Crafting in 4th Ed?

[DefKab]

There's no craft skill, no item creation feats, nothing like that. How does a character make all these items for us to purchase?

[DeltaEmil]

There's no craft skill, no item creation feats, nothing like that. How does a character make all these items for us to purchase?Magic items are created (enchanted) with a magic ritual (which normally does not take a roll).
NPCs don't roll skills. GMs who do roll for NPCs creating stuff that NPCs use are wasting their time in every past, present and future D&D-edition (or any other gaming system likewise).

Crafting is something that player characters on an adventure don't do during adventuring. This is always something you do during down-time, or is done narratively, or it is something that takes so much time that forcing other player characters to have to wait until the crafted sword of mundanity-and-irrelevancy is finished by the crafting player character is bad-wrong-and-never-fun-no-matter-what.

[The New Bruceski]

There's no craft skill, no item creation feats, nothing like that. How does a character make all these items for us to purchase?

Not every character in the world runs around bound to the 4e system. It's used where needed (adventurers and the things they directly interact with) and does not try to do things outside that sphere. To put it another way, my having a phillips screwdriver does not mean that other people cannot make things with non-phillips screws.

[Mando Knight]

NPCs don't roll skills. GMs who do roll for NPCs creating stuff that NPCs use are wasting their time in every past, present and future D&D-edition (or any other gaming system likewise).
The Book of Recorded Rolls: Two Days after Midsummer, The Fifth Year:

Good King Bob rolled a natural 1 on his Get-Out-Of-Bed Check.
Result for check: roll d%
d% yielded: 00 (Roll on encounter table)
Encounter table: 99 (Roll on Great And Terrifying Monsters table)
G&TM table: 42 (Great Wyrm Red Dragon)

Red Dragon initiative: 15
Bob initiative: 3

Red Dragon Bite attack: 60 to hit, 40 damage.

And thus, as Good King Bob tried to roll out of bed, the Great Wyrm Xyxrphaxhadryx swooped in from the sky and devoured the poor soul in a single strike, ending his short reign after his coronation at Midsummer's Eve.

[DeltaEmil]

The Book of Recorded Rolls: Two Days after Midsummer, The Fifth Year:

Good King Bob rolled a natural 1 on his Get-Out-Of-Bed Check.
Result for check: roll d%
d% yielded: 00 (Roll on encounter table)
Encounter table: 99 (Roll on Great And Terrifying Monsters table)
G&TM table: 42 (Great Wyrm Red Dragon)

Red Dragon initiative: 15
Bob initiative: 3

Red Dragon Bite attack: 60 to hit, 40 damage.

And thus, as Good King Bob tried to roll out of bed, the Great Wyrm Xyxrphaxhadryx swooped in from the sky and devoured the poor soul in a single strike, ending his short reign after his coronation at Midsummer's Eve.I stand corrected. Mando Knight is the chosen one who can do it.

[Crasical]

The 'Master Artisan' Martial Practice from Martial Power 2, page 150 makes nonmagical gear. 'Forge Weapon' and 'Forge Armor' from the same book let you make enchanted weapons and armor.

[MLH]

If PCs want to craft nonmagic armor they either need Master Artisan or you say, sure, you need an appropriate amount of time and it's done. If there's an NPC blacksmith he's able to craft armor by virtue of being described as a blacksmith, or you can give him Master Artisan.

Generally, something that applies to crafting as well as to many other things is: the fact that there are no explicit rules listed for a thing doesn't imply that thing is impossible to do.

[Mando Knight]

I stand corrected. Mando Knight is the chosen one who can do it.

Oh, that's just one of the interesting passages. The rest of the book is full of things like

Farmer Joe attempts a Profession: Agriculture check.
Result: 14
...
[One week later]
...
Result: 16
...
[One week later]
...
Result: 15

[Fox Box Socks]

Oh, that's just one of the interesting passages. The rest of the book is full of things like

Farmer Joe attempts a Profession: Agriculture check.
Result: 14
...
[One week later]
...
Result: 16
...
[One week later]
...
Result: 15
Riveting stuff

[Doug Lampert]

Oh, that's just one of the interesting passages. The rest of the book is full of things like

Farmer Joe attempts a Profession: Agriculture check.
Result: 14
...
[One week later]
...
Result: 16
...
[One week later]
...
Result: 15

On a different forum I recently posted the requirements to rig a particular trap in 3.x. It was basically a rope tied between two trees in the correct location/time to make it a CR 10 trap.

A team of six MASTER CRAFTSMITHS, could do it in about two years. The rope (the only material component) would cost ONLY 3,333 GP!

Gosh, I'm glad they've got such realistic rules.

Or, let's repair a wagon, the wagon costs 35 GP, repair parts for whatever is wrong cost 1/6th as much (it doesn't matter what is wrong, the time and component cost don't change, but a replacement wheel comes to about the right cost so I'll assume that's it). Call it 5.83 GP. Fine so far. But the time required is HALF as long as for a craftsman to build the wagon in the first place! To replace one broken wheel or axel with an already complete replacement part.

It takes WEEKS to replace that wheel. And you can't improvise repairs, you need the components.

Then there's the time required to make Mithral or Adamantine armor. Or the ability to craft coins with more gold than you started with. Or the instant crafting of clubs and the like from thin air.

Then there's the fact that craft is usable untrained, which means that the pay rates for unskilled labor in the book are wrong by the book! They're grossly too low.

Lossing the craft rules is GOOD. The craft rules and skills in 3.x weren't used by ANYONE! (Including the writers and playtesters or they'd have noticed the problem with untrained craft and with the times needed for special material versions of otherwise makable items.) AFAICT those who claim to like them never used them. They just provided a way for people to CLAIM there was a mechanical way to do these things and a handful of DCs for the fabricate spell.

My wife's fourth ed. character is a blacksmith from a family of blacksmiths. It works just as well to claim this WITHOUT mechanical backing as WITH mechanical backing, and we don't have a subsystem that no one actually uses and waste of a trained skill on a roleplaying point to do it. Another character is a merchant, he has appropriate skills for a merchant, he does fine without "Profession: Merchant +15" or whatever written on the sheet.

[malachi]

I think I read in the PHB (or possibly on a forum somewhere while I was planning my first character) that you should just use some skill you can come up with some sort of connection to the thing you're crafting/repairing.

The first example that come to mind are to fix a saddle, use athletics. Bluff for forgeries/disguises, arcana for magical things, diplomacy/etc. for clothing, dungeoneering/nature for traps, etc. In my thread about cooking (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=209447) you can get an idea for the sorts of calls you can make.