[hermetic]

I think WotC intended for item creation to become far more widespread in 3E than in previous editions. Indeed progress through the levels is so much quicker now that it doesn't seem like a big loss to give up xp for items. More heart-breaking is to lose xp when casting certain high-level spells; the higher-level psionic powers that cost xp are even more numerous.

In my campaign I allow "mules" to be used by the players. i.e. They can have a character for regular play with all the bells and whistles of wisely allocated skills & feats; or they can use, for any given outing, their mule character whose purpose it is to gain xp which he will later use to create items for the main character. In some cases the mule may actually turn out to be a more important character than the player's original power pc, but that's up to the DM ultimately.