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View Full Version : Pathfinder Working to Rework Crafting



KaneEvolution
2017-04-22, 05:21 AM
Hey all,

So I recently started GMing a game and I realized how much I absolutely hate the feat tax that comes with crafting magical items, as well as how mundane crafting works, so I'm trying to work a hunter-gatherer style system into my game in the same vein of Monster Hunter, Skyrim and so on.

For metals, it's pretty obvious, grab a pickaxe and go prospect with Knowledge (Dungeoneering) and then take whacks at the rock at 5 minutes a check, STR check to break off a chunk and a variable success to break off more, simple enough.

For herbs, a combination of Knowledge (Nature) and Survival to gather up herbs, with some variable resource amounts and the possibility of rare herbs to dig up, and can be used for potions and poisons (And allows more expanded use of the Alchemy Manual, if folks are into that.)

For beasties, this is where I'm hung up. I've decided I want to use a relevant Knowledge skill (Such as Planes for harvesting stuff from demons) or Survival can be used, so as to not exclude people from trying to get things from specific hunts, but I'm having trouble thinking of a loot table, or how to add a variable such as accidentally lacerating the dragon's gall and losing the pheromones (using the dragoncrafting handbook for a reference in that case.)

I just woke up so these are all vague summaries, I will be going more into detail about the prior two so people can use them if they're interested, and any help anyone can give for thinking of harvesting out of corpses would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!
Kane

Kaskus
2017-04-23, 12:22 PM
The Heal skill is probably the best match for harvesting from corpses.

Are you using specific recipes that your players will need to collect specific ingredients in order to craft? If that is the case, you could set the harvest DCs based on the craft DC for the item in question. You could also use a quality scale of some sort. Again, if using specific recipes, you could rule that a majority of ingredients must be of a certain quality or better. OR, if using a numeric scale for quality, you could set a threshold, the total of which must be met or exceeded in order to craft the item. This would also allow you to introduce "support" ingredients which are not part of the recipe but which add to the quality to either meet the threshold or give bonuses to the craft check.

The example you used of losing pheromones from the dragon gall would just seem to be a failure in harvesting. It just comes down to how you describe the success / failure.

nomotag
2017-04-25, 10:04 AM
I had an idea like this. My idea was to be a little generic. When I came up was every monster would drop the same sets of materials. Hides, meat, tooth/claw and special. Meat would be used for food, and to make any kind of herbal buff. Hides were for armor and clothes, tooth and claw were for weapons. Special was used for replicating the creatures magic like or supernatural abilities.

The ammout you looted was based on size with some creatures being considered larger or smaller in a category. A dragon has a thick hide, so it is one size larger when you add up how much hide you can get from them. (Special materials were very rare even at large sizes. 1d6- 4 or something.)

The materials had differences based on the stats of the creature they came from. Hide from a fire resistant creature could add some fire resistance to the armor you made out of it, and you needed to find a creature with a high natural armor if you wanted to make heavy armor. Teeth and claws worked the same way different natural attacks being needed for different weapons. The special was special. What you could make from special loot would be based on the creature. Special was rare so it wouldn't come up much.

I never had a system or monster hunting the loot, but I would think you could have a system where every time the players roll a critical, exploits a type weakness, or do some other cool move then they get a instant loot roll for one of the categories. Critical hit, OK you chop of the creatures left claw and collect it.

I guess it's also worth noting, that I didn't have skill or ability checks to gather materials. I didn't see a need. I just let classes that were good at it have have a number of re-rolls. Oh and I also only had it for monsters not for herbs, trees or ore. I figured having to gather something that couldn't fight back or interact with you would just be a boring grind. (I could have maybe spiced that up with wood nymphs or something, but I was thinking more cave man then fantasy.)