Quote from: Doom;1110890Indeed, they're terrible. They're what, 2 pages long? If the game were called "Crafting and Carpenters" I suppose this level of outrage would be reasonable, but the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, i.e., about exploring weird places and fighting bizarre creatures.

Dungeons and Dragons is a particularly stupid name for a game that mainly consists of neither Dungeons nor Dragons.

If page count actually determined names then Magic and Spellcasting would be more accurate.

I would say there is no excuse for a D&D edition to print worse magic item creation rules than what is available in the Rules Cyclopedia.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110880False. It's a FLAW. Whether we're dealing with a human or an animal, all living beings are motivated by INCENTIVE. There is ZERO INCENTIVE to create any weapon greater than a sword +1 in 5e. Why? The reason is very simple. Even extremely long-lived beings, like elves or liches or vampires do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of the world; they are not separate from it. Therefore, no sentient being will take the massive amount of time and effort to craft a magic item that is not appreciably more combat efficient than a meager sword +1. Time is money.....even for people who think that they reject capitalistic ideas. And sitting in a dark room creating some gimpy shit weapon is not a practical use of anyone's time.

So I asked myself, what are some examples of zero incentive (sorry, ZERO INCENTIVE)?

Quote from: John F. KennedyWe choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.[

Quote from: Antoni GaudiMy client is not in a hurry.

If the rules were for a post-apocalyptic world, would you decry that nobody can craft an Intel microprocessor?

Quoteone shitty Frost Brand sword.

Player characters take a lot of risks with no certainty of return; crafting without risk or uncertainty must necessarily be excessively expensive, or by your reasoning nobody would go on adventures.

QuoteThe problem with 5e's system for selling magic items, is that it ignores human nature. Nobody is going to sell a magic item for less than it cost to craft it. It's not going to happen. It's not logical; it doesn't make any sense....and it ignores every aspect of human behavior.

People who find a magic weapon they don't need, but who do need the material component for a true ressurection, will sell it for what they can get. Conversely, other player characters with lots of gold and no magic weapons might buy it for more than it would cost to craft it, depending how much they value the years of game time.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110834It's not a flaw. They just don't want you doing a lot of stuff with magic items. It's a design choice you don't like.

Bingo.  It's Dungeons & Dragons, not Manufacturing and Markets.  PCs should be adventuring to get their magic.  Heck, I don't even like the concept of the Artifacer...

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110884How do you know those who craft them also aren't using special ways to do it? This is to only establish a baseline, of what it would take if you just tried to grind it out.

But no, people waste money on stuff irrationally all the time. Ever heard of people gambling away their money? Or kings bankrupting their treasuries? You're acting like everyone is a 100% rational agent. What if they get some emotional significance out of it?

Look at how much money countries pour into purely symbolic things all the time. What exactly did the Pyramids do for some dead guy that a simple morgue couldn't have? They could be making these super expensive magic items as simply a show of status. Which I might add, IS a rational thing, and fits into your logic -- it's just not an immediate combat use.

What rulers of a country do is entirely different from what individuals do. The rulers of Egypt had thousands and thousands of helpless slaves to do their bidding. Besides, mountain-sized pyramids affect the consciousness of millions of people, just by virtue of people knowing that something so massive, mysterious, and awe-inspring is there. Meanwhile, nobody is going to spend the next 55 years grinding away in their basement, just so that they can make some Sovereign Glue.

Remember that none of the magic items in the 5e DMG are truly large, powerful, or awe-inspiring. They're glittery piles of dog shit covered in cat shit.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambFalse. It's a FLAW.

Quote from: GnomeWorksIt's a fucking game, not real life.

The shit crafting rules were a design decision, most likely to disincentivize crafting. Because fucking surprise, building a reasonable not-shit crafting system is math-heavy work, a concept anathema to Mearls.

I am fully aware of the fact that the authors of 5e were deliberately trying to create a disincentive for crafting magic items.....which oddly, brings me to another point. It would have been much better (for everyone) if WoTC had been more honest about what their design goals truly were. If WoTC had openly said:

"We don't want player characters to craft magic items."

Well, that would have been a design decision that I disagree with, but at least we would have had full transparency on how things work....and how the authors of the game want things to work. Instead, we have faint typeface, faint page numbers, an almost useless index, and no magic item tables that break down the actual crafting times for magic items. So as a result......everybody's brains turn into cabbage, and few people even seem to notice that the entire crafting system is completely borked.

By the way, I like that word. "Borked".

Quote from: Sacrificial LambIt's too stupid for me to endure.

Quote from: GnomeWorksYet here we are on page 5 of this stupid thread, and you're still bitching about them.

It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. :cool:

Quote from: Sacrificial LambThe problem with 5e's system for selling magic items, is that it ignores human nature. Nobody is going to sell a magic item for less than it cost to craft it. It's not going to happen. It's not logical; it doesn't make any sense....and it ignores every aspect of human behavior.

Quote from: S'monJust because you want to sell something for X, does not mean someone wants to pay you X. The sales system is designed for PCs dumping looted items, it says nothing about commissioned works.

Just because I want to buy a new car for $2,500, it doesn't mean that such a thing will ever rationally happen.

The Player's Handbook also has merchants selling Potions of Healing for 50 gp, even though it also costs 50 gp to craft it. Why would a merchant sell a product for the same amount of money that it costs to craft? Do merchants hate profit? I don't get it, and nobody else here has been able to explain it.

Quote from: DoomIndeed, they're terrible. They're what, 2 pages long? If the game were called "Crafting and Carpenters" I suppose this level of outrage would be reasonable, but the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, i.e., about exploring weird places and fighting bizarre creatures.

I would have preferred 50 fewer pages on spells and 50 more pages on exploration but that's just me. As far as crafting, well, those two pages are crap, but I can ignore them easily enough, especially since D&D snaps in half if players cherry-pick their magic items (kinda learned that in 3e, eh?).

We all agree it's crap, some see the underlying message of "don't make items beyond a few simple things."

I'm glad you're admitting it's terrible.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110982Meanwhile, nobody is going to spend the next 55 years grinding away in their basement, just so that they can make some Sovereign Glue.

I know people IRL that have spent almost half that amount of time grinding away in WoW for even less...

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110982The Player's Handbook also has merchants selling Potions of Healing for 50 gp, even though it also costs 50 gp to craft it. Why would a merchant sell a product for the same amount of money that it costs to craft? Do merchants hate profit? I don't get it, and nobody else here has been able to explain it.

With a herbalist's kit you can non-magically craft a healing potion for 25gp in 10 days (PHB herbalist kit & DMG crafting, crafting at 5gp/day of item value using components costing half that), or in 1 day per Xanathar's, which I find a bit over-generous. I tend to make it 5 days, 1 work-week, at 25gp total cost.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110982Just because I want to buy a new car for $2,500, it doesn't mean that such a thing will ever rationally happen.

So what? The buy prices are for second hand 'cars' being dumped on the market. Default 5e does not have a default industrial 'car' manufacturing economy. The expectation is that items are rarely if ever manufactured, and certainly not manufactured on industrial scale for speculative sale.

If you take your $500,000 new car to a poor rural town, you are not likely to get $500,000 for it. You might be lucky to get $50,000.

It makes me sad, Sacrificial Lamb, that you are fighting against my attempts to find a way to work with you in this topic. I didn't agree with your initial premise because I find the claim not true for me, my logic, or my playstyles needs . But I felt like I was perhaps topic-crapping on your deeper desire: How to Make 5e Crafting Fit My Campaign Desires.

Is that presumptuous of me? Are you having more of a kvetching session? :confused:

I know we have those every season or so. I believe the last one was Darrin Kelly's kvetching session about HERO. It too had a lot of disagreement with its premise. But it seemed to have been more for catharsis than productive brainstorming. And after sturm und drang was released, like gassy indigestion, all settled back to normal.

If you want to have a venting rant, I get it. I won't get in the way or shoot down your appeal to fellow grousers.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1110986I know people IRL that have spent almost half that amount of time grinding away in WoW for even less...

Dear god, how frighteningly true that is... :eek: That, Minecraft, Hearthstone, whole pile of shitty Play-to-Win Castle/Empire Builder guild war games... So much money, life, and time ground into ephemeral virtual trophies and niche bragging rights. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110880It doesn't make any logical sense.

Unlike judging combat, magic all made up stuff. So if somebody describe that this list takes 55 years to make then it a world where those items on that list takes 55 years.

Deal with it. It how that world works.

However your sentiment is understandable in that a setting where one has to take 55 years to make magic items as a solitary wizard may not be as fun or interesting to play as others. Especially this is occurring in as part of the time on has for a hobby

What I find lacking in the discussion is that the DMG clearly states on page 129

QuoteMultiple characters can combine their efforts to create a magic item if each of them meets the level prerequisite. Each character can contribute spells, spell slots, and components, as long as everyone participates during the entire crafting process. Each character an contribute 25 gp worth of effort for each day spending to craft the item.

This clearly establishes that the production of high value magic items is a group affair. I trust that you follow the implications that both for divine magic items and arcane magic items.

One point far more damning is that do the treasure distribution tables line up with the creation times of magic items. It not going to be precise due to the subjective nature of the evaluation. However gross disparity will show up.

My own opinion is that the DMG system does not line up with how treasure distributed. That high CR creatures will appear with more treasure than what the creation time suggests. Organizations that have teams of 17th+ level casters crafting magic items are going to be few and far between. That the system in Xanathar is more in line with the DMG's treasure distribution however the relationship is still imperfect.

Why? Because both Xanathar and DMG reflect a particular world view about the place of magic items in a setting. Namely in both the author is bias against the buying and selling of magic items, and players crafting them. While the Xanathar is more generous and includes buying magic items, it feel like it has a tone of "Oh well if you must...."

Both have an inappropriate tone of authority about how the crafting of magic items ought to be. When in reality it is a setting details. D&D Campagins have been run where all magic items are special. Each a unique once in a lifetime creation. To where magic shop abound and even small hamlet have a local alchemist or hedge wizards where healing potions and minor items can be bought (or sold).

I happen to be a referee who has magic items shop in the setting. Because of that I never used the DMG's recommendations on the crafting times or pricing of magic items. The only thing useful I found out of that whole section in regards to crafting was the categorization of magic items from common to legendary.

If I were to make a 5e based magic item creation system then it would be based off of this list I created for Swords & Wizardry.

I also have an older list that included +5 bonus items. I know the revision numbers are confusing. I switched to a new set of document names and reset the revision numbers between the two.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1111022Dear god, how frighteningly true that is... :eek: That, Minecraft, Hearthstone, whole pile of shitty Play-to-Win Castle/Empire Builder guild war games... So much money, life, and time ground into ephemeral virtual trophies and niche bragging rights. :rolleyes:

One characteristic of magic items that they are a low volume luxury item. So irrational economic decisions will come up far more often.

As for Wow and other resource gathering games, one thing that the elite levels invariably involve teams of players cooperating on the gathering and creation. They regularly produce the equivalent of a +5 holy avenger due to the fact they organize their group similar to a early industrial age style factory system and are extremely efficient about finding and gathering resources.

If a world where the crafting of magic items works like the DMG and Xanathar. Given time, organizations would rise that do what you see in WoW. The ideas dovetail nicely with the organization of the first agricultural societies but rather than grain being gathered it is magical resources. Instead of priests worshipping at the local ziggurat, it is wizards or clerics being trained to take their place at the enchanter's circle.

A plausible campaign could be set after the collapse of a culture who had these organizations thus accounting for the distribution in the DMG treasure tables. Leaving a landscape where there are hordes of magic items waiting to be looted but new items are only rarely produced.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110880False. It's a FLAW. Whether we're dealing with a human or an animal, all living beings are motivated by INCENTIVE. There is ZERO INCENTIVE to create any weapon greater than a sword +1 in 5e. Why? The reason is very simple. Even extremely long-lived beings, like elves or liches or vampires do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of the world; they are not separate from it. Therefore, no sentient being will take the massive amount of time and effort to craft a magic item that is not appreciably more combat efficient than a meager sword +1. Time is money.....even for people who think that they reject capitalistic ideas. And sitting in a dark room creating some gimpy shit weapon is not a practical use of anyone's time.

A single sufficiently knowledgeable person could build a car in a fraction of the time it takes a D&D character to craft one shitty Frost Brand sword. Remember that this is not a powerful weapon. Look at the stats for it. In fact, powerful weapons largely do not exist in 5th edition. So what's the rational motivation in crafting a weapon that is not any more efficient in killing most opponents than a normal fucking sword? The answer is that there is absolutely zero motivation for doing this, and cop-out answers such as:

* the elf lives for centuries, or even millenia
* the demon or lich has an alien mindset
* the real methods of crafting have been lost in time
* a demigod made it

Blah, blah, blah. These are all bullshit cop-out answers. All of them. :rolleyes:

Nobody is going to spend five-and-a-years crafting a gimp sword that isn't any better at killing a Hook Horror or Mind Flayer than a nonmagical sword. Nobody is going to spend five-and-a-half years crafting some gimp sword that they cannot even sell at a profit.

It doesn't make any logical sense.

Here's an example of four different Horns of Valhalla:

(1.) Horn of Valhalla (Silver) [summon 2d4+2 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 6th, creation cost: 5,000 gp, takes 200 days to craft]
(2.) Horn of Valhalla (Brass) [summon 3d4+3 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 6th, creation cost: 5,000 gp, takes 200 days to craft]
(3.) Horn of Valhalla (Bronze) [summon 4d4+4 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 11th, creation cost: 50,000 gp, takes 2,000 days to craft]
(4.) Horn of Valhalla (Iron) [summon 5d4+5 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 17th, creation cost: 500,000 gp, takes 20,000 days to craft]

A brass horn is objectively better than a silver horn, but they both require the exact same amount of time and money to craft (almost 7 months and 5,000 gp). An iron horn takes us almost 55 years to craft. 55 fucking years. Entire civilizations can rise and fall in that period of time. An iron horn takes 100 times longer to craft than a brass horn, and is 100 times more expensive. What is the INCENTIVE for spending 55 years crafting a magic item that is not much better than the item that takes less than 7 months to craft?

The answer: There is no incentive.

This entire system is borked. It's too stupid for me to endure.



The problem with 5e's system for selling magic items, is that it ignores human nature. Nobody is going to sell a magic item for less than it cost to craft it. It's not going to happen. It's not logical; it doesn't make any sense....and it ignores every aspect of human behavior.

Wow dude are you ok?  Seriously, you're very angry about something which doesn't impact you and is very easy to fix, if you need help don't hesitate to take advantage of resources available, I'm legitimately worried for you.

That being said, most of this is again just wrong.  You keep referring to a Frost Brand as a shitty sword, but that is fundamentally and objectively wrong, and no matter how many times you repeat it, it will never cease being wrong.  Swords +1, +2, and +3 are OP in a bounded accuracy system, and seemingly ignore how powerful flat bonuses are.  They don't exist in my campaign world.

No one WILL ever sell a magic item for less than it cost to make it, and they never need to.  You keep hammering this point, as though finding a buyer who is not willing to pay the correct price (which there's less than a 50% chance occurs in the first place, by the way), the character MUST immediately sell it to them, instead of just being able to look for a different buyer.  Seriously?  Oh it took me 50 years to make this, but it might take me a whole 30 days to find a seller, or if I look for on average 100 days I'll find someone willing to pay me 3x what it cost to make.  Guess I better just dump it to the first person I find who offers me 1/10th the price, can't afford to be wasting that massive amount of time looking for a buyer...  What are you on about?

Also, just saying, that chart is for the sale of found magic items.  What kind of psychotic item crafter are you presuming, to where not only are they taking the first offer that comes along, regardless of how bad it is for them, instead of holding out for proper value, but more importantly, why are they looking for a buyer after crafting it entirely?  They're going to put down tens or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, and then hope to find someone to buy it?  They're Not going to line up a commission beforehand, and have an intended buyer spelled out before the start?  I mean with this long of crafting times, though for immortal beings the crafting time itself is not a significant hurdle, there IS the problem that their intended buyer might die off before you finish crafting it.  In that case I could see having to look for a buyer, but having that as the presumption of the default behavior is suspect, to say the least.

You also presume that ALL items of the same rarity take the exact same amount of time and money to craft, when that is also objectively untrue.  Rather, though the "Salable magic item" table uses specific values as a shorthand, page 135 of the DMG clearly spells out that they are ranges, such that a Silver Horn could have a value of 525 GP while the Brass Horn could have a value of 5000GP, while an Iron horn Could have a value of 60000 GP and be only 12x, not 100x.  It specifically says the DM determines the values of magic items, and the values shown under rarity are simply suggested value ranges.  So if you disagree with those valuations, then just Don't Use Them, and use something different.  This is not to say they couldn't have done a better job, but man, you're making a mountain out of a molehill and pretending that things are different than they are.

One thing not noted thus far is that it is impossible to build a magic item system in 5E that will satisfy the OP's criteria, because the 5E rules do not have a functioning economy in any sense of the phrase that would satisfy those criteria.  It's kind of difficult to make gold and time line up for magic, when they don't line up for anything else.  

Therefore, any kind of economy decisions are always going to require either GM ad hoc adjudication or the development of a better economy on top of the 5E rules.  The information in the 5E rules, even with Xanathar, are a weaker form of the same dynamic exhibited by the CR system:  It's not there to be perfect, or even really good.  Rather, it's there to get you started somewhere in the vicinity, and then you make your GM decisions appropriate for your table.  

Given that lack of economy, a slightly longer, slightly better designed system in the existing rules would be an impediment.  It still wouldn't be good for anyone that wants a coherent system, but it would encourage the GM to stick with it instead of making those decisions.  If WotC wanted to do such a thing well, the correct way to do it would be in a book that focused on domains, economy, political organizations, and how they interconnected.  Such a book would necessarily require means to tweak it for genre, setting, and tone considerations.

Quote from: S'monJust because I want to buy a new car for $2,500, it doesn't mean that such a thing will ever rationally happen.
So what? The buy prices are for second hand 'cars' being dumped on the market. Default 5e does not have a default industrial 'car' manufacturing economy. The expectation is that items are rarely if ever manufactured, and certainly not manufactured on industrial scale for speculative sale.

If you take your $500,000 new car to a poor rural town, you are not likely to get $500,000 for it. You might be lucky to get $50,000.

If you were a car manufacturer.....you know, I know, and we all know.....that you would NOT (as a matter of policy) regularly sell most of your cars for the same price (OR LESS) than what it cost you to build it. There is no financial enterprise on Earth that can survive long-term while doing that. Does not compute. Malfunction. :cool:

I know you understand this. Everyone on this forum understands this. If the authors of 5e wanted to prevent PCs from crafting magic items, they could have just said:

"Player characters cannot craft magic items."

That would have been a more honest position for the authors of 5e to take.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1111021 It makes me sad, Sacrificial Lamb, that you are fighting against my attempts to find a way to work with you in this topic. I didn't agree with your initial premise because I find the claim not true for me, my logic, or my playstyles needs . But I felt like I was perhaps topic-crapping on your deeper desire: How to Make 5e Crafting Fit My Campaign Desires.

Is that presumptuous of me? Are you having more of a kvetching session? :confused:

I know we have those every season or so. I believe the last one was Darrin Kelly's kvetching session about HERO. It too had a lot of disagreement with its premise. But it seemed to have been more for catharsis than productive brainstorming. And after sturm und drang was released, like gassy indigestion, all settled back to normal.

If you want to have a venting rant, I get it. I won't get in the way or shoot down your appeal to fellow grousers.

I am having a rant; I admit it. I'm not getting proper sleep (at all), so ranting feels better than pure zombification. Should this be a thread for finding solutions instead? Sometimes "kvetching" has its uses.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambIt doesn't make any logical sense.

Quote from: estarUnlike judging combat, magic all made up stuff. So if somebody describe that this list takes 55 years to make then it a world where those items on that list takes 55 years.

Deal with it. It how that world works.

I do deal with it, by not playing 5e. But I am critiquing it, because very few people are examining how the system actually works. This also isn't merely a matter of game mechanics, but rather.....it's also about cause and effect, and incentive-based actions.

There is no way on Earth that you will ever convince me that five 17th-level Wizards will find consensus and join forces, in order to spend the next 11 years crafting a vial of Sovereign Glue in someone's basement. Isn't that just basic logic? It simply won't happen. Arguing in favor of this happening is like Gretchen from "Mean Girls" trying to make "fetch" happen. But it won't happen. It won't ever happen. There's no incentive for any sentient being to do this.

High-level Wizards join forces to fight Sauron, not to spend half their lives crafting the magical version of Elmer's Glue. :rolleyes:

So what happens instead?

Well, not much. Practically speaking, most of the items in the DMG don't get crafted at all.....even with multiple people joining forces.....because doing so just takes far too long, and isn't profitable. Meanwhile, most of the items are too weak and boring to spend months, years, or decades dithering with. Not to mention, that the higher level you need to be to craft these items.....the less likely that you'll have a consensus of people willing to craft what you want to craft.

Quote from: estarHowever your sentiment is understandable in that a setting where one has to take 55 years to make magic items as a solitary wizard may not be as fun or interesting to play as others. Especially this is occurring in as part of the time on has for a hobby

See, this part you acknowledge and understand. These rules are painfully unfun. They're the polar opposite of fun. And they're boring. The real question is.....how much of this stuff is fixable, while having the game system still be 5e? I don't know.

Quote from: Giant OctopodesWow dude are you ok? Seriously, you're very angry about something which doesn't impact you and is very easy to fix, if you need help don't hesitate to take advantage of resources available, I'm legitimately worried for you.

I haven't had proper sleep in a very long time, and it's making me extremely cranky. That doesn't change the fact that my points are correct. And my main point is about incentive. There is no incentive to craft most of the magic items in the DMG, because you cannot financially profit from crafting most of them, and because it takes too much time and effort to craft items that are only marginally more combat effective than other magic items that can be crafted far more quickly.

Quote from: Giant OctopodesThat being said, most of this is again just wrong. You keep referring to a Frost Brand as a shitty sword, but that is fundamentally and objectively wrong, and no matter how many times you repeat it, it will never cease being wrong. Swords +1, +2, and +3 are OP in a bounded accuracy system, and seemingly ignore how powerful flat bonuses are. They don't exist in my campaign world.

The "Frost Brand" sword in 5e is an objectively shitty weapon.....in comparison to the time, effort, and money it costs to create it. Practically speaking, it's dog shit. It has no attack bonus, and does an extra 1d6 cold damage. Its other abilities are largely situational. You're better off crafting a Sword +1, coated in either adamantine or silver instead. People have mentioned that this system encourages multiple people to craft items together. But there's nobody on this planet that can convince me that a dozen 11th-level Wizards would collectively agree to spend five-and-a-half months in their friend's basement crafting this shit-stick weapon.

Time is money.

Quote from: Giant OctopodesNo one WILL ever sell a magic item for less than it cost to make it, and they never need to. You keep hammering this point, as though finding a buyer who is not willing to pay the correct price (which there's less than a 50% chance occurs in the first place, by the way), the character MUST immediately sell it to them, instead of just being able to look for a different buyer. Seriously? Oh it took me 50 years to make this, but it might take me a whole 30 days to find a seller, or if I look for on average 100 days I'll find someone willing to pay me 3x what it cost to make. Guess I better just dump it to the first person I find who offers me 1/10th the price, can't afford to be wasting that massive amount of time looking for a buyer... What are you on about?

Also, just saying, that chart is for the sale of found magic items. What kind of psychotic item crafter are you presuming, to where not only are they taking the first offer that comes along, regardless of how bad it is for them, instead of holding out for proper value, but more importantly, why are they looking for a buyer after crafting it entirely? They're going to put down tens or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, and then hope to find someone to buy it? They're Not going to line up a commission beforehand, and have an intended buyer spelled out before the start? I mean with this long of crafting times, though for immortal beings the crafting time itself is not a significant hurdle, there IS the problem that their intended buyer might die off before you finish crafting it. In that case I could see having to look for a buyer, but having that as the presumption of the default behavior is suspect, to say the least.

You also presume that ALL items of the same rarity take the exact same amount of time and money to craft, when that is also objectively untrue. Rather, though the "Salable magic item" table uses specific values as a shorthand, page 135 of the DMG clearly spells out that they are ranges, such that a Silver Horn could have a value of 525 GP while the Brass Horn could have a value of 5000GP, while an Iron horn Could have a value of 60000 GP and be only 12x, not 100x. It specifically says the DM determines the values of magic items, and the values shown under rarity are simply suggested value ranges. So if you disagree with those valuations, then just Don't Use Them, and use something different. This is not to say they couldn't have done a better job, but man, you're making a mountain out of a molehill and pretending that things are different than they are.

All items of the same rarity do require the exact same amount of time and money to craft. This is factual. I've noticed people getting confused by the "Magic Item Rarity" table on page 135 of the DMG.

But what you really want to look at is page 129, under "Crafting Magic Items". The creation costs of magic items are right there in the book, and there is no deviation. As for the time needed to craft, you have to calculate it....as progress is made in 25 gp increments per day. This means that a Sword +1 takes 20 days to craft, while a "Frost Brand" sword requires 2,000 days (5 years + 5 months + 25 days) to craft. It's all there; you just have to calculate it. I have the calculations at the beginning of this thread. One shot items (like scrolls and potions) can be crafted in half the time and at half the price, but that's the only exception.

It's sheer lunacy. :cool: