter is just as much a problem if there is no crafting. Nothing stops a 1st level character from buying a Ring of Wishes except money and the DM. Crafting is no different.
Saying that wealth is not an absolute limit restricting power level is NOT saying there is NO LIMIT ON WEALTH!
Obviously if there's no limit to money then you can buy everything! No one is saying you have infinite money, and if they are saying it, then they are purposefully being obtuse when disregarding the concern of the post.
It is not too hard to comprehend that someone can say that an unbalancing item attainable at the wrong level of a character (this doesn't mean an item which is itself 'unbalanced', which is wrong based on its own level) can be obtained by a character just by them saving a little money, working a bit harder than normal, or doing perfectly acceptable reasonable things in character.
When people continue to state that this means any character that somehow did manage to EARN that money most have had a king's ransom dropped on their lap or that they are somehow terrible players who only made characters to sit in town all die is a rubbish! It either makes me believe someone is purposefully rounding-abouting to make the other person have to keep reiterating over and over until they get annoyed or trying to make any newcomers to the discussion think that this was somehow not taken into account or explained numerous time.
Again:
drachasor wrote:
Wealth not being an absolute limiter is just as much a problem if there is no crafting. Nothing stops a 1st level character from buying a Ring of Wishes except money and the DM. Crafting is no different.
If you really took the time to think about what you're really saying you might see the point.
IF you can get the MONEY, NOTHING STOPS YOU FROM GETTING THE MOST POWERFUL ITEM IN THE GAME. I know you used the most powerful and expensive item in the game as rhetoric and an example of how absurd that would be, because yes it would be, BUT that does not mean that an overpowered item is only going to be the most powerful item in the game, because that might still be overpowered at Level 15.
Reasonably, even a 'Level 3' item in the hands of a Level 1 character can screw everything up. It doesn't have to mean he's becoming King of the World of slaying dragons, but if it's even letting him slay ogres with little risk, that's probably overpowered. Saying that a 1st or 2nd level character could not possibly get the money for a '3rd-level' item is NOT BELIEVABLE, and as such is NOT a good way to restrict such an item from getting into their hands.
Then, without the 'money' part, the only thing you have left (aside from time, as others would say) is the DM.
Now if you're expecting the DM to stop a player who otherwise has every reason to be able to acquire, and has done everything correct to acquire, the item is stopping you then the DM better have a reason. As already stated and discussed, if the DM thinks an item is too powerful, they will not put it in the game. They won't give it in treasure. A PC will not find a shop selling one. The PC will not being able to find someone willing to make one for them. That is already a given.
However, IF a character has taken a Craft Feat and they have worked and earned everything that by-the-rules they need to make an item that the DM hasn't put into the game 'NOT because he thinks it's overpowered and never will, just that he isn't putting it in yet) then the DM clearly better have a good reason.
He has every right to say, "You don't find any X for sale.' That's his job, to determine what is and isn't going on. But that's much different than a player saying "I want to make strand of prayer beads. I have the money, I have the feat, I don't have the requirements but I can still make the check." and him saying, "No, you can't." That's a huge distinction.
Maybe the DM has a reason for not allowing an item to be crafted, for instance, if there are no dragons in his world, he can say, "I am not letting you make an arrow of dragon-slaying because that item doesn't exist." Maybe they once existed and worked really really well but that's besides the point.
If he doesn't allow the scorching ray spell in the game for whatever reason, that would be a valid reason for flat out telling a player that, no, he cannot then craft an item which utilizes or otherwise duplicates such a thing.
But usually and in this discussion thread, it will be because he feels it's unbalanced, at least at the current point in the campaign.
Once someone uses the argument 'I'd just not allow it,' or 'A DM can do whatever in his campaign' or 'We would all agree that this is unbalanced and as a group would...' means that you are house-ruling to make a system with a flaw work. That's not an excuse, that is what you are supposed to do as a DM and as players. That does not mean you get to dismiss or ignore the flaws of a system when someone mentions them as not being flaws.
Pizza, you really need to work on being more succinct. No offense, but you could say just as much with one fourth the words.
The fact you can't point out an example of a character follow the WBL guidelines crafting an overpowered item is evidence in favor that this isn't not a concern.
Fact is, the CL on items does not indicate what level they should be available at. The game doesn't have anything to indicate this except for how much an item is worth. And the value of items does indicate how available they should be to buy. The game has rules for this too.
Now, if you are saying, as you seem to be now, that wealth isn't a good way to keep things balanced. I don't disagree. It isn't a great way to do that. Unfortunately, wealth and character level are the two tools D&D uses. So we're stuck with wealth mattering unless we make up house rules to avoid it. At that point, we also aren't really talking about crafting being a problem anymore.
You cannot eliminate one expectation of the game and then declare another element broken as a result. Separate elements of a game are not each in their own little space.
Five things control how you craft magic items:
Time
Wealth
Skill
Feats
Prerequisites
Feats must have but relatively simple to acquire
Skills are easy to acquire.
Pre-requisites are easy to meet and in the rare instances they are not they are designed to be bypassed
Time is a variable depending on campaign
Wealth...this is what is left. Wealth is the great control.
If you go beyond the WBL expectations your game will be different than what is intended. That is up to you, the GM. However, whenever people discuss what the expectations of equipping PCs are we MUST use the WBL chart because that is what the designers expect for you to have at each level.
In any case, yes, you can make really powerful items but in most cases you can do better with a group of cheaper items. It is simply not worth it to put all your resources into a single item. Why own a +5 weapon (50,000gp) when a +3 weapon (18,000gp) and a +4 Belt (16,000gp) will do more or less the same thing for less money?
Pizza, you seem to think that spending all 16k on one item is a good deal. IT IS NOT. Heck, it's cheaper to get +4 to AC by making multiple cheaper AC boosters.
Really? <innocently spreads hands> I was just giving an example of the most powerful item I thought that a certain character of a certain level could craft?
Are you saying I'm wrong? You mean to say, there's a more powerful item that you could post as an example here of what you think such a crafter could make?
Well by all means... bring it on. You've got me backed into a corner and right where you want me, I am ready to be dispatched.
As for the multiple items that give better AC, I was just using a core example of an item. I wasn't planning to stack multiple abilities onto one item or show how many or what varied items could be made. I am talking about a singular powerful item.
I could easily have gone into details or even how much easier it would be have crafted a weaker amulet and then just the costs, DCs, and crafting times for upgrading by differences.
Quote:
And it is a bad idea if you have 16k+ wealth to spend it all on just one thing.
Umm, if you're trying to create an item that costs 16,000 in materials... then it's actually a good... probably MANDATORY idea to have, and since the example is in fact, using a reasonable amount of money (which you haven't said that that amount was unreasonable, just that you would spend it different, which isn't the point) I'm just going to acknowledge that you think it's a bad idea and wait to hear what item captures your crafter's heart.
Since that's kind of the the whole point of the request, to give an example of such an item that COULD be created, by an amount which you aren't saying is invalid, just a bad idea to have all at once (which is of no bearing), I'd say I'll just have to see what your example is of what could possibly be better.
Pizza Lord, are you dismissing the idea that multiple weaker items that all add to the same element are better than one powerful item?
Your whole premise is that it is a bad thing that someone can craft a single powerful item. Any build that is based on a single powerful item can probably be outdone by a build with much cheaper multiple items.
It is just not worth it to spend all of your wealth on single big ticket items.
I just said it was unreasonable to spend all of your wealth on one thing. Because you don't get much out of it as opposed to buying multiple different things. Please try to understand what I say instead of stuffing it into your preconceived notions.
That's the entire reason I asked you to point out an item that is overpowered that could be made using WBL guidelines, because I don't really think such an item exist. Well, there are probably one or two overpowered items out there, but they are exceedingly rare.
As an example: +4 Dex and +2 Natural AC is less than 16k to craft and is better than +4 natural armor.
Since you weren't aware of this, I would kindly advise you familiarize yourself with the actual system and magical items before declaring things unbalanced. You clearly don't know enough about what is in place. No offense intended.
To craft without suffering the reduced production I must allocate my crafting time in units of 4 hours.
I have got 6 extra hours for crafting during the night.
I might be missing it, (and I don't see any one mentioning it so far so possibly this might be some obvious Pathfinder exception that everyone else knows), but I'll bring it up, if only to told otherwise...
I don't see how the ring would help you craft faster. You can only spend 8 hours a day crafting whether you have 24 hours or 200 hours available. This would be the case even if you didn't sleep at all. An undead caster can still only complete 8 hours of work per day creating a magic item.
You have missed a few key words:
"Net result: I can do half a day worth of crating every night even while adventuring as long as the camp isn't attacked by monsters."
Most of Rynjin argument about time being a limit for crafting is that you don't have downtime to craft in a good number of AP.
But with the ring you don't need downtime. You create your own downtime.
A group is in the middle of the jungle, trekking 8 hors every day and spending some time battling monsters and setting up camp.
Guy without the ring 8 hours trekking, 2 hours eating and setting up camp, 8 hours sleeping, 2.5 hours spend doing guard duty while his companion sleep, 1 hour memorizing spells = 21.5 hours, no time to craft.
Guy with the ring 8 hours trekking, 2 hours eating and setting up camp, 2 hours sleeping, 4 hours crafting, another 2 hours of sleep to be fresh for the trek, 2.5 hours spend doing guard duty while his companion sleep, 1 hour memorizing spells = 21.5 hours, crafter for 4 hours at full effect.
You cannot eliminate one expectation of the game and then declare another element broken as a result. Separate elements of a game are not each in their own little space.
Again, you say I am ignoring the limits. I am saying that your so-called limits, are not a good way to keep a player from getting access to an item that would be unbalancing.
Quote:
Five things control how you craft magic items:...
Time, Wealth, Skill, Feats, Prerequisites...
Quote:
Feats must have but relatively simple to acquire
Not a limit per your guidelines. It would be in the prerequisite category. Not all prereqs are feats, all feats will be prereqs. This is with the understand that the crafting feat is mandatory, but that's always been the case.
Quote:
Time is a variable depending on campaign
Absolutely, there's no guarantee that a character will not have 2 days to make an item with downtime and we will agree that even if the DM took all his downtime away, it would just be 10 days at worst, unless the DM was not only keeping him from having a chance to craft, but also completely preventing him from having any character time at all during an adventure.
Even most DMs do not know how much downtime one of their characters will have available during the entire course of their next level, sometimes even during the current one. They let the campaign flow naturally, maybe he rolls up a tornado on his weather chart or a PC does something he doesn't expect and it alters the timetable.
Quote:
Pre-requisites are easy to meet and in the rare instances they are not they are designed to be bypassed
Yes, other than the actual Creation feat, which has always been a requirement for everyone.
Since these are ignorable, these are not even a consideration as being a limit. What they actually are at worst is a DC modifier to the skill check and as such would be factored into the Skill listing.
Quote:
Skills are easy to acquire.
That statement by itself is an opinion, but presumably used in the context of the amount of skill being required by the current crafting system, one I agree with.
Obviously if you're going to craft, you are going to have the skill and it is always a class skill, so it is always +3, even if for some reason you didn't put 1 skill point in per level, you will still have at least 5 if a noncaster and if a caster it's unlikely you don't have high Spellcraft on the off-chance you aren't going with Craft.
I am dismissive of the other things we've listed so far and agree with you concerning them. Skill, however, actually IS a viable method of restricting something based one what a character of a certain level could do. You actually could spend the time and look at the item when designing and judging its power and determine what level it is appropriate for. You could then figure out the likely skill modifier of a character of appropriate level and set a reasonable DC where a character of that level would have at worst maybe a 25% chance of failure with leeway up or down (any easier than that and you will obviously be able to take a 10 even at the worst of times and if that's the case, don't even require a check.)
While it's possible, it's very hard to get right because of the nature of skills. You have ranks (those can only be as high as level, a good thing when trying to determine who can get something) then you have class bonuses, then racial, then abilities, then feats, then MW gear, then magic items that affect that skill. It's hard to do when you're some guy just trying to put a magic item on a page.
While anyone could obviously just set a DC insanely high, that's just being arbitrary, it takes skill to get it just right where it's challenging when it should be, but not impossible for all but the people taking Skill Focus, being gnomes, having stat boosters, etc.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case here. It is very easy to be able to pass the skill check on even some of the most powerful magic items, right out the gate acquiring the feat.
Just the basis of having a check means nothing if it's irrelevant. It does get to at least counting as a limit though, invalid though it may be.
The others however, they are not any control on what can be done by a PC in any definable way.
It will always be an abstract argument,:
"Seriously, who's got 7 days to make something?"
"7 days? We used to dreeeam about having 7 days. When I was playing, any character who managed to get past day 2 suffered -2 paranoia on all checks for a week from the sheer stress of waiting for an attack to come, since two days to yourself was so rare."
"I bet you've actually made a potion, you Sissy-Mary! We'd have killed to have 2 days! When we wanted to craft an item..."
Quote:
Wealth...this is what is left. Wealth is the great control.
Yes, wealth is... all that is left. You pretty much agree with me that the others can be dismissed... after berating me for not wasting my time focusing on them and only focusing on what was, at the time, the current trend of discussion as a whole, which is the crafting system.
Just because at one point the topic focuses on one area doesn't mean the others are being ignored, dismissed, or haven't been considered, only that is where the discussion is moving.
Trying to summarize your interminable walls of text, it sounds like you're saying the problem with crafting is that if the GM gives the PC's lots of extra money and if the GM gives the PC's lots of downtime and if the GM doesn't let the PC's directly buy items in shops but if the GM nevertheless gives the PC's access to crafting materials then the PC's can acquire shiny items.
On a related note, if the GM runs a campaign where an anti-magic field blankets the entire planet and every monster is an Aberration, Rangers would be extremely powerful. Do you have any proposals for how to fix Rangers, which are clearly broken?
If the situation was such that it was always a time crunch like that, then yes, the ring would work.
Even if you don't want guard duty spent working on the item (which some parties might not want to risk, that's their lives so it's up to them), if you're using 21.5 hours of the day, that 2.5 hours isn't lost. It's not reset at midnight. If it's 9:30 at night and you work until 1:30 AM and then fall asleep for 8 hours that's your 4 hour block (2 hours of progress).
The 'only 4 hours of work allowed' per adventuring day assumes a 24 hour period, not between dusk and dawn, noon and midnight, etc. Sure you will wake up an hour later, if your party doesn't want you to prepare spells that's their call, and that assumes you need to constantly re prepare every day, not every day traveling or adventuring will necessarily use your spells.
The time balances out mostly but if it's really that tightly strict with no chance to personal time every day, that's a separate issue and would prevent creating ANY item, even the simplest of 1st-level potions or scrolls that only take 2 hours of work, still would require a 4 hour block while out adventuring.
It is becoming clear that they continue to say that the things they don't agree are doable are clearly impossible because <example that would prevent everything, including what they say is possible, from being done.>
Gauss, the problem is that the wealth component can be gamed as easily as the others.
Let's make an example:
- today, while checking chap stuff for this thread (sorry about the error with the amulet of natural armor, happen when you write just before going to work), I noticed the Strand of Prayer Beads.
doing some reverse engineering, the cost of the power of one bead is 3.000*CL*SL*number of daily uses/5. (the same of a spell trigger item with 100 charges using no slots).
That gave me the idea of asking my GM if my magus, in conjunction with the cleric can make a lesser bead of healing, a spell trigger item capable to cast Cure light wound 5/day, for 3.000 gp.
Let's assume that the GM allow that item.
Now we have 2 different scenarios:
Scenario 1) the GM follow WBL loosely.
"Ok, guys, you have your prayers bead, it is roughly on par with a wand of cure light wound, so I will consider it that way when checking how powerful you are."
Scenario 2) the GM follow WBL slavishly:
"Ok guys, you have a 3.000 gp item, so I should remove an equivalent sum from future loot."
In scenario 1 it pay to bee a good and produce something that will last. In the long run it will cost less than burning a wand of CLW every level.
In scenario 2 it is best to be a cicada. You buy your wand of CLW, you consume it extremely fast and then point the hole in your WBL to the GM, asking him to fill it.
What it the problem: that the guys burning consumables get a better power boost, in the short run, than the guys using the permanent item (using 15 charges of the wand in a day of fighting isn't strange). If the consumable is always replaced to keep their WBL on par with their level they get the better benefit and more loot while the guys using the permanent item get less loot a lesser benefit (at mas 5 CLW spell day, regardless of what they need).
To make another example, a potion of shield of faith +5, CL 18, cost 900 gp, give a +5 deflection bonus and last 18 minutes and in theory (some theory) it is available in a small town 75% of the time.
A ring of deflection +5 cost 50.000 gp [row, above, yes, right price ;-) ] and will be found only occasionally on sale only in one of the major item slots of a large town or larger settlement.
If the GM feel that my WBL should be always replenished if it fall under the expected level, it would be a good idea (after getting a ring +2 to get some protection if attacked when not ready for a fight), to buy plenty of portions of shield of faith.
Every time I drink one future treasures go up in value.
I get a +5 to my AC most of the time when it matter (generally with 4 potions I will have the +5 running for a whole dungeon). I will be in a better position that a guy that has pent 18.000 gp to buy a +3 ring.
If the situation was such that it was always a time crunch like that, then yes, the ring would work.
Even if you don't want guard duty spent working on the item (which some parties might not want to risk, that's their lives so it's up to them), if you're using 21.5 hours of the day, that 2.5 hours isn't lost. It's not reset at midnight. If it's 9:30 at night and you work until 1:30 AM and then fall asleep for 8 hours that's your 4 hour block (2 hours of progress).
The 'only 4 hours of work allowed' per adventuring day assumes a 24 hour period, not between dusk and dawn, noon and midnight, etc. Sure you will wake up an hour later, if your party doesn't want you to prepare spells that's their call, and that assumes you need to constantly re prepare every day, not every day traveling or adventuring will necessarily use your spells.
The time balances out mostly but if it's really that tightly strict with no chance to personal time every day, that's a separate issue and would prevent creating ANY item, even the simplest of 1st-level potions or scrolls that only take 2 hours of work, still would require a 4 hour block while out adventuring.
Again you are reading things that aren't there.
What I want to get is 4 hours full speed work in a day if needed and if that is the only way to get it, not the maximum number of work hours possible.
That 2.5 hours left over are minimum time for rest and relaxation, banter, doing something for pure pleasure and so on. I am not and my characters aren't workaholic.
If needed I will keep that kind of schedule for a few days, as an adventurer even a bit more as my life can depend on what I craft, but I will not mold my life around working 20 hours every day.
As much as possible I want to made my characters into credible persons. Even in our world the guy that work 20 hours every day, even while eating and in the bathroom, exist, but generally they are either very poor people forced to work that way to live or persons with a disturbed personality.
While WBL is a useful metric when discussing relative wealth it is NOT the actual system used to hand out wealth to players. Table 12-5 is. Table 12-5 hands out 30-40% more than the WBL chart. It is assumed the extra is lost in consumables and the sale of items.
WBL's main purpose is for creating a new PC and as a guidepost for the approximate wealth a player should have. Burning consumables over time is not factored into that because it is factored into the extra that is given via Table 12-5.
In any case, the GM is the one handing out the wealth so the wealth system cannot be 'gamed'. If the GM chooses to hand out too much or too little that is his choice. My comments here is to state that handing out too much has its own dangers that are completely independent from the point Pizza the Hut is trying to make.
Note: I had to say Pizza the Hut just once. It is said in jest. :)
Guass, I have seen several GM on these board flatly stating that they make a audit of the character wealth every level or even more often, and then adjusting future loot up on down on the basis of the audit result.
On the other hand, if you don't adjust the rewards, how can you keep the players at appropriate WBL, if they play conservatively, converting the consumables into permanent items?
WBL is a guideline because strictly enforcing it is almost impossible without heavy interventions by the GM.
I am one of those that do audit every so often (usually every other level) and then adjust...but it is a guidepost, not the means to handing out wealth. I use it to make changes to table 12-5.
However, that is really irrelevant to this discussion. The element of the discussion that involves wealth is: Is the amount of treasure the Devs expect players to possess (at or near WBL) intended to be a limiting factor on what they can purchase and/or create? I believe the answer is yes and I vaguely remember the Devs stating something similar at some point.
If I understand correctly, it is Pizza's position that wealth is a poor control.
If I understand correctly, it is your position that wealth is a poor control because it is easily bypassed.
It is my position that it is an excellent control because the GM controls every single gold piece a player can have and thus ignoring requirements (other than crafting feats) is a non-issue.
It is also my position that anyone who spends the majority of their wealth on a single big ticket item is welcome to do so (usually) because I can do far better via multiple smaller items.
In any case, this is not a rules debate, it is an opinion debate and thus I probably don't have anything left to contribute. I have stated my opinion. :)
Gauss, so a character in your games would be penalized for buying a permanent +5 bonus item in Diego's scenario.
You would do your audit every other level, and the person who has the +5 bonus would have 50,000 gold of his WBL used up, while the tricky exploiter would not, even though he is getting the +5 bonus every time he needs it.
You are right in that WBL is a construct for creating characters. Once the characters are in the game world, they cannot really be governed by WBL. If they chose to find ways of getting money other than waiting for loot to be dropped on them by a beneficent GM (trade, crafting, theft, sidequests, looting, performing), unless the GM is being a real control freak, they will exceed the WBL limit. Penalizing players by who are entrepreneurial (put effort, skills, feats etc. into making money) by removing future treasure seems similar to penalizing a character who invested in getting a high AC (bought nice armor, feats, traits, etc.) by fudging die rolls against them, or all of the enemies suddenly having touch attacks.
John Kerpan, why would a character be penalized for buying a permanent +5 bonus item? Your statement doesn't make much sense.
In any case, how do those players have that opportunity? The GM. Time away from adventuring is allowed or not allowed by the GM. Additionally, the section on downtime is up to the GM as well. He does not have to allow it.
I have yet to see a way for a player to actually make game breaking amounts of money using mundane (or even magic) crafting. If they want to make an item sure, they made it. That doesn't mean they can sell it. So, lets say they own a shop. In the space of a year they MIGHT sell one item and make, on average, a few GP per day. That is what the craft/profession checks are for.
In any case, if they want to play shopkeeper they can retire that character or find a different GM since that is not the same game I am playing/GMing (Pathfinder).
I really think these crafting/downtime arguments are strawmen that any GM can simply say no to. I dont know why you and Diego think they are a viable argument to why the ability to bypass crafting requirements is broken.
Your whole premise is that it is a bad thing that someone can craft a single powerful item. Any build that is based on a single powerful item can probably be outdone by a build with much cheaper multiple items.
This discussion is not about a build. This is not me saying that I see a problem with the crafting system because one class taking a PrC using this item, that they might make is a problem. This is not about how one character can get an item, that if they focused all their abilities on doing, could deal 3000 damage 3/day, if they caught someone flat-footed.
There may have been other tangential ideas that are cooking here as they may or may not be robust enough for their own posts and I will comment on them as I can and some people don't agree on all points but have their own concerns about other.
To allow you to comment on the point directly and not get distracted or (actually misguided) on whether we disagree or not on what may be the issue, I am going to tell you, Gauss, what the basic premise is here.
Pizza Lord thinks:
Removing requirements such as Caster Level allows access to items which were designed using a different system which means they were evaluated and priced with an assumption that certain requirements could only be met at certain levels.
Do you agree or disagree? Can you think of an item like this? Is this good or bad in your opinion?
Pizza Lord's concerns:
1) Allowing items to become available before they were intended means the WBL is no longer accurate. Reasoning: Because magic items may not have been given costs based solely on their power, but instead on what powers it takes to create them.
Item pricing:
It is well-known that many items were arbitrarily priced, especially Wondrous Items. This isn't to say they were carelessly or thoughtlessly priced, only that they were not priced following any formula, instead they were based on 'feeling' or how they compared to something else, or at what level a character would normally be able to do a similar ability. This is especially the case with more powerful items that typically have harder to define abilities.
When being priced and designed, a magic item's cost may actually have deserved to be much higher. Most items are power-based from 3.5, which was power-based from 3.0, which used items from 2.0 because they were legacy at each stage of those incarnations, the discussion of market value has always been debated.
A designer may have looked at the requirements and adjusted a price downward based on the difficulty of meeting the requirements.
"This item should be more expensive, but because it's CL 17, it requires X skill ranks in a skill a caster is unlikely to have, and Great Fortitude. A crafter should be able to at least afford the material cost because it also requires both arcane and divine spells, so he'll have to get help."
Obviously an item should be attainable and since a designer knew that an item couldn't be created until at least 17th if it was CL 17 they could adjusts the price as they wished. When dealing with high-price items, such items have a much higher window since the WBL ranges rise dramatically each level. A cost could be set that took into account the difficulty of requirements and was lower (while still remaining 17th range, while the doubled price was still in the range only a 19th-level character could purchase.
Since he doesn't realize that a system will later be put in place that let's a crafter ignore everything he used as a guideline, and the current system may or may not mostly be transfers that also didn't realize this was an option, there could be problem.
Do you agree or disagree? Can you think of an item like this? Is this good or bad in your opinion?
2) A less accurate WBL makes it tough to design fair adventurers which will challenge the expected levels. Reasoning: Since the WBL is used to aid in encounter design by determining what gear a certain level party is likely to have, a designer may not expect a party to have easy access to flight at their level. His encounters may be easily bypassed, or even missed entirely, if the party can pass right over them. An adventure designed with the assumption that a party will not have the ability to teleport, or at least teleport all of them, might have the entire challenge, and thus fun, missed. This may not be malicious on the PCs part, they are just using the stuff they were allowed to create, they may not be actively trying to tank the adventure their DM has chosen to run.
Is this true? Is this only a concern to adventure publishers?
3) When someone meets all the requirements they are penalized for actually creating the object the way it was designed to be created. Reasoning: A crafter meeting the spell requirement loses access to the spell for the duration of the crafting. A person without the spell, not only doesn't have to learn or find the spell, but is also not penalized. While there is a cost to ignore the spell, in any example it is of no consequence. As it has no consequence, it is not a penalty.
Is this true whether you believe it's problem? Do you believe losing access to one (or more) of your spells is a problem?
There, straight-forward to you. Give me your thoughts, Gauss.
1) CL was not designed to represent access level. Just look at Pearls of Power.
2) See (1)
3) They only have to do those spells if they can't meet the harder DC. Or it might allow them to craft it twice as quick. If something is so easy for them they can double-time it without requirements, then it is just a trivial item to make. In any case, THIS WAS NEVER INTENDED AS A BALANCING FACTOR. So there's no need to get concerned over it.
Gauss, the problem is that the wealth component can be gamed as easily as the others.
Not quite as easy, but sure WBL isn't perfect. The balancing system in D&D is pretty much crap. Heck, they have Fighters and Wizards as equal classes when they manifestly aren't.
Dealing with WBL issues is just something the DM has to do. In most groups, it is not that big of a problem though.
It is possible to find some items that aren't balanced right. Remember, Wondrous Items are hard to judge and just because it makes sense that a certain item, with multiple variants and power-levels, might be cause for a special case doesn't quite satisfy me.
I could easily say, Look at all the items that do mention requiring a CL of a certain level, weapons, armor, bracers, rings of protection. Why require CLs based on variable of various multiplications if the easier answer is always a +5 DC, which it will be practically every time.
It makes more sense to see lowering CL for certain items, rather than saying that because some items had a caster level that was higher than expected for every one of their possible variants, all CLs are optional.
You don't have to agree.
Quote:
CL was not designed to represent access level.
That may or may not have been the case when these items were designed, back in 3.0 and 3.5 for the most part, but it would be a much more accurate determination of power level than an arbitrary coin amount or how many days it takes to craft, correct? It's much harder to game a CL than a number of days, or how much gold someone might have. Typically it's never going to be higher than a +1 if someone has a domain ability. Obviously there are ways to make it higher, just much harder and far less likely than skill modifier boosts or the fact that a PC just... never felt like spending his gold.
"Net result: I can do half a day worth of crating every night even while adventuring as long as the camp isn't attacked by monsters."
Most of Rynjin argument about time being a limit for crafting is that you don't have downtime to craft in a good number of AP.
But with the ring you don't need downtime. You create your own downtime.
A group is in the middle of the jungle, trekking 8 hors every day and spending some time battling monsters and setting up camp.
Guy without the ring 8 hours trekking, 2 hours eating and setting up camp, 8 hours sleeping, 2.5 hours spend doing guard duty while his companion sleep, 1 hour memorizing spells = 21.5 hours, no time to craft.
Guy with the ring 8 hours trekking, 2 hours eating and setting up camp, 2 hours sleeping, 4 hours crafting, another 2 hours of sleep to be fresh for the trek, 2.5 hours spend doing guard duty while his companion sleep, 1 hour memorizing spells = 21.5 hours, crafter for 4 hours at full effect.
You still need time. You're crafting at 1/4 speed if you do it while adventuring or traveling (the Ring of Sustenance doesn't let you get around this issue, it's a blanket statement that on adventuring days your crafting time is limited).
The way a lot of adventures run, the party could level up MULTIPLE TIMES by the time you finish any sort of big ticket item. The minor ones (1-2k gp) you can crank out in about a week apiece, but after a while, there's not much need for those any more.
1) I do not see how items becoming available before you think they should have been has any bearing on WBL. On the other hand, the reverse is true. WBL has a bearing on the items becoming available.
2) Again, WBL does not become 'less accurate' because you believe items can be acquired earlier. WBL is a treasure value. The Treasure value comes with certain assumptions of equipment.
If you can purchase that equipment earlier than intended then the fault is with the equipment availability (a function of price), not the WBL. Crafting it does not change that. It is still a function of price (price/2 = cost).
Your example of Teleport is not reasonable. Boots of Teleportation would cost 24,500gp to craft. By the time a person could do so without spending more than 1/2 of their WBL they would be level 9. Guess what?
3) There is no reason that someone who actually knows the spell cannot bypass the spell requirements like anyone else. I have done this on a number of occassions.
I never said I would prevent someone from magic item crafting. I said crafting/downtime arguments which is what certain people are trying to state that can be used to provide unlimited wealth. The GM is fully within his rights to control that sort of abuse (assuming it actually works which I don't think it does). One control is limiting the available downtime. However, that does not stop players from crafting magic items due to the crafting while adventuring rule.
Another control is that while you can manufacture mundane/magical items all you want, selling them for profit is the function of a craft or profession check (ie: shopkeeper). That profit is going to be very small, on the order of a few GP per day.
Like I said before, if you think there's an unbalanced item THEN GO FIND IT. You can't just assume there's a problem.
And CL for power level on magic items definitely was not the case back in 3.0/3.5 because there are plenty of items with high CLs that can show up at low levels. Just look at the random treasure generation (e.g. pearls of power and other items).
Yeah, maybe that would have been a good way to measure things, but it was never used for that. That's just not how the game works.
If you want it to work that way, you'd have to go through all the magical items in the game, determine their power level and then adjust the CL. Of course, you could just GP value, since that IS intended to represent power. There are almost no items that are too cheap. A more common problem is items that are too expensive.
Creating magical items can be a fun and rewarding method for outfitting the Player Characters. However, there are some situations and exceptions that can be easily abused. In order to keep it reasonable there are two rule specifications that are added the rules that are provided in the Core Rulebook.
• Caster Level is set in stone. It cannot be ignored; it is a measure of overall spell power that the character can accomplish from a single spell.
• No single item can have an enchantment cost (which is otherwise known as the creation cost) that exceeds a value that is equal to 1/4th the value as shown on the Wealth-By-Level chart.
Thanks to all of the conversations on here, they are the source of these house rules that should help to keep it in check and not accidentally break the game.
SeelyOne, there are a number of magic items which have arbitrary (read: pointless) Caster Levels. Example: Pearl of Power 1. It's caster level is based on the Pearl of Power 9 because they did not want to list 9 different Caster Levels.
Preventing your players from making level appropriate items does not make a lot of sense.
