Under Adjusting Character Wealth by Level in the Ultimate Campaign book it indicates:
You can take advantage of the item creation rules to hand-craft most or all of your magic items. Because you've spent gp equal to only half the price of these items, you could end up with more gear than what the Character Wealth by Level table suggests for you. This is especially the case if you're a new character starting above 1st level or one with the versatile Craft Wonderous Item feat. With these advantages, you can carefully craft optimized gear rather than acquiring GM-selected gear over the course of a campaign. For example, a newly created 4th-level character should have about 6,000 gp worth of gear, but you can craft up to 12,000 gp worth of gear with that much gold, all of it taking place before the character enters the campaign, making the time-cost of crafting irrelevant.
Some GMs might be tempted to reduce the amount or value of the treasure you acquire to offset this and keep your overall wealth in line with the Character Wealth by Level table. Unfortunately, that has the net result of negating the main benefit of crafting magic items—in effect negating your choice of a feat. However, game balance for the default campaign experience expects you and all other PCs to be close to the listed wealth values, so the GM shouldn't just let you craft double the normal amount of gear. As a guideline, allowing a crafting PC to exceed the Character Wealth by Level guidelines by about 25% is fair , or even up to 50% if the PC has multiple crafting feats.
I’m assuming the additional 25% is at full value of your items, not with what you paid for in making them half-cost?
And that brings up the other question, since you are receiving an additional 25% more than party members (who don’t have an Item Creation feat), are you able to still make items at half-cost, as well? Or is that additional 25% the benefit you are receiving instead?How I read this is I am able to make the magic items at half-cost, but when I add up my items for WBL they are calculated at full cost for my additional 25%.
Am I interpreting this correctly?
That is correct. As an example if your WBL allows for 10000, then you would be allowed 12500 if you had one feat. It does not mean the feat turns off if you go above 25%. Depending on the feat and the game it could be above or below that.
The main point is that you are trading in a feat for money, so the GM should not go out of his way to restrict what you have.
Oh yes, I agree you would receive the additional 25% (or 50% if you have more than one Item Creation feat). I was just trying to clarify if I was still able to make the items at half-cost at the time of creation. I could see GMs arguing as I am getting an additional 25% per level, ‘that’ is the replacement for my “half-cost”.
And none of my GMs would ever take the feat away if I went over WBL, but one of them does follow the WBL very strictly, and I suggested to him it was more of a guideline (but that’s a topic another discussion).
I’m starting up an additional campaign (under another GM) and will be receiving Brew Potion through my Alchemist. And this GM I am certain won’t be anywhere near as stringent, in fact he usually likes to do his own thing.
Thanks for the response.
If you GM don't want to give you that additional WBL, tell him you'll only use it for items tied to you feat.
That's what I ask my players to do (but I'm the first to talk to them about this guideline from UCampaign), because I find it reasonable.
No, my GM who is strict on the WBL, he does allow the extra percentage, I was just curious if I was reading it correctly in that you can make magic items at half-cost AND have the additional percentage.
But again, I understand when you calculate your wealth value (for WBL), it is at full price for all your items, even if you made items at half-cost.
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Note that potions (and other consumables) interact with WBL quite differently than permanent items do.
Suppose the GM audits your wealth every time you level up. And every time you're nicely at the 100% mark like you should. How many potions did you use in between? Nobody knows.
For example, you got Brew Potion at level 1, and by level 3 you're supposed to have 3K gold in assets. And you do. But maybe you had a total throughput of 5K, of which nearly 2K was spent on potions.
WBL doesn't "notice" that; it doesn't say anything about how much wealth you acquire and lose, only how much you should have at any given moment (Although it's recommended that roughly 15% of your assets should be consumables.)
So suppose you only found 3K gold during levels 1-3. But you spent 1K of it on potions and drank all of them. So by level 3 you're 1K under WBL. Now the GM who strictly follows WBL needs to somehow give you more loot to even things out.
Abusable? If your GM is a blind true believer in WBL, yeah.
Yes, I understand where you are coming from. And where my one GM (who follows WBL strictly) does include consumables as part of your hoard, it hasn't really presented a problem in the campaign as I don't go through a lot of consumables in general.
With the new campaign I am about to start, it's hard to say how the GM will handle it, as the last time I played under him was early 2nd edition.
It will be interesting to see how he handles it, but I can say for certainty in that he will have no compunction in making changes for our WBL if he doesn't agree with it or it suits his campaign better.
Eh, where I understand where you are coming from, our GM has always done well for us. Yes, I do feel he is a bit too stringent on trying to keep to WBL, we are not lacking by any means on our money or items.