Crafting, reducing cost by gathering, foraging components?

[Condé]

Hello everyone,

It might belong to the homebrew subforum since it'll add rules that are not in game. My apologies if that's the case.

For the game I am preparing, many players have manifested an interest for Crafting. They are going to have a lot of free time and I wondered if there is a possibility to let them, while roaming and finding new areas, to be able to gather/forage some ressources here and there they could use to reduce the cost of crafting.

We have the Mining Profession in Races of the Dragon pg98.

Check: A Profession (miner) check can be used to indicate the progress of mining or digging operations. Excavation is represented as a fixed number of 5-foot cubes per miner,based on the Profession (miner) check result of the lead worker (but not of the overseer—see Special). Even a pair of unskilled miners can remove a 5-foot cube of stone with 8 hours of labor, while reasonably talented workers can remove twice or even three times as much.

It is not the whole thing but it doesn't specify what you obtain. It looks like it has been designed to dig a tunnel and that's it. And talk about 8hrs sessions and not a week. Which is odd since all profession check work in weeks (except if you are not trained, you can earn 1sp per day).
So this is possibly a profession thatd doesn't give you anything except the opportunity to make a tunnel... Hurray?

I designed something really quick, as for herbalism too. At first it reduced the cost in %, but then I remembered how expensive things can get and having the same plant used in a level 1 and a level 6 potion reducing the crafting cost by 10% doesn't sound really convincing... Right?

Should I make something abstract? You use a profession check, you obtain the kind of ore/plants you need (If you are in the right region), you gather some in a week/day of work and you can deduce this amount from your crafting cost?
Something more "realistic" where you have to gather/forage the right thing and different plants have different properties and different cost, some are rarer than others, same for the Ore etc...

We can easily fall into a rabbit hole and I feel it will not be really worth it since, you know... Even if by reducing the cost of potion crafting it can become a bit more attractive, crafting mundane weapons and armors is going to be lame because the time required to make anything is absurd and by that time you will already have probably found better by killing things.

After a quick research I haven't found anything on the subject so, here I am.

It is very early in the process so I am curious what you people from this forum think of it.

[Crake]

Profession checks can be done to recieve a weekly gp value. Makes sense that this gp value might actually be in the form of whatever thing you were doing. IE, a profession (miner) check might get you some ore equal to the value that your profession check would produce.

[Biggus]

Profession checks can be done to recieve a weekly gp value. Makes sense that this gp value might actually be in the form of whatever thing you were doing. IE, a profession (miner) check might get you some ore equal to the value that your profession check would produce.

This seems like the best way to do it to me: Profession checks reduce the crafting cost by the amount earned (up to the total value of the raw materials, obviously).

[Doctor Despair]

This seems like the best way to do it to me: Profession checks reduce the crafting cost by the amount earned (up to the total value of the raw materials, obviously).

Honestly, if it's a relevant profession check (e.g. miner for a crafted thing that requires gems), it could make sense to allow the profession check to generate 2x the value in materials. Normally, when sold, you only get 50% of their value after all, so it would make sense that, unless you specifically need the gems normally, you'd only get the normal profession rate in money from selling them.

[Railak]

I'd say it's perfectly reasonable, though you'll have to assign a value to what or how much they gather. Cause 3.5/pathfinder, to craft something you need 1/2 or 1/3 the item price in materials to craft it.

Also on the topic of crafting mundane, my group doesn't do the price in silver pieces for progress, we do it in gold pieces. Sure it makes things a LOT faster in most cases, but it doesn't bog the game down with weeks spent crafting a single sword.