Alternate System to Magic Item Creation?

[edduardco]

As the title states I'm looking for an alternate system to create magic items, but unfortunately my google-fu have not been good enough.

My issues is that the system presented in 3.PF works more as guidelines at best, creating a magic item is more an art than a science, and many magic items just seem to follow a different logic, so I will like to find a system that is the opposite to that, that haves hard and detailed rules of how to create magic items and how to craft them by characters, it doesn't need to be for Pathfinder, although it would be very nice if it were for the d20 framework at least.

Given that I have seen many complaints through the years in forums about this issue I imagine that most probably some company must have had developed a better system at this point.

So does anyone know of such a system, from a 3pp or another RPG that match what I'm looking for?

[GM Rednal]

Well, for what it's worth, Spheres of Power has a system for making new items, and it's fairly straightforward about most of it.

[edduardco]

GM Rednal wrote:

Well, for what it's worth, Spheres of Power has a system for making new items, and it's fairly straightforward about most of it.

Thanks a lot GM Rednal, I had not looked at the magic item creation rules from Spheres of Power until now, and I must say that it is pretty good, I really liked it.

[Kirth Gersen]

Check out Chapter 6, once you scroll down past all the weapons and armor.

[THUNDER_Jeffro]

edduardco wrote:

GM Rednal wrote:

Well, for what it's worth, Spheres of Power has a system for making new items, and it's fairly straightforward about most of it.

Thanks a lot GM Rednal, I had not looked at the magic item creation rules from Spheres of Power until now, and I must say that it is pretty good, I really liked it.

I actually wanted to piggyback on this with another question for anyone who has experience using it. Do you change around the caster level requirement for feats that appear to have new uses? Staves seem to be more like magic weapons and armor now, rings offer many of the benefits usually given to Craft Wondrous Item, and rods also seem to be the kind of thing that used to be under Craft Wondrous Item. These feats usually have different caster level requirements than Craft Wondrous Item would.

[GM Rednal]

Officially, there are no changes to caster level requirements, so you would - for example - need CL 11th to craft any staff. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, as an increased caster level is probably more powerful at early levels than at later ones, and might allow someone to pick up some effects that are measurably stronger than expected. This might, for example, allow someone using the Alteration sphere to get a good 'Pounce' combo going earlier than they're supposed to.

That said, you could certainly have enemies carry items you'd like the players to have, perhaps with an eye towards letting the players upgrade and improve them later the way they might for weapons they particularly like.

And, of course, a lot depends on whether or not the feat can also be used to make Vancian items. Early access to Forge Ring could allow for some unexpectedly tough defenses on characters, for example.

Basically, it's something that's best to approach on a game-by-game basis. As a general rule of thumb, I'd be more willing to allow taking item creation feats earlier if the game is restricted to Sphere-based items, and less so if they can be used to make items we're all more familiar with.

[edduardco]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Check out Chapter 6, once you scroll down past all the weapons and armor.

Hey Kirth, I'm a fan of Krithfinder, and that chapter 6 was a very interesting reading that gave me some ideas, kudos for writing examples, and the section about special materials was very detailed, but also I must say that your system requires some streamlining, I understand Kirthfinder was written for your group but I found some parts a little confusing.

BTW, reading about your 'numen' system makes me think about this: the Advanced template gives a +4 to all ability scores a +2 of natural armor, if you wanted to replicate that with magic items it will cost

4*4*1,000=16,000*6=96,000
+
2*2*1,000=4,000
=100,000
(I know natural armor cost 2,000 but that have always seems odd to me, also multiplying by 1,000 allows for a practical number of 100,000)

So in theory you can increase the Cr by +1 giving magic items equivalent to 100,000 gp.

And if you wanted to replicate how the advanced template stacks, each increase on CR will cost more and more GP so +2 to CR will be 400,000, a +3 will be 900,000, and so on. In summary it will be the intended increase to CR squared * 100,000

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

I'd like item creation to work by giving the character who takes it a virtual pool of gold pieces they can use towards the creation of an item covered under that feat. Multiplied by level.

So for Craft Magic Arms and Armour it's maybe 100 gp per level. When you first take it, it would be retroactive, so at 5th level it would give the character a pool of 1,500 gp (100 + 200 + 300 + 400 + 500). Any gold left over in the pool would roll over to next level. It means the crafter can make a cool thing occasionally, but can't just circumvent WBL entirely.

[Kirth Gersen]

edduardco wrote:

BTW, reading about your 'numen' system makes me think about this: the Advanced template gives a +4 to all ability scores a +2 of natural armor, if you wanted to replicate that with magic items it will cost

4*4*1,000=16,000*6=96,000
+
2*2*1,000=4,000
=100,000
(I know natural armor cost 2,000 but that have always seems odd to me, also multiplying by 1,000 allows for a practical number of 100,000)

So in theory you can increase the Cr by +1 giving magic items equivalent to 100,000 gp.

And if you wanted to replicate how the advanced template stacks, each increase on CR will cost more and more GP so +2 to CR will be 400,000, a +3 will be 900,000, and so on. In summary it will be the intended increase to CR squared * 100,000

That's a very nice insight -- a connection I hadn't thought to make, previously. It implies to me that I should probably revisit the numen values -- instead of matching them to (roughly) 3.5 or PF WBL, match them to CR increase instead.

Thank you!

P.S. I've copied this to a different thread to avoid cluttering this one any further.

[Envall]

I don't know if it is what you are looking for, but unchained had this.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/unchained/magic/dynamicMagicItemCreation .html

[edduardco]

Envall wrote:

I don't know if it is what you are looking for, but unchained had this.

Dynamic Magic Item Creation

Unfortunately no, those rules really doesn't change how to calculate the base price for magic items, it follow exactly the same rules from the core rulebook in that regard, what it does is present challenges in the form of skill checks in order to reduce the cost of creation or time to craft, definitely an improvement over the current system but not what I'm looking for.