Crafting items has got to be a godsend. If you have the money(I did after getting Thrommel's rewards and selling items and such) then craft away. Sure it's smart to craft a Belt of Giant Strength for Fighters and a Gloves of Dexterity for your Rogue, but it doesn't end there. The best thing to do is craft magic arms and armor. Not only can you increase the weapon/armor's bonus to +3, you can also add things fire damage(weapon), spell resistance(armor) AND re-name the item. I had Meleny craft items for me. She can add electric damage and cold damage and make any weapon up to +3. On that note I have some questions: What does "Hands of Fire(and all the other Hands of -- items)" do? How can you add more things like Shocking Burst when crafting magic arms and armor?
I think most of us already swear by crafting, but thanks for the heads up anyway. I always have a wizard in my party to craft, and I usually try to get a Cleric of Pelor with the good domain, so he can get holy smite and add holy to my weapons. Thus, basically two slots in my party are pretty much fixed, due to the utility of crafting in this game. In answer to your questions, I have never seen or heard of any "hands of ..." items in this game, so you must be using a mod I don't know. There's nothing like that in the 3.5 DMG. If you can't put fire and such on a weapon, it's because you lack some prerequisite. That would be one of these four things: high enough level, required spell, enough money, or enough spare experience. To add fire or flaming burst, you need to be able to cast flame strike or fireball. Flaming burst requires a higher level than fire (12 according to the DMG, but I think ToEE changed this, probably to 10), and more money/experience. To add frost or icy burst, you need chill metal or ice storm. Shock and shocking burst require call lightning or lightning bolt. Anarchic, requires chaos hammer. Axiomatic, order's wrath. Holy, holy smite. Keen, keen edge. Mighty cleaving, divine power. Unholy, unholy blight. Each of these has some level requirement, which varies by effect. If you have the necessary spell and the option isn't either white or red, then you're not yet high enough level. By level 10, all of them should be doable. If it's red, you don't have enough money or exp, but you're high enough level (I believe... don't hold me to that). A caveat: I've found that adding lots of stuff doesn't help much, because in my game at least, when I examine the damage I never get more than 4 rolls for added things (including sneak attack, fire, frost, shocking burst, holy, etc.). Putting more things on just made it kinda random which 4 would have an effect. Weird, I know, but now you won't waste your money. Another caveat: Adding spell resistance doesn't seem to actually work in my game. It'll take your money and give you squat. I guess it's bugged.
I can tell that I am not using any mods to get items like "Hands of --". I used the Craft Wondrous Item feat if that helps, and it was simply there. I do however have the current Co8 patch installed. Another thing, Meleny(my crafter) is unable to add fire effects to weapons but she has flame strike and, for what it's worth, produce flame. As for my cleric, she worships St. Cuthbert, which brings up a question -- how do I memorize more than one spell in her domain(if possible)? And last, how do I quote people in replies? I am new to this particular forum.
The Co8 thing is the "mod" I had in mind, actually. I don't use it, and craft wonderous doesn't have any hands in it, so there you go. Patch/mod, potato/potahto. What level is Meleny? Remember that each add-on has a different level requirement, so being able to add one doesn't mean you can add another, even if you have the required spell. If she's 10th, and has enough money/exp, then there must be some bug or some rule I'm not aware of. Is it possible she's multi-classed? You have to have the required level in the class that's being used to craft, so she'd have to be like 8th or 10th level in druid, not say, 6th level druid and 4th level fighter. As for memorizing spells in the domain, you only get one domain spell per level for your cleric, and you can choose from only two for each level (one from each of her two domains). When picking spells to memorize, look at the top for the domain tab and click it. You will have a new list of spells and slots to fill. Those are your domain spells. To quote people, just click on the quote button in the lower right corner of their post, instead of the post reply button.
The level requirements for the various weapon power-ups shouldn't even be there. The DMG is a little confusing, but the FAQ has clarified that the Caster Level in the item description is for adjucating level-based abilities of the item and things like Dispel Magic for randomly found treasure. Items otherwise use the caster level set by the creator (which cannot be higher than his own caster level). If a character can cast the required spells (or has access to them through a scroll or other character) and has the appropriate feat, he can create the item in question, regardless of level. The only restriction is the enhancement bonus (the plusses to hit and damage) which can't exceed his caster level divided by 3.
I don't know the faq you're referring to, but I think that must be talking about scrolls and wands and stuff. Those work according to whatever level you have and can be made as soon as you have the spell. For adding fire to weapons, though, you have a level requirement. The DMG makes that pretty clear, I think.
The DMG actually contradicts itself. On one page it says the caster level is a requirement. On another page it doesn't. Okay, my mistake, it's in the 3.5 DMG errata not the FAQ: If you'll note in the DMG for all the items, the CL is separated from the listed prerequisiteds by a semi-colon, just like the magical aura of the item is. It is a separate entry, rather than part of the list.
You're absolutely right. I guess that explains those weird entries in which an item gets, say, an entry of CL 6 and then under the prereqs it says "caster must be at least 6th level". I had not read the into stuff all that carefully. I turned to that section of the DMG when I wondered why I couldn't craft stuff and determined the CL entry was a prereq because that explained why I couldn't craft certain things. Really, it was just Troika making the same mistake reading those entries. Anyway, that does seem to be how things work in the game. But thanks for the clarification on the P&P rules.
No problem. I think the DMG writers themselves were confused. I know the same question came up about 3.0, the official response was that CL wasn't a requirement unless otherwise stated and then they didn't fix the text before putting it into the 3.5 DMG. Troika was probably just going straight from the books and didn't read the FAQ or errata.
Just to follow up on this, I was reading some of the articles by Skip Williams at Wizards.com, and he says explicitly that the item's caster level is a requirement. Basically, the item's caster level is used for determining its saving throws and resistance to dispell effects, but the creator's caster level must be at least as high as the item's caster level. The reason there are sometimes additional entries afterwards is because different people or things can help to supply the prerequisites by cooperating to create the item. Thus, a lower level character could use a scroll or item with a high enough caster level to meet the requirements of the item's caster level, but he wouldn't meet, necessarily, a requirement that said the creator has to be of a certain caster level. Thus, apart from getting some of the CLs (intentionally) wrong, ToEE looks to have gotten the crafting stuff down a bit better than we'd thought (assuming Skip knows what he's talking about, which it seems he probably must).
Skip has been known to be wrong/confused before. Until they make that change in the Errata or the FAQ, I'm inclined to take it with a grain of salt. Especially since the listed Caster Levels for many items seem rather arbitrary. (17th level to make a level 1 Pearl of Power?)
Fair enough. You'd think he'd have been called on it by somebody, though, since he repeats it over and over in the articles on crafting, but then again maybe not. The levels do seem rather arbitrary. And I don't personally find the correction from the errata file much more clear than what was there before. Ah well...
