Quote Originally Posted by Craft (Cheese) View Post
Item crafting. The devs haven't really talked about it much, but it's something that needs to be addressed. What does everyone think of it? What new directions should 5E take?
My general guidelines for item creation are:

a) Item creation should be possible for PCs. If the PCs have the power to kill demons and gods, it should be within their capabilities to make stuff. Item creation should also be practical – it shouldn't require jumping through a ludicrous number of hoops.

b) Item creation should be cheaper than buying the same item from someone else. This is economics 101. If making an item costs the same as buying it from a shop, no-one will make items.

c) To balance out a) and b), item creation should require some amount of character creation resources. If everyone can make magic items, there's no scarcity. You should need to spend feats (or skill points, or build points, or whatever) to do it.

At the moment I quite like the Pathfinder model for doing it: PCs can create items for 50% of their value, assuming they have the time, item prerequisites, and feats to do so. Effectively, an item creation feat is trading a feat slot for gold (and for the ability to make your own stuff instead of relying on other people to do it). The 50% mark is a logical one because that's also the basic sell value for items.

Not everyone likes item crafting, but some people do, and it would be pretty silly to refuse to include a system for item crafting just because not all the players will use it.