Thursday 12 February 2015

Magic-Users in my Campaign: Magic Item Creation


  Well, I've been looking up Magic Item Creation in Castles & Crusades: Monsters & Treasure and it offers two ways to create magic items; One is with XP and the other is with Gold.
  So far I've decided to use the system from Lamentations of the Flame Princess for when it comes to writing scrolls and spellbooks, creating potions and wands, etc. But LotFP doesn't have Magic Item creation rules because it wouldn't fit with the Weird vibe it wants. Still, I love that it allows a Magic-User who's motivated and rich enough to prepare a scroll for a spell he'd normally be too low-level to cast. I quickly compared the two different systems that use coin as cost for the creation of wands and came to a brutal realization; I can't just use the two together as they are.
  Creating a wand with a 4th level spell will take you 4 weeks in C&C and will cost you 9000 gp... for 50 charges! Not bad. In LotFP, it will cost you on average 6000 gp, take on average 17 weeks and will have as many charges as one was able to cast continuously, but you can use scrolls and/or help from other Magic-Users and the charges can go up to 99.
  Both have their ups and downs, actually. C&C makes it faster and overall less expensive and easier, but LotFP allows you to potentially create devastating wands in comparison to your level with enough help, prep time and gold.
  I could come up with a new cost or system that uses gold... Honestly I don't think the effort is worth it though. I'll use the XP cost system as the sole way to create magic items in my campaign. (The fact that it uses a set amount of time instead of a random one as per LotFP rules seems okay in this case since it's XP they'll be spending, not gold!) They can still use them if they REALLY want to, but they'll probably be more motivated to hunt down a legendary magic weapon down in that dungeon over there if making magic items doesn't come easy for them.
  I can't remember where I read it, but there was an article, book or blog post related to D&D where the writer mentioned he preferred replying "Yes, but..." instead of "No." when his players would ask him if they can do certain things.* I agree with that philosophy to DMing. Therefore:
- "Can I create a magic sword?"
- "Yes, but it would cost you a lot of XP."


* EDIT: I found the post!

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