Simple house-rule for Craft skill?

[heavyfuel]

So one of my players has been having some difficulty understanding crafting rules, mostly because they make zero sense. You can instantly craft a quarterstaff, but it takes years to make an adamantine full-plate. It's also quicker to make items with higher DC, which is mental.

Any ideas on how to simplify the process and make it make sense? Also, make it quicker, like a couple of month at most instead of 7 years (which is how long he would take to make said full plate)

Also, if one could make the rules for Masterwork items better as well, it would be nice. It just seems dumb that you have to make the masterwork quality as a simple DC 20 side-dish

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Edit: I've posted this below, but I'm leaving it here as well so newcomers to the thread can analyse it.

Ok, how's this for the houserule? It seems really simple, and couldn't think of a way to make this open to abuse:

Items DC are additive. +5 for making a masterwork item, +2 for using special material (if the special material already requires MW quality like Mithral, it's still a +7 total).


You pay 1/3 of item value as raw material;
You make Craft check representing one day of work; (should adventuring be allowed during this day?)
You calculate Check result minus the DC. The result times 20 is the amount of GP you've made from the item and when your total GP reaches the full price of the item, the item is made.


For working materials harder than steel you need tools of hardness enough to match the material. For every point of hardness you don't meet, you take a cumulative -1 penalty to you Craft check

Assistants can only use Aid Another to help your craft check. Besides the boost in your craft check, they don't affect the process in any way.

Failure to beat the DC by 5 or more means you've destroyed half your raw materials, and must pay for them again.


Ok, so lets go back to the Adamantine Full Plate that was taking 7 years to make:

Its DC is 18+2+5, which is 25.
Total price is 16500 GP

Lets assume the guy with an Adamantine hammer is forging it by taking 10 to total of 25 Check.

Because he has an assistant helping him as well as a MW Forge he gets +4 to a total of 29

Since he's beating the DC by 4 every day, he makes 80GP per day of the item
That means he's now taking 207 days to complete the Full Plate. While you can't sit down and have it finished in one weekend, it's much better than 7 freaking years.

[Extra Anchovies]

So one of my players has been having some difficulty understanding crafting rules, mostly because they make zero sense. You can instantly craft a quarterstaff, but it takes years to make an adamantine full-plate. It's also quicker to make items with higher DC, which is mental.

Any ideas on how to simplify the process and make it make sense? Also, make it quicker, like a couple of month at most instead of 7 years (which is how long he would take to make said full plate)

Also, if one could make the rules for Masterwork items better as well, it would be nice. It just seems dumb that you have to make the masterwork quality as a simple DC 20 side-dish

Maybe you could houserule that the material from which an item is constructed doesn't affect the crafting time? That is, adamantine full plate takes the same amount of time as steel full plate (you'd still need an appropriate set of tools for working the adamantine, though; normal iron hammer/anvil wouldn't work). The couple thousand gp added to the price of a set of adamantine armor is to cover materials, not labor. Let him craft items at the speed for a normal-quality item, regardless of materials, but make sure he has the materials on hand or purchases them. Heavy armor made from adamantine costs an extra 15,000 gp, so he'd need to pay either half or one-third of that to buy the raw adamantine, or find some adamantine lying around and use that.

Alternately, let him hire craftsmen to help him out. Although the hired assistants wouldn't be as skilled as the PC craftsman is, they'd still be able to speed up the progress (e.g. one hireling keeps the forge hot, another primes the adamantine for shaping, the PC pounds the plates into shape, and then another hireling oversees the cooling). It might make sense to add anywhere from one-half to three-fourths of the hirelings' craft check results to the PC's result to determine the progress made that day or that week.

Finally, maybe allow him to take a feat that increases his crafting speed? Maybe Fast Crafting (requirement: craft [any] 12 ranks or something) that lets him craft twice as fast, or 1.5x as fast, or whatever you think is fair.

[Roncorps]

Have you looked over Unearthed Arcana craft point system ?

It make it easier and faster. The system have been make to be used in game with low downtime.

You pay 1/10 the market price as craft point
You pay 50% market price cost (it replace material cost)
You pay XP normally for magic item (If Pathfinder, I would do XP x 5, add it to market price and do the 50%)

The item is created instantly the next day, if you success the craft check. The system assume that the character is "working on it for a while, but only now got around to finishing it".

There is a rule to reduce the amount of craft point (for normal item, each +100 sp of work = -1 craft point. For magic item, each 8 complete hour = -100 craft points).

Example : A chanmail cost 20GP. Using this system, it would cost 10GP (50% of the market price) and 2 craft point (1/10 of 20).

Craft point are gained by level and by feat. Craft point are level x 100, but they are cumulative. So, level 1 = 100, level 2 = 100 + 200 (2x100), level 3 = 300 (100+200 from level 1-2) + 300, etc.

Feat like Brew Potion give +1500 craft point instantly. Scribe scroll +500, etc.

There is rule for assiting too (like you have Craft Wands, you want to have other PC use craft point even if they don't have the feat, etc.)

[heavyfuel]

snip

I really like the idea of needing special tools to work rarer metals. Much like you need diamond blades to cut diamond, you should need an adamantine hammer to craft adamantine armors more easily, as well as the "ignore special materials price" deal.

Only problem is that this doesn't really fix the crafting rules. It makes crafting faster, but you're still crafting tougher things (higher DC) faster than easier things because of how you calculate the time needed.


snip

I have but unfortunately, it's not to my liking. I rather dislike things like "craft points" or "action points" because it feels too video-gamey. Thanks for suggesting though!

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I'm not gonna lie, I ad-hoc all this stuff.

[Owl Prowler]

I'm not gonna lie, I ad-hoc all this stuff.

Change it so that you make a Craft check every day instead of every week. Congrats, you have now fixed the Craft skill, and have made in-game crafting times actually reflect their real world counterparts.

[heavyfuel]

Change it so that you make a Craft check every day instead of every week. Congrats, you have now fixed the Craft skill, and have made in-game crafting times actually reflect their real world counterparts.

This works for reducing time spent crafting, but not for the fact that higher DC items are easier to make than items with lower DC

[Crake]

Maybe you could houserule that the material from which an item is constructed doesn't affect the crafting time? That is, adamantine full plate takes the same amount of time as steel full plate (you'd still need an appropriate set of tools for working the adamantine, though; normal iron hammer/anvil wouldn't work). The couple thousand gp added to the price of a set of adamantine armor is to cover materials, not labor. Let him craft items at the speed for a normal-quality item, regardless of materials, but make sure he has the materials on hand or purchases them. Heavy armor made from adamantine costs an extra 15,000 gp, so he'd need to pay either half or one-third of that to buy the raw adamantine, or find some adamantine lying around and use that.

Alternately, let him hire craftsmen to help him out. Although the hired assistants wouldn't be as skilled as the PC craftsman is, they'd still be able to speed up the progress (e.g. one hireling keeps the forge hot, another primes the adamantine for shaping, the PC pounds the plates into shape, and then another hireling oversees the cooling). It might make sense to add anywhere from one-half to three-fourths of the hirelings' craft check results to the PC's result to determine the progress made that day or that week.

Finally, maybe allow him to take a feat that increases his crafting speed? Maybe Fast Crafting (requirement: craft [any] 12 ranks or something) that lets him craft twice as fast, or 1.5x as fast, or whatever you think is fair.

This is probably about as accurate as you're gonna get. Otherwise, the crafting time's are actually somewhat historically accurate (at least if the crafter is in the 1-6 level range). A quarterstaff can be picked up off the side of the road (a decently sized and shaped stick) and fullplate actually can take years to properly craft. If your players really want to craft things fast, have them consider magic to enhance the speed of crafting, such as fabricate, which completely negates the time factor on crafting. They can still benefit from ranks in a craft skill, since it is required as part of fabricate, but it lets them instantly complete the process. Fabricate is, admittedly, a 5th level spell, so the players may not have access to it at their level, and may instead need to purchase a scroll and UMD it.

[Coidzor]

This works for reducing time spent crafting, but not for the fact that higher DC items are easier to make than items with lower DC

As long as you're taking 10 like most people in the know will. But, yeah, not really run into much to address that, though I think people are mostly concerned with that only in that harder things are faster to craft. :smallconfused: Which just goes back into reducing time spent crafting but more... relatively.

[Owl Prowler]

This works for reducing time spent crafting, but not for the fact that higher DC items are easier to make than items with lower DC

They're faster to make, but you still have to make the DC in order to craft them. Granted, the DC isn't very high, so that's not often an issue. But it's designed so that higher checks result in lower crafting time, regardless of the items DC to craft.

Overall, it works like you think it would. More expensive items take longer to craft, and cheaper items are quicker to craft. People who make higher Craft checks craft things quicker. The only thing that changes is the ridiculous crafting time.

[Duke of Urrel]

Another way to reduce the time it takes to craft an expensive item is to hire some help. If you have one assistant making an item, your time is cut in half; if you have three assistants, your time is cut down to one quarter, and so on. Your assistants may also use the Aid Another action to improve your Craft check score.

[Troacctid]

Easier items, with their lower prices, should be a lot quicker to craft, assuming you do it at a higher DC.


You may voluntarily add +10 to the indicated DC to craft an item. This allows you to create the item more quickly (since you’ll be multiplying this higher DC by your Craft check result to determine progress).

[Coidzor]

Another way to reduce the time it takes to craft an expensive item is to hire some help. If you have one assistant making an item, your time is cut in half; if you have three assistants, your time is cut down to one quarter, and so on. Your assistants may also use the Aid Another action to improve your Craft check score.

Yep. One assistant with a +9 bonus to never fail the aid another = ~2 ranks in the craft skill. And one assistant with a +0 bonus for a 55% chance to successfully aid another = 2*.55 or 1.1 ranks in the craft skill. Or 1 sp per diem = +1.1 bonus, with the only limitation being space/DM adjudication.

For 3 sp per diem that's a trained hireling with at least 4 ranks in the craft skill in question and maybe some racial or Int bonus there, too. so 2*.75 = +1.5 to the check for 3 sp per week. Better odds for when one is more space/assistant limited, since every 2 such assistants can be expected to give a +3 to the check instead of every 3.

Hired assistants are probably one case where a shorter week is more advantageous to you for crafting than a longer one, I think, since it is 7 sp a week for a 7-day week for a hireling to assist the weekly check and 1 gp a week for a tenday week. But, then, crafting takes less overall time if weeks are 11 days or more, so it probably evens out, as speed of crafting increases by 10% for every day over 10.

Not that you'd likely get a 20 day week, which would allow you to craft things in half the time by doing per day as opposed to per week, mind. ...Probably needs to be at least a 13 day week to equal the 7 day week, seeing as how 7 sp is 70% of 1 gp and, relative to the tenday week, a 30% reduction in time should result in a 30% reduction of overhead for assistants to equal a payrate of 7 sp per week for the duration. :smallconfused:

[heavyfuel]

Ok, how's this for the houserule? It seems really simple, and couldn't think of a way to make this open to abuse:

Items DC are additive. +5 for making a masterwork item, +2 for using special material (if the special material already requires MW quality like Mithral, it's still a +7 total).


You pay 1/3 of item value as raw material;
You make Craft check representing one day of work; (should adventuring be allowed during this day?)
You calculate Check result minus the DC. The result times 20 is the amount of GP you've made from the item and when your total GP reaches the full price of the item, the item is made.


For working materials harder than steel you need tools of hardness enough to match the material. For every point of hardness you don't meet, you take a cumulative -1 penalty to you Craft check

Assistants can only use Aid Another to help your craft check. Besides the boost in your craft check, they don't affect the process in any way.

Failure to beat the DC by 5 or more means you've destroyed half your raw materials, and must pay for them again.


Ok, so lets go back to the Adamantine Full Plate that was taking 7 years to make:

Its DC is 18+2+5, which is 25.
Total price is 16500 GP

Lets assume the guy with an Adamantine hammer is forging it by taking 10 to total of 25 Check.

Because he has an assistant helping him as well as a MW Forge he gets +4 to a total of 29

Since he's beating the DC by 4 every day, he makes 80GP per day of the item
That means he's now taking 207 days to complete the Full Plate. While you can't sit down and have it finished in one weekend, it's much better than 7 freaking years.

[Coidzor]

If Adventuring can happen while crafting magic items (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm), that's a definite yes to if they can mundanely craft while adventuring, provided the necessary workshop space.

Maybe with a penalty to progress or restriction on the number of hours that can be invested per diem amounting to a time penalty.