Rings vs wondrous items - what's the difference?

[JoelF847]

Currently, other than needing a different craft feat, there's not a big difference between a ring and a woundrous item. I don't have any suggestions, but I think it would be a good thing if rings somehow were different, similar to how staves are different from wands.

[Ross Byers]

This is a problem with Rods, too.

[Kalyth]

JoelF847 wrote:

Currently, other than needing a different craft feat, there's not a big difference between a ring and a woundrous item. I don't have any suggestions, but I think it would be a good thing if rings somehow were different, similar to how staves are different from wands.

I agree. Currently If I take the craft wonderous item feat I can make necklaces, bracelets, earrings, nipple piercings, toe rings, anklets, lip plates, nose-bones, belly-button peircings, etc...But cant make a ring?

Why? Rings and Rods should just be rolled into wonderous items. If there is nothing different about them either via game mechanics or magical nature then why a seperate catagory?

[Ross Byers]

The design issue here is actually with Wondrous Items. Rods and Rings are well defined categories. The trouble is that Wondrous Items is a catch-all for everything not described by the other categories, and as a result is very large. It even includes 'Elixers' which are basically potions for non-spell effects, that should be just under Brew Potion.

I don't have a good solution for this, though, because breaking down Items into smaller categories is not only nitpicky and sort of bad design, but breaks with backward compatibility.

[Jeff Wilder]

This was just a mistake in design from the beginning, and it's unlikely to change in PFRPG due to the backwards compatibility issue.

Magic item crafting should have been organized based on what an item does and how it works, not on its physical form. So something like:

Craft Spell-Trigger Item (e.g., scroll)
Craft One-Use Item (e.g., potion)
Craft Charged Item (e.g., wand)
Craft Rechargeable Item (e.g., stuff with uses "3/day")
Craft Magic Arms and Armor
Craft Permanent Item

And so on.

And then you could have feats further in a feat chain. Say all of the above only work for items emulating 1st to 3rd level effects. You could have a version that does 4th to 6th, and a version that does 7th to 9th.

You could also have specialty feats, like one for using the wielder's caster stat and level for effects (the way staffs work now).

[Etales]

JoelF847 wrote:

Currently, other than needing a different craft feat, there's not a big difference between a ring and a woundrous item. I don't have any suggestions, but I think it would be a good thing if rings somehow were different, similar to how staves are different from wands.

The Item creation feats from Arcana Evolved solve these issues quite well & they are OGL.

-Craft Single Use
-Craft Spell Completion
-Craft Arms & Armor
-Craft Continous

Vey easy to use & understand

[Matthew Morris]

Rings are subsumed under craft psionic item as well in the SRD.

[Slime]

Maybe Craft Wondrous Item could be broken down in a feat tree:

Craft Minor, Major and Greater Item each limiting the max. Caster Level available for creation ?

[Jason Bulmahn]

Hey there guys,

I appreciate the sentiment here, but this is probably too big a change for what we are trying to accomplish. The item crafting feats are not going anywhere, nor are they changing focus.

This thread is locked.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing