For my personal campaign setting for my players I have established one general rule when it comes to NPCs and the availability of Magic Item Creation. That rule is that all NPCs are their level -1, limiting what crafting feats are available at the beginning of the story, to be expanded on later as the world develops. Part of the story is going to include travelling to different parts of the fantasy world to meet the characters who take part in magic item creation, learn about it, and help those in trouble.
Example: At the start, players are level 3, the only MIC feats that NPCs have are Scribe Scroll by the wizard, and Brew Potion by the Alchemist.
Immediately after the first campaign they will be level 4, so upon returning to the city, new potions become possible as the clerics and wizards that are NPCs can now take brew potion. Craft Wondrous Item is also now possible with some restrictions, and Inscribe Rune is also mechanically possible.
For the 4th level campaign, I plan on having them travel to the dwarven mine city, and learning about the crafting of magic weapons, by a forgemaster dwarf. I expect this character will become a rather important one, as he will be the only initial character to have the ability to craft magic weapons for the players until they reach level 6 or higher. The quest will be about excavating certain gems from the mines that are overrun by monsters (naturally) only to learn that these gems have magical properties and can be used as Magical Item Creation Reagents, an item I have created for the purpose of this campaign world. Reagents found by the players are Appraised, and the Appraise check determines the value that the individual can use towards magic item crafting. Reagents found can be used at twice the value they can be sold at, for the purpose of crafting magic items. For example, a player finds a pile of magical reagents, he appraises it to be worth 1000gp, if the character has no way of crafting magic items, he can sell the reagents for the 1000gp, most likely to magic item crafters, who value the reagents greatly. If the player decides to instead use the reagents himself, they will be worth 2000gp towards the crafting cost of the item.
Cities will have their purchase limits translated from gp into set amounts of crafting reagents already existing in town, and reagents found while adventuring will not affect that total.
To craft an item, the player must purchase (or find) enough magic creation reagents, and if a city runs out, then they cannot finish the crafting of the item.
Reagents themselves take on many different forms for the many different crafting feats. Odd liquids such as dragon's blood could be considered reagents for the purpose of being used as ink to scribe scrolls or make magic tatoos. Rare gems and metals can be used to make magic arms and armor. Et cetera
The question is: are there other ways for me to have NPCs gain MIC feats sooner than normal, not unlike the Forgemaster Dwarf? Are they as flavorful and possible to blend into my campaign setting? I can try and work with pretty much anything.
So, every NPC in the world is 1 level less than the PC's? Not knocking your rule, but kinda curious as to why this is. I mean, no great wizards off in the distance? No epic kings who fought for and won their kingdoms? A whole planet of people who are, individually, just a tad less powerful than some random group of adventurers?
It's there to limit the demand my players have to have custom magic items crafted for them. It's a general rule for who they encounter in town. The goal is for them to 'discover' magic item crafting as the technology develops.
Seems like a lot of work to get around player entitlement. A simple NO or "Lets roll for community size", or a check of the GP limits of the town they are in would work just as well. They want to go off the rails and run to the capital? Too bad, bandits above your ability are blocking the road, or the capital is under siege by hill giants. Heck you could have a campaign just by channeling your players greed in getting access to the capitals high GP limit and magic item availability. Also having magic items over 1k crafted for them will take more than a day even if they find a crafter. Force them to do stuff while they wait for their stuff to get made. Even toss their orders on the end of the line (the smith has other customers, first come first serve).
The option you have come up with seems forced and artificial. It's like playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and going back to the tunnel you escaped from prison with only to find out the mud crab at the exit has leveled up with you.
Seems like a lot of work to get around player entitlement. A simple NO or "Lets roll for community size", or a check of the GP limits of the town they are in would work just as well. They want to go off the rails and run to the capital? Too bad, bandits above your ability are blocking the road, or the capital is under siege by hill giants. Heck you could have a campaign just by channeling your players greed in getting access to the capitals high GP limit and magic item availability. Also having magic items over 1k crafted for them will take more than a day even if they find a crafter. Force them to do stuff while they wait for their stuff to get made. Even toss their orders on the end of the line (the smith has other customers, first come first serve).
The option you have come up with seems forced and artificial. It's like playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and going back to the tunnel you escaped from prison with only to find out the mud crab at the exit has leveled up with you.
player's greed often drives them more than any plot I can come up with for my group. The idea for this world was to have the campaigns be based on what my players care about, and that is loot. In past campaigns my players often forget the reason they are adventuring in the first place and skip straight to the money. I decided to create the world in a way I thought my players would appreciate and become invested in because the plot is centered on what they as a group trend to value more in their experience.
I'm sorry you don't like it, enemies in the world will of course be of appropriate CR, but regular townsfolk don't need to be leagues ahead of my players. I want them to feel like they are the baddest of asses, it makes their characters that much more special.
Levels aren't exactly a good way to judge npcs vs players. A 7th level blacksmith commoner with skill focus and the feats needed to make magic arms and armor or wondrous items is not going to be especially powerful in combat compared to a PC of almost any level. Sure he might be by the book CR5... But with non heroic NPC stats he isn't' going to be good at anything other than his crafting/profession focus.
Heck that 7th level master craftsman isn't exactly going to be all that common anyways, most villages won't have any NPCs of that level. A typical village blacksmith is only going to be able to make masterwork items, and usually only barely (good enough to progress past journeyman, but not good enough to be anything other than a village smith).
Restrict access to areas and you restrict available loot. Its like in a JRPG where there is a gate that your character can't pass through because you need to find a certain item, or a path you can't take because the monsters are too hard. Eventually when you do pass that skill/item/level gate you have access to the next town with its enhanced merchants and new higher level stories/quests.
If the players start out at a thorp in the middle of nowhere, their options are going to be limited. If they want to go to that small town, they have to pass through the bandit woods. If they want to go to the main city, they have to make it past the siege camp of the hill giants. If they want to get high level loot, they have to track down legends of ancient ruins past the bleeding edge of civilization and fight monsters that were thought to be only myths. If they go back to that starting thorp? Still has the same people. Might be something they missed the first time (like an old forgotten ruin), but the village itself isn't going to have anything different from what was available at level 1.
So completely redesign the entire premise of the campaign because you don't like the one nuance that I designed into the game world?
I don't want to give NPCs any advantage over the PCs, I thought it was a cool concept.
Sorry you disagree bro.
How are the NPCs gaining advantages over the PCs? I understand you wanted specific advice on making the mechanics of crafting at lower level, but you also posted at length the mechanics of why the NPCs were going to be lower level.
I'm trying to understand why this is even needed when you can avoid all that work and heavy handed top down approach and just use the existing mechanics to structure the adventure to achieve your desired results.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting your intention. Is it your intent to limit what sort of items that the players have on demand access to? Is it your intent to have the PCs alway better than the NPCs? If its the first I have already stated solutions to access control. If its the second then its pretty easy to understand that NPC levels that the typical villager have are pretty much worthless as a power gauge. You can give them 5 levels over the PC and they still won't be an issue unless you are talking warriors and adepts. The NPCs classes were designed with the specific intent of making it so the average non adventurer could have the required skill level and feats to fill the non adventuring roles of the simulated society the game is set in.
If you don't want any advice, post in a different forum. If you want narrow advice, phrase your question more narrowly.
Also, don't call people bro. Its very DB sounding.
This way of setting up a world doesn't make much sense to me. Why would the PC's level have any effect on the NPC's in town? If the PC's head out to kill some goblins, why does the town wizard or cleric suddenly know how to craft better items when the get back?
If the PC's meet a longtime adventurer with more experience than them, that NPC should have more levels than the PC's. Likewise, the people in towns of any size should be of a range of levels appropriate to their specific community. I believe there's good guidelines to this type of setup available in the game mastery guide, though I don't have it with me to check right now. Magic Item availability should be covered as well. As I recall, the quick version is that the community has a GP value listed for their availability, and anything under the value has a 75% chance of being available in town. I forget how often that refreshes. There's a table for wondrous item availability beyond that value, but it's usually very low.
I find the normal item availability rules and prices keep my PC's from acquiring anything out of their league in my games.
Other than crime, I'm not sure how players can abuse the existence of NPC's to get more loot. Has anything in specific been an issue in the past?
If my PC's tried to steal things above what they could afford, they'd still be limited by what's available. If they tried to steal things from a larger city, well, there's much better defenses in those cities to stop them. An inquisitor or cleric of Abadar working with the city watch as a detective has class skills perfect for the situation and a shockingly powerful array of divination magics available to solve crimes, and I figure most large towns or cities work with a local wizard or magic item vendor for casting support to locate criminals.
Of course, when setting up the plot, antagonists, or expected encounters, you should naturally the appropriate CR and APL guidelines. While this might seem like tailoring the world to a level appropriate to the PC's, it should be understood that events below and above the PC's level happen too, implying the world doesn't just exist to orbit them.
