RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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From Another Discussion
For one reason or another a lot of folks seem to shy away from building their own magic items. This might be a topic for another thread - I'm not trying to derail here, so do start up a new thread and link it here if you feel like getting into this - but why do you think that is (beyond that the system is mighty and daunting!) and do you feel like you've come up with any tricks that have helped you overcome your magic item creatophobia?
I can think a few reasons off the top of my head.
1. It is one more thing GMs have to do in game preparation. It takes time to create a magic item. Going from concept to pricing can be a long process if someone isn't fully comfortable with the rules and hasn't done very many magic items. It took me a several hours to figure everything out for my first custom magic item. With practice I think the process can be done in about a half-hour for the more simple items, or an hour for something higher powered and complicated.
2. The rules are not that clear to begin with. While the rules can be followed well enough, they are just a bit confusing for the first few items. On top of that, there are some mistakes that most people make very easily. The "Ring of True Strike" is a good example. For that reason I found I needed people to walk me through the process.
3. People are afraid they are going to break their game. I come across this often when talking to my own GMs, who often fear a home brewed item will swing the balance out of whack. I have seen it happen, but only once or twice.
4. The pricing guidelines are incomplete. An example of this is with container items like Bags of Holding and Handy Haversacks. How do you price a container out right? This reason isn't as big as others, but it still have prevented me from completing a few items.
What are some other reason? Discuss!
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As someone who has been playing with the Magic Item Creation rules since they were released in 2000, as well as playing with tons of people both physically and via online gaming such as OpenRPG, I have come to one conclusion.
People use it incorrectly, then give it a bad name. As you mentioned the true-strike rings, that would be an example of incorrect use (true strike cannot be made continuous or like boots of speed due to its weird duration which does not have a price modifier).
Likewise, the % cost consideration reductions (such as alignment, race, skill use, etc) were actually not part of the actual rules in 3.5. They were listed in a "behind the screen" sidebar in the 3.x DMGs, which were specifically called out in the beginning of the book to not be part of the actual rules but to be only advice and considerations for the design process. While they are not in a side-bar in the SRD or PRD, they were not intended to be something you could at apply to items at your leisure.
Finally, because people don't pay attention to the fine print (ignoring spell durations, using illegal spells for potions and wands, not factoring in material component costs, etc) and then screw up stuff in terms of price vs value, it makes many GMs nervous because they expect this to be the default situation.
It's like that class (any class) that some guy was using the mechanics wrong, and so everyone in that group was like "Yeah, we should ban this class 'cause it's super OP and/or doesn't work right", when really the guy playing it either didn't read the rules correctly, or was trying to cheat.
That being said, GMs are already allowed to veto any item they wish, including printed items, so telling a player to go back to the drawing board if they make a mistake; or just say no if they don't want things like belts of enlarge person.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I went and compiled alot of the item discussions from last years RPG Superstar. I broke my list down into a few areas and pricing was one of the larger sections. Most items are very easy to price using the rules as given. The difficulties arise when working with the weird item abilities that aren't written out directly. I think this is what throws people off the most.
I think you hit the nail on the head there ashiel, bad rep through word of mouth is the most likely cause. However i think many gm's shy away because magic item creation is a much more complicated and less codified cut and dry section of the rules.
If there were an actual formula to work out everything exactly they would see more use, sometimes its not about not wanting the belt of enlarge as it is about how its ment to be designed. The first step to item creation is really losing the nervousness and making a decision that might turn out wrong.
Some of us are lucky to have players or gms who can accept and fix a mistake, i once made a magebane sword (+2 enhancement bonus extra and 2d6 extra damage vs arcane spellcasters or creatures with arcane sla's) that was a big old mistake that got sundered and replaced. My pc was a little disappointed but he did get a sword of silence insted.
I think you hit the nail on the head there ashiel, bad rep through word of mouth is the most likely cause. However i think many gm's shy away because magic item creation is a much more complicated and less codified cut and dry section of the rules.
If there were an actual formula to work out everything exactly they would see more use, sometimes its not about not wanting the belt of enlarge as it is about how its ment to be designed. The first step to item creation is really losing the nervousness and making a decision that might turn out wrong.
Some of us are lucky to have players or gms who can accept and fix a mistake, i once made a magebane sword (+2 enhancement bonus extra and 2d6 extra damage vs arcane spellcasters or creatures with arcane sla's) that was a big old mistake that got sundered and replaced. My pc was a little disappointed but he did get a sword of silence insted.
Ironically, I think they actually released magebane in Complete Arcane or some other official D&D sourcebook, which worked pretty much exactly like that (bane effects vs arcane spellcasters or things with SLAs).
It's true that almost nobody will do it correctly the first few times, because there really is a good bit of fine print. You really have to pay attention to the fine print. Same with potions. Who doesn't love potions? How many people do you think there are that believe you can make a potion of shield? A lot I tell you! Because they don't read the fine print as to what spells are legal for potions! :P
The item creation system is a complex animal, but that's because it is designed to not only allow you to create an almost unlimited number of magic items of different shapes, sizes, and effects (seriously it's usable for creating everything from a +1 sword to a giant airship that uses a machine that creates unlimited amounts of steam and hot air to lift the blimp and run engines to turn propellers and such). It also - and I feel most importantly - creates a standard by which things can be judged.
Without the item creation rules, it becomes far more difficult to judge the value of items. This recently came up on an OpenRPG gaming forum, where a guy wanted a magic item that did something similar to a spell but not exactly, and wanted to price it very low. I noted (because I've been asked to give advice on that forum when it comes to mechanics and such) that the benefits of his magic item were comparable to the effects of a Righteous Might effect and thus should be priced far more closely to that range.
This standard in item creation means that we can often look at effects and get a general idea as to where to price off the wall abilities, both in terms of verisimilitude and terms of usefulness. For example, I had to do some thinking with the pricing of "The Vampire's Bite" in the other thread, and using the item creation rules and comparison to some existing magic items, I am fairly confident in the results (I actually feel like I may have overpriced it by about 17k since I probably shouldn't have multiplied the vampiric effect by 1.5 for the weapon, as the 30k+ it would have costed seems more in line with similar items).
Without this standard, it becomes far more difficult to create and trust new items. It's essentially just like everything else in the system. Because of standardization, we can look at stuff and go "Well, that looks off", as opposed to just guessing (just like with class features and such).
It also helps me when I'm designing spells!
PAIZO TAKE NOTE: When I'm designing spells for my own games or for others, I often take item creation into consideration. It's a part of the game so much that there is large amount of rules, feats, and even class abilities dedicated to it.
I consider some of the following things.
- Would I be comfortable with another class having access to this spell (via potions, UMD, x/day items, or continuous items).
- Would this spell be way too good if I were to make it into a magic item that it's a legal option for (the Paladin spell bestow grace from the APG falls into this category IMHO).
- If I made this into a magic item, even if it was just a potion, wand, staff, or other item, how would it affect the game.
For example, the shield spell is really strong for a magic item. I wouldn't say it's overpowered, but it would make a very strong option for many characters. It's possible that the shield spell would be better designed if it began at +2 and scaled with caster level (reaching a higher shield bonus as level advanced), since it requires no hands, blocks magic missiles, and is a force effect.
With the Paladin spell Bestow Grace is another example. It's a 2nd level spell, but it grants a sacred bonus equal to the target's Charisma modifier on saves, making it an ideal buff for Paladins (because as written it's legal for the Paladin to cast on himself), Sorcerers, Oracles, Summoners, Bards, and so forth. If I was writing the spell, I would have seriously considered the ramifications of this spell as potions or more permanent effects.
The Paladin spell grace would also fall into this category. It's very useful in terms of having a magic item that let you use this on a semi-regular basis, as it's both a swift action and allows you to move around more or less unimpeded by threat of opportunity attacks.
So when I'm designing stuff, I don't just look at "Hey I bet it'd be cool if I could cast this and do this, and I bet it'd be A-OK to make it this level or write it this way since I'm only putting it on this spell list" or whatever, but instead look at the system and think a bit about the ripple effects.
Ripple effects are huge. The Fighter changed 0% from 3E to 3.5, but went from people complaining about them being OP to one of the worst classes ever. Why? Ripple effects (nerfed feat combos, nerfed keen + improved critical, nerfed vorpal weapons, nerfed and complicated weapon size rules, etc, etc, etc). It's what I call a "stealth nerf".
That effect showing up in a splat book is both suprising and not suprising. Its an obvious extention of bane but its inherently too powerful, dragons, outsiders, about 20-30% of npc opponents, some undead, most aberitions. Its a huge list for a bane effect, compared to a normal bane effect which might have between 20% and 50% uptime depending on type level and the game your in (undead and evil outsider are clear winners, dragon is good when it works and with the crowd i play with aberition can be shockingly handy, lovecraftian buggers we are) magebane has an 80%+ uptime.
Knowing that how can anyone be suprised that players are tentative around these little used and little understood rules that even the people who wrote them in the first place can make a hash of, not saying that the same person did the creation rules as complete arcana but it still comes down to system mastery on the development side.
That effect showing up in a splat book is both suprising and not suprising. Its an obvious extention of bane but its inherently too powerful, dragons, outsiders, about 20-30% of npc opponents, some undead, most aberitions. Its a huge list for a bane effect, compared to a normal bane effect which might have between 20% and 50% uptime depending on type level and the game your in (undead and evil outsider are clear winners, dragon is good when it works and with the crowd i play with aberition can be shockingly handy, lovecraftian buggers we are) magebane has an 80%+ uptime.
Knowing that how can anyone be suprised that players are tentative around these little used and little understood rules that even the people who wrote them in the first place can make a hash of, not saying that the same person did the creation rules as complete arcana but it still comes down to system mastery on the development side.
Don't get me wrong. I totally agree that it's crazy strong. Just noting that, ironically, the very item you scrapped for being too strong actually showed up in an official source later on. Then again, splatbooks are often known for this kind of thing. :P
We've been using Item Creation Rules in my gaming group since we started playing 3.0 back in 2001.
My favorite were Longstrider Boots, which are just toned down versions of Boots of Striding and Springing.
In Pathfinder, specifically, my Cleric/Wizard/Mystic Theurge made an Intelligent shape-shifting weapon for the Fighter so that he could have one weapon that could deal different damage types (pre-APG, which added a similar ability that didn't require the weapon to be Intelligent).
So no, I don't understand the lack of use of Item Creation. If anything, in my group, we used it TOO much. :P
I wish they would've culled all the vastly overpowered items when they went through the SRD. Or at least give them more of a reasonable price. Boots of Speed should've been the first against the wall. Free action haste is exceedingly powerful. And hey, as long as you have 3-4 combats a day each lasting a few rounds, you won't really be running out of that extra attack it grants. At worst, you'll be getting that extra attack the majority of the time.
And while a ring of true strike doesn't work, a sword enchanted to cast it on the user, as a free action as a part of swinging the sword, is legal. It is use-activated and the use-activated rules specifically call out "swinging a sword" as an example.
So, the current RAW item creation allows for swords that give +20 to hit for 2k. 1st level spell, at a CL 1, times 2000 gp. The foot note is only relevant to Continuous effects, meaning that use-activated effects are not governed by it.
I hope the promised revamp of the crafting system extends to magical item crafting.
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if you want a sword of true strike that you can combine with the swing of a weapon.
you have to pay the quicken cost.
so that use activated sword of swift action true strike costs 90,000 gold pieces.
9x5x2,000 gp or 90,000 gold pieces. and it only applies after you make the swift action.
it's 2,000 Gold pieces for the standard action version of true strike.
there is no way to make a ring of continuous true strike due to it's odd duration.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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if you want a sword of true strike that you can combine with the swing of a weapon.
you have to pay the quicken cost.
so that use activated sword of swift action true strike costs 90,000 gold pieces.
9x5x2,000 gp or 90,000 gold pieces. and it only applies after you make the swift action.
it's 2,000 Gold pieces for the standard action version of true strike.
there is no way to make a ring of continuous true strike due to it's odd duration.
The official ruling (and if you pay attention to the RPG Superstar forums you will see this,) for an item using the spell true strike at will is that you need to use the Weapon Bonus (enhancement) base price. That would be Bonus squared X 2000. With a +20 to hit, that would be 800,000 gp. You may lower the price a little bit because it would be just one strike a round, but I doubt you will be able to justify an item below the epic item costs (>200,000gp.)
When creating an item you need to think about the effect just as much as the spell the item emulates. Is the effect covered somewhere else? With spells like true strike and mage armor they are. Weapon and Armor bonuses are handled differently then other effects.
With the upcoming "Ultimate Equipment," we need to have a section on item creation. I am not asking for the rules to be rewritten, but they do need to be clarified and examples need to be given. The pricing table needs to be expanded a bit too, or at least made clearer. Clearing up misunderstandings like the one above should be a goal, and would be one step further towards the rules seeing more use.
For example, a better explanation on price reductions due to limitations is something everyone could benefit from, but is only covered briefly in the Core Rulebook.
Myself and the groups I've played with all use the item creation rules quite a bit.
I do wish the rules were slightly expanded, however. The thing I was most looking for from Ultimate Magic was a few more pages on item creation, including filling out table 15-29 a bit more.
I personally love creating items for high-level PCs, but the creation rules are not clear enough for my little brain. For example, I've tried to reverse engineer the crafting of a Robe of the ArchMagi ('please let me make a similar item but without the silly overpriced SR 18 feature'). Bu doing so is not clear to me, given the multiple abilities, and the importance to multiplier costs of whether different abilities are 'similar' or not (a poorly described concept, proably needing more examples).
Also, the examples they give for just picking an item and mimicking it with swapped spells don't always work. For example, the Lantern of Revealing is listed as the example for 'use-activated or continuous' in table 15-29, yet when I work through the example's math (and people say this hobby is for geeks, sheesh!), it seems the item should be twice as expensive, OR they cut the price in half again because the lantern just illuminates a slice rather than a full spherical spread? I could be getting the math wrong (would not be the first time), but my wrong ness or rightness in this case both examplify the item creation process being hard to use reliably.
Oddly enough, those of us who are afraid to get it wrong, not just cheaping ourselves but (even more so) giving ourselves too good of a deal, are likely the ones most concerned about using the rules. Those who love loopholes tend to love the item-creation vagueness and thus the ability to power up their PCs "legally."
The multiple similar abilities discount is used when making items that have abilities that are tied to each other. For example, staffs have many spells, but only a certain number of charges, and all those spells use the same charges. Staffs receive the multiple similar abilities discount.
Most of the time I stay away from the custom magic item guidelines because (a) there's usually enough good low-priced stuff that already exists (e.g. cloaks of resistance, stat-boosting items, magic weapons and armour), (b) there's a general stigma around crafting magic items, in that some people think it's "munchkin-y" to get magic items for half price and (c) I if create a magic item that's clearly better than pre-existing magic items, I start to get the nagging suspicion that I have underpriced that item, whether the GM accepts it or not.
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Yes, staves are an easier case, and in fact I loved making them before they died an agonizing death in PF (IMHO). In fact, that whole paragraph titled "Multiple SIMILAR Abilities" on p. 549 is pretty easy to apply. But I'm talking mostly about the lack of specificity in the "Multiple DIFFERENT Abilities" paragraph directly below that. "Abilities such as attack roll bonus or saving throw bonus and a spell-like function are not similar..." There is so much gray area here (are saves and AC similar, i.e., protective, or different? are two different type of save or AC bonus similar to each other? etc.), and this paragraph being more clear is where my example of reverse engineering the Robe of Archmagi could be much easier to apply.
I agree they died by fire in Pathfinder. Staffs suck these days. They're more trouble than they're worth. I have yet to have a player who wanted a staff in Pathfinder, or who didn't desire to immediately sell a PF-style staff for something else. So I swapped back to 3.x staffs and use x/day staffs as well (because they're really cool and don't break verisimilitude*).
*: Normal staffs with x/- charges break verisimilitude because they are generally excellent examples of long lost magical tools of incredible power and utility, and yet they burn out, so finding them kind of sucks as they probably have few charges, or feels placed there by the GM because they have many charges meaning they were rarely used. This is why I prefer x/day charges, such as 5/day so you can draw charges from the staff to do cool stuff without going overboard, while making sure the staff is a lasting investment. Same for wands.
Maybe someone can further clarify, or feels like working through the ArchMagi Robe example? Not that I would expect anyone to enjoy that, but hey, I'll check for it just in case.
Give me a moment, and I'll try to get it in my next post.
Awesome! Thank you guys for starting this thread up. It's definitely going to take some time to take in and digest.
PAIZO TAKE NOTE
Noted! ;)
The robe of the archmagi seems to have each of the special abilities added together without the 1.5 modifier for adding additional abilities to the item, which adds up to 101,000 gp. It appears to have had the -30% class/alignment restriction applied to it (must be arcane caster, must be of a certain alignment). The result of this modification brings it down to 70,700 gp.
Now I'm not sure what the value of a +1 caster level to overcome spell resistance is, but it's definitely less than +1 caster level. Now by reverse engineering the Ioun Stone that grants a +1 caster level, we can see that +1 CL is worth 15,000 gp. More than likely, this amount would be squared for the bonus (so a +4 CL item would theoretically cost 240,000 gp, or 480,000 gp as an ioun stone).
So let's assume that since it's a far more limited version of caster level boost, it must be cheaper. Playing with the numbers a little bit, it would appear that 1/8th that value would be about right, adding to 5,250 after being multiplied by 2*2 and reduced by 30%.
That would bring the cost of the item to 75,950 gp estimated value, which is close enough. A lot of items are rounded up or down to a more aesthetic number, such as 75,000 gp (nice and silky smooth this number).
Now it's obviously not perfect, but the designers probably eyeballed it a bit, and in doing so, we can pick it apart and get a better idea as to how the item was created.
Hopefully this will help. On a side note, if my calculations are anywhere near correct, you should be able to shave off about 42,000 gp (60,000 gp * .70) off the price if you take out the spell resistance 18, which leaves you mainly with a +5 armor, +4 resistance, and +2 vs spell resistance, with drawbacks. In short, not very impressive, but it's not bad for the price.
Awesome! Thank you guys for starting this thread up. It's definitely going to take some time to take in and digest.
PAIZO TAKE NOTENoted! ;)
Is it odd this is possibly the second time I've had the urge to hug you? :P
Hopefully this will help. On a side note, if my calculations are anywhere near correct, you should be able to shave off about 42,000 gp (60,000 gp * .70) off the price if you take out the spell resistance 18, which leaves you mainly with a +5 armor, +4 resistance, and +2 vs spell resistance, with drawbacks. In short, not very impressive, but it's not bad for the price.Yes, that does help, and thanks for taking the time. It's still a good demonstration for the PF makers of how much guesswork there is, but it does give me a good idea. Also, I forgot about those helpful 'restrictions' that bring down cost, which I'm sure did factor in. Mainly, once you get rolling with an item like this, it's all about the combo of many features in one slot, for which we pay throught he giant hairy nose, but understandably.
Thanks again, Ashiel, and I'd love to hear from the developers on this.
Keep in mind that the guys who wrote the robe of the archmagi were actually Monte Cook and the gang back in 2000. I don't think that it has been changed much (if at all) since then, so it might not have even been the Paizo staff who actually figured up the cost of the item.
Other items that use the price modifiers are things like the Holy Avenger, if I recall correctly. Again, like I said before, the -10/30% cost reducers are for specific themed items, and were not part of the actual rules in 3E/3.5 but were included in a GM sidebar for explaining how some of the items had been priced and was in fact a guideline (contrasted to the crunchy creation rules). Such modifications were never intended for wrongful abuse by players creating magic items.
For example, when you hear about artificers and crafters making excessively expensive magic items for pocket change because every magic item they have has a -30% or greater reduction in market cost due to it being tailored specifically for their race/class/alignment/etc, you should know they are doing it wrong. It's these guys who are giving junk a bad name. :P
PS: I've had players who have tried to do this before. One was playing an artificer and was trying to stack every cost reducer he could get his hands on, and even in cases of cost reducers that did stack or were applicable, he was generally stacking them incorrectly.
For example, he took the feat from the Eberron book which reduces crafting costs by 25% (so 1000 gp becomes 750 gp). He then took Magical Artisan from the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book (requires you to choose a specific item creation feat and get a 25% reduction in crafting cost). If you combine these two feats, the reduction is cost-25%-25%, not cost -50% (it matters because if you take 1,000 gp and reduce it by 25% then reduce it by 25% again you get 562.5 gp, as opposed to 500 gp). Now that might not seem like a huge difference, but it means a lot when dealing with various expensive magic items.
But yeah, the whole reason I started the Magic Items for the Savvy Adventurer thread was to create a small archive and help-desk for people who wanted to explore magic item creation and get some help from their fellow gamers and such. A lot of us have been doing this stuff for longer than some of us would admit, and it would be nice to pass on the fruits of our experience.
I may end up remaking the thread in the near future to let the nay-say posts fall by the wayside and begin fresh, with the magic items in the thread posted on the front page. I wish that the forum here worked like the forum on Giant in the Playground sometimes. The lack of editing after an hour of posting and lack of formatting makes community enhancements difficult.