Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Paladin's Pride 03-21-06, 02:05 PM	I didn't get any response from this on the skills and feats board, I hope people on this board will be more interested. In my present campaign I have altered the way some of the magic types work as well as changing a few of the item crafting feats. There were two main goals in making these changes. 1) Ensure that magic items are worth the price that they cost in the DMG. 2) Ensure that each magical item crafting feat has a distinct and clearly-defined area of magic items that it can create, such that no two item crafting feats can create items with identical powers. I felt that Scrolls and Wands were very overpriced when used to create scrolls of offensive spells. 375 gp for a 5d6 fireball with a save of 14 is not a good investment. Wands have a similar problem, but on a larger price scale. 11,250 for a wand of fireball is too much because by the time you can afford such an item, its low damage dice and save make it unfeasible. Staffs avoid this problem in that they allow the spell to be treated as if the spellcaster personally cast the spell, but when you create staffs that have multiple spells contained within them, the cost per charge becomes very high. In addition, while not expressly a game balance issue, many players are not comfortable spending 100,000 gp or more for a staff that will eventually run out of charges. I also felt that there was a problem with craft wondrous item, forge ring, and craft rod because there was too much overlap between these feats. No one is able to explain what seperates a ring from a wondrous item (other than the slot), even though rings require at least a caster level of 12 to create. One must wonder why most campaigns have so many rings of protection +1 if it requires a 12th level mage to create them. Beyond the obvious distinction of being a rod-shaped magical item, what really seperates a rod from a wondrous item? With these issues in mind, I made the following changes. Potions Potions of higher than third level may be crafted. All other requirements and restrictions apply normally. Scrolls Like staffs, treat the saving throw as if the wielder cast the spell, including caster level and all modifiers to save DC. Staffs Staffs are no longer expendable items with 50 charges. Instead, a staff has 5 charges that replenish themselves each day. Staff pricing is not affected. Wands Like staffs, treat the saving throw as if the wielder cast the spell, including caster level and all modifiers to save DC. In addition, the feats forge ring and craft rod are eliminated. A new item feat called Craft Magical Raiment has been added to the list of item creation feats. Craft Magical Raiment can be used to create any magical item that takes up a slot on the body (i.e. boots, amulets, cloaks, hats, mantles, etc.) This includes rings and other magical jewelry. Craft Wondrous Item now creates items that do not take up a slot on the body such as Ioun Stones, Bags of Holding, Bottles of Air, Murlyund's Spoon, etc. Rods as of right now are being added to Craft Wondrous Item but I may move some of them to craft arms and armor eventually. Obviously, this makes some magical items much more powerful. Would anyone use these rules themselves as a DM (or like to use these rules as a player)? I'm interested in whether these changes seem balanced.
catfan 03-21-06, 08:07 PM	I will. I love it.
Xeviat-DM 03-22-06, 03:32 AM	My only complaint is that a 50 charge magic item is worth half the cost of an unlimited use magic item. A 5/day item costs the same as an unlimited use magic item. Thus, changing staffs to 5/day makes them blatently more powerful. I'm sure you're aware of the current formula for determining how much a charge/day magic item costs. You take the number of charges it wll have per day and divide that by 5, then multiply that by the price for the unlimited use item. We're getting into slighlty complicated issues, because we're talking about a magic item that has different abilities all working off the same charges, but since they're priced similarly to wands, it should work out. So if you want them to cost the same, they need something like 3 charges per day. This may or may not be reasonable; think about it, it is like getting 3 additional spells per day, and they are cast as if you cast them yourself. Staffs also sometimes have very high level spells that cost multiple charges, so a staff of life could pull out a free raise dead once a day, a very potent effect. But your "craft magical raiment idea is wonderful. I would go a little further. Brew Potion should contain the elixers again; Brew potion should make any disposable item that contains a spell or similar ability that is not used with spell trigger. A Scroll is basically a potion in use, but it requires a spell trigger. Magical raiments interract with the body, while wondrous items don't. Take out craft rod, it's weak. But don't make them all wondrous items, make most of them woundrous items and arms, you need both feats. The ones that don't require arms and armor currently, or that can't be used as weapons, change to wondrous items. Great idea by the way.
Balthanon 03-25-06, 01:54 PM	I've given some thought to doing something similar to magic item creation myself actually. I didn't really change the way that items functioned, but I considered combining the feats to broaden them slightly: Craft Consumable Item: Potions, Scrolls, (some wondrous) Craft Charged Item: Wands, Staffs, Sceptres, (some wondrous/rods) Craft Arms and Armor: Armor, Weapons, Rods (with some exceptions) Craft Wondrous Items: Wondrous Items, Rings, (some rods) Craft Creature: Constructs, Contingent Spells, etc... Craft Structure: Portals, Rune Circles, etc... The names didn't receive much thought, but that was the basic concept for which I was shooting. I do like the idea of splitting Craft Wondrous Items as well (and Craft Magical Raiment is an excellent name for the other feat), but truthfully, I'm not sure if there are enough "held" items to justify it. Part of the reason I considered combining the feats I did was because there are so many wondrous items compared to some of the other categories. To really balance the feats out, it was really a matter of splitting apart Craft Wondrous Item or combining some of the others. Since I already thought there were getting to be too many item creation feats, I ended up going with the latter. To get back to your idea though, you might want to consider expanding the time frame for your staffs. Make the charges recharge more slowly, so rather than 5/day or 3/day, or whatever is most balanced at the same price, try making it 10 per week. That way, a player has the option of utilizing a large number of charges all in one day, or they could spread them out over the course of the week if they're more cautious. Another option might be to either halve or keep the same number of charges, but let them regenerate 1 per week.