Director of Games
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The removal of XP costs seems to be a dangerous slippery slope for me. I don't usually like characters creating magic items anyway, and this seems to open the door for all kinds of abuse. Having PCs crank out wands of useful spells seems like it'd be a particular nightmare.
I am going to admit that I am pretty entrenched on this one. My question for you is, do you give you characters so much wealth that they can pull this off. XP is not much of a cost all things considered, compared to GP.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Nope siding with jason here xp is not something to be used like gold ...xp costs need to go.
On the one hand, this clears up something that always bugged me in 3e: why would any NPC ever spend hard-earned XP to make an item in exchange for mere gold?
On the other hand, it now adds another reason preventing any PC from throwing away a fortune on lodging or a party: you have to save it all for magic items. No squandering of fortunes like Conan is possible. This kind of makes me want to try a 2-tiered system like Frank Trollman proposed elsewhere.
Xp costs are lame. I house ruled them out years ago.
This is a fantastic change!
I never understood why a wizard would craft anything if the net result was a gain for the party (creation of a resource such as wands, scrolls, etc.), and a level loss for the Wizard.
This makes crafting actually seem viable.
As far as being overbalanced... that really depends upon the game. My group was playing the Rise of the Rune Lords not too long ago, and it seemed that for the first four to six levels, we were never up to the recommended starting gold for characters of those levels. It wasn't until later when our DM realized how far behind we were getting that he started being generous with gold to allow us to catch up in power level to where we needed to be.
As a wizard in that group, I never once thought about crafting a scroll... I couldn't afford the gold, and I definitely couldn't afford to not gain levels with the rest of the party (surviving can be difficult as a low level wizard).
Instead of XP costs, I personally prefer either:
3) cost increase - which also tends to make magic items rarer if you dont tinker with the base game economics.
2) craft pool - similar to that found in the Eberron artificer with possibly feats that add points to the craft pool.
While I have tinkered with using xp as another resource in several games it never relaly works out all that well unless the entire system is based on that concept, which neither D&D nor PFRPG are. So I will back Jason's choice halfheartedly (cant help it, the other half likes craft pools).
-Weylin Stormcrowe
This is a good change. For crafters, XP was never an issue anyway since they had resolved themselves to either burning a level for all the items they could get, or the DM gave out XP based on individual character level which meant more XP for crafters.
Considering Pathfinder's XP system, removing XP costs seems a very reasonable thing to do. Triple taxing someone for item creation seems silly to me, but double taxing is reasonable considering the utility.
The problem with XP costs isn't just that they don't really cost anything "in the long run" (which they don't), the problem is that they are bad for the game. Like Age increases before them, an XP cost is essentially running up a credit card bill. You get whatever it is that you were buying with the XP cost now, and you pay later (by death from old age or not going up in level when you otherwise would). That's never balanced, because there's no guaranty that the character in question will still be being played when that credit card comes due.
just adding something from some else.
XP costs gone=good (i.e; very happy spellcasters).
The removal of XP costs seems to be a dangerous slippery slope for me. I don't usually like characters creating magic items anyway, and this seems to open the door for all kinds of abuse. Having PCs crank out wands of useful spells seems like it'd be a particular nightmare.
I agree it is to easily abuseable in game since the rules permit it particularly in a campaign with lots of down time. Plenty of players hit the boards and talk to their friends to pick above average feats in game.
For example the Mercantile Background feat from PGtF makes the new crafting rules an instant wealth generator with down time in game for a party. The feat allows the PC to resell adventuring goods like magic items for 75% of market price which only took him or the party crafter 50% of market price to make because there is no experience cost break to slow them down.
The extra wealth can be used to buy other adventuring items which the feat actually allows the PC to purchase one single item at 75% of market price (probably not going to be the cheap item at 1/month).
In a open source book game the DM now has to choose if he is going to make a house rule to disallow the feat or allow it in game.
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XP as a cost is a poor mechanic. Eliminating it is something I support very strongly.
I don't see much item creation going on, but with this kind of rule, as a DM I'm much happier making fewer items available for 'purchase'. I never liked it anyway, so having a few 'common items' is fine, but having a weaponshop with a holy avenger next to a luck blade is silly. This will let PCs get what they actually want more easily. This is good.
And I'm not worried about it being a 'wealth generator'. In Rise of the Runelords the PCs have had multiple +1 Ogre Hooks and +1 Hid Shirts. They can't get diddlysquat for them. Though the items have a high value based on the rules, they can't be used by normal people. With such a small market, nobody in Magnimar is willing to buy them. This makes sense and my players accept it. So, no worries for me about the PCs selling everything they make.
And of course they might learn the 'hard way'. You sell a bunch of items and see them used by the NPC bad guys... You gotta be careful when you're letting magic go like that.
I agree with the removal of XP cost, never liked the rule.
That said, the gold cost is always the hurdle for my group as I am such a tight wad of a DM.
I like the removal of XP cost, upping the gp cost to make it (or requiring the transferrence of power from another permanent magic item), and the removal of the creation feats.
I despise XP costs on several levels:
1) XP make no logical sense whatsoverer - a wizard who creates a magical item is suddenly less experienced? That's just ridiculous.
2) XP costs are unfun and their expenditure disadvantages the creator of the item in question, even though the item is often for somebody else in the party... way to encourage cooperative gameplay... or not.
3) I don't use experience points at all when I run games. I just tell my players that they level, when I feel like they have accomplished enough (whether combat or non-combat stuff) to level up. Needless to say the removal of XP costs for magical item creation will potentially make my game easier (I say 'potentially', because my players generally don't bother creating magical items).
Hence, I am very happy about the removal of XP costs from both magic item creation and from spellcasting (though in psionics this may be more problematic, because monetary components don't make much sense there). I too wouldn't like it if the PCs were to start creating magical items left and right, but this can be solved by requiring them to quest for special ingredients of magical items, which is something I have been using in lieu of experience points anyway.
Well, XP cost removal is not a good thing, or more exactly the lack of real costing resource in order to make magic items is not a good thing. With the system given in PRPG alpha, crafting magic items costs gp to create and are sold for… the double value of gp, Yes !
Actually, if you use the standard sale rules for magic items, don't the players only get half price for selling off items?
That's enough to insure that they'll only break even for creating/selling magic items.
Of course, if your PCs want to stop adventuring and open up a magic item shop, then they become NPCs. ;-)
I like the removal of experience points as a spendable resource, especially given the fact that an item creator has to spend feats. (Even in the case of the wizard's bonus feats, that's less metamagic feats they have to choose from.) It's never made any sense to me that they could be spent that way in the first place.
As for putting brakes on characters creating magic items instead of buying them with their gold, remember the time involved in creating magic items is very significant. At 1 day per 1000 gold pieces, making items of much higher cost than 1st level wands or scrolls is going to take a lot of downtime, which won't come into play unless the DM allows it. So if you want to be able to limit the ability of your PCs to create items, then just limit their downtime.
I've just started looking into Pathfinder RPG, and I must say the removal of XP costs is the biggest plus for me. I've fooled around with tons of ways to eliminate them and I like how you've removed them. However, I personally would double the existing crafting times.
All I can say is, about friggin time. I've always hated the XP cost for making magical items. I can't remember the last time anyone in our group has created a magical item that wasn't a scroll or potion, usually citing the XP cost as the reason. It has turned the game into a silly "magical shopping mall" experience everytime the characters get back to town with some cash. Personally, I love the idea of characters having to create their own items, instead of going to the local "magical pawn shop" to see if they have a Belt of Giant Strength!! I definitely see this, at least in our group, as relying more on the party wizard to create items, possibly adding some of his own personality into the item. The party wizard will also be more willing to create that "magical sword that can sheath itself in flames" (Flaming longsword +2) for the fighter, as long as he can cough up the funds.
I know that these changes make the item creation feats for my wizard much more appealing now, not for huge profit gains, but to actually help out the party by creating items that meet their needs.
There should be something else to compensate XP costs. I believe that could be time. The formula should be adjusted to make high powered items taking much more time. This can stop Wizards functioning like magic item supermarkets.
There is a crafting time element... 8 hours for 1,000 gp, if I remember right. So, anything that costs more than that (i.e. a high powered item) will take more time.
I always hated XP cost in magic item creation.
I don't mind the "craft pool" that artificers in Eberron get.
I'd like to see magic items have a "magic cost" (I'm sure someone can come up with a cooler name than that) that somehow gets compensated for in other ways than XP. For example, by finding rare magical components such as the venom sack of a giant spider, the inferno gland of a red dragon, the eye of an umber hulk, etc. If you wanted to add complexity, you could have optional rules that give a descriptor to the type of magic in the rare magical component, such as fire, electricity, cold, force, compulsion, charm, healing, etc.
You could have a feat where item crafters are able to suck the "magic" out of an item and transfer it to another item, but maybe with some loss of power, like 20% loss.
If wizards have to take feats to make items, I think they should get more than one bonus feat per 5 levels. More like one every 3 or 4 levels.
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I am going to admit that I am pretty entrenched on this one. My question for you is, do you give you characters so much wealth that they can pull this off. XP is not much of a cost all things considered, compared to GP.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
At high levels PCs tend to have great amounts of money. I'm currently running Into the Wormcrawl Fissure (Age of Worms) and the PCs have plenty of money, using this system they would've gone crazy with wish spells and creating items.
I do like the removal of XP costs, but not for GP, let's think in something harder to get. Back in AD&D they used *age* for spells like wish. I liked that. Not sure if that's going to work with the evolved D&D system we are using, though. Unless that is accompanied by a loss of Constitution or some other mechanical penalty.
I would think something worth of a wish is something you have to do a quest for. Using rare items is a good alternative.
As for the magic items it can stay just on gold and time. Here the keyword is time, because at higher levels that is what's going to be hard to get, and not the gold.
Now that I think of it, time could also be used for wishes, similar to djinns they have to wait a year to be able to do wish again. Just ideas.
We haven't tested it yet, obviously (but will soon, says the wizard)... But me and the crew universally don't like XP costs. It's not like gold to be spent.
In principal, getting rid of XP costs got a positive reaction from us.
I can say from experience (no pun intended) that the XP cost factor didn't work as intended, especially if the loss of points left you a level behind. I played a Erudite (a psi-class who can learn extra powers by paying experience), and ended up a level lower than the party - until I pointed out I was on a different line for the XP chart.
After a big encounter, I ended up *ahead* of the rest of the group.
The DM and I agreed to simply put me back at the same level as the others, and to ignore this cost if I wasn't being abusive.
Moral: it really didn't work as a deterrent for limiting my class ability. Why exactly *should* any class be puinished (wizards, for example, and scribe scrolls) for using a class ability?
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The lack of XP costs is reasonable. However, that being said, there is the danger of wizards pumping out infinite items with unlimited downtime.
For example, a 8th level wizard that has an extra 5,000 xp wants to make scrolls of invisibility. Each one costs 6 xp, so under the current rules, he could spend the next 3 years making scrolls (833 to be exact) before he felt a penalty by being a level behind his adventuring buddies. And even then, he'd be a level behind and get more xp for his part-time adventuring career, catching back up with his friends.
But, the idea of infinite magic items boggles the brain. What a lucrative business, spend 75 gp to make a scroll, 2 hours later you can sell it for 150 gp, repeat as necessary. Who would bother to take Craft, or even a level of expert?
So, how about this small tweak? If you make a magic item, at the end you need to make a Fortitude save equal to the market value of the item (10 + 1 per 1,000 gp of the item). If you succeed, all is good, if you fail, you gain a temporary negative level (you feel a little drained for a day or two), and if you fail by 10 or more, your item is cursed (roll on the cursed table).
Thoughts?
But, the idea of infinite magic items boggles the brain. What a lucrative business, spend 75 gp to make a scroll, 2 hours later you can sell it for 150 gp, repeat as necessary. Who would bother to take Craft, or even a level of expert?
If you believe the prices in the PHB, you can skip the middleman and just cast a 2nd-level spell (as an NPC caster) for 60 gp (minimum) anyways. And it doesn't cost you any time crafting at all.
And in real life, all I have to do is sit in front of a computer typing for most of the day and attend the occasional meeting. And in return I get FREE MONEY!
The point is that presumably that a real business has costs (marketing, overhead for a storefront, security measures against robbery, guild fees, etc. -- it's not just some random dude standing on a street corner shouting "Invisibility scrolls!") and that [gross income - costs] gives a reasonable profit, but nothing comparable to killing bad guys and taking their stuff. :)
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The lack of XP costs is reasonable. However, that being said, there is the danger of wizards pumping out infinite items with unlimited downtime.
For example, a 8th level wizard that has an extra 5,000 xp wants to make scrolls of invisibility. Each one costs 6 xp, so under the current rules, he could spend the next 3 years making scrolls (833 to be exact) before he felt a penalty by being a level behind his adventuring buddies. And even then, he'd be a level behind and get more xp for his part-time adventuring career, catching back up with his friends.
But, the idea of infinite magic items boggles the brain. What a lucrative business, spend 75 gp to make a scroll, 2 hours later you can sell it for 150 gp, repeat as necessary. Who would bother to take Craft, or even a level of expert?
So, how about this small tweak? If you make a magic item, at the end you need to make a Fortitude save equal to the market value of the item (10 + 1 per 1,000 gp of the item). If you succeed, all is good, if you fail, you gain a temporary negative level (you feel a little drained for a day or two), and if you fail by 10 or more, your item is cursed (roll on the cursed table).
Thoughts?
Nah.
I remember one of my early players tried to make himself rich by selling Everburning Torches (he had continual flame at will as a racial ability). Making and selling is not as easy as it sounds, after the wizard makes the scroll there won't be a bunch of people at his door itching to buy it. It takes a profession to sale. So roll for a profession check to see how much you sell of those scrolls, and that's just a normal profession check, you might houserule the PC gets a little more money since he's getting all the raw materials or something, but in the end it's just a Profession check.
Now, I think the Profession skill should be revised from 3.5 (haven't checked the new Alpha Release on that).
I haven't read this section yet, so bare with me.
Without an exp cost, what is the limiting factor on item creation.
If given a kingdoms annual tax and a number of wizards, what prevents the construction of a nationalised enchantment industry?
What is it that make a magic item a relatively rare item?
What makes them special?
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Director of Games
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Hey there all,
The thing to remember is that PCs are not magic item shops. As with other items, they sell them for half price. This is done to represent that the merchant they are selling the item to has overhead, such as guards, taxes, and his own personal income. Although adventurers do not have such things (generally) this should be balanced by not allowing them to sell for full price. If they start doing this, they have gone from being an adventurer to a business. Removing the XP component does not change this fact. A low level caster only needs to kill a dire rat per week to make enough XP to keep pace and make a good living.
This is more of a hypothetical abuse imo. You can do the same thing with the craft rules at a slower rate, but GMs generally do not allow this abuse either.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Jason, from a simulationist perspective, what stops every professional soldier in a countries army being equiped with magicial armour and sword under this set of rules?
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Director of Games
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Jason, from a simulationist perspective, what stops every professional soldier in a countries army being equiped with magicial armour and sword under this set of rules?
As with 3.5, the answer is gold. XP is not really much of a barrier considering that a suit of +1 armor costs a total of 40 XP and a +1 sword costs 80 XP. All that is really does is make a spellcaster have a small chance of being one level behind his group for one session. So which is a more controlled resource in a country, 120 XP or 1,500 gp?
Gold is a finite resource that the GM can specifically control. All the feats let you do is get the items you qualify for at half price. This is good, but not nearly so world shattering as some would profess.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Jason, from a simulationist perspective, what stops every professional soldier in a countries army being equiped with magicial armour and sword under this set of rules?
As I understand it, another limiting factor would be that such a kingdom would still face a shortage of resources after making a certain number of magic items. Remember that the gold itself isn't what's used to create magic items; the gold price is the average cost of the magic supplies needed for such crafting. Over time, such materials become rarer, prices inflate, and in some cases supplies dry up completely.
Well most 'industrial wizards' don't go out adventuring, in fact, most characters never really do anything that gathers them EXP. So for many professional wizards continuely engaging in crafting of items will eventually take its toll on them.
Also, given the amounts of tax a goverment will be dealing with and the potential amounts in kindoms treasury, i see little that stops a nation or even just a relatively wealthy wizard school starting up industrial production of magicial items. Sure, in a world like eberon, thats
cool and thematic, but their are a lot of world where that just makes no sense.
I don't like the removal of XP cost from items or spells, but it's not really worth fighting about for me. Besides, without a formula to change the cost between characters of different levels, the actual XP totals would be easily extreme enough to completely negate any limiting factor XP could represent.
+10 Sword? Okay. 100K g.p.? Okay. 8k x.p.? (out of over 1M to level at 20th?) It would be nothing.
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I wish these rules had come into print a year ago so I wouldn't have had to hack them out myself. I came to many of Jason's conclusions and used a high cost in GP rather than XP rule for item creation. This was spurred by a party of all magic users. An Arcanix Mage School campaign, with three wizards, 2 sorcerers and 5 Eberron Artificers (all specialied in one area (alchemy, herbalism, weapon enhancements, cloth and mechanics)) which means for half the part to contribute they need to be building single use and minor items in the down times.
They are around 9th level now and are a roving natural disaster but in a good way. "Lots of Magic Items" gets figured in on CR calculations and they don't unbalance anything. Now they have to do cost/reward rather than danger/reward calculations for fight or flight. I did have to institute some material component rarity rules to limit things a bit as they went up in level but they tend to build lots of low power stuff and just a few big items for those final battles.
Previous discussions suggest that something like 1/4 to 1/3 of GMs do not give EXP (I didn't for RotRL). It'll be nice for those groups not to have to worry about the spell/item EXP costs anymore.
My general feeling is that, unless the players deliberately design a party where the PCs are not of the same level because they *want* that effect, the game works best when the PCs are of the same level. So mechanics which make them differ in level are to be avoided if at all possible.
Also, from a roleplaying POV, it seems nearly impossible to figure out what a PC thinks he's spending, what an NPC (even worse!) thinks he's spending, and why the gold/EXP equation works out the way it does. It's just an ugly soft spot in the gameworld logic.
If item creation is a game-busting moneymaker, that's a problem with the monetary rules; I don't like patching it with an arbitrary additional cost, especially one that's so hard to apply to NPCs. (It's nearly impossible to make sense of the level distributions in modules if you assume NPCs use the PC advancement rules; but if you don't, how does the EXP->items equation work for NPCs? What are they spending, and how do they earn it?)
It's a pain that the price rules are so thoroughly broken. But adding a broken EXP mechanic isn't really helping in my experience. I'm strongly in favor of this change. (We house-ruled it long ago.)
Incidentally, we had a PC party a while back where every PC was some kind of caster, and all of them made items. It turns out that this approximately doubles the money available to the party (because everything they need is half price). Luckily the APs are treasure starved so this wasn't as destructive as it might have been (though nothing seemed hard for that party after 9th level, I don't know that items were the real problem). But it seems hard to balance modules if you have to deal with a 2x factor in how much bang the PCs' buck is worth! I'm not sure how to solve this. Maybe the discount for making it yourself needs to be much less than 50%.
Personally, I would like to see PCs using item creation to make custom-tailored interesting magic items, not to churn out staples. But then, I'd like there to be less reliance on "staples" built into the system. I get tired of having to trick every PC out in AC, save, to-hit, damage boosters in order to be viable in the modules. Hard to fix, though.
Mary
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Incidentally, we had a PC party a while back where every PC was some kind of caster, and all of them made items. It turns out that this approximately doubles the money available to the party (because everything they need is half price). Luckily the APs are treasure starved so this wasn't as destructive as it might have been (though nothing seemed hard for that party after 9th level, I don't know that items were the real problem). But it seems hard to balance modules if you have to deal with a 2x factor in how much bang the PCs' buck is worth! I'm not sure how to solve this. Maybe the discount for making it yourself needs to be much less than 50%.
The "5 gp per 1 XP" equivalency established in the spell costs suggests that the discount should be roughly 30%, in order to maintain some kind of parity with 3.5 costs.
This may or may not be something you actually want to achieve, however. (shrug)
If were looking at this from a non-player perspective, not only is the XP cost bizarre but so is the GP cost. Somewhere in my stack of books I've got the Artificer's Handbook and it has a great example of just how crazy the GP cost is. To make a +5 sword requires 1,000 lbs of gold coins. To make a staff of power requires over 4,200 lbs of gold coins.
Mechanics-wise I think the removal of XP is great. It gets rid of useless book-keeping and gives the PCs an incentive to actually take craft feats. It makes NPCs who can craft a powerful force. As to why every NPC* wouldn't take some kind of crafting feat and just make scrolls or whatever all the time, the in game resoning is simple. Not everyone has the aptitude for it (much like the real world).
What I would like to see is some type of sidebar in the next release that gives DMs suggestions for alternatives to GP cost as well. Exotic components/monster pieces/etc could be used to offset gold costs (probably at a value = to the average treasure that should be received for defeating a CR x creature).
*For NPCs who are spellcasters and can craft stuff, I've always used the "Why would they ever build something for you? What have you done for them?" schtik. Even if they are crafting all the time, what's the problem? Sure there are more of them than there are PCs, which would actually explain the dreaded (and IMO stupid) Magic Store syndrome that seems to be a core assumption of the 3.x system.
My last suggestion would be: If you're really looking for a penalty/cost to crafting why not make it something like a permnament HP loss in place of XP loss. It makes more sense (putting your own life energy into item creation, it would just have to occur at a different rate than XP loss).
Edit: More stuff
Well the GP cost is for componites thats what your paying to get the rare bits and pieces you need to pull off the enchanting. Now as a DM you can make a call here on what you think is needed and have the pc's go get it if they dont want to spend the gold to buy the odd and rare items.