[Cuilean]

Fantasy reality check...

If you've *just* made 10th level, and thus have 55,001XP... and you burn 400XP making an item, you now have 54,601XP--- and you're 9th level again.

Making items isn't an overnight process. I don't know if your friends would be willing to hang around for the time it takes to make a +2 sword when they could be out adventuring--- especially when you're not going to hand that new weapon to one of them... but instead are planning on selling it.

Those two things limit the "supply"... as do other issues, like material components, since masterwork items don't necessarily grow on trees, either.

Speaking of selling a magic item--- good luck, since very few people in the world are going to have the cash (or the inclination) to purchase magic items even at their base price. Seriously--- how many people in the "base game" are going to have even five thousand gold in liquid cash? That'd be like having a few hundred thousand dollars to burn. (Thus the "demand" level of the discussion.)

Oh--- Nobles, maybe. Other high-level adventurers... And those who do have that much may be just as likely to kill you for the item than actually pay you for it. That is, if your profits don't disappear in fines for operating outside the auspices of government or guild. Or that they have their own mage cranking out items that they don't need yours.

Be careful in trying to break your DM's system--- it's his world. He can say "You're concentrating so hard on casting the spell, that you don't see your nemesis's homonculus push a stool into your path. You trip over it, fumbling the spell. All the components disappear n a flash of grey-green smoke... Oh, I need a Fortitude save vs. poison gas, DC 40."

Perhaps that's a little heavy-handed... how about "As you gaze in egotistic awe at the work you have created, the door swings open, and the king's guard says, 'We confiscate this item for the war effort!'"