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So there was a thread about Master Craftsman that just got locked but it got me thinking about the crafting system and how it could be improved.
Problem 1: Master Craftsman requires noncasting characters to pay more than twice the price (two feats and a less useful skill) to get less than half the crafting benefit that casters do (can only make items keyed to chosen craft skill).
Problem 2: For casters, not all craft feats are equally useful. Craft Wondrous Items and Craft Arms & Armour allow you to make wider range of items, and more important items, than Brew Potion or Forge Ring.
Solution: Magical Artisan (Item Crafting)
Your superior crafting skills and basic understanding of magic allow you to create a variety of magical items.
Prerequisites: Craft (any) or Profession (any) 3 ranks, Spellcraft 1 rank
Benefit: You may create magic items using an appropriate Craft or Profession skill. You must make the check to create the item using the appropriate skill (not Spellcraft) and must meet prerequisites normally, though you may treat your ranks in the appropriate skill as your caster level, if they are higher than your actual caster level. You still may not create spell trigger or spell completion items without a source of the relevant spells, though you need not be able to personally cast them. You must have a minimum number of ranks in the appropriate Craft or Profession skill to create certain types of items:
3: Scrolls, potions, wondrous items, runes
5: Weapons, armour, wands, tattoos
7: Rings
9: Rods
11: Staves
Special: If you have this feat, 7 ranks in Craft (sculpture), and 7 ranks in Craft (weapons) you are considered to qualify for Craft Construct. If you have this feat and 5 ranks in Craft (alchemy) you are considered to qualify for Craft Ooze. If you have this feat and 10 ranks in Craft (alchemy) you qualify for Brew Fleshcrafting Potion.
Anticipated Result: Casters will still probably find it preferable to take Craft Wondrous Items and/or Craft Weapons and Armour in order to consolidate these important items under the Spellcraft skill. However Magical Artisan allows them to shift the investment for the lesser magical items to more of a skill investment. Notably, wands, rods, and staves can all be made with one feat and heavy investment in Craft (sculptures). Non-casters meanwhile are spending only one feat compared to Master Craftsman and have the option to invest in two or three skills to make a wider variety of items. For example, an archer could take Craft (bows) and Craft (leather) and make magic bows, arrows, bracers, boots, and belts. A jeweler also gets the ability to make rings (at a higher level) along with wondrous items like amulets and crowns. They can also help make spell trigger or completion items with allied casters who lack those feats.
One feat to rule them all?
I fear that every single item creation feat now only costs 4,000 gp since you can just create an ioun stone of INT with the appropriate skill.
I think having a gateway feat is fine, as previously established.
However, I think the feat oughta allow the use of either multiple skills, or spellcraft.
The best solution imo is something like this:
"Magical Artisan"
Your superior crafting skills and understanding of magic allow you to create a variety of magic items.
Prerequisite: Craft or Profession 3 ranks.
Benefit: You add Spellcraft to your class skills. Select any Craft of Profession check. You gain +2 on those checks and can use your ranks in that skill as your caster level to qualify for item creation feats. You cannot create spell trigger or spell creation items unless you can actually cast the spell(s) needed. When you create a magic item, you must either roll an appropriate craft or profession check, or a spellcraft check as normal.
Normal: Only spellcasters can create magic items.
EDIT: Since the last thread got closed, I checked the plate version of celestial armor and it is 8th caster level.
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I find that version not very thematic, since the idea behind Magical Artisan is to allow you to make magic items through superior physical crafting skills, and that option is only better than Master Craftsman because it allows you to use Spellcraft to make items (well, that and being something you can take at level 3).
It also doesn't address Problem 2 which wasn't discussed in the other thread.
I fear that every single item creation feat now only costs 4,000 gp since you can just create an ioun stone of INT with the appropriate skill.
An ioun stone of Int +2 costs 8,000gp, which means if you want to cover everything falling under the "Magic Arms and Armour" category (3 craft skills) you're spending 24,000gp. "Wondrous Items" includes at least as many craft skills (clothing, leather, jewelry, plus a few oddities). The others are more ecomonical but as pointed out in Problem 2, they're currently not worth a feat for most characters. (EDIT: Maybe scrolls and wands, for casters?) You can also only benefit from one intelligence-boosting ioun stone at a time (the stacking version costs 24,000gp) and it takes 24 hours to re-attune a new stone, which cuts into crafting time which can be scarce in some games. A headband of Int is 4,000gp, but that takes up your headband slot, preventing crafting while adventuring.
Considering that you still need the Magical Artisan feat to start spending gold on increasing your versatility I don't think it's that much of a problem.
However, if you disagree do you think it would be sufficient to limit the number of different craft skills you can use with the feat to either some fraction of your ranks in Spellcraft, or else 1 + your Intelligence bonus (noting that you can't reselect a different skill if your Int drops and is then increased again)?
It might also be fair to bump the number of ranks required to craft each type of item up a bit (say, +2 for all of them), so the specific crafting feats have more advantage than just being able to use Spellcraft.
EDIT: I'm also OK with preserving the prohibition on spell trigger and spell completion items for non-casters, though I think it is unnecessary given that a cleric can make a scroll of a wizard-only spell and vice-versa just fine.
I find that version not very thematic, since the idea behind Magical Artisan is to allow you to make magic items through superior physical crafting skills, and that option is only better than Master Craftsman because it allows you to use Spellcraft to make items (well, that and being something you can take at level 3).
It also doesn't address Problem 2 which wasn't discussed in the other thread.
I fear that every single item creation feat now only costs 4,000 gp since you can just create an ioun stone of INT with the appropriate skill.An ioun stone of Int +2 costs 8,000gp, which means if you want to cover everything falling under the "Magic Arms and Armour" category (3 craft skills) you're spending 24,000gp. "Wondrous Items" includes at least as many craft skills (clothing, leather, jewelry, plus a few oddities). The others are more ecomonical but as pointed out in Problem 2, they're currently not worth a feat for most characters. (EDIT: Maybe scrolls and wands, for casters?) You can also only benefit from one intelligence-boosting ioun stone at a time (the stacking version costs 24,000gp) and it takes 24 hours to re-attune a new stone, which cuts into crafting time which can be scarce in some games. A headband of Int is 4,000gp, but that takes up your headband slot, preventing crafting while adventuring.
Considering that you still need the Magical Artisan feat to start spending gold on increasing your versatility I don't think it's that much of a problem.
However, if you disagree do you think it would be sufficient to limit the number of different craft skills you can use with the feat to either some fraction of your ranks in Spellcraft, or else 1 + your Intelligence bonus (noting that you can't reselect a different...
If you craft the stone yourself it's 4000.
You can also swap which stone is active and thus which one is giving you which bonus, they don't need to stack.|
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First off, I would appreciate a constructive suggestion. What do you think of my proposed limits?
If you're crafting ioun stones, you're spending 4 days of time you could be using to craft something else, and you're putting enough ranks in Craft (gemcutting) to make a DC 22 check (assuming you're not 12th level yet), minimum 3. Both of which offset the benefit of getting more skill ranks for crafting purposes, especially if crafting time is a limiting factor (which it often is).
And the problem with swapping is that it takes 24 hours each before you get your skill ranks. Note that they also don't work while you're wearing a Headband of Int so if you've got one of those you'll need to remove and re-attune it, too (and not craft while adventuring).
And I'm not convinced it's meaningfully more powerful than taking Craft Wondrous Items and Arms & Armour normally. Once you can make 90% of the items the party uses, being able to make the last 10% isn't a game-changer (which is why so many crafters take only those two feats). So getting "every single item creation feat" at the cost of Magical Artisan and nine ioun stones (weapons, armour, bows, clothing, jewelry, leather, alchemy, sculptures, calligraphy; 3-9 ranks, 36,000gp and 36 days) is only slightly better than two feats. Maybe three. 36,000gp and 36 days of crafting time is expensive for a feat or two.