As crafting has a downside (loss of time & money) he can't take 10 on the roll. ;)
But to your issue:
I would add more complexity to the craftign process (character need to learn/find the "recipe" or study an item to create the recipe himself, adding strange materials which can only be obtained via quests etc.).
Importan is that you didn't cut the feat out of the game or force the player to something (like Erikkerik suggested). This will always create tension in your group.
Also enforce the Encumbrance Rules and check if the player uses his items correct (no two items on the same slot, drawing/readying a non-slot item via an action etc.)
Last but not least, read the crafting rules. I know some Ms which don'T like magic crafting in PF because they simply don't read/understand the crafting rules.
If you give us some examples of how he "creating trouble" we can check it with you.:)
As crafting has a downside (loss of time & money) he can't take 10 on the roll. ;)
1. Stop letting him take 10. Taking 10 is for when you don't have serious risk of failure.
You're thinking of taking 20. Taking 10 only requires no distractions, which is probably the case unless you're crafting during combat.
Limit the time.
Also note that even in the best case scenario where he's using this feat to effectively double his WBL, it's only allowing him more diversity in magic items, not more powerful ones, because magic item costs are exponential.
For example, a +1 weapon costs 2k. A +2 weapon costs 8k. a +3 weapon costs 18k. +4 weapons are 32k, which is the first time doubling your WBL will even get you a +1 at all.
The real benefit of the magic item crafting feats isn't having more WBL, though, it's having perfect availability--it's always being able to get exactly the item you want, rather than relying on the GM to place it in the game world.
Of course, what do I know? I don't use magic items at all as a GM, and kind of hate the idea of magic item shops and PCs making magic weapons, so take my words with a grain of salt.
It's gotten to the point where my friend is pretty much just doing everything on the battlefield and leaving nothing or very little to the other players. please help!
Could you explain how crafting wondrous items allows him to "do everything on the battlefield"? As noted by mplindustries, a half-price magic item usually means he's getting an extra +1 bonus at best. Or is he doing something crazy like crafting necklaces of missiles and triggering them all at once?
He's crafting only to himself? That's the problem.
Just tell him to craft for the rest of the party as well, or say you will take the feat away. I don't usually recommend GM control of PCs in this way, but that you craft for everyone and not just yourself is common decency, and the crafting feats in pathfinder are kinda messed up, so it will mess up party balance if he is not interested in helping the group.
Also, if you limit downtime between adventures, it is very hard to craft at all (takes ages...)
Erik, that violates the WBL rules. If he crafts for everyone else then they are gaining a benefit without paying for it.
- Gauss
My DM had problems with two crafters in the party. He asked us to take other feats instead. We did; problem solved.
You could mitigate this somewhat by asking each player for a (short) list of items they'd like and then have them included in loot that the party finds.
Jusomagna,
He should not be breaking the game doing this. At most he should have a +1 spell DC higher than what he would have without crafting. That is not enough to allow him to do this unless something else is off.
Please give details on his build and the builds of the other players. This sounds more like a problem with optimization. If he is significantly more optimized than the other players that would be the problem.
- Gauss
Erik, that violates the WBL rules. If he crafts for everyone else then they are gaining a benefit without paying for it.
- Gauss
It's pretty much irrelevant that they're not paying for it. It's perfectly fine to craft for anyone and everyone else at cost. The biggest benefit to the crafting feats is the ability to turn items you don't want (and have to sell at half price) into items you do (also for half price) so you don't lose value of items calculated when the GM distributed the treasure into the treasure hoards. It doesn't matter who is doing the crafting, ultimately, and who pays for the feat.
Bill, it does matter. It means if the GM wants to keep the amount of wealth the PCs have anywhere near balanced with CR he will have to calculate based on the PRICE (not COST) of the PCs that have benefited from crafting if they do not possess those crafting feats. As a result he will have to cut the treasure down even farther.
Regarding selling for half. If they sell a bunch of stuff for half then the GM has to give more stuff to bring them up to par. They sell that at half, cycle repeats until they are close.
This is simply how the game works. Wealth is just another statistic like Hitpoints or strength. Have too much and you are too powerful relative to the creatures in the Bestiary. Have not enough and you are too weak.
GM gives out 10,000gp in treasure. He wants the PCs to own 10,000gp of wealth to bring them in line with WBL. They sell 5,000gp and get 2500gp. Now they only have 7500gp, 2500 short.
GM puts an extra 2500gp in the next treasure pile. It gets sold for half also and now the group is 1250gp short. This continues in ever shrinking cycles.
If the GM wishes to keep the group equipment balanced then he will have to constantly adjust for what is sold. This is how 3.X and PF have worked for over a decade. Failure to keep the wealth balanced means more work to keep the monsters adjusted to match the PCs power levels. This is not necessarily a bad thing but some GMs are not willing to go through this kind of guesswork. Its why they buy the books.
GM wants the group to have 10,000gp in wealth each.
Player 1 is a crafter. He crafts for himself 5000gp worth (at cost) of stuff. His value is 5000gp (uncrafted price) plus 5000gp (crafted cost) for a total of 10,000gp.
Player 2 is not a crafter. He pays 5000gp to Player 1 to craft stuff. He also owns 5,000gp of uncrafted stuff.
Player 2 is now worth 15,0000gp because he does not possess the crafting feat and thus cannot count the crafted items at cost. They count at price instead. 5000(uncrafted) +5000*2(crafted cost*2 = price) is a total of 15,000gp.
The GM now has to give Player 1 an extra 5,000gp worth of treasure to balance him out with Player 2 followed by buffing up the monsters. Alternately, he can short the group some treasure in the next loot drop and then give Player 1 enough to balance him out.
Simply put, players should not craft for other players if they want to be nice to the GMs. If they do not agree to be nice, the GM should ban the crafting feats.
- Gauss
No ...
If he spends gold on it rather than sold magic items his gold value goes up. He would spend 1,000 and get 2,000 worth of benefit. If someone else sells and item and gives the crafter gold to make an item then they get(n is vale of item) 2*(.5n)(item sells at half price' crafter makes new item at half cost). If they give him good, its THEIR gold that has its value increased. The same exact formula applies to the caster with his own stuff. Only would disrupt the way you talk about if the crafter was being a total altruist and spending his own share completely on other people ...
Also, as a gm its your job to adjust encounters to remain challenging.
Actually, I was addressing Gauss rather than you.
Oh, boy, here we go again.
To the OP: Magic item crafting is a trip mine for many new GM's. Since it has no balancing factors outside of a.) total money in the party and b.) available time to craft, it can easily unbalance your campaign, especially when party wealth becomes very plentyful at the higher levels.
The suggestion that it only means a +1 to stats which some people espouse here is deeply flawed, since they completely discount that ability of players to specialize their equipment choices.
The FAQ entry about the only crafter benefitting from his feats which Gauss loves to quote so much was pulled by SKR straight out of his tuchas and has no lore nor rules precedent nor explanation attached to it.
The best bet you have in balancing your player is to cut down on the downtime the party has between adventures. Throwing bigger monsters at him runs the danger of overwhelming the relatively underequipped rest of the characters. Giving out less treasure overall hits everybody in the party, not the crafter especially. In fact, it gives him an additional advantage, since he still will be wildly over WBL and the rest of the party will fall back even more.
My personal solution to the problem was to heavily houserule the magic item crafting process, where I took out most of the WBL discount and instead made the crating process faster and more inclusive ( i.e. I consolidated some of the outlier crafting feats ).
Bill, it does matter. It means if the GM wants to keep the amount of wealth the PCs have anywhere near balanced with CR he will have to calculate based on the PRICE (not COST) of the PCs that have benefited from crafting if they do not possess those crafting feats. As a result he will have to cut the treasure down even farther.
Regarding selling for half. If they sell a bunch of stuff for half then the GM has to give more stuff to bring them up to par. They sell that at half, cycle repeats until they are close.
This is simply how the game works. Wealth is just another statistic like Hitpoints or strength. Have too much and you are too powerful relative to the creatures in the Bestiary. Have not enough and you are too weak.
No, Gauss. It doesn't matter. At all. Having crafting feats helps alleviate the problem you elaborate on in spoiler 1. The GM wouldn't have to compensate for the PCs selling at half price nearly as much if PCs have crafting feats to turn the stuff they don't want into the stuff they do.
The party manages to recover 20,000 gp worth of items that are redundant or otherwise don't want to keep. So they sell them for 10,000 gp and use the proceeds to make items they do want for the same money, yielding an end result of 20,000 gp worth of items and no work necessary for the GM to compensate with more treasure later. It doesn't matter for whom the items are intended.
If there's any problems with spoiler 2 it's that you're no longer counting the crafter's items the same as the other players. Yet they have the exact same net worth in WBL. They both devoted 5,000 gp to crafting 10,000 gp worth of stuff and had another 5,000 gp saved away.
Hey there, I'm a newbie around here and to DnD in general. I've been having a lot of trouble lately in my current campaign.
I'm DM, and my friend is a magus. He can craft a great many wonderous items and he doesn't hesitate to do so. he's HEAVILY boosted his character's crafting stats, so he literally never fails, with the help of taking 10. I wanted to know from some more experienced DMs, what's a good counter to this? I can't go with cursed items because a) he never fails, and b) he can just make whatever magic item they find later. I thought of limiting gold supply, but that seems unfair to the other players who are in my group. It's gotten to the point where my friend is pretty much just doing everything on the battlefield and leaving nothing or very little to the other players. please help!
If an item can be sold for half the price that is what it should 'cost'. Now if party divides treasure like below there should not be much of a problem, following two examples of a party dividing loot :
treasure (1):
8,000 gold
magic item (4,000)
magic item (8,000)
magic item (4,000)
listed are the market prices, if they want none of the items they can sell it all and then they have 16,000 gold, 4,000 each (assuming 4 party members).
Now if a character decides to want that 8,000 gold item that will cost the party 4,000 gold fortunately that is his share of the treasure, so he gets no gold this time, but he gets a nice new sword +2 which would have cost him 8,000 gold if he bought it new from the magic factory.
Two other characters take an item and get 2,000 gold, the remaining character does not get an item this time but gets 4,000 gold which he can use to buy a share of items next time.
Next time the characters find new loot, there is no money this time but 3 magic items.
treasure (2):
magic item (8,000)
magic item (16,000)
magic item (8,000)
Selling it will net them 16,000 gold total, 4,000 gold each again.
The character that did not get an item last time gets first pick, and decides he wants the main item, it will be worth 8,000 gold if sold, so he forks over the 4,000 gold of the last loot and with his share of this loot he buys a new item. Two other characters take an item each and another gets 4,000 gold that was put down
In this system every character gets his gear valued at half the gold cost, buying magical items in town is the exception, not the rule, since it will cost effectively double.
Now a character that decides to craft his own gear will not have a huge benefit, but he can customize his gear but WBL will stay the same unless the other characters go to town and squander their money on expensive items.
Unless the magus is prepared only to craft for himself this might cause some imbalance, but I do not see why he shouldn't craft for the party as long as they pay their fair share, half market price.
That system only works well if your players rarely want to get to choose which kind of magic items they have.
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Well how much stuff could he be making? Especially with what feats?
Exactly how much coin are you tossing at your party? A common mistake a lot of new GM's do is give their players far too much gold to toss about.
He needs to get these item components from someplace as well so keep in mind the limits on purchasing for a settlement. You don't enchant things by throwing raw gold coins at a furnace....well most things at least.
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Putting aside the WBL discussion for a moment, I want to double check something. Are you letting the player design custom items? You can run into a great deal of trouble if you let a crafting player run amok with the item design guidelines, especially with Craft Wondrous Item. If you have been allowing this try restricting the player to book items only.
That system only works well if your players rarely want to get to choose which kind of magic items they have.
This system makes sense really, why would your party members pay more than they would get the party if an item is sold ?
In my opinion it is the only fair way to value items, otherwise everybody would rather customize their gear in town than keep any loot at all.
Putting aside the WBL discussion for a moment, I want to double check something. Are you letting the player design custom items? You can run into a great deal of trouble if you let a crafting player run amok with the item design guidelines, especially with Craft Wondrous Item. If you have been allowing this try restricting the player to book items only.
Just apply a surtax in value to a custom item. Or add a spell craft roll at some dc to represent research into the new item.
The suggestion that it only means a +1 to stats which some people espouse here is deeply flawed, since they completely discount that ability of players to specialize their equipment choices.
I agree that it's possible in theory to disrupt a game with excessive crafting (e.g. stocking up on Whip feather tokens and spamming them all the time). I disagree that the difference between a belt of Str +2 and a belt of Str +4 would cause one player to dominate an entire game without other factors being involved.
That's why I'm interested in hearing exactly what this PC has been crafting.
That system only works well if your players rarely want to get to choose which kind of magic items they have.This system makes sense really, why would your party members pay more than they would get the party if an item is sold ?
In my opinion it is the only fair way to value items, otherwise everybody would rather customize their gear in town than keep any loot at all.
Which is what happens in every group I've been in over the last fifteen years, so YMMV.
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Crafting wondrous items is one of the most exploitable aspects of magic item creation, which is one of the least manageable aspects of the game. Just be glad your player hasn't yet figured out that he can routinely craft magic items that are far more powerful than he is.
This is one reason crafting feats are not allowed in standardized Pathfinder Society play.
All of the advice you are given above is good and is how GMs typically try to clamp down on the rampant abuse that crafting in general, and crafting wondrous items in particular, allow.
What I've done with my players is sat down with them and said "Look, we all know that crafting wondrous items is broken. Let's agree not to abuse it OK? If one of you starts crafting items in such a way that they gain a major advantage over the rest of the party, that makes me, as the GM, have to try to arbitrarily start mandating behavior or tailoring loot or in other ways exercise "divine control" in ways that basically break immersion. So let's just not do it OK?"
If I end up with a player who says "No way man, I'm gonna do it anyway" then I figure I've got bigger problems with that player than a rules problem in the game and start asking myself if that player belongs in my group.
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Jusomagna,
As others have notes, it's pretty hard to offer advice without a little bit more information about what's going on.
How many players are in your group?
Do you usually play very combat-heavy or combat-light adventures?
Do you write your own adventures, or play pre-written ones?
What are the classes of the other party members?
Are the other players besides your crafting friend complaining? Have they asked him to craft things for them?
But isn't that taking away "player agency"?
Enforce times. Even though they can craft an 8k item with 4k gp it still takes 1 day per 1k gp of total price to craft. That 8k item still takes 8 days to make. 16k = 16 days. Unless your game has gobs of down time this should be easy to manage. Also, play your enemies intelligently. Crafting takes tools. Have them smash through the entire camp if they ambush. Use your imagination!
Also, no magic item let's you break your action economy. If you're letting him create custom items such as 1/day time stop item then STOP DOING THAT. :) Even more it's perfectly reasonable for you to say he doesn't know how to craft every item classified as a wondrous item. You easily say that most minor items are "common knowledge" while anything above he'll have to find patterns/plans for. If you do that though be sure to drop at least a few here and again as they fight stronger enemies or you'll just be a "no toys for you" style jerk.
Good luck!
Which is what happens in every group I've been in over the last fifteen years, so YMMV.That system only works well if your players rarely want to get to choose which kind of magic items they have.This system makes sense really, why would your party members pay more than they would get the party if an item is sold ?
In my opinion it is the only fair way to value items, otherwise everybody would rather customize their gear in town than keep any loot at all.
None of the groups I played with (or GM'ed for) did that in any major way, basically the GM decides what loot there is to find, and it worked very well.
I have been playing a bit longer, starting in the AD&D era, so perhaps it is a bit of old school gaming that me and my friends are used to.
For crafting players I let them do their thing but limit in a few ways.
First I limit the time the players have and I don't allow crafting on the road even though rules allow for it. I also make creating magic items require components that are rare or exotic. You can buy the components but then it costs full price to craft the item. If a player wants to craft something they design it first using their Craft skill which is DC 15 check to obtain a list of components they will require. They can then shop for said components, go in search of the components, or go through an inventory stuff collected during adventuring.
Like they might need the blood of a fey creature and the ground up claws of basilisk. The player might say "I have the claw of basilisk and I just need the blood of fey creature." Now they can just buy the blood for 50% of the discount price. Take a +1 longsword normally 2000 GP crafter for 1000 GP. The discount is 1000 gp. So 500 gp per component and the the player can buy both, one or none.
I found this made adventuring more interesting and the player then look for interesting components and I'll note what they take. When crafting occurs I scan their list and depending where the wealth of party sits I give them can make their design use from all the components they already have to none or anything in between. It gives a lot of control I find and spurs adventure.
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1) Why isn't he crafting for the other players?
It sounds like this is actually the root of the problem; it's easier to adjust encounter difficulty to a balanced party, than to a party with one exceptional PC.
If the players shares the fruits of crafting, then the other players will be more awesome too, and you can just hike encounter difficulties a bit, and the problem's gone.
So why isn't he crafting for the other players? And if he refuses to craft for them, why aren't they doing anything about it?
2) Crafting item DCs aren't that high. It's not strange that he's getting everything done with Take 10; that's how the game system was intended. DC isn't the block to crafting: the limit is wealth.
How's he getting so much money? Is the other party getting just as much money? (If not, solve that.)
3) While wondrous items are a very big heap of useful things, they're not the only worthwhile items out there. The magus isn't getting those for cheap. He's not getting cheap magic armor, weapons, rings, scrolls, wands, potions.
Crafting DCs are among the easiest to beat. A surprising number of items don't really crest CL 15. A spellcraft check of 20 is super easy even at level 1 or 2 if you only even scantly try. By level 10 if you invest in spellcraft with any significant number of skill ranks there literally isn't an item you can't craft skill-wise. This ease of DC has been stated to be intentional.
You have encountered one of the big flaws in the system. Yes as GM you must either limit the amount of gold the characters have or modify the CR of monsters they face.
This is a flaw in my opinion because it forces you to neuter any creative ideas players have in regards to making gold because if you don't they will throw the CR system way off track. You can increase the CR of encounters, but that only goes so far and becomes harder and harder to balance as the CR system is more of an art then a science.
So behind the scenes you have to lower future treasure gains if the players find a way to get more gold than they should have.
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upon reflection, I suppose it's not really his crafting so much as he's really REALLY good at exploiting the rules, especially with magic.
That's what I suspected. Taking Craft Wondrous Item is a symptom of him being a power-gamer (or whatever your preferred term is), not the cause.
1 Control Down Time
2 Conttrol money
3 Find out the all player wealth compair it to the weatlth by level table. See link
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gamemastering.html
4. Make sure all folks are on par or at level
5. Learn Sunder, Disarm, and steal rules. And use them. This will drive the point home to the PC.
6. Kill the PC and let him pay for the Resurrection 5K cost, and the 2 Resurrection for 2K.
7. Mage's Disjunction Trap
Another thing to point out: it is VERY likely that the item creation rules will be modified and/or clarified in the upcoming paizo book Ultimate Campaign, which I expect might alleviate some of these issues.
They've stated they're not changing anything from core. It's more of an explanation/expansion kind of book in regards to crafting.
And do not forget Domiante Person Wizard that tell the PC to put all his stuff in the bag and robs them.