I am currently running a RotRL home game, and in that game one character (an Oracle) is shouldering the weight of doing ALL the item crafting. He is crafting items for the whole party, so party wealth is much higher, not just for him but for everybody. However, this also means that compared to the rest of the party he is short 3 feats thanks to Brew Potion, Craft Wondrous Item, and Craft Arms and Armor. Whenever the party has time for crafting, dollar signs seem to appear in everyone's eyes. Items which could be bought are deliberately avoided in favor of items that can be crafted.
So I wanted to come up with a system where casters could still use their downtime to make items but it wouldn't penalize "generous" players, nor would it disrupt the balance of game economy.
So here is my suggestion:
1. Item crafting feats are not allowed.
2. Any character with a caster level can craft magic items as long as his caster level is high enough to qualify for the feat that would normally allow that item to be crafted. Non casters may take the Master Craftsman feat to qualify.
3. The cost to craft an item is the same as the price to buy the item from a merchant - crafting does not generate any discount.
The results of these rules would be that the party could still craft items, but has no incentive to do so when a merchant is offering the item for sale; the purpose of item crafting is to allow characters more choice of what items they want rather than to save characters money.
Thoughts? Do you see this as creating any problems I might not have foreseen?
It means anyone selling magic items isn't actually making a profit off of what they're selling. Which... doesn't make a lot of sense.
I don't think players should be making magical items for profits. Rather, to give themselves more control over what magic items they have. Choosing to make something rather than just finding stuff.
I forget how selling stuff works, but if it is still half the item's listed price, then you might have item creation feats allow people to make things for the mean average of the item's sell price and listed price. So if you have an item that they could buy for 100gp and sell for 50gp, let them craft it for 75gp. Would I burn a feat on it? If it meant I got to choose the items I found rather than relying on blind chance, probably!
It means anyone selling magic items isn't actually making a profit off of what they're selling. Which... doesn't make a lot of sense.
No, it means players aren't making a profit off what they are selling.
If a player went to the trouble of setting up a shop and buying magical reagents in bulk then conceivably he could also make a profit, but he has basically turned himself into an NPC at this point.
It's not a huge leap of the imagination to justify PCs having to spend the full cost when crafting since you could say that the NPC crafters have to build a dedicated workshop/do it in an auspicious location/etc in order to save on the costs.
I often play a generous crafter, and I rarely worried about using my feats because I ended up better off with my cheaper items. If you make it cost the same, I wouldn't take those feats! But I would also be concerned about what the others were contributing to the team while I was crafting items for them...
However, in my opinion, the biggest problem with the magic crafting rules is the time required at higher levels.
I did a rough calculation a while back where I compared wealth by level with the time needed to craft 25% of that wealth (which is the assumption of the worth of a crafting feat when creating higher level characters). Unsurprisingly, the downtime needed rises exponentially however, in play, you rarely get that sort of time increase. And what will the rest of the party be doing?
Yes, the feats wouldn't be worth it - which is why they would no longer be necessary under this rule.
As a result, anyone who can cast spells can also craft items if they want under this rule. However, items that can be bought will cost the same, so party members are only going to craft things they have a hard time finding. This means less downtime overall since they won't feel the need to craft everything they use.
Okay. What is your in-world justification for why players are for some reason considerably worse at crafting than some first or third level adept, no matter how powerful they become? That makes no sense. It's going to jar immersion hard.
Okay. What is your in-world justification for why players are for some reason considerably worse at crafting than some first or third level adept, no matter how powerful they become? That makes no sense. It's going to jar immersion hard.
They are just as good at it, or better. How good you are at it depends on your spellcraft skill.
A third-level adept will likely have no more that a +7 or +8 in spellcraft, or +10 or +11 assuming the skill focus feat. So items that have a DC of 22 or more to make are probably out of his league. And a lot of items will fall under that category. Major items are going to require high level casters to make, whether they are PCs or NPCs.
How much it costs an NPC to make a magic item need never actually come up in the game. But a Magic Crafting Laboratory would (and should) be an expensive operation to maintain. If players are able to buy everything they need and craft stuff in their room at the inn with no overhead at all, that jars immersion.