I'm looking into a character focused on magic item creation, and I was curious about this:
When "gathering the materials" for making an item, you have to spend X amount of gold depending on the item, its enchantments, etc. What are you required to have access to in order to have these materials? If we were on the road, would I be allowed to gather the raw components from nature? Not trying to circumvent the cost; I'm willing to still spend the same amount of gold, I'm just wondering what you have to have access to in order to spend that gold in order to gather the required materials.
It's handwaved, even in the rules. Your spell component pouch is supposed to contain these little trivial things that don't cost much of anything. The only times I've seen it not is for big ticket items like the diamond for Raise Dead, but of course you're not going to gather that from the weeds on the side of the road.
If it's something that you find to be a fun part of a spellcaster, work with your DM to build some houserules for it. Personally, I love scavenging weird materials and pieces of creatures on adventures and figuring out what they're good for a la the Elder Scrolls games. There's a few pages in Ultimate Campaign that give a starting point for this sort of thing.
I think you're talking about the material components for casting a spell. I'm talking about the materials needed to create magic items, using Item Creation feats.
RaizielDragon wrote: I think you're talking about the material components for casting a spell. I'm talking about the materials needed to create magic items, using Item Creation feats. Answer s still mostly the same. For magic item components, you just spend the gold and you've got them. What those item components consist of is never even attempted to be described. Aside from the physical item itself (the armor, weapon, belt, necklace, etc to be enchanted).
As long as you can spend the gold, you get your components. It would be reasonable to require to be be in a settlement, or otherwise have access to a merchant, however.
Would it be reasonable to just turn all of your cash into "components" whenever you're in town, so that you can tinker while you are out adventuring?
RaizielDragon wrote: Would it be reasonable to just turn all of your cash into "components" whenever you're in town, so that you can tinker while you are out adventuring? Not really. I would assume most merchants would want gold or silver for whatever supplies you want to buy, not "miscellaneous magic item creation stuff". So you want some cash left.
But it would be reasonable to turn at least some of your cash into generic magic item components so you could still work on magic items while adventuring.
I tend to turn my Gold into 'components' for transportation purposes.
I spend 25 gold pieces and buy ink, holy water, sand that has been blessed by a priest, lambskin vellum, and a vial to contain some of my blood, and then I have 25gp worth of magical reagents to scribe scrolls with.
Or, I spend 1,000gp to buy adamantine filings, diamond dust, sacred wax, and rare incense and herbs to enchant my armor/weapons.
I keep track of it in the same way I keep track of my expensive material components and foci.
Very Respectfully,
--Josh
The rules mention nothing about the specifics about the different material components used for item creations.
It would be very fair to require that you are in some sort of civilization where you can buy the components.
Personally speaking, I'd allow any player to allocate part of his/her gold into components when they are in civilization and then decide later which item to create (as long as the item's creation cost is lower or the same as the allocated gold)...
The player could note it like this:
1000 gp
100 gp worth of gems
10,000 gp worth of magical components.
If at any time this guy wanted to create a magic item, he could do so wherever he was as long as the item's creation cost was 10k gold or less.
(Note however that I would still require the masterwork items needed).
@Better_With_Bacon: I love that you go to such detail and with such strong themes. I might secretly throw bonuses at you for doing it if you were my player, ie. lower DCs on crafting or other "small" stuff, but I'd never require it.
Reason you can't "go component hunting": Maintaining and limiting character wealth by level.
Reason the rules don't list weird components you need to "magic it up": So a bad DM doesn't get confused (or dickish) and start arbitrarily raising the price or limiting availability of components.
Worryies about "getting too much" are generally overblown, I have NEVER played a game where I wasn't at least 15% behind the WBL curve (usually more like 50%).* And this is after we decided to keep things we didn't really want, like the second battleaxe that only one character can use.
Which brings us to point #3, "component hunting" is basically like farming wealth and spending the profit on flat-rate item crafting. I see no difference between selling the dragon blood at market value (assuming you can find/make up a market value) or using the dragon blood to make your ring of acid resistance, and would do the math accordingly.
I am told Ultimate Campaign has the rules for gathering resources, the specific flavor of what you collect, (essence of magma mephit, pure ice from the peaks of the Wall of Heaven) is whatever window-dressing you like.
*This only applies to characters who I had been playing a while. If I had to roll up a new character I started at WBL, and was generally richer than everyone else until we leveled again but continued to be broke.
Check with your GM before just spending gold on materials, though. It's also within the rules for the GM to require that some or all of the cost of a magic item be in the form of Talismanic Materials that have to be specially sought out. It will probably come down to whether the GM thinks that creating items is preparation for an adventure or is part of the adventure.
JoeJ wrote: Check with your GM before just spending gold on materials, though. It's also within the rules for the GM to require that some or all of the cost of a magic item be in the form of Talismanic Materials that have to be specially sought out. It will probably come down to whether the GM thinks that creating items is preparation for an adventure or is part of the adventure.
Of course! You should ALWAYS check with your GM before simply doing things. What I was talking about was a generally fair assumption. Some GM's might not even require that you are in civilization when converting gp into magic item components, while some GMs might require quests to find them.
Agreed it always comes down to working with your GM. I was just wondering if there was any legit book guidance.
I was initially going to ask about if you need a location or not as well, but then I looked over the rules again and saw that it covered that, saying that you could work anywhere that you can study a spellbook, so if a Wizard can memorize their spells around the campfire every morning, I should be able to tinker.
By "component hunting", I didn't mean I intended to try and find my own components so I didn't have to pay for them, though I guess if I were to find them I wouldn't end up having to pay for them.
I think it's an acceptable point that I need to have access to some form of "component shop".
As for my question about turning all my money into components, I wouldn't mind being short cash for other shops. I think the rest of my team would be willing to help out after I've been making all their magic items at cut rate prices.
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