I apologize if I missed this in my search...
I'm running a Pathfinder game and my players noticed before I did (I bought a couple of copies and printed one) that there is no longer an xp cost with crafting magical items.
Is this intended/as designed? I think it's grossly overpowerful if there is not some other cost to making a magical item than just gold.
No, there is no xp cost; and yes, it is grossly over-powerful. I can see the reason to take the sting out of wizards making magical items, but it turns the world into one where powerful magic items are everywhere and in virtually everyone's hands. Need a better balance.
It just makes magical items worth Gold.. and makes crafting make sense.
i.e. why do mages get dumber from crafting?
You as DM control the wealth by level. All this does is let PC's craft items they want rather than wonder if someone will hafta use that +2 Unholy Scythe they found.
-S
While I have some misgivings about the remove of XP as a cost (for spells, items, etc.), I do not find it to be "grossly overpowered". The XP requirement for crafting items was never that burdensome except for the phenomenally rich who had years to while away. Also the new XP per level system virtually requires the elimination of it as a cost since any cost quickly becomes meaninglessly small.
When crafting at full speed in 3.5, you use up 40 xp per day. That's it.
At 5th level, a crafter could spend 21 days crafting away his entire 10,500 gp average character wealth (ACW) and not save 840 xp of his 10-15k total.
10th level can spend 124 days crafting all 62,000 gp ACW, saving 4960 xp of his 45-55K in 3.5, or 70-100K in Pathfinder.
15th level can spend 16 months crafting all 240,000 gp ACW, saving 19200 xp of his 105-120K in 3.5, or 425-600K in Pathfinder.
And a 20th level crafter can spend 4 years, 9 months and 25 days crafting all 880,000 gp of his wealth, saving 70400 xp of his 3.5 total of 200k or 2,400,000 in Pathfinder.
It does become more significant at higher levels in 3.5 (though less so in Pathfinder). There's a question of whether it should have, however even taking everything at face value, any crafter at 20th level who does this will be three levels behind their partymates, and gain TWO AND A HALF TIMES as much xp per encounter, quickly regaining almost all they spent.
It does make a cycle of Crafting, Using, and Selling a loss-less proposal, other than time and the time-value of gold. This could be somewhat abused, but more likely it'll encourage innovation, risk, and some of the rarer items that make the game more fun!
You all bring up some valid points. I'll let the mage in the party run with it as is and just watch the level of gold rewarded.
Thanks all.
Not over-powered as per Majuba's post.
It just reduces the amount of book-keeping required with parties experience.
Agreed on both counts. I play an artificer in an Age of Worms game, and I can tell you that while our party is prepped for nearly any occasion, being levels behind the rest of the party is not fun. Also, our DM bemoans the multiple calculations he has to do when it comes to XP tables due to the level gap. I for one do not mind the loss of XP expenditure in terms of crafting magic items.
I always thought any artificer had to be somewhat insane in 3.x to want to create items at all, let alone make a career out of it.
QFT. Amen to that brother... -_-
More magic items is actually BAD for the comparative power between Melee and Caster classes. Simply compare the impact of +6 stat increasing items on the classes and notice that the Fighter gets maybe 7-10% increase in relative power (depending on your starting stats and so on) while the Wizard gets a host of new bonus spells. This represents a MUCH bigger gain in power and really shows the structural differences between the classes. This difference in gained power is apparent from the low level Boots of Levitation which are more or less useless to melee classes, but which make wizards immune to melee in many situations - for free.
The wizard classes main aspect is the flexibility, but melee classes are more or less focused on their - more or less - one way of dealing damage.
There are two ways to "fix" these differences (at least that I came up with):
1. Change the class mechanics so the classes all get the same amount of powers at the same time. This is the 4e approach, but it also was apparent in Everquest 2.2. Point out these structural differences to the DMs and the game/module designers so any encounters / monsters are designed to give every player his "15 minutes of fame" every gaming evening.
I do not agree ... magical items can give meele classes thal little plus they needed to became more fun to play .. just do not think that the only thing you can give to a figher is a bigger sword ...
After all, objects gives wizards more or less options they can get using spells, fighers can get exciting new opportunities they could not get in any other way ... it is just a matter of creativity ...
I'm not too worried about over-powered crafting wizards, and surelly i will noe penalize them with less treasure just because they spend feature to get better magical object at lower cost ... if i will feel that things are going to far, anyhow, i might introduce, for a few magical items, the need of a rare component, that you cannot always find ready for shopping ... will edventualy be the hook for a new quest.
I find it's not overpowering if you take into account the 50% worth of sold items, the wealth limits of cities that can affect the availability of components and the already relative rarity of available high-level crafter-NPCs.