Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 voila_02 May 10, 2008 23:55:56	I'm sure that every artificer of magic/psionic items out there knows full well the difficulty of crafting effective items en masse, seeing as how it dishes out a drain on XP. Indeed, while it is an effective deterrent against mass production, it logically doesn't make a lot of sense; the more you practice something, the less experienced you become in all of your endeavors? While the idea of putting something of yourself into all of your nonmundane crafts makes sense with the current system, the idea of draining yourself altogether doesn't. Here's what I propose: each time you create a magic item, you generate a level buffer instead of losing XP. This buffer adds on to the XP requirement you need to reach the next level. For instance, you're level 5 and you craft a dozen wands of level 1 spells at caster level 1 (costing 1000 gp normally). This amounts to 480 XP. Under what I propose, you add that to the required amount of XP to reach level 5 (assuming LA +0) and it goes from 5000 to 5480. Simple extension isn't it? It may need work, like maybe some increased XP requirements, but otherwise I think I have something good here. Under these rules, magical artisans wouldn't have to be part-time adventurers to manage the XP requirements needed to routinely craft magic/psionic wares. They could just be regular civilians, making a living, seldom gaining levels, etc. This may not be appropriate for low-magic campaigns, but still, I think this is a good idea. Any thoughts? P.S. I've been out of D&D for a while, so if there's anything contradicting my preconceived notions, let me know.
#2 runestar May 11, 2008 0:26:39	it logically doesn't make a lot of sense; the more you practice something, the less experienced you become in all of your endeavors? The idea is that you are imbuing the magic items you craft with a portion of your own lifeforce. Thus, you become more drained with every item you craft. Crafting is more than just assembling microchips to make a CPU. It is both a physical and a spiritual process.:P Personally, I don't like your rule as it allows PCs to put off paying xp to a later date, as opposed to paying immediately under the current system. It ought to be balanced based on a "pay as you collect" system, because no one can anticipate what will happen in the future. It is not impossible that some scenario may occur in the future which allows the crafting PC to somehow do away with having to deal with the increased xp threshold to lv. Consider this scenario. A wizard17, upon reaching lv18, opts not to level and use the xp to wish for a powerful magic item instead. He gets the item, but remains at lv17, while the rest of the party is lv18. Also, how powerful an item he can craft is limited by how much xp he has (16,000xp in this case, which means that he can never wish for an item with a market price greater than 137,500gp, or craft eq with a combined value of more than 400,000gp). Under your proposed houserule, there does not appear to be a cap on how much xp the buffer can hold. What is to stop the wizard from going to lv18 (where he is as powerful as any other lv18 PC), and using wish to obtain some magic item with an arbitrarily high market price, such as 1000,000,000gp? The xp cost is exorbitant, and he will likely never lv again, but so what? He has in his possession an uber magic item (and can continue to wish/craft even more). Likewise, at lv18, each PC is expected to have up to 440,000gp. Unlimited crafting would let them double this, for up to (8x440,000, or 3,520,000 gp worth of gear at lv18). Paying a cost later results in the game being imbalanced now In certain cases, as may be the case of a one-shot adventure where the PCs are not expected to gain a lv, then a higher xp buffer has no impact at all. Basically, the key drawback is that it makes no difference at the present moment when the PC crafts his magic item, when the impact ought to be the greatest.
#3 Dark_Stryke May 13, 2008 10:51:03	Yeah... this doesn't work out so well. he current system is somewhat self-correcting. If I PC ends up at a lower level than his companions because of creating magic items, he starts gaining more XP from encounters than the other PCs (unless you just use average party level to calculate XP from encounters, rather than individually).