Craft Rules: Simplified [D&D 3.PF]

[Ziegander]

How have I not seen something like this before? Anyway, the concept is blessedly simple: Every item in the game has it's own listed Craft DC and in the item's description is included a list of components required to Craft the item (for example 1 Steel Ingot for a Longsword) and the amount of time required to Craft the item.

If you've got the components, you make one Craft check, and if you fail you waste your time (and your components if you fail by 6 or more). If you succeed, you spend the required time and at the end are rewarded with your new item. For every 5 points by which you beat the DC you produce the item in half the time (so if you beat the check DC by 15 you create the item in 1/8 the time).

This includes magic items. Yes, Crafting magic items also requires a Craft skill check and a list of components. Perhaps an option for casters to forgo certain components if they "invest" spell slots into the item. Feats like Craft Wondrous Item no longer exist, and any non-caster can craft a magic item as long as they've got the components for it.

Now, I'm not going to spend the time right now listing all of the Craft DCs and component costs and time required to Craft all the items in the SRD, but I may get to it in the future. In the meantime, if anyone else would like to take up the challenge be my guest. Boom. Crafting just became amazingly simple. Alternatively, just use the "raw materials always cost 1/3 the item's market price" rule and handwave the specific components, even for magic items, and assign Craft DCs to all the items. Even simpler, though acquiring raw materials as treasure becomes impossible save through DM fiat.

[Domriso]

You gotta love something simple.

This definitely is a hell of a lot more functional than the normal crafting system. Somewhat similar to my own (currently only theoretical) crafting system.

[unbeliever536]

I assume the time to craft is listed in the description as well as the components? What about workshops? If I find an iron ingot in a dungeon, do I have to go back to town to make a new sword or can I just hit it against the wall until it turns into a sword?
(Now I want a feat that lets you change one of your weapons into another one by smacking it for a few rounds...)

[Ziegander]

I assume the time to craft is listed in the description as well as the components? What about workshops? If I find an iron ingot in a dungeon, do I have to go back to town to make a new sword or can I just hit it against the wall until it turns into a sword?
(Now I want a feat that lets you change one of your weapons into another one by smacking it for a few rounds...)

Well, that'd be on a case-by-case basis. Forging weapons is not something easily done in the middle of nowhere, but carving a bow could be. Making alchemical items could conceivably be done in the wilderness, possibly at a penalty to your check. Spellcasters would be better at crafting on the go, simply because of magic, but even a uniquely gifted mundane craftsman might be able to build his own rudimentary forge out in a dungeon with some extra time and effort.

Either way, crafting would nearly always take more than just a few rounds.

[unbeliever536]

I would suggest having workshops generally be available in towns of sufficient size for most crafting projects. You could probably carve the limbs of a bow out in the middle of nowhere, but unless you have extra bowstrings (a good plan for a real archer, actually), you won't finish it. Maybe most of the effort for crafting a bow should be the strings? Or something. Bows are weird.

Anyway, if you usually need a workshop for crafting, then you can set prices for renting and building/buying workshops, allowing PCs to set up their own base of operations at a sufficient power level. You could then have increased cost/reduced utility versions of workshops that are portable, and magic items that give you a full workshop. Come to think of it, Magnificent Mansion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesMagnificentMansion.htm) makes way more sense as a magic item than as a spell. At high levels, the party would invest general funds into an extradimensional hideout, the entrance of which would be movable once per day (and associated with some kind of small, easily concealed object). Some money would go towards buying it, and the rest for upgrading it with all the shops and libraries needed to make everyone's gear.

[Ziegander]

I would suggest having workshops generally be available in towns of sufficient size for most crafting projects. You could probably carve the limbs of a bow out in the middle of nowhere, but unless you have extra bowstrings (a good plan for a real archer, actually), you won't finish it. Maybe most of the effort for crafting a bow should be the strings? Or something. Bows are weird.

Anyway, if you usually need a workshop for crafting, then you can set prices for renting and building/buying workshops, allowing PCs to set up their own base of operations at a sufficient power level. You could then have increased cost/reduced utility versions of workshops that are portable, and magic items that give you a full workshop. Come to think of it, Magnificent Mansion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesMagnificentMansion.htm) makes way more sense as a magic item than as a spell. At high levels, the party would invest general funds into an extradimensional hideout, the entrance of which would be movable once per day (and associated with some kind of small, easily concealed object). Some money would go towards buying it, and the rest for upgrading it with all the shops and libraries needed to make everyone's gear.

All good, solid ideas.

[Seerow]

I don't see how having a separate craft DC and material component for every item in existence is in any way "simplified"

Simplified would be something like arranging items into broad categories, assigning DCs base on that, say all items take X time to make but can be made faster by increasing the DC.


What you're suggesting is going to end up being dozens of pages of tables, plus the same special crafting materials thing that you've tried to get up and running on at least 3 different occasions I can think of and always abandon because it is a massive pain.

[TuggyNE]

I don't see how having a separate craft DC and material component for every item in existence is in any way "simplified"

Yeah. For example, a sword requires a certain amount of steel of a particular variety, coal of a particular quality, and a lot of blacksmithing paraphernalia. "One iron bar" is painfully oversimplified, and yet also a lot more complicated than "1/3 market value in raw materials".

[Ziegander]

I don't see how having a separate craft DC and material component for every item in existence is in any way "simplified"

Still simpler than how it currently works.


What you're suggesting is going to end up being dozens of pages of tables

Not at all. What I'm suggesting is adding a single cell to every row of the existing item tables presented in, for example, the SRD. This cell is for Craft DC. Then adding a single line at the end of every item's full description, just like the one that already exists for magic items, that reads something like, "Craft (Armorsmithing) DC 25, 1 month; 50 lbs Adamantine." That's pretty simple if you ask me, especially in play, which is what's important.


Yeah. For example, a sword requires a certain amount of steel of a particular variety, coal of a particular quality, and a lot of blacksmithing paraphernalia. "One iron bar" is painfully oversimplified, and yet also a lot more complicated than "1/3 market value in raw materials".

And yet, I allowed for that in my original post if you read it to the end. If what I'm suggesting seems too complicated for you, simply use the standard "1/3 market value" rule, set a Craft DC and time requirement for every item on a case-by-case basis, and make a single Craft check. How is that not simple? The only reason listing actual materials is superior to my mind is that then DMs are empowered to hand those materials out as in-game loot.