Wondrous Item Crafting feats are removed and replaced with the following:
Master Craftsman
Choose one type of magical item from the following; Weapons, Armor, Wondrous, Ring, Potion, Scroll, Wand, Rod, or Staff. You become able to craft magical items of the chosen type, using the relevant craft skill (such as Craft (Alchemy) for potions, or Craft (Weapons) for weapons) to create them, treating your ranks in that skill as your caster level for the relevant purposes.
The following are the skills used for each specific type of magic item:
Weapons: Craft (Weapons)
Armor: Craft (Armor)
Ring, Rod, Scroll, Staff, Wondrous: Spellcraft
Potion: Craft (Alchemy)
A major change would be allowing potions to be created by non-casters/alchemists, using the usual +5 DC rule.
Wondrous should allow for Craft or Profession at least.
Yeah I'd thought about subdividing Wondrous Items into separate categories, likes clothes and jewelry, etc, but that might be a little more specific than people might want
Also, apologies for the triple post, I post the thread just when the site went down so it must've done something weird when submitting
Do you remove all item creation feats or just craft wondrous item?
Can Master Craftsman be taken more than once for extra categories?
I wouldn't assign that much to spellcraft.
Rings and wands: Craft(Jewelry)
Scrolls: Craft(Calligraphy) or Profession(Scribe)
Wondrous: varies
What's the purpose of this? If it's just to allow non-casters to brew potions then a feat for that purpose would be preferable in my view.
EDIT: oops, repeated myself.
All item creation feats
Yes
Purpose is to make item crafting less of a casters-only club and allow for magic smiths and the like without requiring them to have as many hit dice as a wood golem.
Without level requirements ('not many HD') for type casters who craft will love this feat. Now they will need more skills than just spellcraft (if I understand correctly), but that is not too bad.
Non-casters will still have very high DCs compared to casters.
Will all crafters have the +5 for missing feat (removed feat)?
I like the idea of non-caster crafting. But I think the DCs will be too high for non-casters to be viable since failure ruins materials - so take 10 is really the way to go when crafting.
The #1 thing is to remove Spellcraft from that list. This skill is the antithesis of Master Craftsman. The purpose of the skill is to encourage people to craft magic items with skills other than Spellcraft. I would let the character choose any Craft (and maybe Profession) skill, but there should some discussion with the GM before the skill is chosen. Don't make them choose a magic item type that corresponds with an existing crafting feat. Weapons, Armorer, and Alchemical probably have pretty clear cut uses, but others like Tailor, Calligraphy, Books, and Jewelry might need a conversation about what it can make and what it can not. Does someone who decides to be a cobbler or haberdasher gain a bonus since he specializes in certain clothing items? What can a carpenter make?
Spellcraft needs to go from the possible skills list.
I'd put Rod, Staff and Wand under Craft (Carpentry)
And split up Wondrous Items into Craft (Jewelry) and Craft (Clothing), depending on item.
Ring also falls under Cradt (Jewelry)
Yeah, I also like the idea of obviating Spellcraft skill entirely (or maybe you can still use it at a +5 DC, ha! Take that generic caster).
However, when you start looking at the various things that can be made, you'll start to get a pretty long list, even when you try to be as broad as possible:
Craft (Jewelry): obvious, includes bracelets, neck items, lenses/glasses, etc.
Craft (Clothing): obvious, anything worn that isn't jewelry.
Craft (Alchemy): elixirs, ointments, dusts, bottles?, candles?, etc.
Craft (Construct): the obvious golem things, but also boats, towers, crazy contraptions, figurines and tokens? etc.
Craft (Instrument): obvious, pipes/bells/etc.
Craft (Written): texts, manuals, etc.
Craft (Gear): horseshoes, ropes, tools, quivers, bags, etc.
Even with this shortlist.. where do carpets or brooms fit in? Portable Hole?
This gets a little wonky, but it's possibly doable *enough* to work for *your group*.
I doubt such a mechanic would do well in a rulebook.
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Another direction might be to make crafting skills based on the primary material being used:
Craft (metalworking), Craft (fabric), Craft (leatherworking), Craft (gems), Craft (woodworking), Craft (stoneworking), Craft (glass/crystal working).
Covers more bases, but still leaves some things open... like candles or written texts, or multi-material builds (like major contraptions or instruments, etc).
Once again, probably fine in a single group context, but probably won't see a general rulebook option.
Unless, this is just an "alternative acceptable skill check". Combine it with the above in that case and you've covered almost all avenues of approaching this.
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Finally, you can separate the act of crafting the item with the act of imbuing it with magic.
You "could" go with "Craft (runes)" and cover anything with magical runes to get the effect... but that's basically the Spellcraft skill, right? And what of the Portable Hole?
You could instead go with effects-focused division, along these lines:
Craft (Consumable Item): Limited use items (eaten/imbibed, applied, or even smashed/opened on use). Point being it's a one-time use item.
Craft (Charged Item): Limited charges for use. Includes casting ability tuning or not (wands vs necklace of fireballs), rechargeable by casters or not, etc.
Craft (Permanent Item): Items that are either always on, or self-recharge after set conditions (usually a cooldown time, but maybe certain parameters like being dipped in blood, once a full moon, etc).
Craft (Enhancement Item): These items enhance an already existing feature (weapon/armor enhancements, ability scores, saves, etc).
Craft (Dimensional Item): This includes teleportation (including planar travel) effects, "bigger on the inside" effects, speed effects (such as haste or blur), or displacement effects (such as a portable hole). "Pocket-sizing" or "Swiss Armified" items (such as a rod of lordly might, or a folding boat) can be made with this.
Craft (Force Item): Effects such as force damage, deflection AC, or structures made of force. Also included are effects that can absorb force effects, either directly or displacing them. Items that are indestructible (short of a sphere of annihilation) would be appropriate here too.
Craft (Elemental Item): Used to make items that manipulate elemental forces. This includes acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic effects, as well as weather and temperature effects. This also includes effects that may negate such elemental forces.
You could even make Crafting a sort of "complex" skill check at that point:
Step 1: Crafting the base item (with whatever appropriate skill that might be). You can bypass the crafting requirement by having someone else make it, or just buying the item.
Step 2: Crafting the base magic item effect (craft consumable, charged or permanent). This readies the magic item to receive it's magical effect, it's imbued with general magic and ready to be tweaked however needed.
Step 3: Adding the actual effect. If it's mimicking a spell, then you simply cast the spell into it (or a spellcraft check +5 DC per spell you don't have). If it's doing an enhancement, force, elemental or dimensional effect it may require an additional associated craft check (even if you have the appropriate spell, or maybe as a substitute to it).
Combination effects can be done (dimensional + enhancement), etc.
Failed checks here are where cursed items can be made accidentally.
Note: This doesn't necessarily help the non-caster *theme* so much, as this all feels far more magical in nature (and less about being REALLY good at making magic items).
A master craftsman feat in this case might let one just substitute his preferred skill (ANY of his choice, so like.. he's a "really good leatherworker") to be used in all steps involved when crafting an item he made himself.
Note that a purely non-caster can still take these skills and be a magical crafter (say, a rogue) without needing the craftsman feat.. it'd just take some skill investment.
Since it's basically moving crafting from feats to skills, I'd take Spellcraft skill right out of this and require the spellcaster to invest in these skills if they want to craft. They already get a shortcut in that they can imbue with their spells directly.
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Those are my thoughts on this.. hope some of that can be useful! I've been thinking up that third option for a while now, been on the backburner of ideas for a couple years.