
OmniMage |
How important is crafting magic items in your games? Does it enhance your games? Is it fun? Is it a big deal? Or is it something you can forget about?
I'm interest in knowing how much of an impact crafting has in your games, and whether or not you like it. I'll also accept information relating to mundane crafting.

Quixote |

It is not important at all, 99 times out of 100.
Characters that have some ability to scribe scrolls, craft wands or brew portions will find it useful.
Players that want to take any of the more complex items will be informed that my games do not include a lot of down time and that such capabilities will probably pay off once or twice a game, but in a big way.
It just kills the pacing of a story to go "...and then three months pass, where you can hang or chill out or make stuff or go shopping or whatever".
On top of that, I usually make all of the magic items found from scratch, and take a lot of liberties with the price for such things, based on the abilities of the party, their level, etc.

Nox Aeterna |

I would say the factor above crafting is pretty important in my games. Technically this would make craft more of an enabler than truly the key component.
So the relevant part is: "Being able to get certain exact magic items".
Some builds depend more or less on certain items. Some benefit greatly, some would work with mostly whatever the GM drops. So this impact heavily on what is picked or not depending on the campaign and its expected rules.
Most of the times, assuming there is downtime, someone picks up crafting due to how 50% price is a insane power up with the bonus of being able to pick and chose your items.
Funny enough at my table, while we often use it and a vast majority likes it, I do believe we have 1 player who doesnt like how it increase the PCs power which in turn often increases the enemies... aka increases the rocket intensity, which could be delayed by players having mismatched gear.

Meirril |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
At my table crafting magic items...is a point of contention. There is one player who is overly enthusiastic about making magic items. He will make items for other players and insist they need them. Without consulting them ahead of time.
He is also constantly looking for a way to get extra funds to pay for said magic items. He doesn't feel anything wrong with it because he is 'helping' the rest of the party.
And he keeps hitting one of my pet peeves. He loves to make disposable one shot items. To me that is just like flushing gold down a drain. That gold doesn't come back. I prefer to see gold invested in permanent items. But that is my problem, not his.
Then there are another pair of players that hate downtime. They constantly want to be pushing on to the next bit of adventure. So its a constant struggle between the pair, our crafting enthusiast and myself (I do like crafting magic items).
Honestly? Pathfinder has become a game where you kind of need certain magic items if you craft a build. And if you want enough of the big 6 items for the entire party, you should be crafting wondrous items. Also if you happen to find a magic weapon or armor that you really like, being able to add additional enchantments to it instead of replacing it is better. So crafting is sort of important. Especially if the GM thinks handing out a +2 weapon is 8,000gp in treasure instead of the 4,000gp in treasure the party can sell it for.

mardaddy |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Whenever I play a caster, I build towards the eventuality of crafting and enjoy researching and coming up with exotic rituals and materials to give more "umph" and story to what others may consider boring or handwaving with a die roll.
One of the sandbox games I am GMing right now I have encouraged all manner of crafting. The party wizard has embraced weaving the themes of the ongoing story into the items he makes for the others. The Alchemist and he plan to make constructs when they get level-appropriate for the attempt, something neither player has had the opportunity to try in their combined 25+ years of RPG's.
Important only in that it enhances the fun for all at the table.
Not vital.

Kimera757 |
How optimized is your game? And how far have you moved from having exactly one fighter, one cleric, one rogue, and one wizard?
I am currently in two Pathfinder games, one that just hit 9th-level (for most PCs, some are still 8th-level) and one that is at 2nd-level.
The first is a mid-opt game with loads of loot. Our wizard crafts wondrous items, and our cleric crafts weapons and armor, but the latter feat was only taken recently, so I don't think he has had the chance to craft anything for anyone other than him yet. In this game, the wizard has crafted lots of items, and charges us the half price needed to make stuff. This game has a lot of unusual martial classes (eg a brawler, an alchemist, a dog, a hellknight, and we used to have an Unchained summonner who was a caster) who would be weaker if we had to rely exclusively on core book items or rely on "found" stuff. We don't have Craft Wands, and our two Wands of Cure Light Wounds are running on fumes (less than 10 charges each, probably less than 5 charges each in fact).
On a lighter note, the wizard and cleric frequently scribe scrolls (Invisibility, Haste and Silence come up a lot), and while the alchemist doesn't brew potions, extracts are pretty thematically similar when you take that discovery that makes them work on party members.
The GM has been seriously upping the challenges of the adventure.
The second only had two sessions, and the second had no combat. It is probably going to be low-opt, so being able to craft items won't really be necessary. We have a wizard, cleric, rogue, and barbarian, so three fairly vanilla classes and one other core book class.

Erpa |

Important? Not so much. Highly encouraged and allowed? Very much so.
My friends and I still play like it's AD&D, where creating your own items was an obnoxious process with poor rules. You adventured, you got gear, and you worked with what was given you, and that was fine.
No one really bit at making items in 3rd edition either, so when I went full on with DMing during our full conversion to Pathfinder,I decided all the casters could have the Craft items feats for free-and it's never been abused.
My players continue to rely on garnered items. They enjoy adding an additional+1 to a weapon or armor as time during travel and rest allows. One player really likes making utility wands for longstrider, sleeping in armor without penalty; things like that.
So, it's a useful tool, but not necessary to succeed.

Balkoth |
Just a reminder about Paizo's specific guidance on crafting:
"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.
If you are creating items for other characters in the party, the increased wealth for the other characters should come out of your increased allotment. Not only does this prevent you from skewing the wealth by level for everyone in the party, but it encourages other characters to learn item creation feats.
Example: The Character Wealth By Level table states that an 8th-level character should have about 33,000 gp worth of items. Using the above 25% rule, Patrick’s 8thlevel wizard with Craft Wondrous Item is allowed an additional 8,250 gp worth of crafted wondrous items. If he uses his feat to craft items for the rest of the party, any excess value the other PCs have because of those items should count toward Patrick’s additional 8,250 gp worth of crafted items."

Heather 540 |

In our last campaign, we went to an NPC for any magical weapons, armor, and wondrous items. We did have one guy who had the craft wand feat and made a nice selection before he died. And later a druid that made potions. The potions were mostly resist energy and were good for quick pre-battle buffs when we knew one was coming up.

Lady Asharah |
I'm currently playing in a Kingdom Building campaign so downtime is frequent and sometimes lengthy, as such our group has multiple crafters, and a number of additional NPCs on retainer who have been hired to do magical research and craft items when needed.
If it was a more typical dungeon delving/adventuring campaign, I imagine we'd limit ourselves more to potions/scrolls and maybe something odd if someone needed a very specific item.
But in general we don't really follow the wealth by level rules so crafting is for us a good way to increase the efficiency of our income (as raiding monster lairs to loot them is not quite as common, we rely on downtime rules for supplemental income)

Dragonchess Player |

Most of the times, assuming there is downtime, someone picks up crafting due to how 50% price is a insane power up with the bonus of being able to pick and chose your items.
Note that, in practice, the "power up" is not really that much. Basically, the magic item crafting feats allow you to sell unwanted magic items at 50% market price to make wanted magic items at 50% market price (no net change to character wealth). You still come out a bit ahead - because art objects, coins, gems/jewelry, and trade goods can be sold/exchanged at full price - but it's not the "double WBL" that some think.

Nox Aeterna |

Nox Aeterna wrote:Most of the times, assuming there is downtime, someone picks up crafting due to how 50% price is a insane power up with the bonus of being able to pick and chose your items.Note that, in practice, the "power up" is not really that much. Basically, the magic item crafting feats allow you to sell unwanted magic items at 50% market price to make wanted magic items at 50% market price (no net change to character wealth). You still come out a bit ahead - because art objects, coins, gems/jewelry, and trade goods can be sold/exchanged at full price - but it's not the "double WBL" that some think.
Haha honestly it doesnt have to be for me to call it an insane power up.
Being able to "trade 1:1" magics items you didnt want for new ones you can pretty much hand pick is crazy powerful. All the "garbage", or even just sub-optimal, items we often get in adventures now "turns into" what you want gold wise. this is enough for me to call it insane.
I would say many consider it "double WBL" exactly because a huge loss is expected, one could say you often just sold everything at 50% and then bought what you needed instead of accepting worse choices, many times it is still worthy it even with this loss anyway. These feats makes you not have to face this.
In simple terms you are pretty much selling at 50% and always buying at 100%. Do this enough and you wouldnt be far from doubling your WBL from taking the feats.
Ofc, this all vary greatly on which gear the GM drops as well as how many levels the game goes on for. Cause ultimately many items will have to be exchanged for better versions or there is something better for the slots at higher levels... as the game goes on this stuff piles up.

Kimera757 |
Balancing crafting items is hard, because it is too dependent on the adventure you're in. An item useful to one party (100%) is useless to another party (50%).
As an example... I am playing Second Darkness. At the start, I was the party's only melee character, and I'm playing a neutral good brawler. We defeated a lawful neutral opponent who uses a badass intelligent lawful neutral katana.
Between not being proficient with swords, and being the wrong alignment, I can't use the weapon. The adventure is older than the brawler class, so whoever designed it could not have anticipated a fighter who doesn't know how to use a sword. (Of course, a chaotic neutral barbarian, while proficient, could not use the sword anyway.)
We considered letting that NPC live, in which case we would have let him keep his weapon (0% value to the party!).
We now have a lawful neutral fighter-type, a hellknight. He uses a shield, so he won't use the katana two-handed, and he does not want to spend a feat on being able to use a katana with one hand. For our party, the item is only worth 50%. For a party with a lawful neutral bastard sword-wielding fighter, this would be awesome.

Warped Savant |

I'm very near to telling my players that crafting isn't allowed as it's usually too much of a headache to deal with.
Either they want to make things all the time, which takes up more time than what should be passing in the story, or they constantly want to make custom items, or stack on as many different powers as possible.
Lately I've restricted it to items that are in the books, and we haven't had any crafters lately so it hasn't been an issue.
In my current campaign I've house-ruled that items that add to Saves, AC, and Stats (maybe some others? I don't remember, but everyone in the group understands the intention) can have one other magical property added to it.
This makes it so that you can have a Cloak of Resistance (because everyone should have one) as well as a Cloak of Something Neat without handicapping yourself.

RoseCrown |
I'm currently playing in a Kingdom Building campaign so downtime is frequent and sometimes lengthy, as such our group has multiple crafters, and a number of additional NPCs on retainer who have been hired to do magical research and craft items when needed.
If it was a more typical dungeon delving/adventuring campaign, I imagine we'd limit ourselves more to potions/scrolls and maybe something odd if someone needed a very specific item.
But in general we don't really follow the wealth by level rules so crafting is for us a good way to increase the efficiency of our income (as raiding monster lairs to loot them is not quite as common, we rely on downtime rules for supplemental income)
Kingmaker is great for crafters, since you have the time and often the resources. However, Kingmaker already makes a bit of a mess with the WBL, since you can draw from the kingdom treasury.
My own party wanted to craft constructs, but sadly we crashed out before that really became a thing.

Slim Jim |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Imagine there's this game where you're an outlaw driving exotic cars, but every so often you are yanked out of the escapism to instead blow a whole day watching your mechanic slowly put new vehicles together from piles of parts strewn around his shop in which you're stuck patiently cooling your heels -- but there's so much customization that needs to be accounted for, and he needs to consult fifteen different manuals, and my god it's going to take *forever* to cram in everything everybody wants on the budget available. The job keeps expanding to fill every second of time allotted, and then some. And you're not the first customer in line....
~ ~ ~
I viscerally loathe in-game crafting of anything save cheap personal gear that can be made on-the-spot.

Warped Savant |

Imagine there's this game where you're an outlaw driving exotic cars, but every so often you are yanked out of the escapism to instead blow a whole day watching your mechanic...
Imagine playing in a game where you're only ever an adventurer and never have time to relax and do other things that don't involve going out and killing things and that killing things takes up the entirety of the 16 hours or so that you're awake during the day.
Seriously, there's rules that allow for crafting while still adventuring. The entire story doesn't have to stop for the XX days that it takes to craft something. And you can start to craft something then come back to it many days later if you really need to.

Chell Raighn |

Crafting has never been a major part of past campaigns I’ve been a part of, though in one of the current campaigns I’m in it is playing a larger roll... and I’m the parties crafter in it too...
Especially if the GM thinks handing out a +2 weapon is 8,000gp in treasure instead of the 4,000gp in treasure the party can sell it for.
Honestly treasure value of items should be valued at 75% of the items cost. It creates a more honest evaluation by considering both options the party may take with that item.

Slim Jim |

Seriously, there's rules that allow for crafting while still adventuring. The entire story doesn't have to stop for the XX days that it takes to craft something.
I'm not referring to in-game time experienced by the PCs, but rather the real-world meat-space time of me gouging my eyes out while the OCD player running the wizard is pawing through a ten-inch pile of books tweaking crap for three freaking hours -- and this is happening because the GM is a dummy for allowing it instead of instructing the player to do it between sessions.

Valandil Ancalime |

SJ;
That sounds like a Player/DM issue, not a Crafting issue.
How important is crafting magic items in your games? Does it enhance your games? Is it fun? Is it a big deal? Or is it something you can forget about?
I'm interest in knowing how much of an impact crafting has in your games, and whether or not you like it. I'll also accept information relating to mundane crafting.
I tend to play casters and usually take crafting feats and, while I could do without it, I enjoy making unique items. Just be sure to restrain your impulses to make broken items (most things with constant True Strike or free wishes, etc...).