Talk:Craft Artifice (3.5e Skill)

Ratings

	Ghostwheel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	This is too open to interpretations, as there's nothing that I can see which defines what a "minor magical item" is--allowing you to theoretically create just about anything except for artifacts.

"You can craft magic items whose caster level is no greater than your ranks in this skill -3."

"Find the item's Craft DC. Normally the DC is equal to the the item's caster level x4, or 10 + the item's caster level (Whichever is higher), but some items have specific DCs." Notably, these.

You can make a magic item whose caster level is equal to your level if you keep this skill maxed, but with a Craft DC of 80 for a CL20 item, you're not likely to make items like that with this skill alone unless you build your entire character around that, at which point it would be more efficient to make an Artificer.

That said, Wizards have a pitiful class skill list and once you grab the essentials, there's very little that's worth spending your extra points on, and extra point you are likely to have since you're an Int-based character. However, being able to dabble in making magic items without spending a feat - Skill investiture rather than feat investiture - saves you some of the trouble. Making potions, scrolls and minor wondrous items like feather tokens would be the majority of this skill's usefulness, as the more powerful items are going to have ridiculous DCs.

As for clarity, setting a soft cap on what you can make via the high DCs was what I was trying to do to some degree; A CL8 item's DC is 32, so while you might be able to attempt making that item is going to be hard. By the time you reach that sort of level, you will most likely be instead reaching for the appropriate item creation feat if you intend to be making magic items often.

I had added the option of reducing the DC by half, but in doing so, you only make 1/10th of the progress you would make at the normal DC. You risk wasting fewer materials, but in doing so you take much longer.

In the end, the skill is meant to allow low-level casters easier access to magical doodads and give the high-level item crafters a way to make magic items faster without spending a million feats. The character must still spend the same amount of XP and while the initial gold cost is less, failure is possible here where it's not normally possible in item creation, so botching the attempt a dozen times is actually going to cost you more than just making the item with the correct feat.

Beyond the caster level and DC entries I mentioned, can you see any other way I should clarify what this skill allows you to make? --Zhenra-Khal (talk) 05:41, 8 July 2017 (MDT)

Au contraire--wizards have tons of skill points once you invest heavily in Intelligence via both level up boosts and tomes. Add on that it is an int-based skill, and with a magic item, you can easily get +65 to your check at high levels without jumping through very many hoops. Get another +5 from somewhere, take 10, and you're golden.

Item creation, at a lower cost than it takes to buy things, breaks the game. Incredibly hard. And this skill makes it worse. If you want to balance it, then you should set some limits; first, it should only be allowed to make consumable items, and second, the highest cost of things you should be able to make is equal to your character level x 25, or something like that. That would go a long way towards stopping characters from trading time for power over other players during downtimes. --Ghostwheel (talk) 06:40, 8 July 2017 (MDT)

You can't really take 10 or 20 on this skill anyway, and what you're saying is that being able to create magic items in the first place is game-breaking. And again, at high levels you could just take the correct item creation feat instead.

I agree that making nonpermanent items only should be the case, and I should likely increase the base raw materials cost to half rather than 1/5 so it's on par with normal item crafting. But beyond that, it's not much more broken than the normal crafting system. And it's certainly more useful than Craft (Alchemy). --Zhenra-Khal (talk) 06:53, 8 July 2017 (MDT)

Another +15 is harder to come by, but doable by anyone interested in using this. And even without it, they can still make CL 15 things easily. The whole point of why so many games ban magic item creation feats is because they break the game. Saying that this is no more broken than that does this skill no justice, and only makes it worse. Craft (Alchemy) is fine because is becomes a flavor thing. Because wealth equals power, and this doubles it on its own. --Ghostwheel (talk) 07:15, 8 July 2017 (MDT)

So you're opposing this simply because you hate item creation as a whole, not because I've made something ridiculously broken. Okayyy. Carry on then. --Zhenra-Khal (talk) 07:20, 8 July 2017 (MDT)

There is a problem. By adding this into a game, you're compounding it. You're making the game more broken. Worse. For any character, not just those who invest feats. Skill points are worth a lot less than feats, and you're making a skill that's even worse for the game than UMD. Willfully, with the knowledge that it breaks the game even harder. Yes, in my opinion that deserves an oppose. --Ghostwheel (talk) 08:11, 8 July 2017 (MDT)

And if tweaked and used to replace the normal item creation feats? Fail twice at making an item and you've spent the same amount of gold as the thing's market price, as well as some P, and you still don't have the item. That creates a hole to absorb some of the leftover wealth generated by being able to make stuff at half price in the first place. There will be min/maxers, yes; Those exist on every street corner with games like this. As currently limited as this skill is currently after some of the edits you suggested, I had hoped it would improve your attitude toward the skill, not worsen it. If you hate the magic item crafting system in the first place, there's no reason to give me hate for conveying my take on it.

That said, there is a lot of stuff on this wiki that is more broken than this and has received better ratings. Thus stuff here is all optional and some people will use it, some won't. At the moment your rating is based more on opinion than anything actually wrong with the system, from everything I can tell, and there's no way to make you happy without simply deleting this project entirely, so I'm not going to try to make you happy as that's not the reason I'm on this wiki. If you don't like it, don't use it. Come up with your own, show me how it's done. But don't expect me to bend over backwards to make things fit your standards simply because it's not something you would use; I've made some of the suggested edits that could be done to balance without taking away from the purpose of the article and I have no reason to change it any further. --Zhenra-Khal (talk) 08:25, 8 July 2017 (MDT)

"If you hate the magic item crafting system in the first place, there's no reason to give me hate for conveying my take on it. "

Sure there is, if you agree that there's a problem, and you're making it worse. That's a completely legitimate reason in my opinion to downvote something even harder.

"That said, there is a lot of stuff on this wiki that is more broken than this and has received better ratings."

Sure, but that's usually marked as "breaking the game" level (AKA, VH :-P), and since it's clearly labeled as such, DMs will know what kind of power it has. A new skill isn't rated under the balance rating system at all, meaning that a DM who allows this skill and uses it in their game is asking to get their game broken in half, and as often happens, will decry everything on the wiki as broken and completely banned. Which is the opposite of what we want to see happen.

"At the moment your rating is based more on opinion than anything actually wrong with the system..."

...As I said, it is also because there is a huge problem with placing the creation of magic items into the hands of the players at a reduced cost compared to what the system expects them to get, and making the problem worse rather than better. So please don't accuse me of logical fallacies I don't make. There is very little that's "opinion" here.

"...from everything I can tell, and there's no way to make you happy without simply deleting this project entirely..."

You could also add the gold limit I suggested, making it so the items truly are minor and have no chance of breaking the game. I gave you a solution. Whether you want to use it or not is on you.

"Come up with your own, show me how it's done."

I have.

"But don't expect me to bend over backwards to make things fit your standards simply because it's not something you would use..."

So don't. You don't have to change anything just because I downvoted your stuff. People have downvoted me as well, but that doesn't mean I'm necessarily changing my things. That said, if you're aware that there's a problem and you're making it worse, then the onus in my opinion is on you to stop making it worse and fix it instead. --Ghostwheel (talk) 18:21, 8 July 2017 (MDT)