One thing I've found akward about the crafting system is the flavor. Why do you need to pay gold to enchant? Why does lacking the spell only add +5 to DC (I've abused this before, personally)?
And we often end up with very generic items. A +1 sword? A belt of dexterity +2? Yech.
However, while playing through baldur's gate, I noticed they had very flavorful items. On of my favorites were the "giant" belts: they gave you strength proportional to that of the giant that it was inspired from. So I came up with an alternate notion for item crafting: Instead of gold, you have to have situational objects that represented enchantment materials.
You want a belt of dexterity? Well, you have to bind the soul of a high-dex creature to the belt, like a wind elemental. The stronger the elemental, the stronger the bonus (that would have to be scaled properly)
So, how do I control the proliferation of insane items? Well, first, I could limit this practice to outsiders. I would limit it to one stat (so no belt of dex and str). And would probably raise item crafter requirements to a higher level. And combined belts would be proportionally harder (try binding 2 outsiders in the same place...). You would have to find exotic materials, exotic creatures, and the whole crafting process becomes a quest.
So, while this idea would work for the "stat" belts, it wouldn't work for other items. Or would it?
For certain spell like abilities (like fly or blur) that exist in outsiders, this could be cool.
For other situations I'm unsure. How would you do a +1 sword? The simplest answer to me would be to associate a nature modifier. Swords of a certain material are naturally +1, +2, etc... So adamantine would be a +4 (if I remember well, that's the enchantment that's equal to it).
That wouldn't work for armors though. For armors, it could involve slaying creatures with magical damage resistance.
There are a number of things I have no IDEA what to do though. For example: all the dimensional objects. Handy haversack? Bad of holding? No idea how to do that.
Same goes for golems. I have no ideas how to do them. That's going to take some thinking.
Basically, I'm trying to create a backstory framework to make Item crafting feel special. It's easy to make finding items special (give them cool names, make them rare) but crafting is theoretically infinite.
So I'm here looking for ideas (not advice). I want to reproduce EVERYTHING crafting already does, but instead of costing money, I want it to be an epic quest!
Eventually, I'd assemble it in a PDF as "Alternative Crafting: A Cooler way to make magical items". Because I'd rather hunt down an elder wind elemental for my belt of dex than sit around for a few days.
Bump. I'm really looking for ideas.
The problem with these kinds of systems (they have been proposed before) is that you end up taking time out of the group adventure so someone can find a specific body part of some creature in order to craft an item.
This is usually not a desirable way of doing things.
It would work great in a CRPG, but in a PNP there are going to be too many people who just don't give a damn about a player finding the rear paw of a blink dog to make their boots of dimension door.
Edit: What I would do is create a list of materials that would reduce the cost of certain enchantments if an item is made out of them. For instance, want a cloak that gives you blink? Well, if you make it out of a barghest hide it will be 25% cheaper. This is based off of the reduction that dragonhide armor grants when applying certain enchancements.
On the other hand, you can also assume there is a market for these things. I mean, why does a magic sword cost 1,000 gold to enchant? Well, what if it needs to be tempered in water that includes the tear of a dragon? What if that magic bow needs a heart core from a 100-year-old oak tree... and those tend to be guarded by druids or treants.
Now you have a new market explaining WHY these magic item components are so expensive... and also a possible hook for adventures.
Tangent, you pretty much got exactly what I wanted. If I can get a framework like that made, it would be an awesome alternative to gold.
In pathfinder/D&D 3rd ed, gold = skill x time. In certain cases, gold = feat + time.
If you want to remove the gp element, you could also replace it (or part of it) by the product of skill and time similarly to how the (mundane) Craft and Profession skills work.
Here, Williamoak. The Ultimate Campaign rules may have what you want:
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCampaign/campaignSystems/magicIt emCreation.html