Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Degobah Jun 19, 2004 2:48:56	As an alternate system in my campaign, we’re doing away with the Item Creation feats and converting them into skills. I feel this system works better than the standard system, for a few reasons: *Under the current system a character must spend XP to produce a magic item, which is silly. It leads to absurd situations such as characters who become more powerful being suddenly unable to produce magic items (if they accept a level raise), and requiring magic-shop-owners to occasionally go monster-hunting for xp. *You never have a chance to fail producing a magic item. You could fail to Craft a horseshoe, but never fail to make a magic sword. Using Craft for magic items as well is more consistent game-mechanically, and its more fun if you have the occasional lab explosion brewing potions. *Item creation feats aren’t very good. In terms of combat ability, a character who takes them is left behind the metamagicians: often taking an Item Creation feat benefits other party members more than the wizard who takes it (as with Craft Arms/Armour). *Item creation feats are too specific. A wizards needs several feats to create every sort of item, which is too expensive. As an alternative, the feats are simply converted into Craft skills. In my campaign, these are: Craft: Alchemy- used to create potions as well as alchemy items. Spellcraft- used to write scrolls (since a scroll is simply a written spell). Craft: Wondrous Items Craft: Magic arms/armour Craft: Wands Craft: Rings Craft: Staves A character who is a spellcaster can take any of these as a class skill. The feat’s caster level requirements are redundant, if the items’ Caster Level is read as the minimum level to create an item. Leave time and cost unchanged: however rather than using “xp”, the balancing factor for an item creator is the need to make a skill check to build an item successfully (you can’t take 10 on Magical Craft skill checks). The DC to create a magic item = (10 + highest prerequisite spell level + caster level of item). Since a character who can build an item should be able to recognize similar items, the GM may allow a Craft check to identify magic items they’ve found as well: same DC as it would be to create the item, and the analysis would take an hour.
#2 baerdith Sep 15, 2004 21:19:32	Interesting, it harkens back to the Good Ole days (1e/2e) when a wizard of whatever level could make certain items. One of the drawbacks to 3e play is the reliance on Feats for Character Features. If a Wizards wants to create something he should not have to burn a feat to do it. Just my 2 cp. I doubt anybody else (and certainly not any designers) would go for it.
#3 taltamir Oct 01, 2004 18:37:22	Well, let’s get to work making this more balanced then. -If you just remove the XP segment of it altogether, you are making things slightly overpowered. However XP costs suck. -craft skills are more reasonable then feats So what’s my suggestion? An item requires magic to sustain it, this magic can come from the player (XP), or it can come from special magic ingredients. Thus a character can choose if they want to use XP or simply magical ingredients (extra gold cost). Since the default cost for buying items suggest NPCs will only charge 5GP per XP (as if...), why not use it? And failure crafting? Well, use a percentile die to determine how much of the ingredients are lost. Final result: -Crafting uses skills just as you described. -XP costs may be replaced by GP costs of 5 times the XP cost, any mix of GP and XP can be decided on by the character (from the actual XP cost that is). -If the craft fails, use a percentile die to determine how many of the ingredients were lost. -Allows adventures that center around the questing of magical ingredients that give "X points of XP for crafting."