Alternatives to Magic Item Creation Experience Point Cost

Most fantasy games make magic item creation difficult because the designers believe that some players might abuse the system by creating many (or particularly powerful) magic items. Therefore, some fantasy game systems require characters who create magic items to expend some of their experience points when creating magic items.

The key problem with this solution is that characters who create magic items will be penalized because these experience points are used to make the characters themselves more powerful. At some point the character creating magic items will have significantly fewer experience points and that character will be less powerful than the others, even if the character only does a moderate amount of magic item creation.

There are at least a few ways to fix this:

• Give extra experience points to characters who create magic items.
• Allow experience points to be drained from willing volunteers in addition to the magic item creator.
• Require a very limited substance to create magic items in you game world.
• Temporarily drain another aspect of a character’s energy when creating a magic item.

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