magic items: is it worth it?


Advice


to be more specific i thinking about having my magus make wands for the following spell.

VANISH
DIMENSION DOOR
EXPEDITIOUS RETREAT
SHIELD
KEEN EDGE

most of them for my own use and other to sell.


Technically making a wand to sell nets you nothing. It costs 1/2 the market value to make a wand, and you can sell the wand for 1/2 the market value.

As for those spells for your own use, those are fine if you think you will use those spells frequently and won't have spell slots to just cast them.


You can't make wands of dimension door. Its a 4th level spell. Smart GMs will never let you make money by producing or selling magical items. There are many good reasons for this, starting with balance, and then going into the economics of actually finding buyers for your wares and flooding the market with an abundance of items that people cannot afford nor want (remember the world isn't filled with adventurers with thousand of gp to spend the world over).

Otherwise, make wands out of spells that you will cast often, but don't need constant increases in caster level to remain good. Some of the best wands you could make/purchase are:
Infernal Healing
Mage Armor
Mirror Image
Expeditious Retreat
Comprehend Languages
Disguise Self
Unseen Servant
Protection from Good/Evil/Law/Chaos (as appropriate)
Obscuring Mist
Silent Image


Wands can certainly go up to 4th level.... There are some adventure paths that let you take advantage of reselling magic items, in particular kingmaker and wrath of the righteous (wrath specifically while using a certain mythic trait..)

I agree with claxon on all other points.


Whoops, I was thinking the level limit on potions and wands was both 3rd! I should have double checked myself!


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I have to disagree with this idea that a PC shouldn't be able to make money by creating and selling magic items. Should you allow them to make 40,000gp on it? Of course not, but how about 400gp, or 40? What's the difference between making a skill check to earn cash at a Profession skill (or Bardic performance) and making a Spellcraft check to earn cash by making magic items? You don't have to let them make 50% markup, but neither should you shut them down just because their schtick is making magic items instead of playing a flute.

Also, imagine all the loot items most PCs leave behind anyway. They could be saving every normal mundane sword just to get the 2.5gp for it. All that money is technically slipping through their fingers anyway. Think they can't carry it all? Wait till they get a bag of holding. Or a horse. If you try to actively discourage the PCs from making money in more ways than killing people, you're creating an escalating situation that you as the GM cannot win - because your job is to make the game fun and fair, not stymie the players. Let them earn some money making a "normal" living during their downtime if they want to. Just don't let them abuse it.

As the GM, allow your PC who puts forth a little effort in finding a buyer or making a deal with a consignment shop to earn a little cash during his downtime. Give them a fair, non-game-breaking payoff for their effort. You don't even need a formula - if you arbitrarily pick a payoff that seems fair (like the same amount another PC could make doing other skill checks) the player will likely never even ask how you came to that amount. If they spend a few weeks making a 4th level wand in their spare time, they are at least a 7th level character and earning a few hundred gp on it is not going to break anything.

Plus just imagine all the role playing opportunities you are wasting by not allowing the PCs to make and sell things! The NPC who bought something might come back with another specific order, or he might tell his friends about the PC and then you have instant plot hooks when the NPC asks them to make something exotic that requires hard to acquire components. Or maybe the item is flawed somehow, perhaps by a poor Spellcraft roll and the NPC gets hurt because the item failed in a time of need and their friends are out for payback, or maybe the item was found at the scene of a crime and the PC crafter is now implicated. The possibilities make my mind swim... We spend a lot of time as GMs looking for ways to herd the PCs into doing what we want and making it feel like it's what they want... never pass up a good opportunity to turn something a PC actually DOES want to do into a plot device for your own purposes.

Scott

Silver Crusade

The Downtime rules have a pretty good method for "running a magic shop" for characters. It gives them a decent income averaged out to abstract the fact that the shop will, at times, go days or weeks or months without selling anything.

So, gives a decent income without getting silly.


Firelock - The problem is where do you draw the line? Maybe they take 2 years off between adventuring campaigns. In that time they construct literally hundreds of magic items. Even at a 1% markup the ammount they make is insane. All this "2 year off" time is usually just hand waved away with a simple dm description of what your life has been like.

I agree with Tempest, the magic shop idea is a happy medium. I also agree with players being able to earn within reason. However, lets look at it this way, the average PC makes more in 1 week then the majority of commoners will make in their lifetime. They don't need even more money by taking the commoners jobs as well.

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