I've been dissatisfied with the magic item crafting rules for a while now. While I think that removing XP as a cost was a great change from 3.5, I worry that time and money being the sole requirement causes more trouble than it's worth...
I've got two arguments - one is based on math, one is based on personal experience. I'll outline both arguments down below and I'd welcome any and all feedback or commentary. :)
Math
I find that unless a campaign follows a specific schedule, the feats will range from being wildly overpowered to woefully underpowered.
I put together a small spreadsheet accounting for WBL, the increase gained for each new level, and the bonus wealth from crafting feats. I took the guideline from Ultimate Campaign that a single crafting feat should give the user a ~25% WBL bonus. I then calculated how much downtime would be required to gain the intended bonus. I assumed that the crafter spent the first five levels NOT using accelerated crafting, but subsequently always crafted at double speed by adding +5 to the spellcraft DC.
Basically it looks like this. If a crafter wants to gain the 25% WBL bonus suggested in Ultimate campaign, he would need:
4 days of downtime to cover the WBL gains in levels 2-5.
8 days of downtime to cover the WBL gains in levels 6-10.
24 days of downtime to cover the WBL gains in levels 11-15.
82 days of downtime to cover the WBL gains in levels 16-20.
If a crafter has multiple feats, Ultimate Campaign suggests that the WBL bonus can be increased up to 50%. So if the crafter has more than one crafting feat, take the downtime days above and double them.
If you want crafting and WBL to stay somewhat on the same page, crafting speeds should scale in the same way WBL does. The few options available to speed up crafting (valet familiar, cooperative crafting) is either available at level 1, or requires more feats and a helper. The easiest solution might be to let the crafter take the +5 spellcraft DC option multiple times at staggered points as he levels. So at level 5 you can make 2000 a day, at level 10 3000 a day, and at level 15 4000 a day?
Personal experience
I feel like crafting kind of puts a gun to my head when considering APs or writing my own campaigns. If the storyline doesn't more or less follow the suggested number of downtime days, crafting feats will spiral out of control. A campaign with very limited downtime (like the RotRL game mentioned above) will make crafting feats poor choices. Conversely a campaign with lots of downtime make Crafting feats incredibly powerful options and will (unless the GM takes steps to counter it) result in fantastically wealthy and overgeared characters - we had this happen in our Skull & Shackles game when the Arcanist installed a magical laboratory in his ship cabin and spent the travel time putting together gear for the entire ship. We'd easily doubled our WBL by level 7. This is a frequent complaint about Kingmaker, which also features a great deal of downtime.
This is problematic since I absolutely love the downtime, kingdom and retraining rules from Ultimate Campaign. Great systems that add a ton of fun options to the game, but you can’t really use them without putting in some heavy restrictions on crafting.
Moreover, I find that low level characters, who need minimal time to reach their intended crafting bonus, tend to have tons of time available for crafting. They will spend days if not weeks weeks travelling from place to place. They frequently stop to rest for multiple days in order to regain HP, shake off a disease, visit the library to do research, or heal ability damage. Their adventure hooks and plot lines tend to be less urgent and far more lenient on scheduling since low level parties tend to move slowly.
Conversely high level characters travel across planes in the blink of an eye. They can reverse Death itself with a single spell and 10 minutes of casting. They have the spell slots and resources to blow through numerous encounters without resting. They tend to go on monumental adventures with nations if not worlds hanging in the balance. In short, there usually isn't set aside time for them to stop and spend three months of crafting along the way. As an example of the latter, while fighting our way to the main villain in Rise of the Runelords our party leveled from 15 to 18 in about four days. The AP instills a sense of urgency which we took seriously, and we did everything in our might to stop the bad guy as fast as possible. Needless to say our crafter didn't have the time to catch up, and wound up being shortchanged about 80K WBL. Not a monumental loss, but noticeable and a little irritating.
Basically I find that low level characters have the time but not the money, and high level characters have the money but not the time.
All that said, I don’t want to bring back XP costs and I certainly don't want to eliminate crafting from my games - I think it’s a fun concept and it shouldn't be removed. I've been playing around with some different house rule ideas (no crafting feats needed to craft, but everything is crafted at full price for example) but I haven’t found anything I’m really happy with.
So… That’s how far I've gotten so far.
How do you guys handle crafting in your games?
Do you recognize any of the problems I've mentioned?
Am I just worrying too much over minor quibbles?
Do you have an awesome subsystem/houserule/homebrew/3rd party material that’ll solve all my problems?
Looking forward to hearing what you think!
I have noticed the exact same problems. The only solution is to invent alternative rules, playtest them, and post them into the correct forum.
As a simplish option, I'd try changing the crafting feats so instead of dividing the possible items up by type (arms and armour, wondrous items, etc) they instead cover price ranges, with eg Craft Cheap Items making things up to 3k at the current speed, Craft Minor Items doing from over 3k up to 9k and bring 3 times faster, etc. And having level requirements as well as having to take them as a chain.
The values and speeds would need playtesting.
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Basically, everything you said is fairly true.
It's easy for low level characters to get a ton of use from their crafting feats. Mid-level characters get less, and high level characters definitely needs tons of down-time to use them.
If you're playing the kinds of game where the character starts at level 1 and a year later he's level 18 and has conquered a kingdom, then maybe crafting feats are a bad way to go in this kind of game; hopefully the DM makes this clear.
On the other hand, if you're playing the kind of game where the character starts at level 1 and then 15 years later he's still level 12 and trying to rise into the ranks of legends, then he will have all the time he ever needs to craft whatever he wants.
Even then, however, you need something else for everyone to do while the mage is crafting, or it might go something like this:
Mage: OK, I'm going to sit here in town and make a couple magic items. It's gonna take me about 25 days, give or take.
Paladin: I could use a new cloak.
Rogue: Oooh, a new crossbow for me please.
Cleric: Some better armor for me while you're at it.
Mage: OK, make it 40 days now.
Rest of the group: No problem. We'll see you in 40 days.
40 days later...
Group: Hey, mage! Long time no see!
Mage: yeah, well, I'm done making that stuff you wanted. Here's your cloak, paladin.
Paladin: Um, well, no need really. You keep it. Sell it or something if you don't want it.
Mage: What? I thought you wanted this new cloak?
Paladin: I did. Honestly. But, while you were making that stuff, we went out and explored a few dungeons, and I found a new cloak in a monster's hoard in there. Even better than the one I asked for, actually.
Mage: You went adventuring without me?
Cleric: Well, uh, we had 40 days to kill. Nothing but time on our hands. So we thought, what could it hurt. Hey, we brought you this bag of gold. I mean, we found a lot more and you don't get a share since you were safely here in town, but we felt bad, so here's some pity-gold. Oh, and I won't need that armor. Look at this cool breastplate we found in that dungeon!
Rogue: Yeah, keep that crossbow too. Oh, and did we mention that we're 15th level now? Sweet, huh!
Mage: So I spent 40 days making a few items that I now have to sell at no profit, while you guys all gained 3 levels and a pile of new magic stuff?
Group: Nobody told you to stay here making stuff that you could have found in dungeons. That was your dumb idea...
That's another major problem with late-game crafting I forgot to cover - things take so long to make that while you're making a new item, you frequently find an upgrade in the meantime, which leaves you with a half-finished item you no longer want!
MAIN POINT
I have a bunch of homebrew rules in my games but the core of what I did to "fix" this problem is the idea that magic item creation requires a small investment of a finite supply of personal magic therefore the total number of magic items that an individual character can create and keep empowered is limited similar to the way the total HD of undead controlled by a necromancer is limited. To balance I made crafting a whole lot easier.
FURTHER READING
This of course had multiple ramifications throughout the world and to keep everything consistantish I made additional changes:
I eliminate WBL in it's current form, characters have much less gold than standard but also gold is only used to purchase mundane or very low level magic items and services.
I add hero bonuses automatically acquired upon leveling up to remove the need for resistance bonus items and +x weapons and armor
I increase the amount of attribute points gained to remove the need for +X belts and headbands.
A fundamental assumption in my games is that everyone who is a hero has some inherent magical ability. Wizards use it to throw around fireballs whereas fighters use it to become supernaturally good at fighting. However anyone can invest small amounts of their inherent magic into items, this enables me to remove the spellcasting requirement for crafting and put a hard cap on how many items a single character can have magically empowered at a time, the hero can only spread their inherent magic around so far.
There are three crafting skills which everyone has access to. Craft(Armamanets) for weapons and armor, Craft(Alchemy) for potions and bombs, and Craft(Occult) for wondrous items and magic enhancing items.
The total number of empowered weapons, armor, potions, wonderous items, etc. that a character can have is limited by their total skill bonus in the appropriate skill. The power of these items is limited by their total skill bonus and their level.
If you want to read more you can check out my horribly un-edited and only partially completed website that I keep my homebrew on:
My awesome rule to solve that problem... drag your fellow party members to become part of the magic item creation force and chop the time down by a variable degree depending on the level of the item, by splitting the manhour load between them all. fudging a bit by whether the draftee is a spellcaster, non-caster with the magical craftman feat, or Joe the Minion. Paladin wants the awesome cloak, he puts some time in.
Awesome. Every party member is temporarily converted into a valet familiar...
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Personally my players aren't that interested in crafting.
That said i'm making some changes to magic and crafting for my new homebrew world.
Potions and scrolls work the same as raw. I'm on the fence about wands, not sure what would be best for them.
Crafting permanent magic items is going to have an Xp cost that is payable in a few different ways.
The XP cost is equal to the base GP cost.
Ex. Lets take a typical flaming longsword +1. Base price is 4,000 GP
So the Xp cost is also 4,000 XP.
There are 4 ways to pay for the XP cost.
1.) Direct drain from the crafter. The crafter pays the full XP cost.
2.) Direct drain from a wiling subject, most likely the person
commissioning the item.
3.) Siphon Essence: An evil spellcaster can drain XP from an unwilling victim. The victim must be restrained and in the presence of the item to be enchanted. Each hour the victim is subjected to the crafting ritual (the caster must be present and actively working on the item) the victim must make a will save.
The Dc of the will save is 10+ the caster's level + his primary casting ability bonus.
EX. Baphazar the black is a 9th level caster with a 16 int. So the DC is 10+9+3 = 22.
For each point the victim fails the save by he is drained of 50XP which is fed to the item being crafted. A successful save prevents progress and xp drain.
4.) Researching exotic components:
Each item has a research score equal to the XP cost divided by 20.
So our Flaming Longsword +1 has a research score of 4,000/20 = 200.
For each 4 hour block the caster spends researching in a library he can make a knowledge arcana check. There is no set DC. You are simply accumulating research points until you reach the total.
EX. Merklin spends 8 hours in a library, after the first 4 hours he makes a knowledge arcana roll. He rolls an 18.
after the second 4 hours he makes another check and rolls a 22. He has now accumulated (18+22) 30 research points towards the 200 total he needs.
Once he reaches the total the DM gives him information on a exotic component that if used in the crafting process will pay the XP cost.
Now Merklin can go adventure for said item, purchase it for additional gold or even find it in a treasure hoard.
Ex. you've slain the bandits and find their hoard, along with the usual gold, items, etc.. you find 3 bottles of preserved fire beetle glands. They are worth 600 xp towards crafting a fire based magic item.
Thoughts? critiques?