Making magic items is an interesting and fun process in the new edition of D&D. Using a generic formula you can get a somewhat accurate guideline on the time and cost it would take to construct a given magical item, although in some cases you have to use your better judgment to shift the cost of the item to make it more reasonable. However, exactly how this process is performed is undefined. My theory is that the price in gold pieces is used to purchase whatever materials are required to craft the device (stopping by the local bazaar, wizard, or sage), and the XP cost is simply used to bind the magic in place so that the item functions. It seems rather boring though, to deduct the gold and XP costs and then after a set period of time to end up with a brand new magic item.
Back in second edition there was a book called the Book or Artifacts that detailed what sort of materials would be required to build a given item. One could not go to any sort of shop and simply pick them up like you can in D&D now, you had to get lucky and find an item, get someone else to make it for you, or make the item yourself. Making an item yourself was the cheapest but longest route one could take. You couldn’t cross off a couple thousand gold pieces, wait a week, and then have the item you wanted, you had to discover what things you needed and most likely quest for several weeks to acquire them. This option, although much more flavor able, is also an exponentially longer way to go about this.
The other issue I have in D&D is the XP cost required to construct magic items. This drain tends to dissuade players from making a magic item because it puts them behind the other players in levels. In fact the only time I would make a magic item is if I had received an individual bonus XP reward that I would use in crafting. In fact I would note the bonus awards I had gotten off to the side and considered that a sort of pool that I could draw from, safe in the fact that expending every point would leave me with the average amount as everyone else.
My goal is to create a system using rules from the previous and current editions of D&D and at the same time try to rectify the loss of experience points. Here’s how I propose to do this. This rule isn’t meant for rules lawyers, as it requires a lot of creativity to keep it fun and also needs fairly lax execution as it most likely wont be precise or entirely accurate, and its not meant to. It’s meant to be fun and make things better for item crafters.
Keeping the Flavor
When you make an item I find it best to have a player piece together the magic item using components that relate to the function of the item. For example, when making a frostbrand one could require that the player retrieve a shard of glacier ice from the northern pole (and somehow keep it safe from melting), craft the hilt from the bones of a white dragon, and temper it in the breath of the Daimyo of the Northern Winds, who dwells on the paraelemental plane of Ice.
Keeping a theme with materials is very good, and you should not forget to include cultural and racial themes in mind when doing this, as elves and orcs will not make an enchanted buckler or healing potion in the same way or using the same materials. Finally, this helps prevent magic from being a carbon copy from region to region, as races also look at magic in a variety of different ways, from a free-flowing art to a science. Indeed, even the same race might look at it in different ways.
DMs should consider items that their players are looking into making, having them research or discover the process on how the item needs to be done (having the Craft feats should suffice for general knowledge or at least allow them to come up with a different fashion in which to do it). The sooner this is done the faster you can implement ways to complete the goals in your campaign. Players will be more than happy to follow your hints if it will allow them to reap the awards of a new +5 greatsword or staff of the magi and it’s the perfect way to design more adventure hooks. Following the above example for the sword, you now have three adventures to setup. Basically it’s a system that makes everyone happy.
Finally, as detailed in the Book of Artifacts, don’t just use parts of a creature for crafting magic items. Creatures with certain powers could bestow arcane favors and the like or freely give parts of them selves (a piece of Moradin’s beard, which must be freely given, could be used for a dwarven weapon or an orcbane weapon, weaved into the hilt wrappings of a warhammer).
The Crunchy Bits
Unfortunately there is no real way to formulate the price for eyes of the newt and frog legs (well actually you can, you just might end up with a million different things on a huge price list). DMs will have to look at a magic item and determine from there roughly the difficulty it would take to require a given item to make a magic item. Minor objects would be made from things that cost several thousand gold pieces, either because the component is rare (metal from a falling star) or hard to get (the blood of a gorgon*).
Essentially all you do is look at a potion of cure light wounds and think of roughly 25 gp of stuff that relates to it, such as holy water (25gp) and there you have it. The more expensive the item, the harder it gets. After all, just how expensive is the leg bone of a white dragon? Several thousand gp at least, if not tens of thousands (they aren’t in high demand, they normally aren’t terribly common, and despite being the weakest of all dragon-kind they still aren’t an easy task for the mundane populace).
In game terms? If you haven’t already figured it out, each item that you happen to find or acquire in quests or adventures reduces the gold piece cost for crafting a magic item. If you already have the leg bone for the haft part of the weapon then it’s that much cheaper.
Optionally, simply discard the costs in general and just think of an appropriate challenge to award them with the needed materials. If the item they want is too powerful, then delay the encounter to a later point in the game or possibly provide them with the means to make a weaker version of the item to hold them over or to give them a taste of what is to come. Mind you, this is primarily used to eliminate the gold piece cost of crafting items, but could also reduce the XP drain of the item. Very rare items or materials that are very difficult to acquire should be needed to completely negate the XP loss.
A similar rule is detailed in the DMG on “power components,” and I feel that this is an excellent rule for reducing or eliminating XP costs. Perhaps by taking your newly forged (but not enchanted) frostbrand to the center of the plane of ice and leaving it there for a year and a day it becomes imbued by the plane’s energy, and gains the properties of a frostbrand without you casting a single spell. However this takes far longer than normal (a year) and most players don’t want to wait that long. Plus the weapon needs to remain undisturbed there as well.
You could also create much quicker ways to award players, such as having the Paragon of Ice touch the blade, instantly bestowing the magical properties onto the weapon (no drain at all). Whatever task it might need you to perform however, should make up for the cost. This is the final part of the optional rule. By finding exceptionally powerful materials or elements, you can craft items without a XP cost.
The Rule
1.) By acquiring items related to crafting a magic item ahead of time, you can reduce or eliminate entirely the gold cost of a magic item. The DM has the final say on this however, and this rule should be careful monitored to avoid abuse by rules mongering or poor roleplayers. The only downside of this rule is that it can end up taking much longer to making a magic item.
2.) By acquiring exceptionally rare and powerful items or elements, you can also reduce the XP drain. This is often much more worth it and is also up the DM. These components should be very hard and rare to come by.
Originally posted by l337_monkey
The other issue I have in D&D is the XP cost required to construct magic items. This drain tends to dissuade players from making a magic item because it puts them behind the other players in levels. In fact the only time I would make a magic item is if I had received an individual bonus XP reward that I would use in crafting. In fact I would note the bonus awards I had gotten off to the side and considered that a sort of pool that I could draw from, safe in the fact that expending every point would leave me with the average amount as everyone else.
My goal is to create a system using rules from the previous and current editions of D&D and at the same time try to rectify the loss of experience points. Here’s how I propose to do this. This rule isn’t meant for rules lawyers, as it requires a lot of creativity to keep it fun and also needs fairly lax execution as it most likely wont be precise or entirely accurate, and its not meant to. It’s meant to be fun and make things better for item crafters.
Some seeds of thought for this plan.
Look at the BoVD's rules for ritual sacrifice. Remove the gruesome part (living sacrifice) and make it knowledge (arcana) instead of knowledge (religion) for arcane casters and knowledge (nature) for natural divine casters (like druids and rangers).
You'd need to choose something else to be sacrificed (sacrifice isn't the word, really; rendered or consumed might be appropriate), but this could work for any class.
This has a weird effect on crafting, and involves a lot of work, as you'll need a system of skill DCs for any given item. You may want to eliminate spell prereqs for this form of crafting.
--------
Another alternative is to eliminate sales of magic items entirely from your setting, and then just letting crafters make items for full market price. This makes crafters simply walking magic shops, but if the setting lacks magic shops, it's a useful role.
This will put a LOT of emphasis on crafting. It is easy, though, and doesn't overpower crafting.
If the world does have magic stores, simply charge 75% of market price in ingredients and no XP. This makes crafting feats useful, but doesn't cost anyone's XP.
--------
Another alternative is to place "liquid magic" as treasure. Crystallized octarine, eldritch quartz, godsblood, angel's tears or devil ichor, whatever. You need liquid magic to make a magic item more complex than a scroll or potion. It'll be a common thing for intelligent foes to hoard, especially if you can't spend your own life force on complicated magic items.
This fits into the current crafting system easily. Just place liquid magic as treasure, and a given "dose" of liquid magic is worth X amount of experience, usable only for crafting items (or paying XP costs for spells.)
This system dovetails into the BoVD systems, as well. Liquid pain or a bottled soul might make excellent liquid magic for vile spellcasters, and living sacrifice might be a source of liquid magic. I dunno if BoED has similar systems to adapt.
You could use liquid magic alongside normal expenditures of XP, too...if liquid magic is sufficiently rare, it could suffice to replace most or all of the materials cost, as well.
This system would REALLY hammer Brew Potion, Scribe Scroll, and Craft Wand (ditto for infusions, if you use those rules) usage if you need liquid magic to craft those, unless liquid magic is REALLY common. The 75% solution above helps solve this problem, though.
If you are dying to have a low-magic system, expensive spell components or even the ink require the acquisition of liquid magic. This is really only appropriate if you want the pursuit of this substance to become the focus of your game, as spellcasters will need to be hunting for it ALL THE TIME.
--------
Another system, not far from the original system, is that the XP is drawn from the one who names the item. This can be anyone, but presumably it would be the main user or first owner. The item could even imprint it superficially to the original user's personality, gaining special FX matching the personality of the user. (The paladin's sword glows white-blue in combat, but the assassin's shiv is like a splinter of shadow.)
This keeps the basic crafting system, but distributes the XP cost throughout the party.
--------
When you make crafting more complicated, you may unintentionally hammer users of the low-level disposable magic items, like scrolls, potions, and wands. These items are the lifeblood of many parties, and eliminating potions makes it much less fun to be a cleric (as you will be the ONLY source of healing.) You may want to use a simpler system (like 75% gold or 100% gold with no magic stores).
Eh. This hops around a bit much, but there's a lot here for a GM to get started on making the crafting system his or her own, without departing so much that the existing material for item values has to be scrapped.
It doesn’t change the current crafting system at all, but it does add a level of complexity because DMs must now figure out what each part is worth when making an item, but it also makes it more fun, I would think, in addition to adding a level of detail besides losing gold, XP, and time, then getting an item. Plus, it also allows players in some situations to avoid the XP loss entirely (something I think every players would like, and also helps keep crafters at the same level as everyone else) and gives them reason to hold onto certain things like gorgon blood and the like. Finally, it can also allow you to speed up the process, avoiding (in some cases) a lot of downtime.
The cost of a magic item can be paid in a number of ways. In all situations the creator must pay 1/2 the item cost in material components.
1) More costly materials. The caster just pays the full cost of the item in material components. This may only be done with items
costing less than 100gp per caster level.
2) Significant material components. The heart of a dragon etc. As a rough guideline special component values was based on CR*CR*200gp, so a CR 10 creature could provide the components for a 40000gp item.
3) Self sacrifice. Permanent hit-point loss. 1hp = 5000gp towards making an item.
4) Domain power. Every point of domain power channelled into the item can count for 500gp towards the total cost.
5) Bloodline sacrifice. Permanent bloodline score loss. 1 point = 2000gp towards an item.
6) Human sacrifice. Other blood heirs may be sacrificed to empower items. 1 point = 1000gp towards the item. This is an evil act, and the caster must make a Knowledge(Arcana) check against DC 10+bloodline score or some ill effects will occur.
7) Extra time. The caster spends four times as long working on the item as usual.
Cheers,
quetzyl
Siphon (Su): The Magesmith is now so skilled in the current of magical energies that he need not use his own to fuel is magic item creation. He may use another willing subject’s XP in the crafting process so long as that subject does not lose enough XP to lower his level. Willing subjects must be present during an entire shift, 8 hours or less depending on the item, for progress to be made. Should the willing subject participate in strenuous activity that shift’s progress is halted momentarily, but the willing subject’s XP is consumed.
The Magesmith may find other willing subjects to pay the XP cost. If Relsia the Magesmith recruits Bob, a willing commoner, to brew a potion of Mage Armor, then later crafts a wand of Cure Light Wounds using George the baker’s XP, Bob need only stay while the potion is brewing. If, instead, she forges a +3 bastard sword with George the Baker’s XP, George would need to stay for every shift or until he had no XP to spare. Magesmiths may not siphon XP from any subject for the purpose of casting spells with XP costs, like Wish.
My group runs it this way. Actually, it's the DM (me typically) who decides which items would be appropriate for what kind of experience costs, such as horns of unicorns, dragon's claws, and a lot more benign, rare things as well. It's a decent platform for adventures, and even provides background conflict, and a new form of Supply & Demand.
Well, Palladium's way puts magic points into the item but they also require components when they're more powerful, and those components are fiercely hard to come by. Anyhow, I like this style and we already use it.
Actually I have some example items I could upload if anyone's interested; I've always wanted to do a PDF for the web on our houserules.It also means that many rare items, such as the salamander blood in the above-mentioned example, will have an intrinsic value, which is the trick with such a system. In most campaigns you don't want the player characters to become organ harvesting merchants. Even if that is okay, you don't want them to become unbalancingly wealthy due to their organ harvesting. And perhaps most importantly you don't want to make the items easy enough to acquire that in a mid- to high- level campaign they become effectively free. This last bit is most likely why this system was omitted from the DMG - without careful management it lends itself to abuse.
With careful management, however, it can work very, very well.
-Shaftiel
The system above also makes it very difficult to craft items because once you specify what is required you cant just deduct gp and make it (like in the core D&D rules), you now have to find a person who has such an item available or get it yourself.
Not all wizards are stocking up on salamander blood, and last time I checked many salamanders aren’t too keen on giving up their blood (However one might reward you a portion in exchange for a service, so players don’t HAVE to become organ harvesters. Indeed, the item might require that such fluid be FREELY given).
Lastly, since salamander blood is so hot a simple vial just wont to the trick either, players best have something capable of storing superheated liquids on hand.
Magic in Elenath is a very powerful thing but is very much a case of getting out of it what you put in. All magic Items have levels of ability that must first be unlocked by the user bonding them in order to use them. The Bonding process is a gradual thing and often takes several years. There are three known ways of bonding magic items: Through the Rite of Blood and Pain, Through the Rite of Binding Fate, and Through the Rite of Sacrifice of Power. Also some items only accept certain types of Rites, for example the Legend of Torture speaks of a sword that could only be bound through the Rite of Blood and Pain. Most magic Items in elenath have the capacity to be bound to the higher levels of power however it is very rare for items to be bound beyond level three because of the amount of personal sacrifice required (no matter what rite is being used).
Game Mechanic: The user must have a skill in one of the Rites to use it. Rites skills must be taught to the user since they are not instinctual but they can become Class Skills for any class. Also as a note if the user happens too succeed the DC by 10 the requirements are decreased by 10%. This is cumulative; i.e.
The Last member of the Vey'ra Bloodline after much meditation has rolled a natural 20 on his attempt to bond the Family Sword. This means he has surpassed the DC by more than 10 pts. so he gets a 5% break in the requirements for using Rite of Binding Fate. If he had beat the DC by 20 pts. Or more he would have gotten a 10% break in the requirements.
Rite of Blood and Pain:
The Rite of Blood and Pain is used by most of the inhabitants of Elenath. It involves meditating with the item for a set amount of time, dependant upon the level that the owner is attempting to bond the item at. After the user has meditated for a time they must sacrifice a certain amount of their own blood into the item and attempt to bond it.
Game Mechanic: The cost is detailed on table (1-1). These are permanent hit points however if you beat the DC by 10 or more you may recover up to 1/3 of them. The bonder may spend an extra d6 hit points to lower the DC by 5 pts. He may spend up to 2d6 hit points in this fashion. Rite and Meditation checks are made for this skill as normal.
Rite of Binding Fate:
Aiden had been having dreams of cutting himself with his pretty sword. He dreamed that after he cut himself he would be able to do great things with sword
Adventurers often use the Rite of Binding Fate. The owner of the item must meditate with the item for a time determined by the level at which he wishes to bond the item. At the end of the Rite he focuses all of his willpower on the item and makes a Rite Check equal to the level that he is attempting to achieve. The item begins to glow with a fierce light which then surrounds the owner and bonds their fates together. This is a very draining process and the wielders are often listless and fatigued for up to a week afterwards.
Game Mechanic: The owner must sacrifice an amount of experience points as detailed on table (1-2). After the XP has been sacrificed and the Rite and Meditation Checks to bond the Item have been made the owner must also succeed a fortitude save or be listless and fatigued for one week (-2 penalty).
Rite of Sacrifice of Power:
Exclusively magic users and divine spellcasters use this Rite. The user must meditate with the item for the requisite time and then Sacrifices a certain amount of their magical or divine power to increase their connection with the item. This process is quite possibly more draining that the Rite of Binding Fate. Users often feel a sense of loss and decreased sensitivity for a time while adjusting to the change.
Game Mechanic:
Pre-requisites: Caster Level 1+
The owner sacrifices an amount of spell slots as detailed on table (1-3). Note that this is spells per day and not spells known. After the Meditation and Rite Checks are made the Owner must also succeed at a will save or be at a (-2) penalty on any spell casting rolls for the next two weeks. Once again this roll applies to ANYTHING to do with spell casting or magic.
Table 1-1: Rite of Blood and Pain
Level Hit points Sacrificed
1: 1d4+2
2: 2d4+3
3: 2d6+5
4: 3d6+5
5: 3d6+6
6: 4d8+6
Table 1-2: Rite of Binding Fate
Level XP Cost
1: 500
2: 1,000
3: 3,000
4: 10,000
**5: 27,000
**6: 70,000
Table 1-3: Rite of Sacrifice of Power
Level Spell Points
1: 1 Spell Point*
2: 3 Spell Points*
3: 5 Spell Points*
4: 7 Spell Points*
**5: 10 Spell Points*
**6: 20 Spell Points*
Table 1-4: Rite DC's
Level DC
1: 20
2: 25
3: 30
4: 48
**5: 50
**6: 58
*Spell Points are the equivalent of spell slots. A level One Spell Slot is equal to one spell point, A level nine Spell Slot is nine spell points etc. the only exception being that it takes three level 0 spell slots too equal one spell point.
**I am considering making levels 5 and six to require something that is a real PAIN IN THE ASS! A quest, attribute sacrifice something to that affect. I don’t know yet though. If I do I will probably tone down the reqs since you should be allowed to bond the item for just surviving my evil little quest.
Also I am thinking about instituting Rite Feats. For instance Adept of Blood and Pain would make bonding when using B&P less painful (less hit points) or just plain easier (easier meditation DC's). I do kind of want this stuff to be pretty hard but not necessarily unachievable.
Here are some of the Above-mentioned Rite feats:
Journeyman of (insert rite)
Prerequisites: 10 rnks. in affected rite.
Effect: The user has gained enough familiarity with the rite that reduce all DC’s for affected rite by 5.
Adept of (insert rite)
Prereq: 15 rnks. in affected rite. 5 rnks. Arcane Lore, Journeyman
Effect: The user has started to understand the finer aspects of the rite and is gaining an understanding of not only the rite's execution but also the magical mechanics behind it. The user now doubles the benefits for beating the DC by 10 pts. or more (5% increases to 10%)