item creation feats and PC Wealth

[darkprince83]

How does one consider item creation feats when considering PC wealth? A PC with just craft wondrous item could make most accessories they would normally need to get as loot or buy for half cost.

Also, other PCs could pay that crafting PC say 75% of base price thus giving the crafter even more wealth.

Is this just a perk for taking creation feats?

On one side, the PC has to take the feats that could be spent on so many other useful feats, and must take the time to craft instead of other useful things to do in downtime. Also, one could take the Leadership feat and have their cohort be a crafter and do it for them for cost or 75% or so without even taking the feats ones self so that makes the feats look less useful.

On the other side, the sheer amount of wealth could literally be twice the normal level of PC wealth.

I'm not looking for ways to fix this, as there are so very many, but just what others feel about this.

P.S. this isn't even considering lowering costs by 30% by restricting use of the item to alignment or race.

[Beckett]

I wasn't really clear on what you are asking, here. I allow item creation feats, and if I run a game at higher levels, where players can really start using them, I'll generally allow about 50% of their starting wealth to be used at a discount for the item creation. That is to say they can use 1/2 their starting wealth for Item Creation. It only applies to them though, they can not have another character make them something for cheap.

As fr not allowing the feats in general, I'm not sure. Even limiting them. The character is making a trade off to take those feats, they could have something else that would require less of an overall investment and easier to use. The fact that they get items for cheaper is well, the point of Item Creation feats.

[TriOmegaZero]

Honestly, either you are okay with PCs getting more power for their level with it, or you're not.

For the most part, selling an item they don't want will give them the half price to create the item they do want, and things will stay balanced. When they keep all the items they find, and only use the gold found to make items, they will have more power.

Either allow the feats if you are comfortable with it, or disallow it if you aren't.

Myself, I've divorced magic items from the gold economy. The PC says 'I want to make a magic item' and I say 'here is when it will be available.' And that time frame will be when they are of high enough level for that item to not be overpowered. Then they can spend their gold on roleplay purposes and not combat purposes. It's not easy, but it is better than gold turning into +1s before they should have them.

[darkprince83]

thanks for the replies. My question, beckett, was simply how others handled it. I wasn't sure if it was considered cheap or whatever and if other people had characters that had item creation feats and how they handled them.

[Takamonk]

There are problems with using item creation feats, I think.

If the DM allows discount on character generation, you'll have some players upset that some players get to sacrifice feat slots for money, and if the DM doesn't allow, the player who takes the feat has the following options:

1) Start play with fewer items and fewer useful feats. (I designate these feats as useless, because they don't do anything for gameplay) and typically have to either make very low-cost items, or take forever to make high-cost items (or so long as to make it impractical - you might as well go dragon-hunting).

2) Start play with fewer feats and then save your own money to make items (which puts you back at option 1).

3) Sacrifice feats so you can be the party's item converter, which takes a good bit of altruism-bordering-masochistic-nepotism, as they typically look down their noses at the idea of you charging them for services rendered, at which point, they start deriving costs per swing of the sword.

[Beckett]

Takamonk wrote:

If the DM allows discount on character generation, you'll have some players upset that some players get to sacrifice feat slots for money, and if the DM doesn't allow, the player who takes the feat has the following options:

I'd take "bonus" feats over stating gold any day. Nah, it is usually that the players that do not benefit don't realize that the ones that do have given up a permanent resource for a temporary one. Items can be destroyed, lost, stolen, etc. . . and those feats are still used.