How long *should* crafting take?

[Coidzor]

What do you think would happen if, say, mundane crafting had half the object's gp value in sp as the target number to reach with the craft checks rather than the full value? Other than even more starting characters making their gear and shifting around the numbers for using masses of mundane crafters to flood a market if one was going to engage in such shenaniganery. And I suppose it taking less time to create a mountain of clubs/quarterstaves.

So it would still cost 1/3 the gp value in raw materials, but instead of rolling to get 15,000 sp for a set of full plate it'd be 7,500 sp instead, which I think would halve the time. 7500/324 or ~24 weeks vs 15000/324 or ~47 weeks. By that same token a 150 sp Longsword would be 75 sp and in one week 3 Longswords could be made with a check of 15 (DC 15*Result 15=225).

Or multiplying the check result by 5 to find the sp in progress? Again with the minimum check result for full plate that'd bump 324 to 1620. 15000/1620 or ~9.25 weeks so either 10 weeks if working straight through on another suit of full plate or 9 weeks and a few days doing daily checks. 150 sp Longsword vs 225 result*5= 1125 or 1125/150 = 7.5 longswords for a week's work.

Combining both of those ideas would give 7500/1620 or ~4.6 -> 5 weeks, which might be far too fast even for ramping up mundane production. Then that 75 sp to make vs 1125 result for crafting Longswords would result in 15 of them in one week, which is almost certainly too fast for the minimum check result.

[icefractal]

I think what you want here is an exponential progression rather than a linear one. That is, after all, what PCs are actually expected to follow, by the CR system*. And as a benefit, you can have high-level characters actually giving a crap about Craft skills without every blacksmith suddenly cranking out gear at a breakneck pace.

Because total skill bonus varies so widely, I'd base this off ranks. So, for a conservative curve (puts the total result on the standard scale, accounting for moderate investment in the skill):
Base: SP / week (as currently)
At 8 ranks: 3x SP / week
At 13 ranks: GP / week
At 18 ranks: 3x GP / week

For a more aggressive curve - higher than standard once you factor increasing bonus in, but keeping pace better with the increasingly large amounts of treasure and other income methods we're comparing it to - we can use the standard scale directly:
Base: SP / week
At 7 ranks: 5x SP / week
At 10 ranks: GP / week
At 14 ranks: 5x GP / week
At 16 ranks: PP / week
At 21 ranks: 5x PP / week

I haven't run the numbers fully with these, but I think personally I'd go with the second (faster) one. It still doesn't compete with Fabricate, but at least a skilled crafter can do some impressive things, rather than the current "stop using the skill after low levels" situation.

*Which is why the phrase "linear warriors, quadratic wizards" is kind of amusing to me. Those are both wrong!

[Coidzor]

I think what you want here is an exponential progression rather than a linear one. That is, after all, what PCs are actually expected to follow, by the CR system*. And as a benefit, you can have high-level characters actually giving a crap about Craft skills without every blacksmith suddenly cranking out gear at a breakneck pace.

Hmm, that does make sense, especially when you put it that way. Also, I do love scaling/granularity... :smallamused:

Thank you. :smallsmile:

Basing it off of ranks does sound interesting, though, and it would give something to those that invested in it relative to Fabricating casters.


Because total skill bonus varies so widely, I'd base this off ranks. So, for a conservative curve (puts the total result on the standard scale, accounting for moderate investment in the skill):
Base: SP / week (as currently)
At 8 ranks: 3x SP / week
At 13 ranks: GP / week
At 18 ranks: 3x GP / week

For a more aggressive curve - higher than standard once you factor increasing bonus in, but keeping pace better with the increasingly large amounts of treasure and other income methods we're comparing it to - we can use the standard scale directly:
Base: SP / week
At 7 ranks: 5x SP / week
At 10 ranks: GP / week
At 14 ranks: 5x GP / week
At 16 ranks: PP / week
At 21 ranks: 5x PP / week

Hmm, so a level 6, Int 13(12->13 from HD 4) type with max ranks in a craft would, by the first one craft 3 sp * DC 18 * Taking 10 Check 22(9 ranks 1 Int 2 MW Tools) of Full Plate or 1188/15000 sp's worth of Full Plate in a week, so around 12.6 weeks for a set of Full Plate at that level of expertise. By the second metric that's 5*18*22 = 1980 sp per week instead or ~7.5 weeks per Full Plate. Versus the default 18*22 = 396 sp per week and ~38 weeks per Full Plate.

2 or 3 months rather than the better part of a year seems better for a fairly competent NPC armorsmith.

3*15*22 = 990 vs 150 or 6 & 2/3 longswords a week.
5*15*22 = 1650 vs 150 or 11 longswords a week.
15*22 = 330 vs 150 or a bit more than 2 longswords a week.

So more than 2 longswords also seems good, though how many more than 2...

At level 10 that bumps up to Int 14 for a craft mod of 13 ranks + 2 Int + 2 MW Tools = +17. Probably a complement of assistants or even characters with greater than the base rate, but I don't wanna bump it up too much beyond the ranks. Though I suppose I could go 2 assistants giving him a +4 combined and a +1 from, say, a minor magic item to round it off at +20 modifier.

10 sp *18 DC *30 Taking 10 = 5400 vs 15000 or 2.777777 weeks for a suit of full plate for both proposed methods of scaling
DC 18 * 30 Check result = 540 vs 15000 or 27.7777 weeks for a suit of full plate

5400 vs 16500 for 3.05 weeks a MW Full Plate
540 vs 16500 for 30.5 weeks a MW Full Plate

10 sp * 15 DC * 30 = 4500 vs 150 or 30 longswords a week for both methods of increased scaling.
15*30 = 450 or 3 longswords a week.

4500 vs 3150 for 1.42 MW longswords a week.
450 vs 3150 for 7 weeks a MW longsword.

By level 10 my sensibilities are much more forgiving of producing things very quickly/a lot of them... So it certainly seems OK to me.

I think I'll take the second one and add in something minor like x2 sp for fully investing in the relevant craft skill at 1st level and something for maxing the craft skill at 20th level, too, for two more spots... Maybe say that 20th level has 10x platinum pieces for the result and that the rate increases in increments of 10x Plat every 4 ranks post-20.

And then I just got the idea for a rather silly little feat that halves the time it takes to craft mundane objects and eliminates the increase in time for crafting masterwork versus non-masterwork so the only difference is whether one pays the extra GP cost to make it masterwork. Or just causes items to be auto-masterwork without paying extra time or GP. XD

Only really of interest for an NPC crafter or giving it to one's NPCs for breaking the economy even harder, I suppose, though.


I haven't run the numbers fully with these, but I think personally I'd go with the second (faster) one. It still doesn't compete with Fabricate, but at least a skilled crafter can do some impressive things, rather than the current "stop using the skill after low levels" situation.

*Which is why the phrase "linear warriors, quadratic wizards" is kind of amusing to me. Those are both wrong!

I must admit, I was, and am, not quite sure of what the best points to check any changes are. I'm pretty certain Full Plate is probably one of them as the most expensive core item that one would commonly want made or think about WRT adventuring types, but that's about it as far as certainty of reference points. I was thinking comparing starting characters level 5 or 6 characters, then level 10ish characters. *Maybe* level 15 characters, but probably not level 20 types, since level 20 characters are supposed to be pretty crazy.

I imagine Craft could actually be used by such characters to, say, bolster the number of weapons/masterwork weapons available to a city about to come under siege, such as Brindol in the Red Hand of Doom as part of helping prepare. Or allowing the party to more reasonably prep up with certain things in advance given some raw materials and time.

Heh.

[Malroth]

Perhaps Instead of a chart with discreet values You could multiply (Check Result x DC x [skill ranks ^2]) and have the result be in copper pieces. Lv 1 characters or skill dabblers would actually be worse off but a specalist by lv 3 is working twice as fast and 10x as fast by lv 10

[Coidzor]

One thing I forgot to take into account earlier was deliberately increasing the DC by increments of 10 for faster crafting. :smallredface:

I was thinking a bit ago that maybe at some point the increased time to make something Masterwork would be obviated and then maybe the increased cost in materials as well. Maybe vice versa.

So that it's just sufficient skill = auto-MW.


Perhaps Instead of a chart with discreet values You could multiply (Check Result x DC x [skill ranks ^2]) and have the result be in copper pieces. Lv 1 characters or skill dabblers would actually be worse off but a specalist by lv 3 is working twice as fast and 10x as fast by lv 10

Why in copper pieces? And what would be done with daily crafting checks then? And what would be done with using craft untrained?

DC 15 * Result 15 * ranks squared 16 = 3600 cp / 10 copper per the silver = 360 sp vs DC 15 * Result 15 = 225 sp.

So a 1st level character would be 60% faster than they otherwise would be, assuming 4 ranks + 1 Int. Only 90% as fast as they could before with 3 ranks(9/10), 40% with 2 ranks(4/10), or 10% with 1 rank.

Multiplying it just by ranks (if any) might be interesting though. It would reward investing ranks rather than relying on non-rank bonuses alone without requiring ranks be invested to use the skill, and with more granularity than hidding X number of ranks per tier...

Looking at stuff like 15*15 = 225 vs 15*15*4 = 900 vs 15*35*23=12,075 vs 35*35*23= 28,175. Granted, I'm underestimating the taking 10 result at higher levels, potentially by quite a bit here*, but, still, compare those numbers with 150 sp for a Longsword or 500 sp for a Greatsword or 3500 sp for a MW Greatsword or 4000 sp for a MW Cold Iron Greatsword(unless MW is doubled too) or 5300 sp for a MW Silvered Greatsword or 30,500 sp for an Adamantine Greatsword.

*Not taking MW tools or assistants or having/borrowing a +6 item or getting inherent bonuses or putting ability score increases from leveling into Int due to having an Int focus, for instance. Aside from fudging the last two up by one from 34 to 35 to match up with the increased DC.

[Curbstomp]

What I do is pretty simple. For someone who owns proper facilities and is utilizing them (say a blacksmith in a smithy) I give them results in GP instead of SP for mundane crafting. If they are doing it on the road without proper facilities then the results are as written for crafters.

This meshes pretty closely with actual crafter output in the middle ages. Particularly with regard to a smith or to a tailor. Additionally it has the advantage of very little change to existing game mechanics.

-Curb

[ace rooster]

I don't have much of a problem with the crafting times. A level 3 dwarf craftsman with 4 level 1 assistants can run a workshop that produces 3 suits of masterwork full plate a year. More if he lets his apprentices work independently.

6 ranks, +3 skill focus, +1 ability, +2 masterwork tools, +2 dwarf, +8 from 4 aid others, +10 from taking 10 to get a result of 32, against a difficulty of 28, to produce 89.6gp per week.


Masterwork full plate is the best of the best of mundane armours, costing more than a house. Most of the time they would be knocking out scale mail at 3 suits a week, with the occasional suit of banded mail.

The only apparent issue is adamantine. As standard the workshop above would take years to produce one suit. I picture it being like tungsten carbide. The stuff is near impossible to work even now (which is what limits it's usefulness), so taking 3 years to form it with a hammer actually seems ok. If you want to speed it up then a feat to speed crafting with adamantine could be reasonable. Other than that I wouldn't change it.

[Mithril Leaf]

I don't have much of a problem with the crafting times. A level 3 dwarf craftsman with 4 level 1 assistants can run a workshop that produces 3 suits of masterwork full plate a year. More if he lets his apprentices work independently.

6 ranks, +3 skill focus, +1 ability, +2 masterwork tools, +2 dwarf, +8 from 4 aid others, +10 from taking 10 to get a result of 32, against a difficulty of 28, to produce 89.6gp per week.


Masterwork full plate is the best of the best of mundane armours, costing more than a house. Most of the time they would be knocking out scale mail at 3 suits a week, with the occasional suit of banded mail.

The only apparent issue is adamantine. As standard the workshop above would take years to produce one suit. I picture it being like tungsten carbide. The stuff is near impossible to work even now (which is what limits it's usefulness), so taking 3 years to form it with a hammer actually seems ok. If you want to speed it up then a feat to speed crafting with adamantine could be reasonable. Other than that I wouldn't change it.

Mechanus Gear is actually notably better than Full Plate.

[Crimson Wolf]

I would liek to say it would ENTIRELY depend on what the persons craft is. Swordmaking can actually be rather quick with the right materials and preparation. They have videos on youtube of people making swords and showing the steps and can be done in basically a day if you have the molds and such ready with the metals ready as well. A DAY. (of course for more intricate work maybe a Full day of painstaking work). Armorsmithing would take much much longer as you not only need to shape every single plate, but also connecting them all, and some armors not only use chain (holy sh*& chainmail takes forever and a day to connect them all properly), but use chain, plates, scales, leathers and padding (which require the leather to be made and that process) AND all connected then fit to the user!

Now alchemy tbh I am not sure on x.x anything with bows and arrows shouldn't take too long, possibly a long hard day of work possibly two. It really doesn't take that that long to make some weapons really! Saying weeks of crafting is rather silly because metals would already be cooled, and the process of heating, forging, cooling, then reheating and repeating to enhance it still HAS to be done within a small timeframe else the metal because rather crappy and brittle.

[Kantolin]

As an important caveat, the 5th level spell fabricate bypasses crafting times entirely.

Which is fine, mind you. Personally, though, most of my house rules allow mundane crafting to end up near that ballpark. While taking three days to create full plate is unrealistic, at level 10 the wizard can make one a day without really noticing the spell hit (or several per day if he really cared to), and I'd rather '5th level casting if you want to be a crafter' not be a thing.

[Coidzor]

Mechanus Gear is actually notably better than Full Plate.

Yeah, I mostly just didn't want to use anything other than the SRD as a reference for this, at least at first, sorry.

:smallredface: Partially b/c I can't really remember the cost of Mechanus Gear off the top of my head. Is it around... 3500? So 3,500+15,000 = 18,500 gp for Adamantine Mechanus Gear while Mithril Mechanus Gear is 9,000+3,500 = 12,500 gp.

or 185,000 sp for crafting and 125,000 sp for crafting, respectively.

vs.

say, a level 10 dwarven crafter, for the craft bonus and because of their heavy armor fetish.

+13 ranks, +2 racial, +3 Int(12 int +2 from level ups +2 item), +2 MW Tool... That's a +20 on the check Which, conveniently, equals the DC of making Mechanus gear, so taking 10 allows us to add +10 for accelerated crafting. :smallsmile:

30*30 (standard RAW)= 900 sp per week. 205 weeks, almost 4 years, for Adamatine. ~138.9 weeks, around 2 & 2/3 years, for Mithril. This seems about when a character would really be capable of making this sort of thing, and while it's more difficult than plate, this amount of time still seems arduously long.

30*30*10 (for work in gold pieces) = 9000 sp per week. ~20.5 weeks for Adamantine, ~13.9 weeks for Mithril. 900 sp per day would give 205 days or ~29 weeks with a 7-day week.* Seems a fair wait given a fairly lengthy downtime, or a case where the DM actually made the characters wait or go off adventuring and come back after putting in the order with a crafting NPC while the crafting NPC took however long using the craft skill to do it.

30*30*13*13 (for skill ranks squared) = 152,100 sp per week. That's less than a week for Mitrhil, around a third more than one for Adamantine. Probably a bit too high for 10th level, maybe more of a 15th level rate to be able to casually knock out that sort of thing by hand?

30*30*13*13/10 (for skill ranks squared in copper pieces) = 15,210 sp per week. ~12.2 weeks for Adamantine, ~8.2 weeks for Mithril. So around 2 or 3 months, at 4 weeks to the month. That seems near to what I'd think of 10th level characters as capable of, knocking out a couple of the more/most expensive mundane armor items in the game during a single season.

I'm sure there's some special material or material+armor type combo that I'm forgetting to take into account for coming up with the edge case of the most expensive mundane armor in the game, though.

*Moral of the story w/crafting per day vs. per week seems to be don't craft per day unless weeks are longer than 10 days, in which case always craft per diem as even an 11 day vs. a 10 day week results in a 10% increase in crafting efficiency/speed, or you only have a day or two's crafting left on an item and don't want to waste the crafting sp value by working for an entire week on the last bit of the object.


As an important caveat, the 5th level spell fabricate bypasses crafting times entirely.

Which is fine, mind you. Personally, though, most of my house rules allow mundane crafting to end up near that ballpark. While taking three days to create full plate is unrealistic, at level 10 the wizard can make one a day without really noticing the spell hit (or several per day if he really cared to), and I'd rather '5th level casting if you want to be a crafter' not be a thing.

Indeed. It's a contributing factor to wanting to speed up mundane crafting a bit.

I'm fine with things getting unrealistic around level 5-8 or so, I must admit. The whole Level 6 is basically superhuman or right around there meme has taken fairly deep root in me. Why not have superhuman crafting speed, too?

Though I kinda wanna have things not get too crazy until level 12 or so, if that makes any sense. Like basically, up until level 10 is where I most want to increase it but have it hold together and then after that point it seems like letting it just go crazy go nuts is more in keeping with D&D than not letting it go crazy go nuts. :smallconfused:

[dextercorvia]

I don't have much of a problem with the crafting times. A level 3 dwarf craftsman with 4 level 1 assistants can run a workshop that produces 3 suits of masterwork full plate a year. More if he lets his apprentices work independently.

6 ranks, +3 skill focus, +1 ability, +2 masterwork tools, +2 dwarf, +8 from 4 aid others, +10 from taking 10 to get a result of 32, against a difficulty of 28, to produce 89.6gp per week.


Masterwork full plate is the best of the best of mundane armours, costing more than a house. Most of the time they would be knocking out scale mail at 3 suits a week, with the occasional suit of banded mail.

The only apparent issue is adamantine. As standard the workshop above would take years to produce one suit. I picture it being like tungsten carbide. The stuff is near impossible to work even now (which is what limits it's usefulness), so taking 3 years to form it with a hammer actually seems ok. If you want to speed it up then a feat to speed crafting with adamantine could be reasonable. Other than that I wouldn't change it.

But it takes a fairly optimized 1st level smith 1 week to make a Greatsword -- not masterwork, just a big piece of metal you hit stuff with.

[Coidzor]

But it takes a fairly optimized 1st level smith 1 week to make a Greatsword -- not masterwork, just a big piece of metal you hit stuff with.

Part of what I wanted to get away from, yeah.

[ace rooster]

I would liek to say it would ENTIRELY depend on what the persons craft is. Swordmaking can actually be rather quick with the right materials and preparation. They have videos on youtube of people making swords and showing the steps and can be done in basically a day if you have the molds and such ready with the metals ready as well. A DAY. (of course for more intricate work maybe a Full day of painstaking work). Armorsmithing would take much much longer as you not only need to shape every single plate, but also connecting them all, and some armors not only use chain (holy sh*& chainmail takes forever and a day to connect them all properly), but use chain, plates, scales, leathers and padding (which require the leather to be made and that process) AND all connected then fit to the user!

Now alchemy tbh I am not sure on x.x anything with bows and arrows shouldn't take too long, possibly a long hard day of work possibly two. It really doesn't take that that long to make some weapons really! Saying weeks of crafting is rather silly because metals would already be cooled, and the process of heating, forging, cooling, then reheating and repeating to enhance it still HAS to be done within a small timeframe else the metal because rather crappy and brittle.

Erm, molds? The blast furnace is a fairly recent invention, and before that we could not get the temperatures to melt steel. Smelting and forming was all done while the metal was solid, though much softer (still not exactly soft). The job of the swordsmith was as much in the metallurgy as in the forming, which I doupt your youtube videos even consider. For reference, a good swordsmith would take as much as 7 months to form a katana (wikipedia, so could be off). I'm not saying that a greatsword should take 7 months, but working steel takes more time than you might think, and a lump of metal you hit stuff with is a club rather than a greatsword.


As an important caveat, the 5th level spell fabricate bypasses crafting times entirely.

Which is fine, mind you. Personally, though, most of my house rules allow mundane crafting to end up near that ballpark. While taking three days to create full plate is unrealistic, at level 10 the wizard can make one a day without really noticing the spell hit (or several per day if he really cared to), and I'd rather '5th level casting if you want to be a crafter' not be a thing.

Fabricate has the massive limitation that it has no provision for creating masterwork items. This means that items created this way cannot be enchanted, and adamantine cannot be worked at all (all adamantine items are masterwork). If you have lots of high quality steel (costing 10gp per pound, as opposed to 4gp per pound for half plate) then fabricate can make full plate very quickly, but there is no way to get that steel without mundane smelting of the very best ores by the very best smelters. Such steel would not be generally available for purchase other than in suits of scrap full plate. Mundane crafters will use cheaper metal together with flux and fuels by improving the metal as they form it, which fabricate cannot do.

The focus of this discussion so far has been about crafters who have spent a lifetime working a trade, to the exclusion of other persuits. These are people who will have spent all of their feats on being a better crafter. D&D does not expect adventurers to be these people, so does not have the feats that these people would take in the rulebooks. If you want to speed up crafting then some feats for master craftsmen seems a better direction to go than ripping up the craft rules. Dragoncrafter is an example that already exists.

[Kudaku]

I think the key is to get away from the gradual escalation the craft system currently uses and embrace an exponential gain model the way icefractal suggests. Characters become superhuman and start to leave the limitations of the real world behind at ~level 5, the skill system should reflect this.

If a decent level 2 blacksmith has +7 in Craft: Weapons and can turn out a breastplate in two weeks, then a 6th level master smith with magical tools and a craft bonus of +21 should be able to do it overnight. A level 10 grand master smith with access to the Forge of the Ages and a craft bonus of +42 should be able to put it together in an hour.

[Psyren]

6 seconds (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm) :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, mundane crafting is pretty insane. I don't know how smithies stay in business (or villages stay defended) when a single suit of armor takes that long to make. There should be a way for apprentices to speed up the process (besides working on different things, that is.)

[Tvtyrant]

I let characters use the craft reserve system and keep it as normal for everyone else. Out of party crafting is meant to be more realistic, the party has a rapid time table.

[Crimson Wolf]

Erm, molds? The blast furnace is a fairly recent invention, and before that we could not get the temperatures to melt steel. Smelting and forming was all done while the metal was solid, though much softer (still not exactly soft). The job of the swordsmith was as much in the metallurgy as in the forming, which I doupt your youtube videos even consider. For reference, a good swordsmith would take as much as 7 months to form a katana (wikipedia, so could be off). I'm not saying that a greatsword should take 7 months, but working steel takes more time than you might think, and a lump of metal you hit stuff with is a club rather than a greatsword.



Fabricate has the massive limitation that it has no provision for creating masterwork items. This means that items created this way cannot be enchanted, and adamantine cannot be worked at all (all adamantine items are masterwork). If you have lots of high quality steel (costing 10gp per pound, as opposed to 4gp per pound for half plate) then fabricate can make full plate very quickly, but there is no way to get that steel without mundane smelting of the very best ores by the very best smelters. Such steel would not be generally available for purchase other than in suits of scrap full plate. Mundane crafters will use cheaper metal together with flux and fuels by improving the metal as they form it, which fabricate cannot do.

The focus of this discussion so far has been about crafters who have spent a lifetime working a trade, to the exclusion of other persuits. These are people who will have spent all of their feats on being a better crafter. D&D does not expect adventurers to be these people, so does not have the feats that these people would take in the rulebooks. If you want to speed up crafting then some feats for master craftsmen seems a better direction to go than ripping up the craft rules. Dragoncrafter is an example that already exists.

Molds aren't really a new concept, some would do this with either plaster or wax inside a wooden box, then once it is cooled basically open the box frame, break off the wax or plaster and bam you have your shape for whatever you were doing it for. Though this is only something really good for hilts, pommels or other intricate things. And a smiths forge can still heat things up to these temperatures that you would need to form what ingots or bars of whatever metal you're working. This being medieval tech kinda stuff, if we put this in a fantasy setting with things like elves and dwarves who are supposed to by almost magic like in how amazing they are at crafting, and real mages an wizards, I would say this might be sped up quite a bit, or at least at a somewhat fast pace that wouldn't take a week or more.

Yes crafters usually are not player characters but even then people who had years and years (or with fantasy races being literally lifetimes to learn) I just think it wouldn't take so long to make some weapons is all I'm saying.

Edit: I just checked wiki for the katana, NO WHERE does it say a Katana take seven months or any number of months to forge :/ where on earth did you read that?

[ace rooster]

Molds aren't really a new concept, some would do this with either plaster or wax inside a wooden box, then once it is cooled basically open the box frame, break off the wax or plaster and bam you have your shape for whatever you were doing it for. Though this is only something really good for hilts, pommels or other intricate things. And a smiths forge can still heat things up to these temperatures that you would need to form what ingots or bars of whatever metal you're working. This being medieval tech kinda stuff, if we put this in a fantasy setting with things like elves and dwarves who are supposed to by almost magic like in how amazing they are at crafting, and real mages an wizards, I would say this might be sped up quite a bit, or at least at a somewhat fast pace that wouldn't take a week or more.

Yes crafters usually are not player characters but even then people who had years and years (or with fantasy races being literally lifetimes to learn) I just think it wouldn't take so long to make some weapons is all I'm saying.

Edit: I just checked wiki for the katana, NO WHERE does it say a Katana take seven months or any number of months to forge :/ where on earth did you read that?

Molds are not new, casting steel is. Getting the temperatures required to melt steel is tricky.

The point about player characters is that D&D is not designed to handle characters that want to be crafters rigerously, so a feat like 'rapid armoursmith' would not make the players handbook, even if it was in a setting. A level 3 human expert crafter will have 3 feats. One will be skill focus, but there are no approprate options for the other two. They also will get 6 skill points a level, so could have max ranks in another craft too. Boosting standard crafting speed could bring the crafting times down to the level you would expect for a master crafter, but it would also bring the times down for journeyman crafters to a similar level. Feats allow characters to specialise further than skill ranks. If you want your dwarf crafters to be better you can use racial feats too. Feats can allow you to have epic crafters without making everyone with a decent number of levels into a walking factory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_making Section on katanas.


It is important to remember that swords and armour are not perishable, or replaced often. Most armour will last 10+ years, and will be sold on rather than scrapped in most cases. It is best compared to a car in modern society, at least in terms of the economics. It takes about one week of man hours to make a car (at a min), but they are not exactly rare, despite a very small proportion of the population building them.

[Crimson Wolf]

Odd because the page for the actual katana sword goes into details of it being made and never even mentions that :/ But just saying that if they had the ingots ready, it wouldn't/shouldn't take as long as using raw materials (because then you would need the heat for not only forging but also casting). Now yes it can be tricky but not impossible, how else would they have made metal bars/ingots back then to form the swords?

[Tvtyrant]

The problem is not melting iron, it is in making steel. You need to get carbon into the iron and in a uniform amount, which is difficult to do without a modern blast furnace.

[Crimson Wolf]

But it was done back then, wasn't like Spanish steel back then supposed to be some of the best in the world pre modern time weapons?

[Coidzor]

The problem is not melting iron, it is in making steel. You need to get carbon into the iron and in a uniform amount, which is difficult to do without a modern blast furnace.
But it was done back then, wasn't like Spanish steel back then supposed to be some of the best in the world pre modern time weapons?

I'm sure this has probably been addressed in the real world weapons and armor thread, but from what I recall, Toledo, Spain was famed for its swordsmiths, and blend of steel IIRC, for a good while, or at least that's what they tell tourists these days.

What I'm wondering now is, what if one starts with steel and then swordsmiths at it?

[Tvtyrant]

But it was done back then, wasn't like Spanish steel back then supposed to be some of the best in the world pre modern time weapons?

Yes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel#Ancient_steel). It was done back then in a process that involved melting ore at tremendous temperature with carbon (charcoal) and limestone (to pick up the impurities.) There were also processes that involved repeatedly heating and cooling the metal to get the carbon content right. Neither works well for large scale processing.

[Slipperychicken]

I would say there should be a base time to craft any given item, but a high skill means the crafter could choose to either quickly crank out low-quality items (i.e. rushjobs), make normal quality items at a slightly better pace than normal, make high-quality items at the normal pace, or take a very long period of time to potentially make a very high-quality item. Cranking out low-quality items is generally more efficient in terms of ROI (and working below your potential can get you labelled as a sellout), but making exceptional ones earns respect from members of your field, could land you a cushy job making things for nobles, and can even get your name into the history books if you make a legendary object.

This approach could work for items as diverse as metalworking and poetry, but is largely incompatible with 3.5's "Masterwork/Non-Masterwork" quality paradigm.

[Coidzor]

I would say there should be a base time to craft any given item, but a high skill means the crafter could choose to either quickly crank out low-quality items (i.e. rushjobs), make normal quality items at a slightly better pace than normal, make high-quality items at the normal pace, or take a very long period of time to potentially make a very high-quality item. Cranking out low-quality items is generally more efficient in terms of ROI (and working below your potential can get you labelled as a sellout), but making exceptional ones earns respect from members of your field, could land you a cushy job making things for nobles, and can even get your name into the history books if you make a legendary object.

This approach could work for items as diverse as metalworking and poetry, but is largely incompatible with 3.5's "Masterwork/Non-Masterwork" quality paradigm.

The quickest thing that occurs to me there would be to have a couple of simple templates to provide a gradient between the base stats as written and then subtracting or adding. I guess the alternate materials like bronze or stone to make certain weapons deal less damage or lower the AC value may provide some basis to go on...

Taking that as inspiration, one could come up with a 5 tiered thing for weapons? Say, Shoddy: -1 attack/damage, Substandard: -1 attack, Standard: base value, Superior: +1 attack, Masterwork: +1 attack/damage(non-magic, natch)? Maybe lower the crit range by 1 for each category below Standard for weapons with superior crit ranges as well?

No real idea for pricing other than maybe halving or quartering the cost for the Substandard/Shoddy ones, though. I suppose Superior could be +150 and MW be +300, or maybe Superior =+300, MW = +450-600. Keep enchantment to MW only or let MW weapons keep the +1 damage... or just increase the cost of MW enough so that MW weapons = +1 weapons and are just enchanted further from there? Hmm...

Less sure about how you'd do something equivalent, as a quick and dirty thing, for armor, though. :smallconfused: Maybe Shoddy: -1 AC/Max Dex, Substandard: -1 Max Dex, Standard: base value, Superior: +1 Max Dex, Masterwork: +1 AC/Max Dex?

Maybe also add in some ability to further customize to increase max Dex by 1 for X gp up to double the initial max dex bonus or some other point... But that's getting out of quick and dirty territory, I think.

Interesting idea, though.

[Slipperychicken]

Taking that as inspiration, one could come up with a 5 tiered thing for weapons? Say, Shoddy: -1 attack/damage, Substandard: -1 attack, Standard: base value, Superior: +1 attack, Masterwork: +1 attack/damage(non-magic, natch)? Maybe lower the crit range by 1 for each category below Standard for weapons with superior crit ranges as well?

I was thinking about something like that, actually. Your post made me think of some additional things you could append to each weapon's value rating.

Shoddy: -1 tohit, -1 damage, -2 on the item's saving throws and checks to resist disarm attempts, gains the broken condition on a natural 1 (imposing an additional -2 to hit). If another nat 1 is rolled while it's broken, it's shattered, and considered an improvised weapon (the -4 improvised weapon penalty doesn't stack with the others) until repaired. Allows for a 50% discount on the normal cost, due to poor materials, sloppy craftsmanship and/or lack of maintenance. These are either purely decorative, the product of a lazy and incompetent blacksmith, or the kind of rusting, broken-down weapon which goblins and undead would have their hands on.

Substandard: -1 to hit, -1 on the item's saving throws and checks to resist disarm attempts. Nothing particularly bad happens on a natural 1. Has a 25% discount. This is the weapon quality for poor and miserly soldiers who are forced to buy their own equipment.

Normal: Uses the weapon's normal statistics. Price is as listed in the weapon's entry. This is the kind of weapon used by middle-class warriors, career soldiers, and warriors whose equipment is subsidized by their employer.

Respectable: +1 to hit, +1 on the item's saving throws and on checks to resist disarm attempts due to thoughtful design, proper weighting, and good craftsmanship. Charges a 25% premium for the time and effort spent on this weapon. This is the kind of weapon which knights, mid-ranking soldiers, and petty nobles use. Not enough to make people jealous, but it marks the wielder out as a serious combatant who values his weapon.

Masterwork: +1 to hit and damage as per Masterwork, +1 on the item's saving throws and on checks to resist disarm attempts due to thoughtful design, proper weighting, and good craftsmanship. Charges the normal Masterwork price (if this would be less than 50% over the Normal price, then add 25% in addition) for the time and effort spent on this weapon. This is the kind of weapon which high nobles use, is often embellished with pretty designs, and which draws the eyes of thieves.

Superior: +1 to hit, +1 damage (which stacks with the bonus from magic), +2 on the item's saving throws and on checks to resist disarm attempts. Charges a premium of 100% or much more, in addition to the normal Masterwork cost. These exceedingly rare top-of-the-line weapons are ones which royalty commission when they need the very best, and which legendary craftsmen make for the express purpose of enchanting. Needless to say, such weapons inspire envy and fear. Master thieves may try to pilfer these weapons for sport, and anyone who spots one knows the wielder is either a person of high status or a very lucky thief.

[jiriku]

Fabricate has the massive limitation that it has no provision for creating masterwork items.

Fabricate states, "You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship". It is not implausible to say that masterwork items require a high degree of craftsmanship and can be made with a Craft check, therefore you can fabricate a masterwork item by making an appropriate Craft check. Now, you may view it differently, but I'd say your interpretation is debatable and many DMs would not adopt that more-restrictive reading of the spell.


If you have lots of high quality steel (costing 10gp per pound, as opposed to 4gp per pound for half plate) then fabricate can make full plate very quickly, but there is no way to get that steel without mundane smelting of the very best ores by the very best smelters. Such steel would not be generally available for purchase other than in suits of scrap full plate. Mundane crafters will use cheaper metal together with flux and fuels by improving the metal as they form it, which fabricate cannot do.

Respectfully, I'd like to point out that you made this up. The rulebooks do not anywhere define the cost per pound of the steel used in various armors, nor set the minimum cost per pound of material that must be used to make an item by various means. The rulebooks definitely do not set any limitation on what kinds of steel are or are not available for purchase, nor does the fabricate description spell out how the item is fabricated or what techniques it can or cannot duplicate. You're entirely in homebrew and house rule territory here. Now, it's fine to homebrew and house rule things (lord knows I do it all the time), but it's not accurate to say "you can't do this" when you're talking to someone else about rules that you made up for use within your own game.


The focus of this discussion so far has been about crafters who have spent a lifetime working a trade, to the exclusion of other persuits. These are people who will have spent all of their feats on being a better crafter. D&D does not expect adventurers to be these people, so does not have the feats that these people would take in the rulebooks. If you want to speed up crafting then some feats for master craftsmen seems a better direction to go than ripping up the craft rules. Dragoncrafter is an example that already exists.

I agree with you that homebrewing some feats would certainly offer possibilities, but it remains that the current crafting rules are a poor slapdash thrown together to fill out a skill description and they don't function well as written. They are not some sculpted, highly polished set of game rules that should be considered sacred and never touched. I say, if one intends to homebrew, put the entire subsystem on the chopping block and be willing to use all the tools at your disposal to fix it.

[Crimson Wolf]

Well see if it was done, and we are talking about making armor and weapons than wouldn't it be easy to see how in a fantasy setting this can be done even easier?

[Phelix-Mu]

I think the game should get away from gp used as a way to measure the progress in Crafting. While it is pleasant and simplistic and thus nicely uniform to model, all that it basically ends up creating is a crazily imbalanced bias toward magic.

I'd probably re-jigger it to go with a mundane item grading system, such as Slipperychicken suggests. I would try to make it uniform across all types of crafting, and capable of producing results that couldn't be copied by fabricate (because fabricate is pretty easy to abuse, even if I believe it does have a role to play). I'd also make it more based on planning.

So, for instance:

Miriko the Smith is going to make a mace.

She plans for one day of work, which will be difficult, since she wants some quality.

She plans for a Grade 3 weapon, which will allow [insert bonuses by grade] and be capable of being sold for more gold.

She has 8 ranks in Craft(weaponsmithing), and a total modifier of +15.

Grade 3 = Base DC of 20

Progress on Grade 3 is usually in weeks, but she wants it in days, so she adds +10 to the difficulty.

Final Difficulty= 30.

If she fails to meet the one-day difficulty, she may continue the project a second day, rolling again on the same difficulty with a +2 bonus (and on the third day with a +4 bonus).


....


Or something like that. Keep in mind, I just made that all up in like 10 minutes, but I think it illustrates what I would like to see; a more intricate crafting system that allows for more utility to mundane crafting, and better benefits for those with ranks. Progress isn't measured by gp, and time is limited somehow (avoiding those with a huge modifier being able to just pump stuff out). All in all, the sp-progress system in the book is simply too abstract and mechanistic, making crafting a rather boring math exercise, where it should have more creativity and narrative qualities, in my mind (alongside the pre-req math...this is D&D after all).

Just some thoughts, and I'm sure if I give it a few hours more thought, I will find some flaws with what I just envisioned.

[Coidzor]

I think the game should get away from gp used as a way to measure the progress in Crafting. While it is pleasant and simplistic and thus nicely uniform to model, all that it basically ends up creating is a crazily imbalanced bias toward magic.

I'd probably re-jigger it to go with a mundane item grading system, such as Slipperychicken suggests. I would try to make it uniform across all types of crafting, and capable of producing results that couldn't be copied by fabricate (because fabricate is pretty easy to abuse, even if I believe it does have a role to play). I'd also make it more based on planning.

I thought about that, but wasn't really able to come up with any examples of how one would go about substituting an alternate timescale or how to allow for faster progress as one becomes insanely skilled. Seeing as how several other mundane skills eventually become magical or quasi-magical, even if it's in Epic.

There's an idea. Maybe Fabricate can only make a limited range, from Substandard to Respectable, with either Shoddy or something that looks like Shoddy but is actually just non-functional as a sort of potential critical fail sort of thing if one were into that.

More narrative potential/qualities and planning potential would be interesting, though.

[jiriku]

It is definitely a good idea to decouple crafting time from gp cost. The relationship between crafting time and craft DC is also screwed up. Currently, if you craft two identical rings, one made from gold and the other from platinum, the platinum ring takes 10x longer to make, even though the two metals are worked in similar ways and have relatively similar physical characteristics. If you try to make the platinum ring using a much simpler design to make it faster (DC 5 instead of 15), you actually triple the time required (check x 5 in sp per week instead of check x 15). Even rushing your work (+10 DC to cut time in half) merely brings you up to 2/3 the production speed you'd have managed with the more complex design.

To be more realistic, crafting time should be a function purely of the complexity of the design and the inverse of skill and urgency.

Hmm, so let:
t = time
k = constant of proportionality
c = complexity
s = skill
u = urgency

then
t = kc/(u*s^2)

This would suggest a table of "complexity levels" each with a standard number of days required for completion. You'd take this number and divide by the square of your skill bonus. The result is the number of days you need to make the item (which can be less than one). If you're in a hurry, you can increase the DC of your skill check by some factor to divide the number of days required accordingly. So, roughing this out...


Complexity (Check DC)
Time (Weeks)


Simple (5)
25/7 (about 3.5)


Average (10)
25


Difficult (15)
100


Masterwork (20)
600



Thus a journeyman craftsman with a +5 modifier could make a simple item in a day, an average item in a week, a difficult item in a month, and a masterwork item in six months (assuming he was lucky enough to make the skill checks). A master craftsman with a +10 modifier could make four simple items per day, an average item in about two days, a difficult item in a week, and a masterwork item in six weeks. A legendary, wuxia-level craftsman with a +30 modifier could make 36 simple items in a day, 5 average items in a day, one difficult item in a day, and a masterwork item in about five days.

Rushing your work could add +5, +10, +15 etc to your check in order to reduce the time required to 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc.

If you want to involve planning, it could be done pretty simply. Spending a day planning your work could grant a +2 bonus on your next weekly check, while spending a week in planning could grant a +5 bonus on your next weekly check. Spending a lot of time planning for a simple job is counterproductive. Also rushing for +5 and spending a week planning each check averages out to no change in DC or time spent; spending half your time slowly planning and half working in a hurry isn't any more beneficial than just working steadily. Seems to pass the reality check.

Feats could be homebrewed that improve this. Perhaps rushing only increases your checks by +3 instead of +5, or you get double the normal bonus for planning. Maybe you have a talent for hard work but are too impatient to perform well at trivial tasks; you get a bonus on DCs above 10 but are compelled to rush DCs of 10 or below.

This involves math, planning, and multiple grades of item quality. It's easy to visualize feat support. I could maybe even see a three-level master craftsman NPC prestige class. Unfortunately, it pretty much requires a calculator to figure most tasks, which would be beyond the patience or interest level of a lot of players I know. Still, it has the appeal of being a system that models reality reasonably well and produces the kinds of numbers we'd expect.

[SinsI]

IMHO, GP value should have absolutely nothing to do with how long crafting takes. Instead, you should directly define those durations yourself:

If you are ordering a mail armor, the blacksmith is not going to create it out of individual links - not only does he outsource their creation to his assistants, but he is going to have a number of already assembled chain sheets. So a week, tops - and you have your masterwork custom mail armor; and if you hurry him (with extra $$$), you can probably have it on the same day.

Also, creating many identical items (like a quiver of arrows) is far faster together than creating them individually.

[ace rooster]

Fabricate states, "You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship". It is not implausible to say that masterwork items require a high degree of craftsmanship and can be made with a Craft check, therefore you can fabricate a masterwork item by making an appropriate Craft check. Now, you may view it differently, but I'd say your interpretation is debatable and many DMs would not adopt that more-restrictive reading of the spell.



Respectfully, I'd like to point out that you made this up. The rulebooks do not anywhere define the cost per pound of the steel used in various armors, nor set the minimum cost per pound of material that must be used to make an item by various means. The rulebooks definitely do not set any limitation on what kinds of steel are or are not available for purchase, nor does the fabricate description spell out how the item is fabricated or what techniques it can or cannot duplicate. You're entirely in homebrew and house rule territory here. Now, it's fine to homebrew and house rule things (lord knows I do it all the time), but it's not accurate to say "you can't do this" when you're talking to someone else about rules that you made up for use within your own game.



I agree with you that homebrewing some feats would certainly offer possibilities, but it remains that the current crafting rules are a poor slapdash thrown together to fill out a skill description and they don't function well as written. They are not some sculpted, highly polished set of game rules that should be considered sacred and never touched. I say, if one intends to homebrew, put the entire subsystem on the chopping block and be willing to use all the tools at your disposal to fix it.

Fabricate allows you and requires you to make "an approproiate craft check". Singular. Masterwork items require two seperate checks (one for the item, and one for the masterwork component).

Fabricate also does not get around the requirement for a third of the final value in materials, and as the only materials fabricate uses are in the final item they must be of the appropriate value and quantity, hence the value per pound. Fabricate does not change materials or mimic processes that do ("product of same material"), so cannot refine metallurgy the way mundane crafting can.

I do not make up rules, but I do try to hold spells to theirs. Fabricate is a good example of spell with many implicit limitations that people tend to handwave away, and so assume is massively powerful.


The rules do not function well for master crafters who focus on their craft and can do little else, but they function fine for your average dwarf with a few ranks in armoursmithing. If you really want a level 10 commoner who happens to enjoy armoursmithing to be able to equip an army in a year then the craft times are too long, but I don't really think that is where the issue is. The issue is that a level 10 expert armoursmith with all feats going towards his profession cannot. We do not need to chuck the system to deal with this issue.


Homebrewing a whole new system is certainly one way to go, but the existing system is easy to remember, streamlined, and economically balanced (The crafts are all equally profitable, so you get no migration between them and the profitability is not too heavily weighted to high level characters, at least imo.). I see no reason to throw it away to deal with a few fringe cases, which are all on the upper side so can be dealt with using feats. That would also stop unseen crafters being the most effective way to build things, as they do not get the effects of feats.