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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Greywander's Avatar

    Join Date
    Nov 2017

    Default Crafting system using degrees of success to determine progress

    I was musing about a possible alternative to the current crafting system in 5e, and thought I'd get some input.

    With the existing crafting systems, either from the PHB or from XGtE, crafting takes a set amount of time, regardless of your ability. Tool proficiencies are essentially a binary on/off setting, your actual bonus to ability checks with those tools never comes in to play. Now, this is perhaps intentional, as the rigidity of the rules here make it impossible to break them by stacking up stat bonuses.

    For the alternative system I had in mind, the player would instead make an ability check with those tools at the end of an 8 hour workday. If they fail the check, no progress is made. If they succeed on the check, the amount they succeed by determines how much progress they make. For example, if the DC is 10 and they roll a 22, they would make 12 "points" of progress. If they roll high enough, they might even be able to complete multiple items in one day.

    Now, this begs two question: (a) What is the DC of the check, and (b) how much "progress" is required to complete an item? These two actually intertwine; by lowering the DC you are increasing the amount of progress made for the same roll. For (b) the most obvious would be to use that item's gold value as the requisite amount of progress. For (a) we might have one DC for creating an existing mundane item (say, 10), another for modifying an item or designing a new item (say, 15), and then magic items would probably depend on rarity (say, start at 12 and increase by 2 for each step).

    One thing I'd be worried about is that a sufficiently high roll (especially on an artificer with Tool Expertise) could allow a character to produce an item so quickly, or produce such a ridiculously large number of cheap items, that it breaks any illusion of realism. For example, producing literally thousands of candles in one day. (Although, note that under XGtE rules, you can produce exactly 1000 candles in one day).

    Maybe a better way to handle it would be to start with the crafting system in XGtE, and make the check at the end of each workweek (probably just a DC 10 for everything). On a pass, you get the normal progress done. If you succeed by, say, 10 or more, then you get two workweeks worth of work done. If you succeed by 20 or more, you get three workweeks worth of work done. Etc. This allows characters with high bonuses to finish a little faster, but without giving absurd crafting speeds for those with high stats. It also means rolling less often, since it's every week, rather than every day (though you could also roll after a single day of work, to see if you can get two or three days worth of work done).

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    WolfInSheepsClothing

    Join Date
    Aug 2013

    Default Re: Crafting system using degrees of success to determine progress

    Some things just take time. It doesn't matter how good of a vintner you are, that wine has got to sit in those barrels for the same amount of time regardless.

    IMO, the crafting system does need more depth though. Specifically, each tool set should have its own instructions for use, their own time/cost/value created ratios. Said vintner cannot make one bottle of wine in a day because making wine takes months, but his labor isn't required for much of the time, so he can make many many barrels of wine at once. A blacksmith can make a sword in a few hours work, several even, but it requires his full attention the whole time, so there's no good way to get an economy of scale going outside of an industrial setting.

    And yes, I'd like to see a system that uses a tool use check, though in most cases this would effect the quality of the item produced, not the quantity. In most cases, this would effect the value of the item without otherwise effecting mechanics. For example, a character who rolls well while making a longsword would get a particularly beautiful longsword, one he could charge more money for, but not one which functions any better than any other longsword. Off the top of my head, you could simply say that the roll made at the completion of crafting is added directly to the value of the item as a percentage of its base value, so if you roll a 34 (17 on the die, expertise for +12, 20 int for +5) the longsword is worth +34% more than is typical, or 20.1 gp up from 15.

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