Remove XP Cost for Crafting

[cmenden]

Controversial suggestion incoming!

One change I'd really like to see (for reasons that I'm sure are obvious) is the removal of XP costs for potion/wand crafting. Taking the feats already costs quite a bit in the loss of utility and/or power that comes from losing a feat.

"But cmenden, surely you've forgotten that these feats can be purchased with gold!" One might ask, and so I move onto The Controversial Aspect.

The other half of my suggestion is that we remove the ability to purchase these feats with gold. I can't really see a good reason to allow PCs to buy these feats rather than take them at character creation. I know I'm atypically bad at making money, but by the time I had 10k gold, the XP costs of Craft Wand felt too high for a light quester like myself.

Because that's the other classic problem that we've seen hashed and rehashed a lot here in the Suggestion thread. The XP cost of these feats make them hard to continue using as you level up a PC, so they go from being "a high cost that comes at the expense of other valuable things a feat can provide" to "dead weight" in the 8-10 range.

Other Alternative Suggestions could include:
XP (or a portion of it) comes back over ticks like the Recovery Bonus
Reduced XP costs as you get higher level (I think we had this in EFUR but it seems harder to code than just going with 0xp)
The option to craft for 0 xp at a higher gp cost

Thanks for reading!

[Random_White_Guy]

I prefer see them as a progression feat. Like for example Pickpocket is stellar on a low to mid level rogue but by the time you've made your fortunes and have a huge stealth kit and levels and etc and it becomes almost always auto-success it's certainly loses some of the "Thrill" and is barely done or engaged in. An apprentice wizard brewing to make his bones and getting gold to buy new scrolls throughout his career but by the time he's an archmage he has apprentices to tend to such plebeian matters.

[Howlando]

Yes I'm afraid I prefer how things are.

An important, powerful Mage won't bother wasting their time mass-producing goods for the plebs, but may be wealthy and important enough to learn how to make some wands and brews for their personal supply (why not?).

Buying the feats are optional. For some people it may be prohibitive, and they can still elect to take the feats as normally and play a caster.

Other players would cringe at the idea of "wasting" a feat on such, but will happily drop their thousands.

The main thing I REALLY want to avoid is alt "crafter" PCs that friends use to help each other out.... THAT is the worst case scenario for me.

[cmenden]

Thanks for the replies!

The "Crafter Alt" thing would be pretty bad, yeah. I always forget about alts!

[Cruzel]

Perhaps dedicated and long-lived crafter PCs could receive loot or something that lowers or negates the XP cost, perhaps only while they're at high levels for the XP losses/inability to easily gain xp to be crippling?

[LoveLess]

Make it so that experience spent with crafting is added to the Recovery system EFU already has. This way, you cannot just hop on your alt, make some potions, then get off. You would need to be on for a longer period, such as, actually playing the PC. Lowering the cost by a base amount could still be a problem with alt crafters, this would be a pretty nice middle ground.