What is the point of a high craft score?

[CyberThread]

Just asking overall, what is the benefit of a high skill point allotment in a craft ?

[Curmudgeon]

Generally the point is so you can take a penalty and create things significantly faster.

[Flickerdart]

None at all, for most craft skills - you likely won't have enough downtime to make anything useful, or in useful quantities.

Craft (Poisonmaking) measures progress in gold though, so it can actually be used pretty quickly, and keep poison relevant for a little while longer than normal.

[Story]

Crafting speed and hence income is quadratic in your skill check. Combine it with massive numbers of Unseen Crafters and you can rapidly churn out nonmagical items.

Though at the point where you're selling hundreds of masterwork swords, you might struggle to get market price.

[Big Fau]

Because Fabricate.

[KillianHawkeye]

Because you want to be really good at it? :smallconfused:

[Saintheart]

Essential for the Runecaster. Without it, no runes.

[Gnome Alone]

Ye Olde Bragging Rights.

[animewatcha]

Just asking overall, what is the benefit of a high skill point allotment in a craft ?

So you can make use of special materials yourself. If you have dragon mag, check ( I think ) 358 for list of mods you can do to weapons/armor at just the creation process. With a high enough heck and time, you can have oerthblooded ( or whatever it is called also dragon mag ) mithral breastplate or something.

[Naomi Li]

If you're playing on a "1 day of downtime every seven adventures" then it probably isn't worth much, mechanically, and it is largely just for roleplaying. However, if you instead get "several months of downtime per adventure" then you could easily be making a significant amount of your profit from craft/profession/perform instead of from adventuring. (Adventuring for a reason other than profit... who would have imagined such a crazy idea? :P)

Your DM might let you use your craft skill as a highly specialized knowledge skill that could show up in roleplaying every once in a while. The collective knowledge of the forum can probably supply you with many more ways it can be extremely useful.

[Ansem]

You get enough points in a craft skill that you can take 10 and beat the highest DC.

[Kane0]

So you can make elven, dwarven, orcish and dragonhide stuff.

[Chronos]

You get enough points in a craft skill that you can take 10 and beat the highest DC.
There is no highest DC: You can always craft quicker with a higher check.

[DeltaEmil]

The fastest crafter are spellcasters that have the spell fabricate.

[Ansem]

There is no highest DC: You can always craft quicker with a higher check.

But it becomes irrelevant after that, if not an Artificer you can still buy something or use a spell to do it for you. So you just need about 9-13 points in it to take 10 since the highest DC is 23 I think for weapons and armour.

You can then spread it into other craft skills until you can take 10 there as well.

[Gnaeus]

In PF you can use it for magic item crafting in place of Spellcraft or if you are a non-caster. I most often see this for Alchemists using Craft Alchemy to brew potions since they get a nice bonus to that check, but there are other corner cases in which it helps.

[Fax Celestis]

Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week’s work. If the check succeeds, multiply your check result by the DC. If the result × the DC equals the price of the item in sp, then you have completed the item. (If the result × the DC equals double or triple the price of the item in silver pieces, then you’ve completed the task in one-half or one-third of the time. Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner.) If the result × the DC doesn’t equal the price, then it represents the progress you’ve made this week. Record the result and make a new Craft check for the next week. Each week, you make more progress until your total reaches the price of the item in silver pieces.

TL;DR the more times you beat the DC with one check, the faster you complete. If an item has a craft DC of 15, and you check in at 60, you complete in 1/4 the time. If an item has a craft DC of 5, and you check in at 60, you complete in 1/12th the time--a craft DC 5 item that takes normally 8 hours to make can be made in about 40 minutes by someone who hits a DC of 60.

This partially plays into the infinite club scenario: as a club has a craft DC of 0, you can get one instantly (by walking outside and picking up a stick). Since you can infinitely beat the DC of 0, you can craft them arbitrarily fast. My preferred solution is to give clubs and other craft DC 0 items a craft DC of 1.

[Flickerdart]

TL;DR the more times you beat the DC with one check, the faster you complete. If an item has a craft DC of 15, and you check in at 60, you complete in 1/4 the time. If an item has a craft DC of 5, and you check in at 60, you complete in 1/12th the time--a craft DC 5 item that takes normally 8 hours to make can be made in about 40 minutes by someone who hits a DC of 60.

This partially plays into the infinite club scenario: as a club has a craft DC of 0, you can get one instantly (by walking outside and picking up a stick). Since you can infinitely beat the DC of 0, you can craft them arbitrarily fast. My preferred solution is to give clubs and other craft DC 0 items a craft DC of 1.
That doesn't actually help, since Craft progress is determined by GP cost and not DC. Because a club costs 0 gp, it is completed in 0 seconds because whatever result you get for check result * DC, it's infinity times higher than 0. A club's normal craft DC isn't 0, but 12 (as a simple melee weapon).

[Kennisiou]

With most craft skills you don't need a lot of investment, however a very small number of craft skills have some very high DC craftable items (craft poisonmaking has some poisons that are a craft DC of, like, 30 to make). For the most part you just get a few points in a craft to be able to quickly craft some of the higher DC items, but for crafts like poisonmaking that have high DC craftable items, investing heavily into the craft can be worth it.

[AzureKnight]

Between adventures and before leveling pcs I encorporated a trqining period where the various classes hone their skill both combat and non combat. With this our mage took profession book binder and craft book. with her synergy bonus and the likes she uses her skills to make her own spell books that hold about 75 to 100 % more pages for her traveling spellbooks which saves the gnome carrying capacity.

[Flickerdart]

Between adventures and before leveling pcs I encorporated a trqining period where the various classes hone their skill both combat and non combat. With this our mage took profession book binder and craft book. with her synergy bonus and the likes she uses her skills to make her own spell books that hold about 75 to 100 % more pages for her traveling spellbooks which saves the gnome carrying capacity.
Having a book with more pages doesn't make it much lighter than just having two books.

[Tvtyrant]

Having a book with more pages doesn't make it much lighter than just having two books.

Unless the covers are made of, like, lead or something.

[AzureKnight]

To clarify she used the skills to find lighter materials to make the books sorry i didnt clarify.

[Flickerdart]

To clarify she used the skills to find lighter materials to make the books sorry i didnt clarify.
I'm pretty sure that a community of really smart guys with no muscles would already have found the lightest possible materials to make books out of.

[CyberThread]

No because they have really high intelligence, but really low wisdom.

[ArqArturo]

In PF you can use it for magic item crafting in place of Spellcraft or if you are a non-caster. I most often see this for Alchemists using Craft Alchemy to brew potions since they get a nice bonus to that check, but there are other corner cases in which it helps.

More than once I've had friends play spellcasters that refuse to create items. So in PF this helps a lot.

[nedz]

So you can make lots of money without any of that dangerous adventuring business.

[ArqArturo]

So you can make lots of money without any of that dangerous adventuring business.

It's also essential for Basket-weaver builds :smallbiggrin:.

[DigoDragon]

Your DM might let you use your craft skill as a highly specialized knowledge skill that could show up in roleplaying every once in a while.

My group actually does this. For example, my wizard has Craft (Weaponsmithing) and in several situations has been able to track two different armies based on the make of the abandoned weapons we found from several battlefields.

One of our GMs has the requirement that any PC who wants to make their own magic items, they have to either craft the item first or purchase it from someone who has the relevant skills. He also ruled that Fabricate cannot create masterwork items. However, we usually get lots of downtime to craft things and he reworked the system so checks can be made daily, so it's doable.



So you can make elven, dwarven, orcish and dragonhide stuff.

And improve them twice as much? :smallwink:

[Flickerdart]

No because they have really high intelligence, but really low wisdom.
It's a good thing that Craft is Int-based.

[Coidzor]

Unless the covers are made of, like, lead or something.

Wasn't a book with lead covers and copper pages the strongest listed material in complete arcane for variant spellbook materials?

[CyberThread]

Wizard was so paranoid of his spells, that he would later die 40 years, from lead poisoning.

[Chronos]

Quoth Fax:

This partially plays into the infinite club scenario: as a club has a craft DC of 0, you can get one instantly (by walking outside and picking up a stick). Since you can infinitely beat the DC of 0, you can craft them arbitrarily fast. My preferred solution is to give clubs and other craft DC 0 items a craft DC of 1.
Nah, you can craft a club in zero time, but you still have to start with raw materials. Just because it's 0 GP worth of materials doesn't mean there's no material at all. So, you pick up a free stick, and instantly convert it into a free club.

[Flickerdart]

Nah, you can craft a club in zero time, but you still have to start with raw materials. Just because it's 0 GP worth of materials doesn't mean there's no material at all. So, you pick up a free stick, and instantly convert it into a free club.
Curiously, "start with raw materials" is not a step in the Craft process. RAW, you must pay for 1/3 of the cost materials regardless of whether or not they are already on hand, and that is the only thing that addresses materials. So the only material-related action required from you to create a club is to pay 1/3 of 0gp to...someone. To the forest, I guess.