Further to what I've just posted, I think there should be some sort of trade-off between the "interest factor" between a character's class and his magic items. So, high level Wizards are interesting enough as it is, so they could fairly be loaded with potions, wands and scrolls, those being items that allow them to do more of what they can do anyway. Meanwhile, the high level Fighter, having a lower "interest factor" should have easy access to more interesting items, such as "Wyrmdrinker", a magical longsword that gains its power by being bathed in the blood of dragons.
Of course, in a one-off, this is quite easy (except that the magic item lists favour spell-casters - not surprising since spell-casters create the magic items). In the course of a campaign, the spell-casters can create what they want, while the Fighter is stuck with whatever they can persuade the wizards to make for them, or the DM gives them.
I'm also something of a believer in the philosophy that there should be very few magic items in the campaign, and that those that exist should be quite powerful. I typically attenuate this with a concession that there should also be plenty of cheap one-shot items like potions, wands and scrolls.
In modelling this sort of a game, I'd restrict access to the Item Creation Feats except for Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion and Craft Wand. The rest (of the Feats) would have to be learned through special question, in tomes of secret lore, or through the use of a special Prestige Class (the Artificer, or somesuch).
Unfortunately, this would throw the 3rd Edition god of balance out of whack, which is annoying. Also, the easy crafting of magic items is, ironically, one of my favourite changes in the 3rd Edition.
I'm pretty damn certain that Craft Wondrous Item is unbalanced, though, since effectively it allows the replacement of almost any other item creation feat.
To help re-balance it, I'd assign two caveats:
1) If it functions like another item, you need the feat for that item. So, a Sock of Protection (that works like the Ring) requires Craft Magic Ring.
2) By default, only the items listed in the DMG are known. Other items can be learned, but the instructions must be researched or found. Treat this as the task of scribing a spell of a level equal to the item caster level divided by 2 (round down).
In truth, I'd prefer to see Craft Wondrous Item to be removed, and replaced with a number of sub-feats. Don't see that happening, though.
Archived comment from Mort:
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty funny how a wizard seems to be a master tailer, shoe clobber, pot maker, dentist, whatever. As he crafts the most wonderful items out of a couple of thousands of gold.
One thing one can do to restrict the insaneness of wondrous item creation mayhem is to make up ingredients for each of the items. Sure the ingredients for a belt of ogre strength would cost you 5000 gold (just a guess) but who will sell them to you? It's not like you can walk into the Monster-e-Mart and pick the things you need. This would make creating these items full adventures in themselves and perhaps give the players some more appretiation for that magic item they just created.
Archived comment from me:
ReplyDeleteIt's assumed that the wizard creating the item purchases a masterwork item of the appropriate sort to use in his device (a masterwork belt in your example). They could, of course, create the item themselves, with the appropriate Craft skill, but this isn't required of them.
As for buying the rest of the components, you are quite right. However, 3rd Edition has this somewhat silly notion of magic as a commodity, which makes for easy construction of items. Without this assumption, balance can quickly fly out of alignment since it's assumed that PCs can basically get what they want.
It's annoying that D&D 3rd Edition, which was supposed to have a modular design so you could easily swap things in and out, is so tightly coupled together that you can't just strip things out. Hell, even something as simple as emcumberance can't simply be ignored, since it impacts skill ranks, Monk and Ranger abilities, and movement (which is itself locked to the more tactical combat system).