I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
they made a choice back in the day: magic items or Features. They chose to power up the classes specifically so that less and fewer magic items would be in the game, and doubled down on that choice with attunement and then doubled down again when they rewrote all the magic items and got rid of over half of them.
Then they doubled down yet again and made not being able to make anything over uncommon a standard.
They are, by action, stating that they think the idea that magic items should be purchased is ridiculous. And that is not going to change.
also, I am curious: where is this wealth by level table? Because 17k gold is low as hell for my game, lol. Hell, rent in one of the Apses of Durango would suck up over half of that in one year. For a single!
That converts to a fairly low social class income for a year in my game — a bit above a farmer, well below a guildsman, not even close to a merchant (well, maybe a peddler). I confess I have a slightly more developed out economics system, but damn….
As forbeing low? accroding to the DMs guide the average income for a skilled working is 6 gold per month
Thanks for that. I had forgotten about it entirely -- and wow, it is super low.
6 gold per month in my game for a skilled worker would equal enough to buy food and shelter (one meal of bread and water, and space in a barn) for about a month. It is roughly one day at an Inn (or three meals at a tavern). The problem of being overeducated means that I sat down and reset the economics based on the cost of a loaf of bread. It isn't a "rea" economic system, but it is considerably closer to one than the 5e base.
Also, the DMG shows 750 (at best) in gold for 10th level (which I confess made me laugh out loud), not 17k.
I owe you a slight take back -- in reflection, on a lot of the stuff I have been seeing from interviews and odds and ends like the report that the Rod of Seven Parts is due to return, the abiit of a Bastion to make magical items, and so forth, it is fairly obvious that they are going to do something involving magic items that appears to be loosening them up a little.
The Devs see magical items as a McGuffin. They are the basis of a fetch quest, and only some of them are actually rewards the Dm is supposed to provide -- most of the decently powered ones are set up to be some kind of quest based thing. That isn't new, this isn't the first edition that WotC has demonstrated this kind of thinking for.
But they are also still very much pulled back, and I think they want to move a bit more forward, so they could make some shifts around magic.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
Even if a DM allows players to buy magic items, players don't just say "I wanna get a +3 sword" and then the DM checks a table and replies "500,000 gp." There has to be someone selling the items. The person selling the items is controlled by the DM. The magic items are still being issued by the DM. With crafting, there's theoretically no such middleman. If you have 500,000 gp (worth of stuff), you can craft a +3 sword. That's significantly different, because it means a DM who doesn't want you to have a +3 sword can't really do anything besides starving players or changing the rules.
that doesnt answer my question. Yes I know the DM still has final control on the price and availability in store, as for making it themselves jsut by using the meager rules for making a magic item as is, a player isnt going to be able to do it anyway.
What was the point of your question, then?
the point of my question is why bother collecting all this gold as a reward for adventuring if you cant do anything with it.
That was your question. I'm aware of that. My question about your question is: why did you ask it?
because people keep saying that magic items are not meant to be purchased and only used as a reward, but part of the reward is all this gold, with nothing you can spend it on if you take magic items out of the equation. which in turn leads to being able to do crafting of such.
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
Even if a DM allows players to buy magic items, players don't just say "I wanna get a +3 sword" and then the DM checks a table and replies "500,000 gp." There has to be someone selling the items. The person selling the items is controlled by the DM. The magic items are still being issued by the DM. With crafting, there's theoretically no such middleman. If you have 500,000 gp (worth of stuff), you can craft a +3 sword. That's significantly different, because it means a DM who doesn't want you to have a +3 sword can't really do anything besides starving players or changing the rules.
that doesnt answer my question. Yes I know the DM still has final control on the price and availability in store, as for making it themselves jsut by using the meager rules for making a magic item as is, a player isnt going to be able to do it anyway.
What was the point of your question, then?
the point of my question is why bother collecting all this gold as a reward for adventuring if you cant do anything with it.
this is why the economics of the game are screwed up. On purpose, it appears, from a mechanics viewpoint. The DM is basically supposed to be sucking you dry and nickel and diming you to death.
That's why they tied crafting to gold and why gold is the measurement and resource for so many things.
It is also why I reset the economics of my game -- after the last five years of a system that my players will poke and prod at every corner of, I had enough and said screw it, lol. Now those costs have an actual basis, and there are points of reference.
A typical adventurer should rake in at least 50 to 70k a year in my game. Of which only around 10% will be "free money". But I also have stuff like weapons breaking and armor breaking, so there is a need for more than typical coin just to keep gear in shape. And that's before the bandits!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
they made a choice back in the day: magic items or Features. They chose to power up the classes specifically so that less and fewer magic items would be in the game, and doubled down on that choice with attunement and then doubled down again when they rewrote all the magic items and got rid of over half of them.
Then they doubled down yet again and made not being able to make anything over uncommon a standard.
They are, by action, stating that they think the idea that magic items should be purchased is ridiculous. And that is not going to change.
also, I am curious: where is this wealth by level table? Because 17k gold is low as hell for my game, lol. Hell, rent in one of the Apses of Durango would suck up over half of that in one year. For a single!
That converts to a fairly low social class income for a year in my game — a bit above a farmer, well below a guildsman, not even close to a merchant (well, maybe a peddler). I confess I have a slightly more developed out economics system, but damn….
As forbeing low? accroding to the DMs guide the average income for a skilled working is 6 gold per month
Thanks for that. I had forgotten about it entirely -- and wow, it is super low.
6 gold per month in my game for a skilled worker would equal enough to buy food and shelter (one meal of bread and water, and space in a barn) for about a month. It is roughly one day at an Inn (or three meals at a tavern). The problem of being overeducated means that I sat down and reset the economics based on the cost of a loaf of bread. It isn't a "rea" economic system, but it is considerably closer to one than the 5e base.
Also, the DMG shows 750 (at best) in gold for 10th level (which I confess made me laugh out loud), not 17k.
I owe you a slight take back -- in reflection, on a lot of the stuff I have been seeing from interviews and odds and ends like the report that the Rod of Seven Parts is due to return, the abiit of a Bastion to make magical items, and so forth, it is fairly obvious that they are going to do something involving magic items that appears to be loosening them up a little.
The Devs see magical items as a McGuffin. They are the basis of a fetch quest, and only some of them are actually rewards the Dm is supposed to provide -- most of the decently powered ones are set up to be some kind of quest based thing. That isn't new, this isn't the first edition that WotC has demonstrated this kind of thinking for.
But they are also still very much pulled back, and I think they want to move a bit more forward, so they could make some shifts around magic.
I will agree that unlike previous editions Magic Items are not as important to making a character but they are part of said character. even according to teh charts I listed they have starting magic items by level.
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
they made a choice back in the day: magic items or Features. They chose to power up the classes specifically so that less and fewer magic items would be in the game, and doubled down on that choice with attunement and then doubled down again when they rewrote all the magic items and got rid of over half of them.
Then they doubled down yet again and made not being able to make anything over uncommon a standard.
They are, by action, stating that they think the idea that magic items should be purchased is ridiculous. And that is not going to change.
also, I am curious: where is this wealth by level table? Because 17k gold is low as hell for my game, lol. Hell, rent in one of the Apses of Durango would suck up over half of that in one year. For a single!
That converts to a fairly low social class income for a year in my game — a bit above a farmer, well below a guildsman, not even close to a merchant (well, maybe a peddler). I confess I have a slightly more developed out economics system, but damn….
As forbeing low? accroding to the DMs guide the average income for a skilled working is 6 gold per month
Thanks for that. I had forgotten about it entirely -- and wow, it is super low.
6 gold per month in my game for a skilled worker would equal enough to buy food and shelter (one meal of bread and water, and space in a barn) for about a month. It is roughly one day at an Inn (or three meals at a tavern). The problem of being overeducated means that I sat down and reset the economics based on the cost of a loaf of bread. It isn't a "rea" economic system, but it is considerably closer to one than the 5e base.
Also, the DMG shows 750 (at best) in gold for 10th level (which I confess made me laugh out loud), not 17k.
I owe you a slight take back -- in reflection, on a lot of the stuff I have been seeing from interviews and odds and ends like the report that the Rod of Seven Parts is due to return, the abiit of a Bastion to make magical items, and so forth, it is fairly obvious that they are going to do something involving magic items that appears to be loosening them up a little.
The Devs see magical items as a McGuffin. They are the basis of a fetch quest, and only some of them are actually rewards the Dm is supposed to provide -- most of the decently powered ones are set up to be some kind of quest based thing. That isn't new, this isn't the first edition that WotC has demonstrated this kind of thinking for.
But they are also still very much pulled back, and I think they want to move a bit more forward, so they could make some shifts around magic.
I will agree that unlike previous editions Magic Items are not as important to making a character but they are part of said character. even according to teh charts I listed they have starting magic items by level.
I personally use this as a guide to try and limit how often characters get access to either find or buy them
So, Imma tell ya -- I give out more magic items than their lists.I'm an old lady who likes to give out magic items because that is how D&D works to me. I fully expect that in my next campaign, once the players reach 17 to 20, at least one of the fabled +5 weapons will be in the grasp of at least three out of the 9 players that will be in a given session.
So don't take what I'm saying as I disagree with you about them getting it. I'm speaking to the rules in the books themselves, and how they have set things up.
I've pretty much rewritten the bulk of the game for my table. And I had to for three reasons: To strip out Lore they wrote into it, to meet my player's wants and needs, and to put in Lore for the world. My game is crunchier, is harder, is deadlier, is way ore RP focused, and is wholly player driven in an open world. TO make it work, I had to tear apart a lot of stuff. That's why I had forgotten about those tables, lol. THey have zero value or use in my game world.
But we aren't talking about my game world (which would be an outlier anyway) -- I use it for some examples, but when I do I have to do conversions of it to 5e versions.
Odds are really good that they will take some of the stuff from CGE and TGE and work it into the new DMG. Like, more than 50% chance for pretty much anything. But they aren't likely going to make it much different -- because they have an idea in their head called Balance.
They wrote the main rules during a pretty rough period for the company and the game -- and it shows. They rushed them, as well, for the same reasons. They have been learning not to change much abot what is present right now. This is a big point for me in this thread -- that 80% thing is what they harp on. It is a PR move, absolutely, and iit is meant to silence folks, and all that other stuff, but they are also seeing that if they get too drastic, they get shut down. THis forum is crammed full fro all the Class UAs, lol.
THey have been told, in very certain tems, not to screw with it too much.
So, if there are existing rules, they are only going to change the a little.
Now, magic items can be bought -- your XGE has it in the same section you lined me to -- but look at how they did it. It is hard, it takes time, and it is set up mostly to drive a quest. The new Deck of Many things? THey redesigned it to help folks create new fetch quests and the like, lol. magic items to this dev team are a mcGuffin -- like disease, they are intended to inspie an adventure or serve as a tool fo one. They do not want players to ever pick their items.
Even the sections youlink to, those are for DMs, not players. And they talk about several different ways of giving magic out. XGE is probably closer to what we will see in the new DMG -- and that's a good thing, but I don't think they will make it all that much simpler to buy magic items.
Even in 1e, that wasn't supposed to be a thing, lo. There shouldn't have been a shop where you could just buy your magic items. We all did it, of course, lo.
But in 1e, players aren't supposed to pick their spells in their spell books, either.
I think that the magic item stuff in TGE and XGE were sorta trial balloons -- both books are entirely, wholly optional rules.So I do think that there will be an increased ability to create "common" itms.
I also think they may make it harder to get rare items, because I suspect they will reset magic item rarities.
And that's what we are talking about here -- what we think they will do, not necessarily what we want them to do. I mean, I want the to take all my stuff, pay me a fortune for it, and then use it in the game, lol.
But I know that ain't gonna happen, lol. They sure as hell ain't gonna fix the economic system. I don't see them making CR any more transparent. I see them maybe doing a little bit more with crafting -- but not nearly enough to satisfy the "crafting now" crowd.I doubt they will expand the "spell point" system -- indeed, I think that option will vanish. As will other options, like Sanity, Renown, and Piety. in part because they don't want to have to make them available on DDB, and I can see how DDB is absolutely central to the new stuff: they bought DDB in order to make the new version one that is updated live and consistently.
\But that's what I see. Who knows.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
Even if a DM allows players to buy magic items, players don't just say "I wanna get a +3 sword" and then the DM checks a table and replies "500,000 gp." There has to be someone selling the items. The person selling the items is controlled by the DM. The magic items are still being issued by the DM. With crafting, there's theoretically no such middleman. If you have 500,000 gp (worth of stuff), you can craft a +3 sword. That's significantly different, because it means a DM who doesn't want you to have a +3 sword can't really do anything besides starving players or changing the rules.
with an optional rule it means the DM already agreed to that. People need to stop worrying about the DM like they are a victim, the dm has the most control over everything of the group, and more control than many TTRpGS. It might be fair to say 5e DMing is hard because you have some many rules you can adapt or change to make it good, but its not fair to say the existence of optional rules creates problems DMs can't handle or solve.
There is no qualitative difference between a DM deciding at the start of the game to let players craft items, and deciding in the middle of the game to give them items. I think many DMs need to realize wthat they are never going to plan and control everything at every table, and still be good DMs. Any game is a work in progress. You are more likely to have differences in power based on playstyle than items, and you will have to adapt, magic items are actually fairly easy to account for. And really some amount of magic item is built into the design.
also a crafting system doesnt mean players can do whatever they want, most crafting systems are designed so that players can only have certain power levels at certain times. And they already have an optional magic item acquiring system that the DM doesnt control, loot tables. The DM may take complete control of itemization, but its far from necessary in 5e
There is no qualitative difference between a DM deciding at the start of the game to let players craft items, and deciding in the middle of the game to give them items.
Yes there is. Deciding at the start of the game to let players craft items means that the players will expect they can craft any magic item they want and will eventually have the in-game time and resources to do so, it also means the DM cannot change this decision after playing a bit with the players and seeing how they build / play their characters. In contrast, deciding in the middle of the game to give them items has allowed the DM to watch the players characters in action and see which ones are disporportionately powerful, but them giving out the items it means they can choose or HB items to help even out the power level of the player characters, and if they realize after handing out a few Uncommon items that the PCs are significantly more powerful then they can stop there and not give out any more items, or choose to avoid the most powerful items, and the PCs will be none the wiser. In contrast if the DM decides to allow crafting but then realizes the PCs are crafting the most powerful items and wants block the PCs from certain items they will be violating the player's expectations which generally makes players unhappy and will have to impose artificial limitations : e.g. suddenly there are no Displacer Beasts anywhere in the world b/c they don't want all the players having Cloaks of Displacement.
They could fix a lot of the present issues with the magic item economy by simply rebalancing the rarities. I would argue a few items need a total rework, also, but really, the lazier approach would still go a long way.
I've hardly played with every item, but I've noticed a few standouts for sure. The Broom of Flying is simply ridiculous for its rarity. Winged Boots might be, too , but the broom is even a cut above that. The items that set one's ability score to a high number are simply incompatible with crafting in my opinion, and should likely be marked as such. The Illusionist's Bracers are at least one category too low for how powerful they are. I think there's an item or two based on hiding that do the same thing but at different rarity.
If I was writing rules, I would put in something about weapon and armor types, like: "a weapon or armor of a different kind than anyone in the party is currently using, is one rarity lower." Give a nice boost to those items, to push diversification. Make the Polearm Master consider whether to switch to a powerful longsword instead of just blowing it off because it's not close to being worth it. (That's assuming you're keeping all those features and feats that lock someone in to one type of gear, which idk if you should but I'm sure they will.)
There is no qualitative difference between a DM deciding at the start of the game to let players craft items, and deciding in the middle of the game to give them items.
Yes there is. Deciding at the start of the game to let players craft items means that the players will expect they can craft any magic item they want and will eventually have the in-game time and resources to do so, it also means the DM cannot change this decision after playing a bit with the players and seeing how they build / play their characters. In contrast, deciding in the middle of the game to give them items has allowed the DM to watch the players characters in action and see which ones are disporportionately powerful, but them giving out the items it means they can choose or HB items to help even out the power level of the player characters, and if they realize after handing out a few Uncommon items that the PCs are significantly more powerful then they can stop there and not give out any more items, or choose to avoid the most powerful items, and the PCs will be none the wiser. In contrast if the DM decides to allow crafting but then realizes the PCs are crafting the most powerful items and wants block the PCs from certain items they will be violating the player's expectations which generally makes players unhappy and will have to impose artificial limitations : e.g. suddenly there are no Displacer Beasts anywhere in the world b/c they don't want all the players having Cloaks of Displacement.
a crafting system always has limits, the players expect what the DM tells them to expect. The choice of using an optional crafting system is a choice that a DM can handle. The same thing happens you describe in games where DMs give items. And if it super problematic, the dm tells the player and removes the item through some means, or homebrews the item. Notice item generation through random loot, module, or dm fiat all have the same possible issue.
this is normal stuff when you use optional rules, you may have to tweak things, if that bothers you as a DM, dont use these rules.The DMs guide is a book designed for DMs to run, and mostly create/alter the experience to suit the table's needs. Its not the PHB, most players have never read it. Only people highly interested in item aquisistion Will bring it up, and you are going to have to deal with them one way or another.
the dm can decide whether they want to micromanage magic items, randomize it, or follow a system for fair item creation (if that is designed)
the dmg is full of optional systems, Not sure why anyone would fear the mere concept of a well designed optional crafting system existing.
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
Even if a DM allows players to buy magic items, players don't just say "I wanna get a +3 sword" and then the DM checks a table and replies "500,000 gp." There has to be someone selling the items. The person selling the items is controlled by the DM. The magic items are still being issued by the DM. With crafting, there's theoretically no such middleman. If you have 500,000 gp (worth of stuff), you can craft a +3 sword. That's significantly different, because it means a DM who doesn't want you to have a +3 sword can't really do anything besides starving players or changing the rules.
that doesnt answer my question. Yes I know the DM still has final control on the price and availability in store, as for making it themselves jsut by using the meager rules for making a magic item as is, a player isnt going to be able to do it anyway.
What was the point of your question, then?
the point of my question is why bother collecting all this gold as a reward for adventuring if you cant do anything with it.
That was your question. I'm aware of that. My question about your question is: why did you ask it?
because people keep saying that magic items are not meant to be purchased and only used as a reward, but part of the reward is all this gold, with nothing you can spend it on if you take magic items out of the equation. which in turn leads to being able to do crafting of such.
It's quite a leap of logic to say that because the standard reward system gives characters lots of gold and nothing to spend it on, that implies they are meant to be able to buy magic items. Especially when the DMG has lines like "The game assumes that the secrets of creating the most powerful items arose centuries ago and were then gradually lost as a result of wars, cataclysms, and mishaps. Even uncommon items can’t be easily created. Thus, many magic items are well-preserved antiquities." Well-preserved antiquities don't just end up at the shop. You can't buy a Louis XIV writing desk at Crate and Barrel.
And of course there's the line "Unless you decide your campaign works otherwise, most magic items are so rare that they aren’t available for purchase."
So, the default assumptions are, it's hard to make magic items, and magic item shops don't exist. A DM can choose to add them in, of course, but those are the assumptions are currently written in.
What's more likely is they put gold on the treasure table in large amounts, because the game has always put large amounts of money on the treasure tables, and they didn't come up with a way to spend the money because they didn't think to.
Yes there is. Deciding at the start of the game to let players craft items means that the players will expect they can craft any magic item they want and will eventually have the in-game time and resources to do so, it also means the DM cannot change this decision after playing a bit with the players and seeing how they build / play their characters.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
-Crafting existing in a game does not mean everything can be crafted; you still have to get the DM's buy-in for any significant crafting project. -Crafting existing in a game does not mean players will have infinite resources to craft with; a big part of the engagement in a good crafting system is deciding how to prioritize use of limited resources. -Crafting existing in a game does not remove the DM's stewardship of the game; the DM is as allowed to say "Hey guys, can we talk? This crafting experiment just isn't working, can we maybe switch ideas, talk about a fix?" about crafting as they are about any other rule. Will some players push back, especially if they have significant resources invested in a crafting project? Sure, and those players should be allowed to ask for something else to replace the resources they invested in their crafting project. That's part of making a mid-game course correction, is ensuring the players feel good about the new direction.
In contrast, deciding in the middle of the game to give them items has allowed the DM to watch the players characters in action and see which ones are disporportionately powerful, but them giving out the items it means they can choose or HB items to help even out the power level of the player characters,
A DM can put items in the world. They cannot decide how those items are used; deciding who gets to use which item is the purview of the players, not the DM. DMs who use magic items to 'even out' character balancing are DMs that're playing with fire, because the super powerful sword you hand to the party with the intent of making the party's mascot Village Idiot relevant in combat is just as easily assigned to the team's Paladin of Great Murder Justice to amplify the combat monster's combat monstery even higher. There's also the issue of blatant favoritism - the DM constantly giving cool magic items to weak/bad players who constantly create terrible characters and actively make extremely poor plays while telling the players who build competent characters and run them well "**** you, you get nothing, good day sir!" is sending the exact wrong message to the team. Punishing good players for being good players by telling them they don't get any cool magical swag is not a Feels Good moment, nor a good DM decision.
and if they realize after handing out a few Uncommon items that the PCs are significantly more powerful then they can stop there and not give out any more items, or choose to avoid the most powerful items, and the PCs will be none the wiser.
Players can tell when the DM's turned off the tap. Players can tell when a DM's avoiding giving out anything more powerful/useful than an Immovable Rod. Players are not (generally) idiots. Players can absolutely buy into the idea of a magic-poor world where enchanted gear is scarce, but they can also pretty easily tell when a DM has decided to switch to Scrooge Mode.
In contrast if the DM decides to allow crafting but then realizes the PCs are crafting the most powerful items and wants block the PCs from certain items they will be violating the player's expectations which generally makes players unhappy and will have to impose artificial limitations : e.g. suddenly there are no Displacer Beasts anywhere in the world b/c they don't want all the players having Cloaks of Displacement.
The DM still controls how crafting works (for the moment), what is available to craft with, and who can craft. It's also the case that players do not always see crafting as a route to cheat at the game and acquire and overwhelming loadout by level 5. Many players see crafting as a means to express cool ideas they have for their character rather than a route to Power Overwhelming.
My favorite item I've ever crafted (that actually showed up in a game)? A lightly modified cloak of protection that became its bearer's unofficial badge of characterdom. A forester's cloak bearing mementos of previous character beats and arcs, augmented with a few of the "Quirks" properties from the Dungeon Master's Guide's Magic Items Quirks table (probably my favorite tool in the entire DMG) and the "negative" quirk of needing a drop of the wearer's blood applied to it once a day for its magic (including the protection enchantment) to function. Its primary enchantment wasn't even the Protection enchantment - Red's cloak prevented him from dreaming at night if a spell didn't make him dream, helping quiet his frequent nightmares. I loved that item. It spoke to who the character was, and how he'd dealt with the course adventuring life had set him upon.
Again - munchkins gonna munch. They can demand Epic Quests to gain Items of Power as much as they can demand Epic Quests to gain Materials of Power with which to create Items of Power. You can't stop some people from wanting to be powerful. So don't try, and don't punish everyone else who wants to be allowed to be more creative and expressive from doing so in a misguided attempt to stop people who want to be powerful from being powerful.
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
Even if a DM allows players to buy magic items, players don't just say "I wanna get a +3 sword" and then the DM checks a table and replies "500,000 gp." There has to be someone selling the items. The person selling the items is controlled by the DM. The magic items are still being issued by the DM. With crafting, there's theoretically no such middleman. If you have 500,000 gp (worth of stuff), you can craft a +3 sword. That's significantly different, because it means a DM who doesn't want you to have a +3 sword can't really do anything besides starving players or changing the rules.
that doesnt answer my question. Yes I know the DM still has final control on the price and availability in store, as for making it themselves jsut by using the meager rules for making a magic item as is, a player isnt going to be able to do it anyway.
What was the point of your question, then?
the point of my question is why bother collecting all this gold as a reward for adventuring if you cant do anything with it.
That was your question. I'm aware of that. My question about your question is: why did you ask it?
because people keep saying that magic items are not meant to be purchased and only used as a reward, but part of the reward is all this gold, with nothing you can spend it on if you take magic items out of the equation. which in turn leads to being able to do crafting of such.
For the umpteenth time, I am not saying that they are not meant to be purchased, I'm saying you can't typically just pull up the entire magic items section like a catalogue and scroll through it for what you want. The DM will typically manage what items are available for purchase in some way. Which is also why crafting currently has several steps and an extended time factor; it allows the DM to regulate access to magic items.
If you have 500,000 gp (worth of stuff), you can craft a +3 sword. That's significantly different, because it means a DM who doesn't want you to have a +3 sword can't really do anything besides starving players or changing the rules.
Yurei's response notwithstanding, I nodded pretty hard along with this. Maybe it's just the kind of players I've been exposed to, but as a DM, any easily predicted/formulated crafting system for magic items gives me hives, because I KNOW what I'm going to hear from players when they're wanting to craft a vorpal sword or staff of the magi and I'm not in favor of it.
I'm going to shout this again because it feels like it's being roundly ignored by this entire thread: the 2014 version of D&D was explicitly designed to function absolutely fine without any magic items, ever, being given to the PCs. This is text, straight from the DMG. What this means is that, supposedly, the entire game design presumes either NO magic items or, at best, a very few handed out to each character over the course of 20 levels. Indeed: if the PCs get magic items, the canon books strongly suggest that 80% of them are minor items only.
ANY crafting system almost requires an entire rebalancing of the game, unless the DM puts firm limits on what can be crafted, how long crafting takes, what's required to do it, and success rate. I.e.: any crafting system that allows for PCs to gain significantly more magic items than prescribed by the books necessitates a large-scale rebalancing of the game itself.
They could fix a lot of the present issues with the magic item economy by simply rebalancing the rarities. I would argue a few items need a total rework, also, but really, the lazier approach would still go a long way.
I will take a moment to note that Rarity is an aspect of Lore, and is based in (or creates the basis for/of) the Forgotten Realms. Since it is lore, rarity is wholly the province of the DM.
I do agree that it needs to be looked into more heavily -- but I will also note that it should be expanded beyond the current five, and each of the rarities should have a description of what makes something rare. Your example is a good bit of this: what makes a Broom of Flying an uncommon item? How uncommon is it, in relation to Oil of Etherealness? What makes something a rare item?
This also means they need to decide what they are going to do about Wondrous Items. Their presence makes me twitchy because they don't readily fall into the current (albeit broken) rarity system easily, but that's more a factor of their lack of designation of what a wondrous item is in the core books, and their desire to crete collective traits.
They can demand Epic Quests to gain Items of Power as much as they can demand Epic Quests to gain Materials of Power with which to create Items of Power. You can't stop some people from wanting to be powerful. So don't try, and don't punish everyone else who wants to be allowed to be more creative and expressive from doing so in a misguided attempt to stop people who want to be powerful from being powerful.
this is an excellent summation.
A crafting system revision is unlikely to enable PCs to create something that is classified as Rare or greater.Flat out. They screwed the pooch on laying down the lines of what is common, uncommon, rare, et al, but the vague basis of it still makes it pretty clear that if they do expand the crafting system as is expected, that they will not make it so that little Timmy can forge himself a +4 Spear of Lugh.
Sorry, but it just ain't gonna happen. Crafting, around magical items, will focus exclusively on Common and Uncommon items. Arguments about "but they will make only powerful items" are empty arguments. Unless someone can point to something suggesting they ar suddenly going to change that core aspect of the game about the existence magical items when they are hellbent on making sure they don't break existing Adventures and such.
More importantly, even if they do bring in a more player happy making crafting system, because rarity is an aspect of Lore that varies from world to world, Rarity becomes the factor that determines how useful the crafting system is -- a DM can say that a Broom of Flying is now a Very Rare item, and poof, ain't no one crafting one. Ya'll can complain about how that might be "unfair" -- but ultimately, that's all stuff the DM should be addressing when they prepare for the campaign as a whole.
(I will grant that a lot of folks don't always understand the difference between Lore and Mechanic, but that's a different subject).
The DM will typically manage what items are available for purchase in some way. Which is also why crafting currently has several steps and an extended time factor; it allows the DM to regulate access to magic items.
This is the big key to crafting, and why suggestions that break significantly away from the current paradigm are unlikely to even make an appearance.
The current paradigm is established entirely in a very small bit of rule making (not mechanics): The game assumes that the secrets of creating the most powerful items arose centuries ago and were then gradually lost as a result of wars, cataclysms, and mishaps. Even uncommon items can’t be easily created. Thus, many magic items are well-preserved antiquities.
As I noted above, they aren't going to make anything more than uncommon able to be crafted. No matter how much folks want it, that's not going to be a thing that happens. But at the same time, if they don't get tighter around the way that Rarity is structured and used and, yes, priced (because 50gp for a magic item is flat out damn foolish if you have a world where greater things can no longer be made), then they will break the very system they have for it.
Gwar and I went off on a tangent about Magic as Technology earlier in the thread --but the core rules explicitly kill that entire line of approach, because this is not a system where the sciences of magic is evolving forward, but rather one where the arts of magic are being lost, rapidly, and old amazing things are being lost. And that particular basis has been part of D&D's DNA since its very first iteration.
At some point the designers crashed Vance and Niven together (Magic Goes Away and Dying Earth) and since then, Magic in D&D's main line has been the fading power, and that,my friends, is a Sacred Cow they aren't going to touch -- no matter how many Eberron style worlds they create, until one of them eclipses the popularity of FR.
But that is where a lot of the conflict lies -- the desire to be able to have the players craft their own magic items of rare or greater rarity -- and while that might eventually be possible, it is exceptionally unlikely to happen now, because simply put, the designers don't want to do that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
Even if a DM allows players to buy magic items, players don't just say "I wanna get a +3 sword" and then the DM checks a table and replies "500,000 gp." There has to be someone selling the items. The person selling the items is controlled by the DM. The magic items are still being issued by the DM. With crafting, there's theoretically no such middleman. If you have 500,000 gp (worth of stuff), you can craft a +3 sword. That's significantly different, because it means a DM who doesn't want you to have a +3 sword can't really do anything besides starving players or changing the rules.
that doesnt answer my question. Yes I know the DM still has final control on the price and availability in store, as for making it themselves jsut by using the meager rules for making a magic item as is, a player isnt going to be able to do it anyway.
What was the point of your question, then?
the point of my question is why bother collecting all this gold as a reward for adventuring if you cant do anything with it.
That was your question. I'm aware of that. My question about your question is: why did you ask it?
because people keep saying that magic items are not meant to be purchased and only used as a reward, but part of the reward is all this gold, with nothing you can spend it on if you take magic items out of the equation. which in turn leads to being able to do crafting of such.
For the umpteenth time, I am not saying that they are not meant to be purchased, I'm saying you can't typically just pull up the entire magic items section like a catalogue and scroll through it for what you want. The DM will typically manage what items are available for purchase in some way. Which is also why crafting currently has several steps and an extended time factor; it allows the DM to regulate access to magic items.
did I say you specifically said that? No but plenty of people in this thread have.
Yurei's response notwithstanding, I nodded pretty hard along with this. Maybe it's just the kind of players I've been exposed to, but as a DM, any easily predicted/formulated crafting system for magic items gives me hives, because I KNOW what I'm going to hear from players when they're wanting to craft a vorpal sword or staff of the magi and I'm not in favor of it.
In general the solution to this is cleaning up rarities and making sure the broken items are out of reach. For example:
In tier 1, you can craft or purchase Common items without any particular checks, Uncommon items may be possible with a quest and DM permission.
In tier 2, you can craft or purchase Uncommon items without any particular checks, Rare items may be possible with a quest and DM permission.
In tier 3, you can craft or purchase Rare items without any particular checks, Very Rare items may be possible with a quest and DM permission.
In tier 4, you can craft or purchase Very Rare items without any particular checks, Legendary items may be possible with a quest and DM permission.
You can also use a two-axis rarity system, where one axis indicates tier of play, the other axis indicates difficulty of finding for characters within that tier, but that seems like a larger change to 5e rules.
Yurei's response notwithstanding, I nodded pretty hard along with this. Maybe it's just the kind of players I've been exposed to, but as a DM, any easily predicted/formulated crafting system for magic items gives me hives, because I KNOW what I'm going to hear from players when they're wanting to craft a vorpal sword or staff of the magi and I'm not in favor of it.
In general the solution to this is cleaning up rarities and making sure the broken items are out of reach. For example:
In tier 1, you can craft or purchase Common items without any particular checks, Uncommon items may be possible with a quest and DM permission.
In tier 2, you can craft or purchase Uncommon items without any particular checks, Rare items may be possible with a quest and DM permission.
In tier 3, you can craft or purchase Rare items without any particular checks, Very Rare items may be possible with a quest and DM permission.
In tier 4, you can craft or purchase Very Rare items without any particular checks, Legendary items may be possible with a quest and DM permission.
You can also use a two-axis rarity system, where one axis indicates tier of play, the other axis indicates difficulty of finding for characters within that tier, but that seems like a larger change to 5e rules.
I would argue that it should more or less work along the lines of Tier 2 = lesser Common, Tier 3 = greater Common, Tier 4 = Uncommon.
Because they don't want Rare or higher to be readily accessible.
I broke it down into "Everyday" (stuff that folks can buy, used often, consumable), Specialty (stuff that requires hiring a person to make for you), Common, Uncommon. Potions, balms, salves, etc are all part of everyday magic items.
Specialty would be things like the beads and flasks and jugs -- but not the regular ones, because all the effects are shorter term and consumable. This gives me an industry on the world, technically.
Then we break into the common and Uncommon stuff. Mostly found, but sometimes available if you go down the right alley or head to the right house in town.
My base example is a "Candle Wand" -- it allows one to light a candle. Larger houses will have one. THe next step up for it is a Fireplace Wand, that lights a fire in a fireplace or campfire ring.
I'm not saying that's how they will do it, just using it an example of how they could -- because they aren't going to make rare items a thing that can be crafted or bought.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
As I noted above, they aren't going to make anything more than uncommon able to be crafted. No matter how much folks want it, that's not going to be a thing that happens. But at the same time, if they don't get tighter around the way that Rarity is structured and used and, yes, priced (because 50gp for a magic item is flat out damn foolish if you have a world where greater things can no longer be made), then they will break the very system they have for it.
Gwar and I went off on a tangent about Magic as Technology earlier in the thread --but the core rules explicitly kill that entire line of approach, because this is not a system where the sciences of magic is evolving forward, but rather one where the arts of magic are being lost, rapidly, and old amazing things are being lost. And that particular basis has been part of D&D's DNA since its very first iteration.
At some point the designers crashed Vance and Niven together (Magic Goes Away and Dying Earth) and since then, Magic in D&D's main line has been the fading power, and that,my friends, is a Sacred Cow they aren't going to touch -- no matter how many Eberron style worlds they create, until one of them eclipses the popularity of FR.
But that is where a lot of the conflict lies -- the desire to be able to have the players craft their own magic items of rare or greater rarity -- and while that might eventually be possible, it is exceptionally unlikely to happen now, because simply put, the designers don't want to do that.
I wouldn't say that magic is outright going backwards, so much as that magic in the setting is something analogous to Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. You had the great nations of old who built up the processes for making Rare and better items. Then you have the various falls, calamities, etc. and those nations are gone. New nations have arisen, but in the interim the processes have been lost and they're in the "make the tools to make the tools" stage of building back up. It's not that magic is actively being rotted away, it's just that the basic setting premise is one of coming out of a magical Dark Age.
That's my take on the Watsonian explanation, in any case. On the Doylist side of things, yes they've scaled back some of the really powerful and advanced magic features from prior editions; I'm not personally familiar with the details, but I've heard people talk about how clunky and difficult to manage things like Epic Magic or magic items created via Permanence were, so now they've scaled back the player-facing magic aspects to something meant to be more balanced and manageable.
Also, it's not so much that they want to block the crafting of Rare+ items altogether. I mean, look at the XGtE table; 10 weeks and 2000 gold for a Rare. Not something you can stop and do in the middle of an adventure, but 3 months is a reasonable timeskip period between adventures and a good roleplay alternative to directly cashing in gold for an item. Even the 6 month and 1 year periods for Very Rare and Legendary aren't that out of the question as timeskips, given that one generally expects players to be into tier 3 or 4 by the time they're getting at those. World-ending cataclysms or kingdom-wide threats don't happen every other week (or at least I certainly hope they don't for the sake of your setting). If anyone else here has read the Dresden Files series, that's about how long a timeskip we usually get between each book (the latest two-parter being an exception). A DM can either plan ahead with the player to cover getting the formula and components as a part of the adventure they just wrapped up, or if the party's up for it they could run a short sidequest to assemble the components for anyone who wants to craft in the interim.
Ultimately my point is that crafting Rare and better items is an extension of the purchasing/reward system as managed by the DM, not a player-facing and managed system like spell preparation.
I feel like you only read the second half of what I wrote, lol. In most games, "optional rule" doesn't mean "poorly designed rule that we still decided to include for some reason." Optional rules can be good. I think most people feel like the feats optional rule is good, although I'm not certain I agree. The using-Strength-for-Intimidation optional rule is pretty unequivocally good though. So why does crafting have to be crappy just because it's optional?
By what metric are you deeming an optional rule to be "good" or otherwise? The purpose of crafting is to provide an alternative source of magic items in-between active adventuring time; because you have the time, you can make a magic item at a fraction of the list price if your DM agrees. I would say that's a fair arrangement; it's not optimal for speccing your character out like this is Skyrim or an MMO, but that's rather the point. Magic items are rewards issued by the DM, not resources just waiting for you to accumulate enough gold and/or plot coupons to acquire on demand.
the whole idea that Magic Items are not supposed to be purchased is ridiculous. according to the wealth by level chart a 10th level character would start (and by default would have earned) 17,000g. what exactly is the point of having that much gold? what are the players going to spend it on except for magic items?
Even if a DM allows players to buy magic items, players don't just say "I wanna get a +3 sword" and then the DM checks a table and replies "500,000 gp." There has to be someone selling the items. The person selling the items is controlled by the DM. The magic items are still being issued by the DM. With crafting, there's theoretically no such middleman. If you have 500,000 gp (worth of stuff), you can craft a +3 sword. That's significantly different, because it means a DM who doesn't want you to have a +3 sword can't really do anything besides starving players or changing the rules.
that doesnt answer my question. Yes I know the DM still has final control on the price and availability in store, as for making it themselves jsut by using the meager rules for making a magic item as is, a player isnt going to be able to do it anyway.
What was the point of your question, then?
the point of my question is why bother collecting all this gold as a reward for adventuring if you cant do anything with it.
That was your question. I'm aware of that. My question about your question is: why did you ask it?
because people keep saying that magic items are not meant to be purchased and only used as a reward, but part of the reward is all this gold, with nothing you can spend it on if you take magic items out of the equation. which in turn leads to being able to do crafting of such.
It's quite a leap of logic to say that because the standard reward system gives characters lots of gold and nothing to spend it on, that implies they are meant to be able to buy magic items. Especially when the DMG has lines like "The game assumes that the secrets of creating the most powerful items arose centuries ago and were then gradually lost as a result of wars, cataclysms, and mishaps. Even uncommon items can’t be easily created. Thus, many magic items are well-preserved antiquities." Well-preserved antiquities don't just end up at the shop. You can't buy a Louis XIV writing desk at Crate and Barrel.
And of course there's the line "Unless you decide your campaign works otherwise, most magic items are so rare that they aren’t available for purchase."
So, the default assumptions are, it's hard to make magic items, and magic item shops don't exist. A DM can choose to add them in, of course, but those are the assumptions are currently written in.
What's more likely is they put gold on the treasure table in large amounts, because the game has always put large amounts of money on the treasure tables, and they didn't come up with a way to spend the money because they didn't think to.
Exactly, gold is historical from when the game was more of a simulation and less of a power fantasy. When things like: food, shelter, and taxes were a significant drain on a PCs gold resources. Players don't want stuff to cost gold (just look what happened when I argued that your Bastion should cost gold not "bastion points"), as a result gold is useless.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Thanks for that. I had forgotten about it entirely -- and wow, it is super low.
6 gold per month in my game for a skilled worker would equal enough to buy food and shelter (one meal of bread and water, and space in a barn) for about a month. It is roughly one day at an Inn (or three meals at a tavern). The problem of being overeducated means that I sat down and reset the economics based on the cost of a loaf of bread. It isn't a "rea" economic system, but it is considerably closer to one than the 5e base.
Also, the DMG shows 750 (at best) in gold for 10th level (which I confess made me laugh out loud), not 17k.
I owe you a slight take back -- in reflection, on a lot of the stuff I have been seeing from interviews and odds and ends like the report that the Rod of Seven Parts is due to return, the abiit of a Bastion to make magical items, and so forth, it is fairly obvious that they are going to do something involving magic items that appears to be loosening them up a little.
The Devs see magical items as a McGuffin. They are the basis of a fetch quest, and only some of them are actually rewards the Dm is supposed to provide -- most of the decently powered ones are set up to be some kind of quest based thing. That isn't new, this isn't the first edition that WotC has demonstrated this kind of thinking for.
But they are also still very much pulled back, and I think they want to move a bit more forward, so they could make some shifts around magic.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
because people keep saying that magic items are not meant to be purchased and only used as a reward, but part of the reward is all this gold, with nothing you can spend it on if you take magic items out of the equation. which in turn leads to being able to do crafting of such.
this is why the economics of the game are screwed up. On purpose, it appears, from a mechanics viewpoint. The DM is basically supposed to be sucking you dry and nickel and diming you to death.
That's why they tied crafting to gold and why gold is the measurement and resource for so many things.
It is also why I reset the economics of my game -- after the last five years of a system that my players will poke and prod at every corner of, I had enough and said screw it, lol. Now those costs have an actual basis, and there are points of reference.
A typical adventurer should rake in at least 50 to 70k a year in my game. Of which only around 10% will be "free money". But I also have stuff like weapons breaking and armor breaking, so there is a need for more than typical coin just to keep gear in shape. And that's before the bandits!
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I will agree that unlike previous editions Magic Items are not as important to making a character but they are part of said character. even according to teh charts I listed they have starting magic items by level.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/xgte/awarding-magic-items
I personally use this as a guide to ltry and limit how often characters get access to either find or buy them
So, Imma tell ya -- I give out more magic items than their lists.I'm an old lady who likes to give out magic items because that is how D&D works to me. I fully expect that in my next campaign, once the players reach 17 to 20, at least one of the fabled +5 weapons will be in the grasp of at least three out of the 9 players that will be in a given session.
So don't take what I'm saying as I disagree with you about them getting it. I'm speaking to the rules in the books themselves, and how they have set things up.
I've pretty much rewritten the bulk of the game for my table. And I had to for three reasons: To strip out Lore they wrote into it, to meet my player's wants and needs, and to put in Lore for the world. My game is crunchier, is harder, is deadlier, is way ore RP focused, and is wholly player driven in an open world. TO make it work, I had to tear apart a lot of stuff. That's why I had forgotten about those tables, lol. THey have zero value or use in my game world.
But we aren't talking about my game world (which would be an outlier anyway) -- I use it for some examples, but when I do I have to do conversions of it to 5e versions.
Odds are really good that they will take some of the stuff from CGE and TGE and work it into the new DMG. Like, more than 50% chance for pretty much anything. But they aren't likely going to make it much different -- because they have an idea in their head called Balance.
They wrote the main rules during a pretty rough period for the company and the game -- and it shows. They rushed them, as well, for the same reasons. They have been learning not to change much abot what is present right now. This is a big point for me in this thread -- that 80% thing is what they harp on. It is a PR move, absolutely, and iit is meant to silence folks, and all that other stuff, but they are also seeing that if they get too drastic, they get shut down. THis forum is crammed full fro all the Class UAs, lol.
THey have been told, in very certain tems, not to screw with it too much.
So, if there are existing rules, they are only going to change the a little.
Now, magic items can be bought -- your XGE has it in the same section you lined me to -- but look at how they did it. It is hard, it takes time, and it is set up mostly to drive a quest. The new Deck of Many things? THey redesigned it to help folks create new fetch quests and the like, lol. magic items to this dev team are a mcGuffin -- like disease, they are intended to inspie an adventure or serve as a tool fo one. They do not want players to ever pick their items.
Even the sections youlink to, those are for DMs, not players. And they talk about several different ways of giving magic out. XGE is probably closer to what we will see in the new DMG -- and that's a good thing, but I don't think they will make it all that much simpler to buy magic items.
Even in 1e, that wasn't supposed to be a thing, lo. There shouldn't have been a shop where you could just buy your magic items. We all did it, of course, lo.
But in 1e, players aren't supposed to pick their spells in their spell books, either.
I think that the magic item stuff in TGE and XGE were sorta trial balloons -- both books are entirely, wholly optional rules.So I do think that there will be an increased ability to create "common" itms.
I also think they may make it harder to get rare items, because I suspect they will reset magic item rarities.
And that's what we are talking about here -- what we think they will do, not necessarily what we want them to do. I mean, I want the to take all my stuff, pay me a fortune for it, and then use it in the game, lol.
But I know that ain't gonna happen, lol. They sure as hell ain't gonna fix the economic system. I don't see them making CR any more transparent. I see them maybe doing a little bit more with crafting -- but not nearly enough to satisfy the "crafting now" crowd.I doubt they will expand the "spell point" system -- indeed, I think that option will vanish. As will other options, like Sanity, Renown, and Piety. in part because they don't want to have to make them available on DDB, and I can see how DDB is absolutely central to the new stuff: they bought DDB in order to make the new version one that is updated live and consistently.
\But that's what I see. Who knows.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
with an optional rule it means the DM already agreed to that. People need to stop worrying about the DM like they are a victim, the dm has the most control over everything of the group, and more control than many TTRpGS. It might be fair to say 5e DMing is hard because you have some many rules you can adapt or change to make it good, but its not fair to say the existence of optional rules creates problems DMs can't handle or solve.
There is no qualitative difference between a DM deciding at the start of the game to let players craft items, and deciding in the middle of the game to give them items. I think many DMs need to realize wthat they are never going to plan and control everything at every table, and still be good DMs. Any game is a work in progress. You are more likely to have differences in power based on playstyle than items, and you will have to adapt, magic items are actually fairly easy to account for. And really some amount of magic item is built into the design.
also a crafting system doesnt mean players can do whatever they want, most crafting systems are designed so that players can only have certain power levels at certain times. And they already have an optional magic item acquiring system that the DM doesnt control, loot tables. The DM may take complete control of itemization, but its far from necessary in 5e
Yes there is. Deciding at the start of the game to let players craft items means that the players will expect they can craft any magic item they want and will eventually have the in-game time and resources to do so, it also means the DM cannot change this decision after playing a bit with the players and seeing how they build / play their characters. In contrast, deciding in the middle of the game to give them items has allowed the DM to watch the players characters in action and see which ones are disporportionately powerful, but them giving out the items it means they can choose or HB items to help even out the power level of the player characters, and if they realize after handing out a few Uncommon items that the PCs are significantly more powerful then they can stop there and not give out any more items, or choose to avoid the most powerful items, and the PCs will be none the wiser. In contrast if the DM decides to allow crafting but then realizes the PCs are crafting the most powerful items and wants block the PCs from certain items they will be violating the player's expectations which generally makes players unhappy and will have to impose artificial limitations : e.g. suddenly there are no Displacer Beasts anywhere in the world b/c they don't want all the players having Cloaks of Displacement.
They could fix a lot of the present issues with the magic item economy by simply rebalancing the rarities. I would argue a few items need a total rework, also, but really, the lazier approach would still go a long way.
I've hardly played with every item, but I've noticed a few standouts for sure. The Broom of Flying is simply ridiculous for its rarity. Winged Boots might be, too , but the broom is even a cut above that. The items that set one's ability score to a high number are simply incompatible with crafting in my opinion, and should likely be marked as such. The Illusionist's Bracers are at least one category too low for how powerful they are. I think there's an item or two based on hiding that do the same thing but at different rarity.
If I was writing rules, I would put in something about weapon and armor types, like: "a weapon or armor of a different kind than anyone in the party is currently using, is one rarity lower." Give a nice boost to those items, to push diversification. Make the Polearm Master consider whether to switch to a powerful longsword instead of just blowing it off because it's not close to being worth it. (That's assuming you're keeping all those features and feats that lock someone in to one type of gear, which idk if you should but I'm sure they will.)
a crafting system always has limits, the players expect what the DM tells them to expect. The choice of using an optional crafting system is a choice that a DM can handle. The same thing happens you describe in games where DMs give items. And if it super problematic, the dm tells the player and removes the item through some means, or homebrews the item. Notice item generation through random loot, module, or dm fiat all have the same possible issue.
this is normal stuff when you use optional rules, you may have to tweak things, if that bothers you as a DM, dont use these rules.The DMs guide is a book designed for DMs to run, and mostly create/alter the experience to suit the table's needs. Its not the PHB, most players have never read it. Only people highly interested in item aquisistion Will bring it up, and you are going to have to deal with them one way or another.
the dm can decide whether they want to micromanage magic items, randomize it, or follow a system for fair item creation (if that is designed)
the dmg is full of optional systems, Not sure why anyone would fear the mere concept of a well designed optional crafting system existing.
It's quite a leap of logic to say that because the standard reward system gives characters lots of gold and nothing to spend it on, that implies they are meant to be able to buy magic items. Especially when the DMG has lines like "The game assumes that the secrets of creating the most powerful items arose centuries ago and were then gradually lost as a result of wars, cataclysms, and mishaps. Even uncommon items can’t be easily created. Thus, many magic items are well-preserved antiquities." Well-preserved antiquities don't just end up at the shop. You can't buy a Louis XIV writing desk at Crate and Barrel.
And of course there's the line "Unless you decide your campaign works otherwise, most magic items are so rare that they aren’t available for purchase."
So, the default assumptions are, it's hard to make magic items, and magic item shops don't exist. A DM can choose to add them in, of course, but those are the assumptions are currently written in.
What's more likely is they put gold on the treasure table in large amounts, because the game has always put large amounts of money on the treasure tables, and they didn't come up with a way to spend the money because they didn't think to.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
-Crafting existing in a game does not mean everything can be crafted; you still have to get the DM's buy-in for any significant crafting project.
-Crafting existing in a game does not mean players will have infinite resources to craft with; a big part of the engagement in a good crafting system is deciding how to prioritize use of limited resources.
-Crafting existing in a game does not remove the DM's stewardship of the game; the DM is as allowed to say "Hey guys, can we talk? This crafting experiment just isn't working, can we maybe switch ideas, talk about a fix?" about crafting as they are about any other rule. Will some players push back, especially if they have significant resources invested in a crafting project? Sure, and those players should be allowed to ask for something else to replace the resources they invested in their crafting project. That's part of making a mid-game course correction, is ensuring the players feel good about the new direction.
A DM can put items in the world. They cannot decide how those items are used; deciding who gets to use which item is the purview of the players, not the DM. DMs who use magic items to 'even out' character balancing are DMs that're playing with fire, because the super powerful sword you hand to the party with the intent of making the party's mascot Village Idiot relevant in combat is just as easily assigned to the team's Paladin of Great Murder Justice to amplify the combat monster's combat monstery even higher. There's also the issue of blatant favoritism - the DM constantly giving cool magic items to weak/bad players who constantly create terrible characters and actively make extremely poor plays while telling the players who build competent characters and run them well "**** you, you get nothing, good day sir!" is sending the exact wrong message to the team. Punishing good players for being good players by telling them they don't get any cool magical swag is not a Feels Good moment, nor a good DM decision.
Players can tell when the DM's turned off the tap. Players can tell when a DM's avoiding giving out anything more powerful/useful than an Immovable Rod. Players are not (generally) idiots. Players can absolutely buy into the idea of a magic-poor world where enchanted gear is scarce, but they can also pretty easily tell when a DM has decided to switch to Scrooge Mode.
The DM still controls how crafting works (for the moment), what is available to craft with, and who can craft. It's also the case that players do not always see crafting as a route to cheat at the game and acquire and overwhelming loadout by level 5. Many players see crafting as a means to express cool ideas they have for their character rather than a route to Power Overwhelming.
My favorite item I've ever crafted (that actually showed up in a game)? A lightly modified cloak of protection that became its bearer's unofficial badge of characterdom. A forester's cloak bearing mementos of previous character beats and arcs, augmented with a few of the "Quirks" properties from the Dungeon Master's Guide's Magic Items Quirks table (probably my favorite tool in the entire DMG) and the "negative" quirk of needing a drop of the wearer's blood applied to it once a day for its magic (including the protection enchantment) to function. Its primary enchantment wasn't even the Protection enchantment - Red's cloak prevented him from dreaming at night if a spell didn't make him dream, helping quiet his frequent nightmares. I loved that item. It spoke to who the character was, and how he'd dealt with the course adventuring life had set him upon.
Again - munchkins gonna munch. They can demand Epic Quests to gain Items of Power as much as they can demand Epic Quests to gain Materials of Power with which to create Items of Power. You can't stop some people from wanting to be powerful. So don't try, and don't punish everyone else who wants to be allowed to be more creative and expressive from doing so in a misguided attempt to stop people who want to be powerful from being powerful.
Please do not contact or message me.
For the umpteenth time, I am not saying that they are not meant to be purchased, I'm saying you can't typically just pull up the entire magic items section like a catalogue and scroll through it for what you want. The DM will typically manage what items are available for purchase in some way. Which is also why crafting currently has several steps and an extended time factor; it allows the DM to regulate access to magic items.
Yurei's response notwithstanding, I nodded pretty hard along with this. Maybe it's just the kind of players I've been exposed to, but as a DM, any easily predicted/formulated crafting system for magic items gives me hives, because I KNOW what I'm going to hear from players when they're wanting to craft a vorpal sword or staff of the magi and I'm not in favor of it.
I'm going to shout this again because it feels like it's being roundly ignored by this entire thread: the 2014 version of D&D was explicitly designed to function absolutely fine without any magic items, ever, being given to the PCs. This is text, straight from the DMG. What this means is that, supposedly, the entire game design presumes either NO magic items or, at best, a very few handed out to each character over the course of 20 levels. Indeed: if the PCs get magic items, the canon books strongly suggest that 80% of them are minor items only.
ANY crafting system almost requires an entire rebalancing of the game, unless the DM puts firm limits on what can be crafted, how long crafting takes, what's required to do it, and success rate. I.e.: any crafting system that allows for PCs to gain significantly more magic items than prescribed by the books necessitates a large-scale rebalancing of the game itself.
This is very untrue.
I will take a moment to note that Rarity is an aspect of Lore, and is based in (or creates the basis for/of) the Forgotten Realms. Since it is lore, rarity is wholly the province of the DM.
I do agree that it needs to be looked into more heavily -- but I will also note that it should be expanded beyond the current five, and each of the rarities should have a description of what makes something rare. Your example is a good bit of this: what makes a Broom of Flying an uncommon item? How uncommon is it, in relation to Oil of Etherealness? What makes something a rare item?
This also means they need to decide what they are going to do about Wondrous Items. Their presence makes me twitchy because they don't readily fall into the current (albeit broken) rarity system easily, but that's more a factor of their lack of designation of what a wondrous item is in the core books, and their desire to crete collective traits.
this is an excellent summation.
A crafting system revision is unlikely to enable PCs to create something that is classified as Rare or greater.Flat out. They screwed the pooch on laying down the lines of what is common, uncommon, rare, et al, but the vague basis of it still makes it pretty clear that if they do expand the crafting system as is expected, that they will not make it so that little Timmy can forge himself a +4 Spear of Lugh.
Sorry, but it just ain't gonna happen. Crafting, around magical items, will focus exclusively on Common and Uncommon items. Arguments about "but they will make only powerful items" are empty arguments. Unless someone can point to something suggesting they ar suddenly going to change that core aspect of the game about the existence magical items when they are hellbent on making sure they don't break existing Adventures and such.
More importantly, even if they do bring in a more player happy making crafting system, because rarity is an aspect of Lore that varies from world to world, Rarity becomes the factor that determines how useful the crafting system is -- a DM can say that a Broom of Flying is now a Very Rare item, and poof, ain't no one crafting one. Ya'll can complain about how that might be "unfair" -- but ultimately, that's all stuff the DM should be addressing when they prepare for the campaign as a whole.
(I will grant that a lot of folks don't always understand the difference between Lore and Mechanic, but that's a different subject).
This is the big key to crafting, and why suggestions that break significantly away from the current paradigm are unlikely to even make an appearance.
The current paradigm is established entirely in a very small bit of rule making (not mechanics): The game assumes that the secrets of creating the most powerful items arose centuries ago and were then gradually lost as a result of wars, cataclysms, and mishaps. Even uncommon items can’t be easily created. Thus, many magic items are well-preserved antiquities.
As I noted above, they aren't going to make anything more than uncommon able to be crafted. No matter how much folks want it, that's not going to be a thing that happens. But at the same time, if they don't get tighter around the way that Rarity is structured and used and, yes, priced (because 50gp for a magic item is flat out damn foolish if you have a world where greater things can no longer be made), then they will break the very system they have for it.
Gwar and I went off on a tangent about Magic as Technology earlier in the thread --but the core rules explicitly kill that entire line of approach, because this is not a system where the sciences of magic is evolving forward, but rather one where the arts of magic are being lost, rapidly, and old amazing things are being lost. And that particular basis has been part of D&D's DNA since its very first iteration.
At some point the designers crashed Vance and Niven together (Magic Goes Away and Dying Earth) and since then, Magic in D&D's main line has been the fading power, and that,my friends, is a Sacred Cow they aren't going to touch -- no matter how many Eberron style worlds they create, until one of them eclipses the popularity of FR.
But that is where a lot of the conflict lies -- the desire to be able to have the players craft their own magic items of rare or greater rarity -- and while that might eventually be possible, it is exceptionally unlikely to happen now, because simply put, the designers don't want to do that.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
did I say you specifically said that? No but plenty of people in this thread have.
In general the solution to this is cleaning up rarities and making sure the broken items are out of reach. For example:
You can also use a two-axis rarity system, where one axis indicates tier of play, the other axis indicates difficulty of finding for characters within that tier, but that seems like a larger change to 5e rules.
I would argue that it should more or less work along the lines of Tier 2 = lesser Common, Tier 3 = greater Common, Tier 4 = Uncommon.
Because they don't want Rare or higher to be readily accessible.
I broke it down into "Everyday" (stuff that folks can buy, used often, consumable), Specialty (stuff that requires hiring a person to make for you), Common, Uncommon. Potions, balms, salves, etc are all part of everyday magic items.
Specialty would be things like the beads and flasks and jugs -- but not the regular ones, because all the effects are shorter term and consumable. This gives me an industry on the world, technically.
Then we break into the common and Uncommon stuff. Mostly found, but sometimes available if you go down the right alley or head to the right house in town.
My base example is a "Candle Wand" -- it allows one to light a candle. Larger houses will have one. THe next step up for it is a Fireplace Wand, that lights a fire in a fireplace or campfire ring.
I'm not saying that's how they will do it, just using it an example of how they could -- because they aren't going to make rare items a thing that can be crafted or bought.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I wouldn't say that magic is outright going backwards, so much as that magic in the setting is something analogous to Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. You had the great nations of old who built up the processes for making Rare and better items. Then you have the various falls, calamities, etc. and those nations are gone. New nations have arisen, but in the interim the processes have been lost and they're in the "make the tools to make the tools" stage of building back up. It's not that magic is actively being rotted away, it's just that the basic setting premise is one of coming out of a magical Dark Age.
That's my take on the Watsonian explanation, in any case. On the Doylist side of things, yes they've scaled back some of the really powerful and advanced magic features from prior editions; I'm not personally familiar with the details, but I've heard people talk about how clunky and difficult to manage things like Epic Magic or magic items created via Permanence were, so now they've scaled back the player-facing magic aspects to something meant to be more balanced and manageable.
Also, it's not so much that they want to block the crafting of Rare+ items altogether. I mean, look at the XGtE table; 10 weeks and 2000 gold for a Rare. Not something you can stop and do in the middle of an adventure, but 3 months is a reasonable timeskip period between adventures and a good roleplay alternative to directly cashing in gold for an item. Even the 6 month and 1 year periods for Very Rare and Legendary aren't that out of the question as timeskips, given that one generally expects players to be into tier 3 or 4 by the time they're getting at those. World-ending cataclysms or kingdom-wide threats don't happen every other week (or at least I certainly hope they don't for the sake of your setting). If anyone else here has read the Dresden Files series, that's about how long a timeskip we usually get between each book (the latest two-parter being an exception). A DM can either plan ahead with the player to cover getting the formula and components as a part of the adventure they just wrapped up, or if the party's up for it they could run a short sidequest to assemble the components for anyone who wants to craft in the interim.
Ultimately my point is that crafting Rare and better items is an extension of the purchasing/reward system as managed by the DM, not a player-facing and managed system like spell preparation.
What do you mean about wondrous items? A wondrous item is just a magic item that's not a weapon, armor, or spell focus.
Edit: Or a scroll or potion.
Exactly, gold is historical from when the game was more of a simulation and less of a power fantasy. When things like: food, shelter, and taxes were a significant drain on a PCs gold resources. Players don't want stuff to cost gold (just look what happened when I argued that your Bastion should cost gold not "bastion points"), as a result gold is useless.