There is a master Alchemist Feat that lets you use the GP cost instead of the SP cost for determining how long it takes to make Alchemy items and poisons.
ya about the whole craft skill problem in general you think poisons take along time look at traps.......>.<
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Um, I don't play Pathfinder so I can make clubs or poisons, I do it to play a hero - and that's what the rules are designed for. Trying to use the rules set to simulate the real economy of an entire world is silly - do you run an entire town of commoners in initiative order every time your players want to buy something in the market?
The rules are designed to define (and limit) what *PCs* can do in the typical situations that heroes find themselves in, and include some "down-time" things they can do as well. The GM can take care of the rest in narrative without needing a rule to do it. The rules are to limit munchkins from deciding to take a month off to make a bunch of poison and then sell it to buy a wand of super-uber-death.
My suggestion: Rather than toss your hands up in the air, roll eyes, and make fun of the rules... (and honestly... I'm kind of okay if it takes a 20th level commoner several months to brew a potent poison)... make new rules to fix the problem. My solution: A "Craft Poison" feat that lets you vastly speed up the time it takes to craft poison.
As poison is an alchemical item, the feat Master Alchemist speeds of the creation of poisons by a factor of 2-5 or higher.
Master alchemist
Your mastery of alchemy is nearly supernatural.
Prerequisite: Craft (alchemy) 5 ranks.
Benefit: You receive a +2 bonus on Craft (alchemy) checks, and you may create mundane alchemical items much more quickly than normal. When making poisons, you can create a number of doses equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1) at one time. These additional doses do not increase the time required, but they do increase the raw material cost.
In addition, whenever you make alchemical items or poisons using Craft (alchemy), use the item's gp value as its sp value when determining your progress (do not multiply the item's gp cost by 10 to determine its sp cost).
-There is a legitimate problem with PC's having no reasons, beyond fluff, to take crafting skills. Even for magic items spellcraft covers everything you need.
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The problem is these absolutely insane prices for poisons. Everything else comes from there.
Using poison is seen as very much of a game balance thing, since forever. First edition AD&D actually had being attacked by screaming civilians as a deterrent. In every edition, there have been all sorts of drawbacks, most of them artificial or patently ridiculous.
May I suggest that the very process of using that poison is pretty much a hindrance itself?
Poisons in our world are complex chemical substances. They consist of rare metals such as arsenic, or odd, massive proteins for the most part. Dealing mainly with the protein poisons here, the main problem with them, and the reason it never saw large-scale use in warfare was PERISHABILITY. Once you made those poisons, they degraded very quickly, keeping their potency for a day or a few. Particularly if you want injectable poisons, you run into this. Dry poisons, typically either ingested with food or drink, or burnt and inhaled and only for indoors use, are a slightly different story (but in a world without gas masks, would you use poison fumes?). Fact remains, ingested poisons are what we know saw at least some use in history.
So, when you have made a poison, the clock is ticking. You have a bottle that will be useless shortly. This means that travel time needs to be very short. If the Dwarven Ruins of Hellholia are a week's travel away, forget it. Even if you get there fast, you still can't just smear it on your blade and go hunting. Once opened, that fragile glass bottle won't protect the poison for very long. Optimally, you would want to open the bottle and apply the poison just before combat begins. The poison is good for the first hit you make, then you can throw the bottle away.
Certainly, there are exceptions out there. However, used this way, with something like a two-round job to even apply the stuff to your weapon, you don't need to make it cost an arm and a leg. Poisoners don't need to risk poisoning themselves. Balance is pretty acceptable even so.
Um, I don't play Pathfinder so I can make clubs or poisons, I do it to play a hero - and that's what the rules are designed for. Trying to use the rules set to simulate the real economy of an entire world is silly - do you run an entire town of commoners in initiative order every time your players want to buy something in the market?
Fantastic for you. Some people play Pathfinder to play a hero who crafts things. I find the concept of a hero who forged his own weapon intriguing.
Further, classes in Pathfinder have now been introduced that use that craft skill more than just in a background sense.
The rules are designed to define (and limit) what *PCs* can do in the typical situations that heroes find themselves in, and include some "down-time" things they can do as well. The GM can take care of the rest in narrative without needing a rule to do it. The rules are to limit munchkins from deciding to take a month off to make a bunch of poison and then sell it to buy a wand of super-uber-death.
Actually, since 3E/3.5, which Pathfinder is based off of, the rules are designed to define what everyone can do, since PCs, NPCs and monsters all follow the same rules.
Who cares if a player wants to build a bunch of poison. Player's going to have to find a buyer, right? Who's the buyer? Oh, yeah - the GM.
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Actually, since 3E/3.5, which Pathfinder is based off of, the rules are designed to define what everyone can do, since PCs, NPCs and monsters all follow the same rules.
There's another thread about this topic, but allow me to point out that this is not strictly true. I mean, it would be true if all the PCs, NPCs and monsters were all run by players - but they're not.
For example, do all GM characters start at level 1? Are they built using the generation rules? Do you have to run them through micro-adventures, leveling them up, finding their items? Or do they simply spring into being as it fits the story?
Try doing the latter as a player during play.
Who cares if a player wants to build a bunch of poison. Player's going to have to find a buyer, right? Who's the buyer? Oh, yeah - the GM.
Who cares if a player wants to achieve massive wealth without regard to balance issues? Everyone, hopefully.
Who cares if a player wants to achieve massive wealth without regard to balance issues? Everyone, hopefully.
Hence why I brought up the GM. The GM has to give the player an outlet to sell that mass supply.
There's no way around this, short of selling it to OTHER players.
Typically, expensive things are expensive because they (or their raw materials) are scarce. Flood the market, they stop being scarce.
This isn't even a rule-0 "fix" to the perceived problem, because there's no rule that says a player must be allowed to sell everything he's crafted at a set rate.
So the player wants to acheive mass wealth without regard to balance issues? Tough on the player.
This isn't even a rule-0 "fix" to the perceived problem, because there's no rule that says a player must be allowed to sell everything he's crafted at a set rate.You're simply fixing it after the fact, where the rules would preempt it instead.
What rules would those be?
People have a right to complain about bad rules. Roughly 4/5 people at a table are not the DM and cannot simply rule 0 everything when they want to. This is, by and large, a good thing, and prevents things like "my rogue stabs the dragon in the eye so he'll die instantly", but it can be problematic.
A rogue making their own poison or a dwarf crafting their own axe are both very iconic components of a fantasy story, not unbalancing, and an integral part of many character concepts. The problem is that the turnover rate for masterwork weapons, weapons of unusual construction and usable poisons is far, far, longer than that for magical item, meaning that the vision many people have for their characters cannot come to fruition unless most dm's change how they game (either by house ruling or allowing a lot of down time)
The ability to give your character the chance to make their own poisons or weapons is entirely in the DM's hands. A dm may not even think about pacing a story with downtime, so it doesn't even have to be an active act of getting in the way on the DM's part. Banal cries of "find a new group then!" overlook the difficulty of finding enough people into the same hobby in your general area and the fact that people are going to disagree on SOME rule somewhere in the books. Some DM's are either sticklers for the rules, or not confident enough in their ability to decide what rules are safe to change and what rules have to go. That's why even non munchkins call for changes in the rules.
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A rogue making their own poison or a dwarf crafting their own axe are both very iconic components of a fantasy story, not unbalancing, and an integral part of many character concepts. The problem is that the turnover rate for masterwork weapons, weapons of unusual construction and usable poisons is far, far, longer than that for magical item, meaning that the vision many people have for their characters cannot come to fruition unless most dm's change how they game (either by house ruling or allowing a lot of down time)
Right, but:
A) If that axe is worth having, should it not take a lot to make it?
and
B) If that poison modifies what the class can do in the game, perhaps it should have been a class feature in the first place.
I just can't get past the sentiment that this isn't "Craftfinder" where you're "an industrious artisan fighting to make useful stuff in a world beset by magic and evil!"
Downtime is a good choice. Off-camera isn't bad either. But in-game, expedient, and cheap things available to anyone of any class simply cannot be game changers in a world where balance matters.
Hmmk...with the aforementioned feat, its not too bad actually. Catch is the build, always is the build, but that makes sense.
At level 5, you possibly have 5 ranks in the skill. You get +3 for your class proficiency. If you're doing it right, you should have a class that uses the same stat as your primary, so say a conservative +3 bonus there. Add +2 for a lab, if you're going to do it right, +2 for a racial trait if you're a gnome (or even +1 for a trait-trait? Hell, +1 trait as well!), and +2 for the feat. That's a +17. Taking 10, you're at 27, 28 with trait-trait. Average roll, you're at 28, 29 with trait-trait. That's enough to do a rush job on many poisons and make serious progress in a week, roughly 600-850gp worth of poisons.
So, a fairly built gnome rogue spending a feat can crank out reasonable poisons at about 3 doses a week for about 200-300 gp yes?
The ones being complained about herein. Where stuff is expensive and takes a long time to make. It creates scarcity at the source, rather than making for scarce customers of it later.What rules would those be?
You're simply fixing it after the fact, where the rules would preempt it instead.
Alright, so the existing rules, yes?
I would argue that the rules don't need to preempt it, as the GM is the economy. He/she controls the market, and controls who is buying and how much.
I would contend that a player attempt at exploiting the economy of the game world is a non-issue due to that.
Right, but:
A) If that axe is worth having, should it not take a lot to make it?
1) It doesn't take six months to buy an adamantine battleaxe or poison. Player 1 wants to buy an adamantite battle axe to sunder things. Player 2 wants to forge an adamantite battle axe with his two hands, using his great grandfathers forge, quench it a barrel of his own sweat and make it HIS. Player 1 has a better chance of doing it in a reasonable time frame, WITHOUT investing in skills or feats to do so.
2) It should cost something under the players control. In this case it costs skill points, possibly a feat. The large amount of time involved means that it costs something completely under the DM's control: time.
B) If that poison modifies what the class can do in the game, perhaps it should have been a class feature in the first place.
It is a class feature for an alchemist.
I just can't get past the sentiment that this isn't "Craftfinder" where you're "an industrious artisan fighting to make useful stuff in a world beset by magic and evil!"
A sword, or a weapon, isn't supposed to be just a sword you bought at the market for X amount of gold. It's supposed to be Excalibur, Mjolnir, Anduril. Some weapons you inherit, some you pry from the cold dead hand of your foe, and some you make yourself. (the shield on the illiad, perrin's hammer in the wheel of time)
Downtime is a good choice. Off-camera isn't bad either. But in-game, expedient, and cheap things available to anyone of any class simply cannot be game changers in a world where balance matters.
Downtime is under the DM's control. So is off camera time. The fact is that the real game changers (magic items) can be made on the road and in a real hurry, while the more thematic, mundane weapons take FOREVER to complete. It takes longer to make a sword masterwork than it does to make it vorpal.
Did you know that to make a single dose of Dark Reaver Powder with a +10 craft (alchemy) modifier and taking 10, it will take nearly 6 months to complete....
The crafting rules in Pathfinder, just like in v3.5, are totally broke.
Not broke, just incomplete. They are easy enough to finish.
I was gonna remake this thread since someone was defending the RAW Craft rules.
But it's probably easier just to bump it.
Wouldn't it be better just to use the Poison crafting rules in Complete Adventurer? 3.5 did it right.
1/6th cost raw materials to make poison (rare poisons are 1/3rd cost), you make it in gp (not sp) so faster.And it works/cheap/no issues.
How could Pathfinder mess that up (where are the poison craftng rule gor PF anyway?)?
Poison is a bad example of errors in the crafting skill as specialists in the manufacture of poison do not have this problem.
A 20th level commoner with an int of 20 (the example given) built to make poison would have no trouble manufacturing it quickly:
20 ranks + 3 (craft alchemy is a class skill) + 6 (Skill Focus) + 4 (Prodigy, Craft Alchemy and Profession Craftsman) + 2 (Masterwork Tools) + 10 (Heart of the Fields) + 2 (Master Alchemist) + 2 (Master Craftsman) + 5 (Cauldron of Brewing, why do you think he took master craftsman?) + 4 (two apprentices) = +58 for alchemy.
Crafting while taking ten allows him to make 4420 gold of poison per week.
Or he is quite comfortable making 38 gold a week or about 1700 a year.
The real issue comes from crafting armor from special materials which has no reasonable shortcut.