So anyone with Craft Wondrous Item nearly doubles their, and the whole party's, wealth? THIS IS PERFECTLY BALANCED WITH NO FLAWS WHATSOEVER
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It still takes time. It's not like the minor XP loss was a big deal before. A 1,000 GP item only took 40 XP. Granted, bigger items were more XP, but then you were getting more per encounter too.
Overall, it's not a huge deal. If it's overpowered now, it was overpowered then.
Also, the Craft feats really just help shore up the selling of other magic items found. In adventures like Pathfinder, the items offered up generally are about equal to the estimated character wealth at any given time, but when the party starts selling stuff and getting only half that value back, they start falling on the charts. Craft feats just help the party get back up to that 'norm'.
So anyone with Craft Wondrous Item nearly doubles their, and the whole party's, wealth? THIS IS PERFECTLY BALANCED WITH NO FLAWS WHATSOEVER
Yeah, it does. Because it is now instantaneous and doesn't require any prerequisites spells-wise, caster level-wise, or skills-wise. Plus, everyone knows that heroes always have years worth of time between adventures and know all the spells there are between them.
:P
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Because it is now instantaneous and doesn't require any prerequisites spells-wise, caster level-wise, or skills-wise. Plus, everyone knows that heroes always have years worth of time between adventures and know all the spells there are between them.
(Just so it's clear, KaeYoss is being ironic here.)
The problem with using time and spell availability as "good enough" balancing factors is that they're so heavily DM-dependent. I'm not a particularly fervent advocate of "rules in place of DM judgment," but this isn't really a matter of judgment, but rather just a matter of campaign styles.
I like significant time to pass in my campaign. I strongly dislike the 20-in-20 phenomenon. With time constraints not being significant, simply due to my perfectly valid campaign-style choice, I've found item creation to be somewhat problematic in my 3.5 game, even with XP costs. I've had to ask the item creator to tone it down. It can only be worse with no balancing factor to replace XP costs.
Personally, in my Pathfinder games, I'll be using 5gp-per-XP, just like spells, unless Jason comes up with something I like better. There's no way I'll be simply allowing item creation at half-price.
If it's overpowered now, it was overpowered then.
This is the operative phrase, I think. Ditching the XP cost makes item creation less messy, but not especially more powerful. It might even make you less powerful, ironically, because of the one-level XP gravy train (because you get more XP for higher-level encounters if you're lower level, spending XP in 3.5 to keep yourself consistently one level behind the rest of the party nets you enough XP to double your money and a good portion of the rest of the party's, as well as have some spare XP left over to cast spells that required it).
I, for one, would like to see a total overhaul of the item creation system, though I doubt that this is possible. Actually, scratch that: I would like to see an overhaul of the whole magic item system, something that makes permanent magic items rare and important but still leaves room for characters that want a bag full of petty magic items to have them. Wands and scrolls should not use "charges," since that's boring and has little to no relation to any source material (at least that I know of). This is, of course, a pipe dream, but I will smoke it nevertheless.
This is the operative phrase, I think. Ditching the XP cost makes item creation less messy, but not especially more powerful. It might even make you less powerful, ironically, because of the one-level XP gravy train [..]
Note that there is no more "XP gravy train" in Pathfinder -- XP rewards are flat, not scaling by level. So if you're behind 50K xp, you'll be behind 50K xp forever.
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I, for one, would like to see a total overhaul of the item creation system, though I doubt that this is possible.
It's possible. It wouldn't even be particularly disruptive to backward-compatibility. (How many statted-out NPCs have item creation feats? For the few that do, making the change -- depending on how it's handled -- wouldn't be a big deal.)
I'd love to see the system redone in Pathfinder to get rid of the goofy "physical item types" distinction that 3.5 uses in favored of a "type of trigger" system like some third-party sourcebooks have used. (I.e., whether it's a potion you drink as a standard action or a runestone you trace as a standard action, it's the same crafting feat.)
In fact, I think one designer (guy who did ... Complete Artificer, maybe?) actually went out of his way to make his system readily available again. While I'm not sure how I feel about his idea of "spell slots as balance," as I never play-tested it or got a feel for it from reading, I really like how he categorized the possible items to be crafted.
Actually, scratch that: I would like to see an overhaul of the whole magic item system, something that makes permanent magic items rare and important but still leaves room for characters that want a bag full of petty magic items to have them.
This, on the other hand, is probably impossible (for Pathfinder). It's just not B-C. (FWIW, my personal taste coincides with yours, but I've learned to suck some things up as the cost of being able to play regularly.)
So anyone with Craft Wondrous Item nearly doubles their, and the whole party's, wealth? THIS IS PERFECTLY BALANCED WITH NO FLAWS WHATSOEVER
The D&D economic system is incredibly shaky, XP costs or no XP costs. DMs can (and do) arbitrarily limit the amount of free time and money that characters have available, so the whole idea of "doubling your money" is moot except at character creation time, if your DM allows pre-crafting items before play begins. XP costs have never been the limiting factor. YMMV, of course.
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Did the Pathfinder rules revert back to the SRD for creating magic items? That is, they now involve XP costs again, you can't craft while adventuring, etc?
It looks like the rules for crafting in Alpha are gone in Beta.
It looks like they got rid of the 'making magic items on the move' rules, which I think is a shame. I like the idea of a wizard puttering at a gewgaw while he's on watch. Besides, making 200 gp of market value in magic items per adventuring day isn't that big a deal, I thought.
So anyone with Craft Wondrous Item nearly doubles their, and the whole party's, wealth? THIS IS PERFECTLY BALANCED WITH NO FLAWS WHATSOEVERThe D&D economic system is incredibly shaky, XP costs or no XP costs. DMs can (and do) arbitrarily limit the amount of free time and money that characters have available, so the whole idea of "doubling your money" is moot except at character creation time, if your DM allows pre-crafting items before play begins. XP costs have never been the limiting factor. YMMV, of course.
IMO it's bad game design just limited to core mechanics unless the game has no down time, crafting experience costs act as a break on crafting abuse in game in a default campaign that utilizes the suggested wealth by level rules or low magic campaigns. Throw in access to a feat like Mercantile Background and it really starts shaking things up.
To paraphrase selling a magic item of marginal utility to a party for 75% of market to have the crafter make 150% of custom magic desired by the party.
Under the basic rules party finds a 100K magical treasure that is of marginal utility to the party they sell it for half market price 50K and purchase items they want at market price. In campaigns where they cannot purchase items someone takes a crafting feat and turns the 50K into 100 K of magic items specifically desired by the party.
Throw in a feat like Mercantile Background the party gets 75K which they craft into 150K of magic items they specifically desire.
Doubling the magic items of BBEGs increases their CRs by 1 or 2.
Can a DM/GM compensate for this more optimized party by giving them less wealth? Sure but there was no reason to before the unnecessary rule change.