| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I have often been aggravated with the inflexibility and unrealistic nature of item creation in DND and continuing onto PF. I am a crafter in real life and find some of the crafting times, as well as the sheer number of feats, unnecessarily burdensome.
As such, I present here for your perusal my updated and hopefully streamlined version of magic (and mundane) item creation. This will be posted in multiple parts with spoiler tabs for ease of reading.
The following item creation feats are simply a streamlined combination of the existing item creation feats arranged by their function. Note that all of these reference the feats they emulate/grant and the levels at which those benefits become available.
I arranged them as such as I felt that, aside from the mundane fabrication of the items being imbued (which would most likely be purchased outright anyway by someone with enough money to be crafting anything magical), the principals behind the actual imbuing process for these items would be essentially the same. Note that I do not include Craft Construct, as this is sufficiently unique IMO, to remain a separate feat.
Prerequitite: CL 1
Benefit: Gain access to the feats Brew Potion, Craft Wand, and Scribe Scroll if you meet the requirements of those feats (CL 3, 5, & 1, respectively). When you obtain CL 3 you may also craft wonderous items whose functionality is based entirely on a finite number of charges using this feat.
Prerequisite: CL 3
Benefit: Gain access to the feats Craft Magic Arms and Armor and Craft Wonderous Item if you meet the requirements for those feats (CL 5 & 3, respectively). However, unlike the normal rules for the Craft Wonderous Item feat, you may not use this feat to craft any item whose functionality is based on a finite number of charges.
Prerequisite: CL 7, one other Item Creation Feat
Benefit: Gain access to the feats Craft Rod, Craft Staff, and Forge Ring if you meet the prerequisites for those feats (CL 9, 11, and 7, respectively).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The following is my update to the actual crafting rules. As this is rather lengthy, I am going to attempt to subdivide this into sections based on what is being accomplished in an effort to reduce information overload with one giant post.
Non-magical items are crafted using a base price that disregards any expensive components, assuming that those components are readily available. However crafting methods and materials which are particularly complex or simple to work with modifies this base price by double or half, respectively. Extremely difficult materials and methods may increase this modifier to tripple the normal cost for purposes of crafting. Modifiers for materials and methods are assesed separately and stack with each other. The actual cost to craft an item is half of that item's base price.
A character may craft non-magical items at a rate of 50gp per day by mudane means. If crafted using any supernatural effect such as a fabricate or creation spell, the rules of that effect determines the time it takes to craft such an item.
Magical items are crafted using a base price that disregards any expensive mundane components, assuming that those components are readily available. A character may imbue these items at a rate of 1000gp per 2 caster levels per day (minimum 1000gp per day).
A character must have an appropriate environment in which to craft. A normal day of crafting consists of 8 hours of labor. A character may attempt to craft items at an accelerated rate, allowing them to perform 8 hours of work in a 4 hour period, but doing so imposes a -5 penalty to all crafting checks.
A character may work longer than 8 hours in one day, but doing so risks becoming fatigued. Treat this as a forced march, using hours spent crafting as hours spent marching. A fatigued or exhausted character applies double the penalty to their strength and dexterity scores to their craft checks as well.
A character may split their time crafting items in any way they choose, but must do so in 4 hour increments for magical items other than potions and scrolls, and 2 hour increments for potions, scrolls, and non-magical items. If attempting to craft items at an accelerated rate these increments may be reduced to 2 hours for magical items other than potions and scrolls, and 1 hour for potions, scrolls, and non-magical items. Dividing up time spent crafting reduces the amount of progress that can be made during each period proportionally.
A character may choose to work on more than one item at a time, effectively switching between working on each item. However, doing so is inefficient and increases the cost of crafting. When switching from one incomplete item to another item, the cost of resuming work on the first item increases by 10% of the progress that could be made in one day of crafting that item. This represents the time and resources lost by switching tasks mid-construction. This increase does not apply when switching between multiple identical items.
In the case of charged or single use items, characters may salvage any undamaged mundane components. In addition, if the character wishes to reconstruct the itemprogress from which the materials were salvaged, each crafting session completed before a number of days have passed equal to the original item's caster level has its cost reduced by 10% while still providing the same amount of progress, due to lingering magical qualities. This reduction also applies to the cost per charge if a character is attempting to recharge an item.
Destroyed magic items may also be salvaged to reconstruct the original item, but this process is more difficult as the mundane components must be carefuly repaired to avoid further marring any lingering magical auras. Re-crafting the mundane components of a destroyed magical item costs 50% as much as the original components, but takes just as long as crafting the original item. Furthermore, all craft checks made in this time have their DC increased by 5, and if any craft check made in that time fails by 5 or more any lingering auras of the original item are destroyed, negating any reduction in the cost of imbuing it again.
As a special exemption, the fabricate spell may be used to reconstruct mundane components of destroyed magical items without ruining the lingering magical qualities of that item, but doing so requires material components equal to 50% of the cost of crafting the original components. When used in this way the spell takes 10 minutes per 10 cubic feet of material to cast and the caster must make a craft check equal to the original DC to craft that item +5, or suffer the same results for failure.
A character must make a craft check for every time increment they spend working on an item, regardless of how little time they spend, instead of once per item crafted. Failing this check by four or less means that no progress was made on that item. Failing it by 5 or more means that all progress made and materials used that period are destroyed, while failing the check by 10 or more indicates that the item itself was damaged, destroying one half of the progress and materials used thus far and requiring that the character replace all lost materials.
Excepting when a character is attempting to reconstruct a magical item (addressed above), repairing a non-magical item or mundane component costs 50% as much as the original item and takes only half the time, with no increase in the craft DC.
OK, I think that was it. These rules might require a little more book keeping (especially in the case of crafting multiple items at once). However, they grant a number of benefits IMO. Among those are:
1- Making a dedicated crafter no longer takes all (or nearly all) of your available feats, as one feat now grants the ability to craft multiple items based upon their functional similarity.
2- Crafting a mundane sphere of gold no longer takes longer than making one of steel if the gold is actually present, as the material cost is no longer a factor in this project. In fact, the gold sphere would take less time as it is an easier material to work with. (Note, also, that if the gold is not present, the cost would still factor as the crafter would have to make other items to pay for it's acquisition.)
3- A more powerful (and supposedly more skilled) magic item crafter takes less time to craft items than a weaker (and supposedly less skilled) crafter.
4- Magic items can now be recharged and salvaged where previously they could not. This is great for the character who really wanted to use that wand the enemy just had, but discovers it only has 4 charges left, or when the fighter sunders that awesome staff they were planning on snagging.
The notable caveat lies in the dual classification of the Craft Wonderous Item feat, which falls both under the Craft Disposable Item and Craft Wonderous Equipment feats I proposed. In general, however, most wonderous items are either limited use functionality or infinite use functionality, with relatively few having aspects of both. Those which do I would grant to DM fiat, depending upon the remaining utility after the expendable charges had been used.
|
I would be inclined to move the misc items out of the disposable items, and leave it in wonderous equipment. A lot of those items are very much spell in a can items, and they are odd in nature. Better to say that disposable items feat is restricted to the wrote items, something your apprentice could rip out with out you worrying that he might burn down the tower.
I might also make that feat a prereq for the other two, with no linkage between them. Since you are taking away the mega feat tax, and there are some traits/feats that now become more powerful as they apply to the aggregate feats, I would make some limited progression be required.
I really like the acceleration part so the better the caster you are the better you can create magic items. Wondering out loud what if it was based on the highest level of spell you could cast, and not caster level. The 20th level bard shouldn't be able to craft as fast as a 20th level wizard.
Recharging/Repairing, I'm against recharging, there are esoteric (mythic) ways one can recharge uncharged items, but part of their low cost is the disposable nature they posses. As for repairing, I thought by means of Make Whole many but not all magic items could be repaired. I'm okay for there being a way for items to go away, it forces the PCs to make a tactical decision when choosing to sunder or disjunct.
didn't read the mundane crafting area to comment, but I generally don't bother with that area of the rules to have an opinion.
Thank you for your comments Galnorag. I assume by "misc items" you refer to the caveat items that I had mentioned in my last post, and personally I would agree with you here completely. However, I could also see two people cooperating to make a hybrid item, one crafting the permanent abilities and the other imbuing it with the limited use effects, or some similar method.
As for the feat progression, as it stands you may take Craft Disposable Item or Craft Wonderous Equipment without any prerequisites other than CL (CL1 or CL3, respectively), but you must have at least one of these two before you can take Master Artifice. I'm not sure if you had noticed this or not, but this was intended as a limited progression for that reason. If, however, the DM were to rule that you must acquire all of them in order that would also be understandable, though that is not something that I would enforce at my table.
I also noted that you had mentioned the possibility of basing the accelerated crafting upon the highest level spell as opposed to the CL. While this could very well be a personal preference I would not. Consider that while a bard (as per your example) may not master spellcasting as fully as a wizard, he has may other talents that he has developed which might aid him in his endeavor. He may even know more about the preparation of the material components to resonate with the tones of the spells he is attempting to imbue them with, for instance. Furthermore, as his spell list is more limited he is more likely to have to make additional UMD checks just to pull off crafting an item which also increases his likelihood of failure for any given crafting check, which would also increase the time he would have to spend.
Finally, to address your comments concerning repairing/recharging objects. You are correct that Make Whole can repair a magical item, even up to restoring it's magical qualities, but only if your CL is at least double the CL of the original item. These rules grant a similar, if slower, option to low level characters who may not have a high enough CL to do so, or when they want to restore an item that already has a very high CL. As for recharging, the rules I propose really only mean that the cost when recycling the material components is reduced by the cost of the wand (or whatever, generally 50gp or less) plus 10% of the remaining cost. The characters recharging this item must still pay the other 90% per charge. And that is only while the object still retains at least one charge and for one additional day per CL of the original item once the last charge is expended. After that the discount no longer applies, save for the cost of the material component (again, usually 50gp or less).