Think about all the enchanted gear your PC has. How did you acquire the majority of it? Loot drops, crafting it or purchasing it from NPCs, or some other source?
It all depends on the DM.
In my games, almost all of it comes from loot, since a relatively small subset of magic items is available for purchase. And in the current campaign, the PC's just reached 5th level, and aren't playing spellcasters anyway, so no crafting.
It's directly linked to the DM's concept of magic in the world.
Most of it comes from loot.
The way that most games are designed, you get better gear from loot, because you lose a lot of value selling gear at half price only to have to purchase what you want at full price. And crafting takes time that I've yet to see a GM allow for. I mean, I know GMs do it, I see them talk about it on the boards, I've just never been in a game where that happened.
Because of that, I try to allow time for my players to craft; but since we almost exclusively play APs, the only time available is usually between books. Which can mean adjusting the way the AP is run, because some of them don't allow for the characters to have time off between books.
Right. I know it all depends on the GM. Everything depends on the GM. I'm trying to get a gauge of how most GM's do it, based on your actual characters' experiences.
For example in my current game I've told the players its a very generic Pathfinder-type world even though my setting is a homebrew. This means I'm running things right out of the core books and one of them even has Scribe Scroll. So far (2 levels and 7 game sessions) the players are solely relying on item drops and not using crafting or the ability to purchase from the local church.
In this instance the players either forgot about their ability to make scrolls or just don't really want to. Same with purchasing their own stuff. They've said though that they're saving some loot to the side for big stuff like a cloak or maybe a magic weapon.
Oh, I did play with one GM that let my wizard scribe scrolls and brew potions "in the field" so-to-speak. In that game, I made scrolls and potions all the time, as needed. And we had some magic items commissioned while we were out on missions.
I don't think I've ever seen someone not make scrolls when they had the feat from Wizard levels. It's free spell slots just sitting there in your brain. Unless you just never have downtime, there is no excuse.
Loot. Or at least that's where magic stuff comes from. I actually rarely buy magic items even with the magic mart available.
The vast majority of stuff that passes through our hands is loot, but when the GM runs an AP, the loot is mostly terrible. Pathfinder is a game of specialists, and AP loot is written more generally, so, it invariably needs to go. When the party has the right crafters, you can sell, say, a +5 effective weapon with stupid, wasted properties on it and use that same money to make a +5 weapon that's actually worth having.
Right now, 100% of my magical gear is crafted. The Barbarian has a looted weapon (though, we've crafted upgrades on it). Someone has a Hat of Disguise. I'm pretty sure that's it.
We do have fewer magical items in general than a normal party, though, because we're using Unchained's Automatic Bonus Progression. Before that, about half of the gear the party used was loot (cloaks of resistance, belts an headbands of stats, rings of protection, and amulets of natural armor--they're common enough that we just waited on them to drop and crafted the rest).
Because we have every magical craft feat between us, we haven't purchased anything except scrolls.
Most of my PC's are in AP's, so they pick up a lot of their gear from loot. They generally find one weapon that they really like (Such as the scythe from Book 2 of Curse of the Crimson Throne), and upgrade as wanted from there. However, I also have them able to access the equivalent of Ye Olde Magic Shoppe via going to everyone in the city and commissioning as needed.
The vast majority of stuff that passes through our hands is loot, but when the GM runs an AP, the loot is mostly terrible. Pathfinder is a game of specialists, and AP loot is written more generally, so, it invariably needs to go. When the party has the right crafters, you can sell, say, a +5 effective weapon with stupid, wasted properties on it and use that same money to make a +5 weapon that's actually worth having.
Right now, 100% of my magical gear is crafted. The Barbarian has a looted weapon (though, we've crafted upgrades on it). Someone has a Hat of Disguise. I'm pretty sure that's it.
We do have fewer magical items in general than a normal party, though, because we're using Unchained's Automatic Bonus Progression. Before that, about half of the gear the party used was loot (cloaks of resistance, belts an headbands of stats, rings of protection, and amulets of natural armor--they're common enough that we just waited on them to drop and crafted the rest).
Because we have every magical craft feat between us, we haven't purchased anything except scrolls.
Because of that, I change a lot of the gear in APs to suit my players. Before we start each book, I ask them to give me a list of magic items they would like to have (that's level appropriate), and then scatter them around the adventure. I also add some of what I think they'd like, and some extra bonuses here and there.
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My group maybe averages out to 40% crafting, 40% loot, 20% purchased.
It varies more by campaign than by GM. As others have pointed out, some campaigns have more downtime, thus more crafting. A current campaign has more military/mercenary style where we get a lot of gold payments, so about 60% of our stuff is purchased.
We also had one GM try out an experimental system where most of our wealth came in the form of magical components which could then be converted to certain types of items by a friendly NPC. For example, a particular vine could be used to make a physical enhancement belt, and certain beetles were useful for items that shifted their form or their user's.
Our group makes them ourselves whenever possible. Custom making is fun; you can fix things just the way you want them.
Think about all the enchanted gear your PC has. How did you acquire the majority of it? Loot drops, crafting it or purchasing it from NPCs, or some other source?
We have one GM running about 5 different campaigns depending on what players are available on our game dates. That said we average about 45% found/45% bough/10% crafted on items.
I was the first player in her game ever tot take crafting feats and in that specific campaign I was able to spend about a year and a half at one point to make my PC all the gear he used basically the entire game. I offered the service to others as cost in the group but no one took me up on it. This game also ended up with very little down time after that point so it was hard to craft after that anyways.
Now in our newest game 2 of the other players have realized how good crafting can be at low levels and they are taking some crafting feats, which I make sure to make good use out of when I can. One is a druid with Wonderous Items and the other is our Cleric with Craft Arms and Armor.
Looting and the occasional treasure hoard. I don't have magic marts in my setting and I don't follow the wealth by level rules. They get what I decide they'll need for future games and only one player has ever had anything crafted for him from the money he'd gained over the course of adventuring.
Sometimes we find things, sometimes we buy them if we come across the right shops, and sometimes our DM lets us macgyver our own magic-esque items. The party fought a hydra once, and our barbarian, Bob, harvested some ice sacks from it and made gauntlets out of the hydra's heads that do ice damage when you punch with them. Our Bard had a glider made out of manticore wings, too. I haven't made anything yet out of our scavenged materials, but it seems like our DM will allow a lot of stuff if we had to use our imaginations to conceive them. :)
The biggest determining factor will be the campaign.
If you just look at AP's, Kingmaker and Serpent's Skull can work out to literally months of downtime, plenty for crafting. Jade Regent you're EXPECTED to craft during your literally years-long journey. Rise of the Runelords takes place at whatever pace you care to make it, but does have some downtime built in.
ANd then you get Carrion Crown, which is essentially just one big chase spread across six modules, or Second Darkness, where you're either exploring, fighting, running, or being chased all the time, no real down time.
If you are old-style adventurers, where you pick and choose where to go and what to do, and rest up between adventures, yeah, crafting is the way to go.
But the faster the pacing, the less useful it becomes.
==Aelryinth