3.5 Craft Skill: Laborers & Assistants

[Adept_Scholar]

The craft skill in the 3.5 P.H. (pg. 70) says that untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1sp a day, yet it does not say exactly how they are used to produce goods/items for PCs. Clarification?

[deuxhero]

Aid Another presumably.



Aid Another
You can help another character achieve success on his or her skill check by making the same kind of skill check in a cooperative effort. If you roll a 10 or higher on your check, the character you are helping gets a +2 bonus to his or her check, as per the rule for favorable conditions. (You can’t take 10 on a skill check to aid another.) In many cases, a character’s help won’t be beneficial, or only a limited number of characters can help at once.

In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn’t achieve alone.

See also: Aid Another in Combat

An untrained assistant has a 50% chance of giving you a +2 bonus and 50% chance of doing nothing (odds slightly better if they have 12 int instead of 10)

[ericgrau]

Fortunately since you're not crafting under pressure the assistant can take a 10 to insure success on giving the main crafter a +2 100% of the time. The main crafter probably wants to take a 10 too. And bonuses from multiple assistants stack until the DM says it's unreasonable. I'd guess 2 assistants for many crafts. So assuming two assistants the crafter would succeed on a DC of his modifier plus 14.

The rules are vague here because you can't do much of anything with craft anyway. It's only good for DMs who want to estimate what the 1000 NPCs are doing. Like "How many weapons can they make for the army in a month?"

[deuxhero]

Specific trumps general and "You can’t take 10 on a skill check to aid another." trumps the general rules for taking 10.

[Adept_Scholar]

I see, I see. So let me post a couple of examples to see if I understand correctly:

Let's say I have a PC who has 2 ranks in craft, pottery and has an INT score of 14 (+2 mod) and they want to craft 10 superior clay vases in a day (for example, the area they are in is an importer of fine antiques & they want to make a little extra change (and do a bit of role playing :smalltongue:). According to the 3.5 P.H., one clay jug (or vase for this case) costs 3cp (I will assume this to be a "very simple" item with a DC of 5). With that in mind, I will put the price of a "typical" clay jug at 6cp (DC 10), "high quality" clay jug at 9cp (DC 15), and "superior" clay jug at 12cp (DC 20). Now, going through the steps:

10 superior clay vases (or jugs)=120cp=12sp
1/3 12sp=4sp crafting cost for materials
PC rolls a 16 & adds the +2 INT mod & 2 ranks in craft skill to equal the required DC of 20.
PC takes the result of 20 and multiplies it by the DC of 20 to get 400. 400 is more than three times the amount of the items in cp (120), so the PC creates the vases in 1/3 of the time (8 hours rather than 24). We can estimate the vases to be worth half of their selling cost of 12cp each, so the PC could sell the 10 vases for 6sp making a profit of 2sp (after 4sp crafting cost). Since the area the PC is in has a demand for this item, I could increase this profit in order to make selling & crafting this particular item for valuable within the area/territory.

A 2nd example using two assistants:

The same PC wants to craft 100 superior clay vases in a week & finds two assistants within the town to aid him.

100 superior clay vases=1,200cp=120sp
1/3 120sp=40sp crafting cost for materials
14sp cost for assistants (1sp each per day for a week)
Assistant one rolls 11 with no INT mod=+2 to PC (roll 10+)
Assistant two rolls 14 with no INT mod=+2 to PC (roll 10+)
PC rolls 13 and adds ranks (2), INT mod (2), & assistants (4, 2 each) which equals 21, greater than the required DC of 20.
PC takes the result of 21 and multiplies it by the DC of 20 to get 420. 420 is more than three times the amount of the items in sp (120), so the PC (and two assistants) create the vases in 1/3 of the time (2 days rounded down). They could then be sold for an estimated 60sp equalling a profit of 6sp (after 40sp crafting cost & 14sp cost for assistants).

Comments and suggestions? While I can certainly see and understand why making a few sp here and there would be almost nothing to hardy adventurers (especially mid to high level ones), I think by adding an economic element of imports and exports of goods within different areas/territories for example, could make a more realistic world and make crafting things outside of weapons and armor worth at least something (not to mention encouraging a different element of character roleplay :smallwink:).