Why is magical item creation always seen as overpowered?

>Why is magical item creation always seen as overpowered?

In what game? Because that's the sort of thing that's radically dependent on the ruleset.

Only game I know of where magic item crafting was OP was 3.X D&D (not any edition before or since, just 3.X), because it allowed a character to basically do fucking anything and have every ability.

You're getting really sort of mad for all the wrong reasons. 3.pf provided rules largely as guidelines for the DM, with EXPRESSLY STATED advice that they were loose guidelines that the DM had to weigh in with their own judgement. This was ultimately better than simply not providing any advice at all about item creation, and at no point was there supposed to be any illusion that the DM wasn't in complete control of what was and was not possible or fair.
If anything, it was a step forward from 2e item creation being purely a game of Mother-May-I with a large random chance of failure, and 2e likewise had severe balance issues when it came to what magic items could do.
The only vile and evil thing that 3rd edition did was make magic items more accessible and better understood, which while you may consider that to be a fault, it's just an ultimate symptom of the clarity and general transparency of the system that helped people find the game easier to understand and get into, what ultimately catapulted it to its unprecedented popularity.
This transparency also is what makes it a fine target for people to get upset and complain about the edition, but c'est la vie.

>Heck, anything worth having takes at least 10 days of constant crafting and thousands of gp worth of rare materials.

Also I should point out that "crafting time" is meaningless in 99% of cases because it will happen offscreen, either between sessions or the rest of the party will just wait until the crafting is done and there will be a two week timeskip.

Wait... what? How?!
That's a crazy loose interpretation of the rules to make a statue that does that.
Please elaborate?

If I was GM I would be tempted to throw at least one pressing situation in that caused a hard choice between getting the weapon faster or having to solve the problem that has come up.

i add a zero to every magic item price just to piss off my players
>and balance the game

Believing that since you can use abilities at a lower level (like spellcasting) you can channel at a Lower level. So it's 2000 x CL (3) x SL (N/A or 1). Then make it trigger on touch only to reduce the cost a bit and it should come out to less than 3,000gp in materials.
-asspulling retard logic

>I'd like to purchase this everburning torch.
>>That'll be 1,250gp
>Fuck that. It'll be cheaper to hire a novice wizard to follow me around and constantly cast light on a stick.
Also that really hurts your players.
>We really need to tend to our wounds. Our companion in armor is nearly dead and the priest travelling with us has fallen. How much for your cheapest magical healing remedies?
>5,000gp a bottle. Take it or leave it

Let me find something for you user. You might like the magic sword creation rules for DCC.
I also added a list of unusual materials that you roll on when making weapons

> He doesn't do crafting sessions

Players often have a better understanding of their own character's strengths and weaknesses then the DM does, simply because they only have to look at themselves.

Magic item creation basically hands the players access to items that can cover their weaknesses or bolster their strengths without the GM being the one to hand them it.

It's not inherently OP, but a powergamer or a weak GM can mean it quickly breaks the power curve.

I know that in pathfinder you can make your weapons out of basically anything. Even rice paper, but it breaks after one successful hit.

>More time and monetary cost is not an impediment to most groups,

>Also I should point out that "crafting time" is meaningless in 99% of cases because it will happen offscreen, either between sessions or the rest of the party will just wait until the crafting is done and there will be a two week timeskip.

What? If this is the case, than you, as the GM, are objectively doing a bad job. There should ALWAYS be more things that the players want to spend their gold on than they have gold to spend it on, and more things that the players want and need to do than they have time for. That's one of the core elements of any RPG; the inability to exercise all desires and the necessity of strategizing.

The way I handle custom item creation is to make it an actual quest. You don't just walk down to the corner store and buy an Ikea-brand Longsword +2, you have to work out what enchantments you want to have on it and then go and acquire the components/travel to the correct location.

It turns magical item creation into a source for adventure, rather than a bunch of weird maths that lets people overpower themselves.

>There should ALWAYS be more things that the players want to spend their gold on than they have gold to spend it on, and more things that the players want and need to do than they have time for.

That's unreasonable. You can have time-limited adventures once in a while, but there is no plausible way to have them ALL the time. There's just no way to have a ticking time bomb in every episode of the show.

>That's unreasonable.

Hardly

> You can have time-limited adventures once in a while, but there is no plausible way to have them ALL the time.

Sure you can, as long as your PCs aren't the only group with agency in the world, which seems to be the case sadly often. The players go to rescue Jimmy from the goblins instead of dealing with Farmer Mcclusky's ankheg problem? By the time they come back, he's already hired a different group of adventurers to take care of it for him, unless of course, they really hurry.

>There's just no way to have a ticking time bomb in every episode of the show.

You don't need to have that. You just need to have lots of people doing lots of things and all wanting it done yesterday, if at all possible.

Sure you can!

Just don't make the timer like, hours or nothing, make it months, years.
Crafting items takes time, if they don't use their years wisely then they might fail their goals

This x1000.

It added mechanics into how it coukd even happen, but was still limited in terms of spending. Podunk hamlet #1000 isn't going to have the raw materials for something like even a moderate (+2) enchanted item, so your characters need to journey to a big trading city or similar to even be able to make anything.

I've run and played in several dozen 3.5 games where this never was an issue. Each time crafting time came up, that was the cue for the builder to sit aside eith the book while the interaction-heavy characters took center stage. Bard going on a drunken bender with the fighter? Yup, perfect time to work on something. Cleric and paladin going on and on about attempts to convert people? Perfect time to work on a few scrolls in the background. Etc etc.

It's like another user said: it's only a problem with shitty GMs or munchkin players.

>Why is magical item creation always seen as overpowered?
Because without it the players' equipment is totally at the whim of the gm so they can cripple the party's effectiveness however they want and not have to put a single thought towards balancing for anything the players do.

>More time and monetary cost is not an impediment to most groups
How much free downtime the party has and how much money they have is entirely dependent on the gm not even considering requiring special materials for magic items.

If players want to sit in a town for a couple months crafting everything they can find in the book before the big end-battle then give them consequences.
Maybe their enemies change their plans or move ahead with them faster than expected.
Maybe the concentration of magic attracts any of the multiple monsters that eat magic items.

This shit ain't exactly rocket science.

here ya go user.
these are the materials i have players roll for when finding a magic weapon or when i make one for a dungeon or treasure reward. if anyone wants to add to this list, please feel free, i'm always interested in new materials to add to the list, no two weapons should be alike.

(1):Adamantine
(2):Blood Crystal
(3):Bone
(4):Bronze
(5):Cold Iron
(6):Elysian Bronze
(7):Fire-Forged steel
(8):Frost Forged Steel
(9):Gold
(10):Living Steel
(11):Mithral
(12):Obsidian
(13):Silver
(14):Stone
(15):Voidglass
(16):Glass Steal
(17):Red Steel
(18):Black steel
(19):Meteoric Iron
(20):Crystal

I have never heard of magic item creation being considered overpowered. At least from my experience in 3.PF, they tend to be considered fairly mediocre, simply because the majority of games don't give the player much downtime to make items, and often any net wealth increases from using the feats are worth less than having spent the feat on something immediately useful in combat.

It's one of those weird things which varies wildly in value depending on how much downtime the players get. It's also weird, because you're basically selling feat slots for gold pieces.

Thought Bottle cheese, planes with different time progression from the ones you're going to do all of your adventuring on to make the time drawback less severe, feats to further cut down the cost, plus you get exactly what you want/need instead of dealing with loot tables or exactly what the DM wants to give you.

It's a way of bypassing the action economy. I can cast Voice of Katsulas and that has some powerful positive effect for me. Or I can put it into an item that is always on or freely activated, and then I get the same bonus all the time. It's there whether I knew I'd need it on a particular day or not and doesn't draw from my own personal spellcasting resources.

If I have a limited spells per some period, then items usually have their own individual clocks. If I have limited effect selection, then usually item effects don't count towards that. If I have limited effects known, then I get the benefit of selecting from everyone in my group or who I can buy from who has that crafting ability, and then still have my own abilities.

Most especially, I can drastically frontload my powers by taking a lot of time during downtime periods that from an game mechanics standpoint are usually wasted anyway, and then that frees up the crucial turns during combat encounters.

Many games have an itemization element to your power, especially D&D3.x. Crafting means I can overload items to give myself every possible advantage: +6 to all the stats I care about, +30 to all the skills I use, +5 to armor/attacks/saves, spell and energy resistances, and a variety of continuous effects. A normal player gets what the DM decides he finds, or at best what he can persuade his DM to let him buy. A crafter gets to fit out exactly teh optimized item for any situation. All your item slots are filled, and filled optimally.

Games like GURPS use the gadget limitation on powers for exactly this reason. It means that +3 to wombat taming that I get from training, from a spell, from cybernetics, and from a magic item are all more or less priced similarly (subject to the limits imposed by the source of your power). In most games, gear is pretty much a direct add to your personal power anyway.

Then make something happen, force the 10 day requirement to matter

...

Shit man, i did a bunch of reverse engineering, and almost all the items in 3.pf are either built with the item creation rules, or the item creation rules overprice them by a huge margin. They're actually pretty balanced in my experience.

I'd post a link, but it's on reddit

That's not even counting purely cosmetic magical effects.
Maybe the flaming sword has blue flames.
Maybe the structure of the weapon is some silly anime bullshit that shouldn't reasonably be an effective weapon.
Maybe wooden parts grow small roots and twigs if left laying on the ground for long enough.

The design can also be an opportunity to expand on the setting or drop hints of potential side-plots.
Some bandits' magic weapons could be from an ancient civilization known for secret stashes of goods and could hint at such a cache nearby.
A shield design in the style favored by a certain royal family could be a hint towards where the missing heir has been.
A specific type of weapon could be a relic from the war waged by a recently collapsed kingdom, no longer made but still encountered in various hands on occasion in any of the surrounding lands.

I have no idea. It smells like autism really. It's really very simple. Common materials can be bought for gold, rarer materials cost more, and the rarest you simply have to go on an adventure to look for. Once you have what you need in materials, you must find a workshop or workbench with tools and maybe a furnace, which costs favors or gold to rent, or you must hire a magical smith. If you didn't hire a smith, you must spend time making the item yourself, you might need to find someone who can train you, which you can be apprenticing for, or if you know already, begin the process. The actual crafting may cost exp, because it is demanding, time-consuming, and maybe requires you to sacrifice part of yourself, like with Sauron and his One Ring.

Simple, reasonable, and the only reason it wouldn't work is bad GM and worse Players.

Not quite item creation, but i told my groups half-celestial paladin (i know i'm retarded for allowing this) that the large greatsword they threw from 150 feet was so funny that the gods decided to bless it.

What i gave it was basically turned into a medium +1 greatsword and made it indestructible, but it can't be enchanted or repaired further. As well, it deals an extra 1d6 for every 50 feet its thrown from.

Is this broken in any way? like, will this be able to fuck up my campaign?

The exp cost to crafting was dumb and should never have been added in. All it does is punish the party as a whole because their crafter is a level (or teonin extreme cases) behind and now can't provide adequate assistance in immediate problems.

Just specify that it has to be thrown and you're golden. An extra few D6 of damage on rare occurrences isn't OP at all (how often is the guy going to throw swords like a football?).

Because of autistic neckbeard grognards.

It depends on the item. The golden rule here is that the exp lost is proportional to the power the item gives you. Sauron was nothing without his ring, but with it he was as strong as before or stronger. If the item isn't powerful enough you don't lose exp. All of this are decisions competent GMs can make.

It isn't OP. At least at earlier levels. What I do is that I make it a challenge to get profit from magic items. You can't sell for profit to a merchant, you can only sell for profit to the people who buy the thing.

It's a weapon a martial class uses to beat enemies with, it won't affect your campaign in any way. Only things affecting spellcasting matter.

At least in dnd it actually works to the party's benefit since casters, who are generally the magic item crafters, already tend to outpace other classes in power so being a level or two behind helps balance things out and actually causes them to gain more xp which they can then spend on more magic items.
The magic items themselves can give easy access to spells to balance out daily limitations and number and type of spell benefits and give special abilities, especially against certain types of damage and attacks, that are otherwise rare and often take multiple levels in certain classes.
These aren't just for the crafter either since the whole party can get a better deal for their gold if they just pay the crafter to make stuff.

Well, in regular circumstances, likely never. But being a flying person with perfect maneuverability due to a feat, they could throw it from some rather high places.

you'd be surprised what a group of idiots can do with an indestructible object.

Yeah no. It's unreasonable to expect me to spend my hard earned XP to craft magic items for your benefit. Buy your own, whatever I craft is for my own use only.

That's falling. Also, falling damage exists on objects already. What's the difference between him dropping his enchanted sword or dropping a rock on it?

Well, in that he can fly and throw it directly downwards.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying, it's for your own benefit as much as the party's.
>and actually causes them to gain more xp
By keeping behind the rest of the party in level you gain more xp and you're not any less powerful because you're investing that extra xp in things like wands or things to protect you from negative levels.

Having the party buy or commission their magic items is just throwing party resources away instead of paying you to make it for less than the market price and you could even keep some or all of the difference for your own use in exchange since it's still better for the party overall for you to have the extra gold instead of some random npc unless your dm has investing in someone have a story impact.

That's not even mentioning alternative rules that allow party members to contribute to crafting.

You can of course play a selfish/stupid character but you're literally throwing away extra money and magic items you could be getting.

Magic items have utilities that simply aren't available when using mundane items.

Furthermore, if the only trade-off is availability, that stops being an issue as soon as characters acquire the items they want.

This is also why artificers can be so broken if you let them.

I like you. DCC states that every magic item should have a story. If you're going to put it in the dungeon then you had best write up its last two owners and history at the very least! When I roll something up I usually give it a cosmetic affect relevant to its purpose, abilities, or material. One of my players rolled up a +1 dagger of meteoric iron, nothing really special about it other than being magical, but it's always warm to the touch and if held under a night sky it reflects the sky.

Yeah it's the little stuff that can also make the difference between a memorable treasure and just another magic item.

This brings up a good question. At what point does a falling object need to only hit touch AC for it to do damage?

Well, that depends, really. i would say once the Damage dice hit 10D6 or so, that would be the point, because its easily gonna break through your armor as well.

A better question, at what point has the object fallen far enough to require a reflex save from the ensuing crater in the surrounding squares.

Maybe it's physics don't work like that? Maybe it lands harmlessly if it doesn't strike an opponent? If gods or angels blessed it I imagine they wouldn't want it causing so much collateral damage

In the grand scheme of things, the amount of damage a 10 foot crater can do to an environment is essentially nothing, as eventually something will grow in that crater, or maybe it'll even turn into a rain catching thing and animals drink out of it.

Nature's a hardy motherfucker, and dropping a hunk of metal from one or two hundred feet ain't gonna even phase it.

>Nature is Hardy
Yeah until humans came along and disproves that easily.

I always use some penalties to the stats when the player uses high-end magical items.
decreases in HP, penalties on certain rolls, personality and alignment changes for characters etc. when it's about to hit game-changing levels.
I dont look much at what it costs on being made, but rather how often you have the opportunity to find certain materials to make this, and what the costs are in the long run.

for example, the demon-slaying weapons i use in an eastern campaign are easily made by sacrificing any kind of demonic creature (you stab them with a regular sword until the are dead, even though it will take some time).
With every killed demon they become stronger, but the party is forced to do purification-pilgrimages to temples from time to time to keep the accumulating stat penalties away from them.

Yeah, but it took us pumping out thousands upon millions of chemicals, deforesting at a rate nature can't keep up with, and nuking shit to cause that.

One sword causing a crater ain't shit comparative to that.

And yet all of what you listed can be summed up as "+1 sword."
Not that it's a bad thing, it's just that you, like me, appreciate when DMs put thought into the weapons they give you.

I think the craziest weapon I've ever had the joy of using was Ascalon, a dragonslaying spear.

It was described as lovingly crafted and almost rococo in style, and was essentially a +1 spear with two hidden abilities, the attack bonus getting higher the larger your enemy was, and the ability to instantly kill any and all dragons. The last ability was discovered when I was hanging off a cliff, and our barbarian out of desperation hurled it at the dragon in order to get to me faster.

Depending on the system, and assuming dnd as a basis, none of what he just said is "just a +1 sword".

Special materials are their own beasts, separate from enchantment, normally. Second, added effects tend to go beyond "+1". In general terms, a +1 weapon is one that is simply slightly better than its non-magical counterpart. Its slightly sharper, slightly harder, slightly more effective, but otherwise exactly the same.

Anything else can't be described as "Just +1"

Even your Ascalon isn't "Just a +1 weapon". Its a "+1 weapon with hidden goodies"

Okay, just because nature is hardy doesn't mean the gods would make something that causes so much collateral damage. What happens when you drop it in a populated area? I'm a city? Nah, I think the whole, "leaves a crater" isn't something good gods would build into a weapon. Too destructive. It's not like the gods have to obey the laws of physics with magic.

First, the person it was given to is a paladin. Ideally, they aren't retarded enough to drop it in a city to start with.

Second, All they did is make it indestructible. Its not like they added a crater making property, thats just something you could do with an object if you dropped it from high enough. Which was my point. At what point would dropping an object, regular or magical, cause a crater, needing a reflex save.

You are too homed in on the weapon itself, but keep in mind gods in many pantheons are way more retarded with their weapons than humans ever could be.

Solution: If thrown at the ground, the sword will always angle itself with the pointy side aiming downwards. Since it's indestructible it'll slip into whatever it fell on if given enough speed, but stop at the hilt since the shape wouldn't cut as well.
What happens to the struck object is up to you, but i expect that, once the campaign is done, your setting will have it's own Sword in the Stone

Very likely, but an average sword, if it hits terminal velocity, would probably end up pointy side down anyways, just due to drag on the guard.

And even if it is indestructible, that doesn't stop the amount of force an object at terminal velocity would provide. Most of that would still go straight into the ground.

If we're talking about terminal velocity then the best you'll get is a hilt sticking out of the ground with a lot of cracks around it. Earth isn't the same as stone or more compact materials, it has a lot of space to move

Ever heard of kinetic bombardment?

Yeah. You need more than a 5lb stick of indestructible aerodynamic metal to cause craters. At most you can probably put a mailbox post in the hole.

Late game you REALLY need to outfit your melee characters because most thing you're fighting at that level have high spell resistance.

If you can't crack SR like an egg, stop pissing away caster levels.
Even if the GM decides to add 50 points to every SR value, just stop casting spells that allow SR. There's plenty of 'You lose" spells with SR:No.

I disagree, since that means that a martial who wants to have a character built on survivalist-tier self-reliance cannot make his own gear unless he takes levels in a spellcasting class. Locking magic item crafting in to spellcasters just ends up making noncasters worse. Again.

>but you can hire a spellcaster to-
Only if one is available and willing to do the job.

>but scrolls-
What if I don't have UMD trained? Also, why *must* I involve another person in my crafting if I want any kind of relevance past lvl 6?

You're disagreeing with facts. That's how it works in DnD.

It also has absolutely fucking nothing to do with martials being unable to craft, he was just stating that spending your EXP on crafting actually makes you stronger if it costs you a level.

That said, I agree fullheartedly that martials should be able to craft. But shitty ivory tower design, go take it up with your GM.

>I disagree, since that means that a martial who wants to have a character built on survivalist-tier self-reliance cannot make his own gear unless he takes levels in a spellcasting class
You don't actually seem to be disagreeing with me since I never claimed it was a flawless or ideal system, it's just how it works in 3.5 dnd.

Either you need to work on your reading comprehension or stop beating strawmen.

There were some half-hearted attempts at alternative rules but just the way abilities and skills works tends to automatically cripple martials with crafting.

There's also the ever-present problem that whenever a martial wants to do something they're held to the standard of some game designer or writer's amateur misunderstanding of what's "realistic" while casters largely get a free pass because all myths and fantasy media are free game to be bundled together under the banner of what magic can do with a hefty dose of modern anachronistic views of the development of knowledge and technology.

Such as?

Anyway, if I WERE to try to design a better system for magic item creation I would probably add in a much bigger role for special materials or even specific sites for item creation.

Stuff like requiring certain monster parts for certain enchantments or specific items.
I've always really enjoyed when there have been descriptions of monsters that included details of parts of them that had supernatural abilities and could count as treasure.
Like did you know you can actually harvest a beholder's levitation organ? Or that a flail snail's shell can be used to make a spell-turning shield?

Monster Hunter is a shitty meme game and you should be ashamed for emulating it.

Most conjurations and illusions, actually. Forcecage, Glitterdust, Grease, a bunch of the Wall of Thing spells, etc. Basically any illusion that doesn't directly inflict damage also has SR:No and no save until interacted with. If your GM doesn't define interaction as "looked at it", you can make some terrifying no-save-just-die ambushes with illusions, a bit of prep work, and smart thinking.
Or just cut the monster out of the link and buff the fighter.
Or summon things to murder the enemy.
Or turn yourself into King Kong and smash things.
Or say "No thanks" and teleport the whole party away from the random wilderness encounter.
Or use any of the dozens of ways of getting absurd penetration checks and sneer at spell resistance. Or any of the ways to automatically penetrate.

Honestly, the only irritating thing about spell resistance is when some 'tard in the party gets it and won't lower it so you can buff them without having to roll.

>you can only have monster parts as part of making magic items if you're copying monster hunter
Go back to /v/ faggot.
It was a concept in mythology and fantasy long before some jap game that you sperg out over other strangers liking or not.

...

I did something similar for a 3.5 Gestalt Campaing based on commerce and crafts (the main villain was something like the Guild in Last Exile, but many occasional villains of different type occurred).

I required that the GS of the monster would be comparable to the caster level and the body part conceptually similar. This would set a number of craft CD (still prepared in base of GS, I know it does not necessarily makes sense but is a level based game after all).

I don't remember the numbers and my stuff is in another country now, but i think this is a good start, it worked for us.

We just had to change the rules for the masterwork. THAT is retarded, because of the time. PF did not address it, the designers did not want (I think people have the screenshot).

This is a very optimistic view on the thing a monster can resist, the way a party is never surprised, and the way monsters are played.

user, you know that in 3.PF, conjuration has the entire orb of X spell line that is expressly not affected by SR?
Or that many, many debuffs are not, because many do not rely on directly effecting the creature unless it's a touch spell?
SR is only a problem when it comes to buffs and blasting casters, and this is long known. Do not act like you can come to some new conclusion about the most picked apart game on the market.

You're going to have to back that statement up.
In any given spell-prep cycle I make sure to cover all the bases, so if it turns out that we fight NospellsAllowed Mc50SRandMakesAllSaves I'll just throw some no-save no-SR battlefield control around or shit buffs on the party. Incidentally, this is also exactly what wands, staffs, and scrolls are for.
If we get surprised, then that changes, uh, fucking nothing aside from a round of combat. I can still cast my shit once I get my turn.
Would love to know how a monster will be played to negate a wizard wizarding at full force.

Best answer.

I'm fine if my players want to make a magical item. But depending on what it is they might have to go to Hades and back for the materials.

Or wait, are you saying that a monster's spell resistance can resist spells that say "Spell Resistance: No"? Because that's just objectively wrong. If the spell doesn't care about SR, it doesn't care about SR period full stop.

Because if an item's worth having, it's too powerful. If it's not worth having/you can find better shit in the wild, item crafting is irrelevant and never used.

Therefore item crafting is only used when it's producing shit that's better than other available options, assuming the players aren't mentally defective.

I just say that SR: no does not mean autowin. A creature can see through illusion, orb spells are nullified by energy resistance and/or stuff like Mettle. The right spell at the right moment solves a situation, but you cannot always have the right spell in the right number.

Very true about "buff the party" which is generally the best thing to do.

>Would love to know how a monster will be played to negate a wizard wizarding at full force.
I just found an absurdity the assumption that is easy to surprise monsters.

What buff spells is this wizard supposed to cast? I can't remember spells other than Enlarge Person, Haste, and Fly.

if you wanted to be both believable and disingenuous, you could have at last pretended to remember invisibility.

also Displacement, Stoneskin. And this is just core.

Invisibility runs out as soon as they attack. It's better to buff yourself with invisibility and then start casting all the other buff spells while running around invisible so you don't get shanked.

>Very true about "buff the party" which is generally the best thing to do.
Or summon creatures.
Or polymorph yourself.
Or use different spells that do not directly interact with the creature, like cages, wall of X, etc.
SR is only an obstacle to a blaster wizard or a player who is inexperienced.

It can, to be fair, interfere with some lines of debuffing.

But there's plenty of debuffs (and decent blasts) that don't give a shit about SR.
It's also damn easy to shit on, since you can trivially boost penetration and caster level.

Not improved invisibility. And sometimes one chance is all that is needed.
To clarify - what I said can be inverted. there are spells and combination that look unlikely or weak, until the moment arrive in which they are fantastic.