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[Azarkon]

Youa re an idiot. Any character that craftes magic items deals with the xp loss; not just mages. Morons.

Doesn't explain why experience is character power. If it's character power, then any time I expand power, I would lose some of it. That's clearly not the case for classes that do not craft magic items. So why should it be for classes that do?

Namely, you need to rethink the whole experience is character power definition. It doesn't work, unless character power can only be expanded while making magic items, which makes no sense.

EDIT: Also, read the article below to see why if you equate experience with power in general, then the process of making items actually multiplicatively increases your relative "power." In other words, if we assume for a second that experience is character power, then character power can be infinitely amplified through insertion into magic items. Wonderful.

Don't be stupid. Meteor swarm is taxing as is catsing spells... that's why you can only cast so many in one day, and in soem cases castingc ertain spells costs you xp as well. The reason why itemc reation costs xp is because you are empowering the item with the magic permenately unlike casting a meteor swarm which is cast just once, and that's it. D00fus!

How many times do I have to tell you that describing something isn't an argument? *Why* does imbuing a wand of magic missile with the ability to cast magic missile for a limited amount of time cost xp, but casting magic missile does not? Isn't experience power, according to you? If I expand power in casting a spell, and I definitely do, then shouldn't I lose exp, if experience was power? Why is experience a special sort of power that somehow only applies when I'm crafting magical items? Because of permanence? So I'm expanding my ... "power" ... which is gained by killing monsters and can be replenished by fireballing a group of orcs ... to provide a permanent magic source for an enchantment? How much sense does that make?

It's an arbitrary restriction imposed for no reasons of realism or sensibility, but purely to prevent people from spam creating items: therefore, a useless baggage in CRPGs.

How cna you argue against a system when you are so stupid you don't even understand how it works. Afterall, you are the one claimed that only mages get hit with xp loss. Idiot.

Like how you argue all the time?

Ah... The 'ol 'I'm not a powergamer; but you are!" XP is not that eaisly to get back. It's a permenant loss, and orc caves don't grow on trees. And, your example is ultra lame when the same cna be done with gold. Look at this, I just said all my gold on itemc reation, let's go kill the orcs for some more. LOLOLOLOL How is that any different?

It's not different, which is the reason exp loss is redundant and a horrible idea. Why is gold insufficient for the creation of magic items, providing that you limit it in the same way you limit "orcs that grow on trees"?

It's like some designer woke up one day and thought to himself, "gee whiz, gold is like toilet paper in our world and it's just so frustrating that everyone has so much of it and can create so many magic items! Since gold inflation is such a hopeless problem, let's just make it so that experience, instead of gold, is the unit of transaction! Nevermind that the solution should be to limit the amount of gold in the world. Nevermind that it makes no logical sense that a crafter would become better at crafting through slaying dragons. Screw logic and rationality; let's bring D&D back to its roots: killing monsters for phat lewts!"

Didn't make sense in PnP, and certainly doesn't make sense in monty haul CRPGs where the items you obtain in dungeons obviate the need for crafting nigh universally. Obsidian's testers, while the solution they've created is far from perfect, at least sees the utter retardation of the original concept.

 

[Azarkon]

Some fuel for the earlier power gaming comment (aka why the crafting in D&D, even with exp loss, is power gaming):

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~kel/KDD/3. ... ng35.shtml

My impression after reading the article: 1) crafting in D&D is simply screwed up in general and 2) the concept of exp loss for item creation is *prone* to power gaming. Literally designed for it. That tells me that the entire concept should be reevaluated. If it's realism that the designers are after, then exp loss is the wrong abstraction - time, instead, should be the cost. If it's gameplay balance that they're after, they should do the same: if a character wants to make a wand of fireball x 50 charges in a low magic environment, which defeats the entire point of spell restrictions / day, he should have to expand alot more than a few measly experience points and worthless gold. On the other hand, if it's a CRPG and he wants to craft long sword +1 that can be purchased in the store next door for 710 gold, the item must not end up costing more gold and exp than it's worth.

 

[Atrokkus]

Spending xp on crafting is just plain dumb. It's like spending xp on killing a monster. Whenever you do something that you've never done before, or something you've had little expertese in you GAIN EXPERIENCE. That's common sense and the more it's incorporated into gamedesign the better (today's developers often prefer the opposite, though). If you managed to assemble the Orb of Infernal Benevolence, then you should gain a helluve lot of XP points. Alternatively, if a game has skill-use-based system, crafting skill should be boosted instead.
Question: how to make crafting difficult and less cheesy? Enforce high requirements. That is, make minor stuff easy and real cool stuff extremely hard to make. Again, you ask "how?". But isn't it obvious that you can incorporate ability checks here as well, or other skill checks -- because some items may require knowledge in other disciplines, not just crafting.
There are many ways to make it difficult without dumbing it down.

 

[Volourn]

*yawn*

 

[MrBrown]

Guys... It's futile to try to apply realism or some kind of world plausability logic to D&D. It just doesn't work.

Best example: The time it takes to craft an item is based on the item's cost in gold pieces. Clubs cost 0 gp. So, a character with sufficient ranks in Craft(Weaponsmith), can just go into a forest, snap his fingers, and every tree turns into a bunch of clubs. Equipping an army just became easier...



As for the actual topic, I personally prefer having gp-only costs over xp+gp costs. However, in either case, item creation feats amount to one thing in the end: Buying magic items cheaper.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

As for the actual topic, I personally prefer having gp-only costs over xp+gp costs. However, in either case, item creation feats amount to one thing in the end: Buying magic items cheaper.

That's something I don't think anyone has mentioned yet. You're already burning away feats just to be able to craft items.

I still don't like the idea of burning XP, regardless of the argument either way of the realistic nature of D&D. I do think the argument that XP is already an abstraction, so let's make it MORE abstract and further away from what it is supposed to represent is an idiotic one, though.

I could care less if I'm called a POWAH GAEMR because I don't like it. It just doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Now, the idea that the magic user would lose some of his spell powers for a time does appeal to me. Even a temporary level drop would be fine. Something that makes the player have a cost for making an item that still allows the player to keep up with the party.

The big problem I had with that implimentation is that in ToEE, I found myself making a crafting sorcerer just for filling a slot with someone that could generate some items for me and the occational charm spell. He wasn't able to keep pace with the rest of the party in terms of level, so that character got to mostly sit in the back and just be the occational utility guy.

 

[MrBrown]

That's something I don't think anyone has mentioned yet. You're already burning away feats just to be able to craft items.

Money, XP... It's all just game mechanical resources. The crafting feats just allow you to shift points from one resource to another, in a restricted way. Kinda like healing spells.

The big problem I had with that implimentation is that in ToEE, I found myself making a crafting sorcerer just for filling a slot with someone that could generate some items for me and the occational charm spell. He wasn't able to keep pace with the rest of the party in terms of level, so that character got to mostly sit in the back and just be the occational utility guy.

The problem with the implementation in ToEE was that you had no other way to get most of those items than crafting.

The D&D rules assume the characters get a certain approximate amount of wealth per level, and that the players can use that wealth to buy magic items. If not any magic item, then at least from a decent amount of choices. In such an environment, crafting just becomes a feat to get those items cheaper, or for getting a specific item if buying is restricted in some way.


The system starts to exhibit problems when you take away the ability to buy items and/or change the allotment of money and treasure. ToEE, I think, had this problem, as do several PnP groups that try to play "low-magic" worlds or some such. And probably that guy in the link Azarkon gave. I think most PnP groups who don't have this problem in their low-magic games simply allot so little money that the PCs don't even have the money to craft items, making the feats useless.


If NWN2 is going to follow the same kind of shop availability as NWN, I don't think it will have problems with the crafting rules.

 

[Mefi]

Perhaps not, but a player deserves interesting consequences. Why have item creation merely slow down levelling? Why not have it make the process different? Permanent stat loss is one way to do this (presuming stat gain is rarely an option). I'm sure there are many others.
Loss of generic xp is just not interesting.

But then it ain't AD&D if you do that You can't really have permanent stat loss in a game where your max stat is 18. They tried it with D&D (think it was CON) and it was totally screwed up in gameplay. Rolemaster had a failure chart (so you could fail to make an item, or you ended up making an item different in someway to what you intended) and that could affect your stats, but then Rolemaster differentiated between temporary (where you are now) and permanent (the maximum you could ever be) stats.

There are a lot of ways to do item creation, and I agree AD&D is not the greatest, but it's hardly a big problem for me. I'm more bothered about the implementation of the time in cRPGs based on AD&D. The quest is "rescue the poor maiden before the trolls eat her". Player thinks "just going to craft a big stick of troll whacking - she can wait 6 months". That's where interesting consequences could really kick in.

 

[Rhombus]

"Gold is pretty easy to obtain and players probably should have a greater limit than just gold when making magic items."

Hasn't there always been talk about how all crafting in NwN2 is gonna require resources, like iron-ore for making swords and stuff... that is not infinit... Doesn't this apply to the creating of magical items aswell... I was under the impression it did..?

 

[Nightjed]

"Gold is pretty easy to obtain and players probably should have a greater limit than just gold when making magic items."

Hasn't there always been talk about how all crafting in NwN2 is gonna require resources, like iron-ore for making swords and stuff... that is not infinit... Doesn't this apply to the creating of magical items aswell... I was under the impression it did..?

thats crap, if it takes gold for making the item why not just take gold for the "needed reagents/minerals", if you need to "find" them then youll end up like with nwn1 where a ton of modules (specialy those released before hotu) did not have any way of finding materials for item making (not even blank wands or empty bottles) making your item making feat useless

 

[galsiah]

But then it ain't AD&D if you do that

I'll never understand why people make cRPGs with P&P rules. I guess it's for marketing purposes. I don't know if that's more or less depressing than the possibility that they actually think it's a good idea.

You can't really have permanent stat loss in a game where your max stat is 18. They tried it with D&D (think it was CON) and it was totally screwed up in gameplay.

How did it screw it up? What problems did it cause? One bad implementation in one context doesn't make it a bad idea in every context.

I'm more bothered about the implementation of the time in cRPGs based on AD&D.

Sure - time is an important issue. That's true of most RPGs in some way though.

 

[Azarkon]

thats crap, if it takes gold for making the item why not just take gold for the "needed reagents/minerals", if you need to "find" them then youll end up like with nwn1 where a ton of modules (specialy those released before hotu) did not have any way of finding materials for item making (not even blank wands or empty bottles) making your item making feat useless

Yeah, gold and exp are not actually the limiting factors in item creation... The availability of empty flasks is.

But that's a CRPG specific retardation that can be resolved by replacing all but the rarest ingredients in general via a flat-out gold cost, which I think is the way it should work anyways since there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to find an ample supply of common ingredients in CRPGs. They might as well be abstracted away.

 

[Pseudofool]

Balance does trump realisim,

but no reason you can't have both if you put your little neurotrasmitters to work

Losing exp. to craft is stupid, sure there should be balance, but this could be achieved by having rare items used for crafting, rare availiblity of "recipes" or forges, a limit to how many items you can craft per level, any number of things.

Was making mechanical items in Aracanum crafting? Should that have cost xp and gold in addition to the skill points, attribute checks, and items it already costs?

The whole balance vs. realism debate is stupid; if you're smart/creative enough you can have both.

 

[Mefi]

How did it screw it up? What problems did it cause? One bad implementation in one context doesn't make it a bad idea in every context.

Yeah, you're right about every context but NWN is trying to be AD&D.

From what I remember of 2nd ed., the problem was that wizzies suddenly got gimped as they lost 1 point of CON for every permanent spell they cast. It meant no-one would ever seriously consider creating a permanent magic item as wizards don't tend to have much in the way of a CON stat to begin with in a 3 - 18 system. As AD&D uses hit points which are based on your CON stat, as well as requiring many standard saving rolls using your CON stat, going into negative modifiers is very stupid for a wizard who has crap AC on top of that. I think Darksuns introduced a semi-permanent spell to try and rectify the problem but then they brought out 3rd ed. which gimped wizzies in other ways (why should the wizzy be the one who always loses XP?).

That's pretty much all I remember about it as I last played 2nd ed when I was a wee nipper of a teen. Rolemaster was my preferred ruleset anyway and a little bit of stat loss for screwing up in crafting wasn't quite so much of a big deal in a 1 - 100 system which catered far better in allowing you to regain the losses.

But as I said earlier, AD&D is what NWN is using and trying to follow. That's just the way that system works so it's pretty pointless to criticise them for implementing that ruleset as best they can. Everyone already knows that the ruleset is horribly broken in places, if not in its entirety.

 

[Spazmo]

Pseudofool, you're completely right about how crafting ought to work in CRPGs. The problem is that the rule in question came from a P&P game, where things have to work differently. In a P&P game, nobody particularly wants to set aside whatever quest the DM has planned out to go and look for 10 pieces of iron ore. In any case, PCs aren't really meant to craft that many items anyways, since it can take a long time and you have to be fairly high level to create interesting stuff. The rule really works quite well in the P&P game, although it's awkward in CRPGs.

The next step in your logical reasoning is "well, maybe P&P rulesets shouldn't be used in CRPGs at all!" To which I can only say, no shit, Sherlock.

 

[Deacdo]

If money is so easy to attain give out less of it or give players more uses for it (in other words, increase its value).

Personally I'd like to see monsters stop dropping gold. The massive pouch of gold stuffed up the ass must get uncomfortable.

 

[Drakron]

I think people are forgetting a few things.

First in D&D you have copper and silver before gold, cRPGs simply tend to use the gold as standart and get rid of the rest.

Now D&D have gold sinks, fighters spend a lot of money in their gear as spellcasters spend a lot of money in their spells, besides that we also have travel costs (mounts, inns, food, etc ...) and even if at one point the players do get a lot of gold they also still need to update their gear.

Lets look at ressurection for example, the cost is a 1000gp worth diamond and at high levels "save or die" spells are common making the loss of 1000 gp per battle common.

The issue is cRPGs also tend to do away with costs.

Also in the subject of loot, as in cRPGs the items stay on the map as long the programers decided to do (and it spans from "never" to "always") and you can easy find your way to whatever they are placed in PnP that is not assured ... also there are tables were some enemies drop nothing, not to say loot is not convinient gold or gear ... we have gems, paintings, statues, etc ... cleaning out a stronghold means spending a great deal of time transporting the loot out and sell it.

And as for item creation ... you forget something.

There are NPC crafters and enchanters.

You dont want to lose the XP ... fine, you buy then but they are going to cost more gold that if you crafted/enchanted it yourself ... a player can create a PC that specializes in crafting and even if it might be harder to play ... well remenber that he is adding something to the party ... more GP (and so more equipment), it might not to be easy but a well designed and played character can offset the dificulty.

Also never forget one thing, anything in the game is subjected to DM aproval and just because its on the manual does not mean its intended for the players to use, crafting is more in the realm of the DM that the players.

Stop blaming the BioWare "+5 items grown in trees" Monte Haul design in D&D, anyone can fuck up the system but just because you can fuck up something as the d20 system does not mean the system is flawed.

 

[LlamaGod]

Personally I'd like to see monsters stop dropping gold. The massive pouch of gold stuffed up the ass must get uncomfortable.

Wizardry 8 did it pretty nice, only monsters that would have gold on them would drop it and the amount dropped depended on the monster type again.

A slime would have a coin or two lodged in them, while a rogue on a path might have a sack of 30 on him.

 

[Slaine]

A slime would have a coin or two lodged in them, while a rogue on a path might have a sack of 30 on him.

And in nwn a rat would drop a great axe.

 

[bryce777]

I think people are forgetting a few things.

First in D&D you have copper and silver before gold, cRPGs simply tend to use the gold as standart and get rid of the rest.

Now D&D have gold sinks, fighters spend a lot of money in their gear as spellcasters spend a lot of money in their spells, besides that we also have travel costs (mounts, inns, food, etc ...) and even if at one point the players do get a lot of gold they also still need to update their gear.

Lets look at ressurection for example, the cost is a 1000gp worth diamond and at high levels "save or die" spells are common making the loss of 1000 gp per battle common.

The issue is cRPGs also tend to do away with costs.

Also in the subject of loot, as in cRPGs the items stay on the map as long the programers decided to do (and it spans from "never" to "always") and you can easy find your way to whatever they are placed in PnP that is not assured ... also there are tables were some enemies drop nothing, not to say loot is not convinient gold or gear ... we have gems, paintings, statues, etc ... cleaning out a stronghold means spending a great deal of time transporting the loot out and sell it.

And as for item creation ... you forget something.

There are NPC crafters and enchanters.

You dont want to lose the XP ... fine, you buy then but they are going to cost more gold that if you crafted/enchanted it yourself ... a player can create a PC that specializes in crafting and even if it might be harder to play ... well remenber that he is adding something to the party ... more GP (and so more equipment), it might not to be easy but a well designed and played character can offset the dificulty.

Also never forget one thing, anything in the game is subjected to DM aproval and just because its on the manual does not mean its intended for the players to use, crafting is more in the realm of the DM that the players.

Stop blaming the BioWare "+5 items grown in trees" Monte Haul design in D&D, anyone can fuck up the system but just because you can fuck up something as the d20 system does not mean the system is flawed.

I agree completely, especially about bioware being responsible (and other developers). I also hear people talk about playing the game with easier/lame rules, as well. DnD is very balanced in 2nd edition especially, if you play by the rules, and very difficult, too. You would seldom get to a very high level except by being very clever or lucky.

 

[flushfire]

IMO, i dont really mind whatever they want to implement as cost for crafting as long as it's for game balance. Personally i prefer xp cost, its simple, and would make me think twice before crafting anything.

Or they can make gold as valuable as xp, although that can be hard. In some other RPGs wealth is more valuable than xp.

Or they can make the DM choose which should be used - gold or xp, xp being more valuable and youd spend less xp compared to how much gold youd spend creating the same item.

They can also just make the crafted items unique to crafters and the gold costs large enough so that youd still want to craft the item even if it costs a fortune because you cant buy it elsewhere.

Or crafting failure, a very common limiter in MMORPGs, so that powerful items remain rare, can also be implemented.

 

[Drakron]

Look, the problem with crating comes from the economy ... money have to come in and come out.

Now crafting have to logicaly cost less that buying since merchants make profit so question is how to make it so players dont became crafters.

One way is expecialization, players then to be the fighting type so they cannot be both the ultimate blacksmith and the ultimate swordman.

Other is time, making a good sword would take weeks and players usually are pressed for time but we have two issues, one is downtime were the characters can actually spend time in doing things and then the fact time is compressed in RPGs so if a player wants his character to spend 1 year making gear there is really nothing that stops him and it would only take a few minutes in real time.

The last is compoments, as items scale in power so the compiments required for its creation became more rare and dificult to find, finding mithril ore might end up being a quest on itself.

Problem is that is crafting ... echanting is a diferent game.

Enchanting only requires casting of the spells, as long the spellcaster knows the spell its not a issue and lets not forget that spellcaster can come up with their own spells.

Time is not a issue, materials might be a issue if not for the fact most of the materials end up being the ones used on the spells so its not that much of a issue.

So enchanting is less that a issue that crafting but enchating items are far more powerful that a regular crafted item.

There is were the XP cost comes, it prevents enchanting to became too common .... one could argue that a temporary stat drain could work (nothing stops anyone from doing that in their house rules) but then comes the question on how it works with downtime and compressed time?

It does not, permanent stat drain would go us back to having to come up with excuses for the amount of magic items lying around and making spellcasters creating 2-4 magic items at most because of the drain.

 

[obediah]

magic item mill games just suck.

"insert 5,000,000 gp for sword +5" = sucks
"insert 50,000 xp for sword +5" = sucks
"bring me 200 orc gizzards for sword +5" = sucks

"Sword +5, wtf is that? Only a few recipes for magical swords are known, and those are all closely guarded. You can spend months tracking those people down and stealing/trading for the information. Or you can research civilisation X that made most of the magical swords remaining today and try to find the information yourself." = the not suck.

Some of this is gaming style preference, but if your system has an equation for turning xp into phat lewt then it is horribly, horribly broken.

EDIT: I know the conversation has moved well beyond the "throw in your chips" phase, but I wanted to get on the record.

 

[AlanC9]

My understanding is that the NWN2 OC will restrict crafting by using special materials. You only have so much of this stuff in the game, so that's how many different items you can craft. This will have to be at least as well balanced as ToEE crafting, where the XP costs were trivial compared to the benefits.

NWN2 mods can do whatever they want, including restoring XP costs.

As for the "realism" aspect, a lot of fantasy worlds require the wizard to expend some amount of personal power to create a magic item. Sometimes this is renewable (XP in D&D), sometimes not (HP, stats, maybe spell slots in D&D). Any system is realistic if that's how magic works in your fantasy world.

 

[Volourn]

"And in nwn a rat would drop a great axe."

Bullshit. TGhis never happened, so stop the bullshitting.

Unless you mean in user made mods in which case blame the modders.


XP cost + gold cost + special items cost = Best Crafting System Ever.

All others are for pussies. :twisted: