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rockdeworld
2015-08-08, 07:24 PM
Crafting is a skill that's used very rarely because of its extreme limitations (not being able to craft anything useful after level 3-ish, because then everything useful is magic*). I'm not including crafting as part of a spell, because it hardly ever affects the mechanics of the spell. If we don't want to change that limitation, then crafting should be simple enough that learning all the mechanics takes fewer than 3 levels. In other words, grapple-rules complexity and depth is out.

My problem with approaching this from a crafter's point of view is that my experience with crafting IRL is extremely limited. So I'll approach it from a gameplay point of view.

Yes, crafting takes time if it's complex or large. But so do spell rituals, and absolutely none of them has a casting time longer than 24 hours. The tradition of D&D rules hating on mundane and giving a pass to magic is an annoying one for people who want to do mundane stuff, so screw crafting time ever taking longer than 24 hours (well, almost). Instead, the limitation is that it takes 24 hours for an item of your size category, and goes up and down by powers of 2 per difference in size category. If 2+ people work together, add their size (2 medium creatures = 1 large, 2 large = 1 huge, etc). This means 8 people working together can craft a 32' boat in 24 hours, or 1 person in 8 days, but who cares? If the party wants to craft a boat, let them. They might need to in order to get off a desert island. And you should assume that the character crafting is getting exactly as much food/rest/personal business as a spellcaster casting a 24-hour ritual.

Similarly, the granularity of how difficult/possible it is to craft something is just impossible to measure for anyone who isn't an IRL expert in crafting that exact product. And people will surprise you with what is possible (http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/1387240461/Free-shipping-folk-art-glass-craft-antique-chinese-snuff-bottle-home-decor-tiny-gifts-for-christmas.jpg_350x350.jpg) (that jar is 2 inches big and the art was drawn on the inside of it). And the other problem with trying to determine how difficult it is to craft bronze chain mail vs. green dragon scale mail is that it doesn't matter for the game at large. So screw trying to get nitty-gritty with complexity too.

The problem with relating anything except cost in the craft check to an item's cost is that item costs vary so wildly that it breaks the game one way or another. 20 Arrows are 1gp, and Adamantine Medium Armor is 10,000gp, but I think both should be craftable. So price is out, except for determining cost of raw materials. If the item tells you what its raw materials are, and you can purchase them, you can use them to craft it. Otherwise it's item cost / 2 to craft an item, so that crafters can make money from their trade. Note this means PCs probably can't craft items for profit, but it doesn't matter because you aren't playing D&D to simulate Armor Tycoon.

Then we have to pick what to base the craft DC on, and we can't choose size or cost. Since cost is the only thing most items have to identify them (though weapons and armor have other things), we either have item category or have to pick something unique. The DC is supposed to represent how difficult something is to craft, and uncultured swine that I am, I still know that items within the same category have vastly different difficulties (eg. wooden club vs. spiked chain). So that just leaves something unique. Now, in D&D there's a difference between being trained and untrained in a skill. And in real life, there's the same thing, which is probably most obvious when it comes to crafting. So in crafting, being trained is worth a lot, which I'll define as +10 to your check. And crafting something you're trained in, just for utility, should not be difficult. So I'll define the craft check as DC 10 if you're trained in crafting that item, and DC 20 if you're not.

So why would anyone put more than 1 rank in a craft skill? Most people won't, and shouldn't have to (again, because crafting is largely useless). But artists will, because rather than making a different DC for something designed to be art and something that isn't, artists can make something prettier (i.e. worth 10% more) for each point above its craft DC that they get with their check. That means if you're crafting Mithral Breastplate (4,200 gp), and you're trained in the skill, and you get a result of 30 on your check, you can sell the Mithral Breastplate you made super-fancy for 300% its original price (12,600 gp). And that's the way it should be, because putting a ton of ranks into craft should be worth something.

So to summarize:
-Craft DC is 10 if you're trained in the skill, 20 if you're not.
-Craft time is 24 hours, multiply/divide by 2 for each size category difference between the item and you:
--2 sizes down = 6 hours
--1 size down = 12 hours
--same size = 24 hours
--1 size up = 48 hours
etc.
-You can reduce craft time by adding additional people who succeed a craft check, and the amount of time they reduce it by is given by the same table as above (item size relative to character size). The minimum time required to craft something is a standard action.
-The cost to craft an item is 1/2 its given cost, unless the base materials are given and you purchase them.
-For each point higher your check is than the craft DC, increase the value of the item by 10%.

By the way, because f*** spellcasting being special: You can add +30 to the craft DC to craft the item as a standard action. Or +40 to do it as a move action. Or +50 to do it as a swift action.


*Unless you're an archer and want to craft arrows because your DM actually makes you keep track of that. But even then, the only arrows you care about are ones that bypass DR.

martixy
2015-08-08, 08:26 PM
You will never ever see me say something bad about KISS.
That's a design pattern people should take obligatory yearly exams on.

But once in a while I enjoy theorycrafting with the best of em.

I know it's very niche and low-impact facet of the game, but it's an interesting topic. I'd like to try it sometime.

If this were a computer game I'd do the on-paper complicated, but computationally easy system and be done with it.

Anyway, here's my version in neat, table form(I can't be bothered with the forum markup version, so you get a spreadsheet instead, if the link is dead it's cuz my PC is off):
http://martixy.no-ip.biz/D&D/Tools/Crafting%20system.xlsx

rockdeworld
2015-08-08, 08:34 PM
That's a design pattern people should take obligatory yearly exams on.
Haha, well, maybe engineers.


Anyway, here's my version in neat, table form(I can't be bothered with the forum markup version, so you get a spreadsheet instead, if the link is dead it's cuz my PC is off):
http://martixy.no-ip.biz/D&D/Tools/Crafting%20system.xlsx
So what defines how complex an item is? And what do the numbers in the table mean? (I guess 0 = 0.5h, 1 = 1 h, etc).

martixy
2015-08-08, 08:43 PM
Haha, well, maybe engineers.


So what defines how complex an item is? And what do the numbers in the table mean? (I guess 0 = 0.5h, 1 = 1 h, etc).

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/alternate-crafting-rules

Here's the complexity rules. Ultimately it'd be up to the DM to make an educated guess.

The right table is the size adjustments.

The left table(s) are the times for crafting and the DC's.
Given 0 size adjustment, they correspond 1-to-1, but the times extend below the number complexity tiers, to accommodate for the size adjustments.

If a medium creature crafts a tiny complex item, that's 4h from the DC + 1 time step from the size, making it 1 day(or 8 hours worth of crafting time).

ben-zayb
2015-08-09, 12:06 AM
While a set formula based on gold alone might not be to your liking, have you considered crafting based on a crafter's current WBL percentages? That is, the required difficulty/effort for a Level 2 PC (WBL 900) crafting a 90g item and a Level 6 PC (WBL 13k) crafting a 1300g item will be approximately close.

I am still figuring out an exact workable formula for my planned 3.5 skill subsystem upgrade, but that's the the essence of crafting's basic change.

martixy
2015-08-09, 05:58 PM
That's actually an interesting idea I hadn't thought of.

Do post when you come up with the details.

rockdeworld
2015-08-10, 12:07 AM
While a set formula based on gold alone might not be to your liking, have you considered crafting based on a crafter's current WBL percentages? That is, the required difficulty/effort for a Level 2 PC (WBL 900) crafting a 90g item and a Level 6 PC (WBL 13k) crafting a 1300g item will be approximately close.
I could consider that if WBL had any in-game meaning at all; WBL is purely a meta-gaming concept. Only wealth-at-the-current-time is measurable, and good luck trying to measure it at any given time. That by itself would be complicated enough to make me reject it out of hand.

Besides that, it would still mean that literally anyone could craft scale mail, while only the most die-hard high-level adventurers that are also passionate about crafting could craft adamantine scale mail, despite the fact that they are the exact same thing with different materials.