Spending Your Downtime

I like it! I particularly like reducing it down to one roll for a long period being the official rule, which is what we would up doing in most games, anyway.

Seems interesting, is crafting items also restricted by proficiency in the associated skill in addition to level?

Yes it is.

Better question, are some items limited to being only available in certain qualities?

Ex. Master and above quality only.

Or will you always be able to craft that item if you have the right skill and level?

Seems interesting, is crafting items also restricted by proficiency in the associated skill in addition to level?

I believe so, in particular crafting items of higher quality (Expert, Master, Legendary, etc.)

So, at level 12 you can craft that Level 5 Arsenic Poison (as a made-up example), but if you want to craft that Level 9 Expert-quality Dark Elf Sleep Poison, you'd better be Expert in the skill training.

EDIT: Answered your own question. No idea on the quantity thing, though. My gut says no, quantity will not be gated like that, but curious what a dev says.

So wait, taking downtime to Gather Information takes downtime DAYS? That feels rather inefficient.

Solid. I'm glad the core rulebook is making definitive rules on this and I hope it'll be easy to incorperate into society play. Retraining in core is a blessing. I also like that recovering from disease is a downtime activity.

Downtime is almost always a big part of my campaigns. I like when my players put down roots in a campaign area.

I wonder though if the full rules will have options for travelling downtime rules, for say if your party puts together a caravan, to travel on a months long journey from the Inner Sea to Tian-Xia.

Hmm, I'll have to see the system more, but I'm not sure how I feel about the notion of the price of an item having variance on the success of a roll. We've taken rolling out of character creation and leveling (fixed stats/HP), why is it being introduced to really the only other permanent thing affecting a character, wealth?

EDIT: Granted, it's not clear what the variance is. A 10% discount probably isn't a big deal, but if you could potentially pay 50% of the normal price... then it very much feels like the system we had before, which was broken.

So wait, taking downtime to Gather Information takes downtime DAYS? That feels rather inefficient.

Even in a modern era, investigators and reporters can take days to run down sources, so not too unrealistic. However, all this will work towards solving that complaint that people have had in the past of adventurers levelling from first to 10th in two weeks, if downtime activities across the board take a while.

willuwontu wrote:

Seems interesting, is crafting items also restricted by proficiency in the associated skill in addition to level?

I believe so, in particular crafting items of higher quality (Expert, Master, Legendary, etc.)

So, at level 12 you can craft that Level 5 Arsenic Poison (as a made-up example), but if you want to craft that Level 9 Expert-quality Dark Elf Sleep Poison, you'd better be Expert in the skill training.

EDIT: Answered your own question. No idea on the quantity thing, though. My gut says no, quantity will not be gated like that, but curious what a dev says.

Ninjas everywhere :P

Thanks for the reply though.

you must be skilled enough at crafting, reflected in your proficiency rank, to craft an item of that quality (trained for standard items, and expert, master, or legendary for higher-quality ones).

This makes it seem like that you can always craft an item of your level, just not at a quality above your proficiency, I'm curious whether there are items that will require a certain proficiency to craft or not.

Cool blog, crafting looks very promising

you might also get the occasional special commission from a client who wants a specific item and is willing to pay top... gold piece

Value of gold piece = dollar confirmed through colloquial substitution.

(kidding)

I'm curious if the "survive in the wild" and "subsist on the streets" (which sounds like a euphemism for eating cobblestones) will have any use after, say, first level. Or maybe it's really putting the "hobo" in murderhobo?

I'm also super curious about the forgery rules. Cool spycraft/heist missions or forged claims of nobility to justify wars (shades of Crusader Kings 2) could make those really awesome...or create a world where forgery is super simple and your average bard is, essentially, a master counterfeiter and destroys economies.

It would be horribly unfortunate if the crafting rules are precisely balanced and wonderful, but the rules for crafting fake destroys the in-game economy.

I am glad to hear that items will have levels. That really cleans up a lot of the expectations for what equipment is expected/appropriate for different stages of the game.

It seems to me like the game will still have issues with balancing crafting for GMs that want to run campaigns that take place over a short period of time, but at least crafting skill feats no longer compete with combat effectiveness.

I still really want rules for a stylized wealth system though.
-w-

Hmm, I'll have to see the system more, but I'm not sure how I feel about the notion of the price of an item having variance on the success of a roll. We've taken rolling out of character creation and leveling (fixed stats/HP), why is it being introduced to really the only other permanent thing affecting a character, wealth?

The item's price is unaffected by the roll. The amount of price you can reduce per day (the discount) depends on the roll, in much the same way that you might make more money from a great Performance on a critical success.

Alexander Augunas wrote:

So wait, taking downtime to Gather Information takes downtime DAYS? That feels rather inefficient.

Even in a modern era, investigators and reporters can take days to run down sources, so not too unrealistic. However, all this will work towards solving that complaint that people have had in the past of adventurers levelling from first to 10th in two weeks, if downtime activities across the board take a while.

You also get to look for several questions at once when you take the activity, so it actually works out fairly similarly to spending an 8-hour workday in PF1 gathering information and getting lucky on your 1d4+1 hours rolls.

It seems to me like the game will still have issues with balancing crafting for GMs that want to run campaigns that take place over a short period of time, but at least crafting skill feats no longer compete with combat effectiveness.

It's a lot better in that regard, in that a +5 weapon takes 50 days to craft in PF1 (perhaps up 200 days to craft a +5 vorpal or similar weapon), while now it takes at most 4 days to craft an item if you need it right away, the extra time just helps get more discounts. While it's certainly true that some campaigns are so fast-paced that even 1-4 days of downtime is too much to ask, I submit that those campaigns probably just won't use downtime and so shouldn't need to worry about crafting. Whereas campaigns that wouldn't give you 50-200 days off probably number a large majority of them, and they still might be using downtime extensively even so.

"You can craft items of your level or lower": I'm not sure I like this much. This means long lived races with hundreds of years of experence at their craft can't make items without also being high level: master craftsmen are always higher level meaning learning to quilt well means you can kick someone's butt by default...

EDIT: I forgot to say the rest seems good. ;)

tivadar27 wrote:

Hmm, I'll have to see the system more, but I'm not sure how I feel about the notion of the price of an item having variance on the success of a roll. We've taken rolling out of character creation and leveling (fixed stats/HP), why is it being introduced to really the only other permanent thing affecting a character, wealth?

The item's price is unaffected by the roll. The amount of price you can reduce per day (the discount) depends on the roll, in much the same way that you might make more money from a great Performance on a critical success.

This fair. I actually edited my post a bit too. In PF1e (particularly PFS), the only variance on wealth, essentially, is your Day Job, and that's a pretty small percentage of your wealth. You've even done a lot to ensure that you can't play up and earn extra wealth. This was done because of the power disparity that arose from characters with very different wealth-by-level.

The blog here mentions that the cost starts at 50% of the price, but doesn't indicate that you can't reach a final price close to that. However, it sounds as if you're saying that you'll reduce the final cost by a fixed amount the more time you spend on it. So long as that amount isn't unreasonably high, and is similar (or even slightly better than...) the current wealth contributed by your Day Job, then I don't think it's a big deal. If it's too high, then you'll have a situation where everyone will essentially be forced into Crafting (similar to item crafting in PF1e, if you're doing it right :-P). I sorta assume you've considered this, but that's not obvious from the post, or at least not to me.

Very nice.

I really like that you can smash out magic items quickly if you are rolling in piles of gold, but you can spend your time and compete the magic items and save your precious silver.

It is also good that you cannot make items above your level or proficiency.

I also like that crafting magic items nets you a similar amount of gold as your other down time activities.

It would be interesting to see rules for stronghold, but these are quite easy to cook up in the interim.

Downtime is something that has basically never come up in my campaigns because nobody involved is that interested in it. These rules should still exist for other people, of course.

So long as that amount isn't unreasonably high, and is similar (or even slightly better than...) the current wealth contributed by your Day Job, then I don't think it's a big deal.

I think a benefit is that as long as you have a good work site, you can get your full roll no matter the local as opposed to how a small town might limit how much you could earn with day jobs.

"You can craft items of your level or lower": I'm not sure I like this much. This means long lived races with hundreds of years of experence at their craft can't make items without also being high level: master craftsmen are always higher level meaning learning to quilt well means you can kick someone's butt by default...

EDIT: I forgot to say the rest seems good. ;)

Fortunately, pretty much all standard quality mundane items are at most level 1 items (or rarely level 2), so pretty much anyone can craft them. They just might not be able to craft a +5 sword (this was already the case in PF1; weapons had a caster level requirement based on the enhancement bonus).

tivadar27 wrote:

So long as that amount isn't unreasonably high, and is similar (or even slightly better than...) the current wealth contributed by your Day Job, then I don't think it's a big deal.

I think a benefit is that as long as you have a good work site, you can get your full roll no matter the local as opposed to how a small town might limit how much you could earn with day jobs.

This is exactly right, and is a major benefit of Craft vs Practice a Trade or Stage a Performance. Of course, the advantage of the others is that they can make you money when you have none, whereas Craft saves you money but only if you had half to start with. They can combine really nicely if some PCs are Crafting while others help gain initial capital via other downtime means.

Looks like everyone can respec feats now.
Are fighters being offset in some way for losing this exclusivity?

This sounds unnecessarily complicated. To make a single potion or scroll, it takes 4 days no matter what? That's a huge time sink.

And I'm confused by the disparaging comments about the crafting in 1st ed. You make it sound like that system is broken, but I've never seen it break anything. If anything, the amount of time required to craft items in 1st ed is prohibitively large. When I went through Rise of the Runelords a couple of years ago, time was the biggest limiter on what I could craft. And it sounds like you want to make that longer in 2nd ed?

In addition, crafting of magic items in 1st edition only increases the power of your party noticeably if you are giving out tons of currency. If you give someone 1,000gp they can change that into 2,000gp worth of magic items. But if you give out magic items or equipment, then they can only sell that at 1/2 its value. And that's coincidentally the same cost to craft an item like that. So, generic +1 armor that costs 1,000gp can be sold then those funds crafted into...wait for it....1,000gp worth of magic items.

Now, it can be argued that being able to pick your equipment without losing value is an advantage by itself. And that's a totally valid arguement, but it's not equivalent to doubling your wealth. If you want to minimize the effect of being able to craft exactly what you want, then just change crafting to cost 75% of the full price of the item. Or switch it back to the way magic item crafting worked in 3.5 where it also cost you XP.

4 days for everything?

If so, wow do I not want to play Alchemist now.

This means long lived races with hundreds of years of experence at their craft can't make items without also being high level

Well that is an inherent part of a system with levels

While I'm glad to have downtime rules in the first book, the limiting of item crafting to your level seems a bit off.

I'd like, at least, level + proficiency instead of just level, so specialized training counts, too.

graystone wrote:

"You can craft items of your level or lower": I'm not sure I like this much. This means long lived races with hundreds of years of experence at their craft can't make items without also being high level: master craftsmen are always higher level meaning learning to quilt well means you can kick someone's butt by default...

EDIT: I forgot to say the rest seems good. ;)

Fortunately, pretty much all standard quality mundane items are at most level 1 items (or rarely level 2), so pretty much anyone can craft them. They just might not be able to craft a +5 sword (this was already the case in PF1; weapons had a caster level requirement based on the enhancement bonus).

Ah... The blog is rolling mundane and magic crafting all together. Ok, that's better. I'm mostly fine with that then, though I hope there is some was to 'fudge' the level up with feats/abilities. I'd like the possibility for highly skilled crafters that aren't as equally leveled. I guess it's kind of force PC groups to have all the crafts to make what they need instead of trying to find crafters that match their level.

So what about the whole if I can make magic items cheaper=my pc gets more poweful issue?
Or is it basically a non issue through a combination of the minimum level requirement, the fact that only 3 items give you numeric bonuses and resonance?

To make a single potion or scroll, it takes 4 days no matter what?

It only takes 4 days to create the most powerful item you can currently craft, and potions are typically crafted in batches, where you spend the time but get 4 potions' worth (alchemists can increase the batch size further as well for alchemical items like elixirs).

James Krolak wrote:

To make a single potion or scroll, it takes 4 days no matter what?

It only takes 4 days to create the most powerful item you can currently craft, and potions are typically crafted in batches, where you spend the time but get 4 potions' worth (alchemists can increase the batch size further as well for alchemical items like elixirs).

Batch crafting is great way to implement crafting for those cheaper consumables.

So what about the whole if I can make magic items cheaper=my pc gets more poweful issue?

Or is it basically a non issue through a combination of the minimum level requirement, the fact that only 3 items give you numeric bonuses and resonance?

That's always going to be true to some extent whenever the PCs gain additional wealth. But the playtest downtime system makes the value gained during a day of downtime much more predictable for you, rather than PF1 where magic item crafting generates 500 gp per day of value for any old schmo who can perform it while even someone who decided to spend so much effort in Profession that they had +90 (is this even possible in PF1? It's far beyond the skill bonuses of most demigods in any case) earns roughly 50 gp per week. So that way you can more easily predict how much value you'll be adding to the party based on how much downtime.

Missed opportunity to tell us at least a little bit about rituals.

James Krolak wrote:

To make a single potion or scroll, it takes 4 days no matter what?

It only takes 4 days to create the most powerful item you can currently craft, and potions are typically crafted in batches, where you spend the time but get 4 potions' worth (alchemists can increase the batch size further as well for alchemical items like elixirs).

Okay not as bad. Useful for brewing when on the wagon to the next town.

While I'm glad to have downtime rules in the first book, the limiting of item crafting to your level seems a bit off.

I'd like, at least, level + proficiency instead of just level, so specialized training counts, too.

That'd be an interesting idea to try, I'd probably do something like you can craft higher but the quality is less, so expert would let you craft standard items of 1 level higher, master would let you craft standard or expert 1 level higher or standard 2 levels higher and so on.

That seems like a good way to work it, and reward people for specialization.

graystone wrote:

This means long lived races with hundreds of years of experence at their craft can't make items without also being high level

Well that is an inherent part of a system with levels

Not so in pathfinder classic: you can skip prerequisited by increasing the DC and caster level sets the DC. A skill focused character can make an item with a CL well above their level. As such, it actually isn't inherent.

Mark Seifter wrote:

James Krolak wrote:

To make a single potion or scroll, it takes 4 days no matter what?

It only takes 4 days to create the most powerful item you can currently craft, and potions are typically crafted in batches, where you spend the time but get 4 potions' worth (alchemists can increase the batch size further as well for alchemical items like elixirs).

Okay not as bad. Useful for brewing when on the wagon to the next town.

And if you're willing to brew, say, the second-best healing elixir available instead of the best, you might wind up in a situation where your alchemist can brew a batch of 8 in one day (and of course, this isn't even dipping into the daily alchemical items you can prepare each day, we're talking permanent additional items).

I like how Lore is the catch-all for "practice a trade". Sometimes in PF1 it was ambiguous (or just "ask the GM") if you wanted to do something like "be an artist" or "be a chef"- do you use craft, profession, or even performance?

Excaliburproxy wrote:

It seems to me like the game will still have issues with balancing crafting for GMs that want to run campaigns that take place over a short period of time, but at least crafting skill feats no longer compete with combat effectiveness.

It's a lot better in that regard, in that a +5 weapon takes 50 days to craft in PF1 (perhaps up 200 days to craft a +5 vorpal or similar weapon), while now it takes at most 4 days to craft an item if you need it right away, the extra time just helps get more discounts. While it's certainly true that some campaigns are so fast-paced that even 1-4 days of downtime is too much to ask, I submit that those campaigns probably just won't use downtime and so shouldn't need to worry about crafting. Whereas campaigns that wouldn't give you 50-200 days off probably number a large majority of them, and they still might be using downtime extensively even so.

Okay, so maybe I understood this wrong, but you use four days to craft the item at full market price, but how long does the extra crafting take to halve its price? Also only four days or is this period much longer to prevent the easy doubling of ones WBL?

Also, pardon me for not paying enough attention in the preceding weeks, but I guess the expert, master and legendary levels of skill proficiency needed to craft higher level magic items are unlocked with skill feats? Do all the different crafting feats use the same skill? :)

Instead of being a flat 4 days minimum, the time should be based on the size and quality of the item:

* A medkit should not take as long as a sword, which should not take as long as armor, which should not take as long as a house.

* An average quality item should not take as long as an expert item, which should not take as long as a master item, which should not take as long as a legendary item.

Add size and quality together, then make the check at the start. Depending on whether you got a critical success and how much you're willing to spend, you can make it in the minimum time for maximum cost, the maximum time for minimum cost, or whatever point in between suits your needs.

Otherwise, I like the blog. :)

Excaliburproxy wrote:

It seems to me like the game will still have issues with balancing crafting for GMs that want to run campaigns that take place over a short period of time, but at least crafting skill feats no longer compete with combat effectiveness.

It's a lot better in that regard, in that a +5 weapon takes 50 days to craft in PF1 (perhaps up 200 days to craft a +5 vorpal or similar weapon), while now it takes at most 4 days to craft an item if you need it right away, the extra time just helps get more discounts. While it's certainly true that some campaigns are so fast-paced that even 1-4 days of downtime is too much to ask, I submit that those campaigns probably just won't use downtime and so shouldn't need to worry about crafting. Whereas campaigns that wouldn't give you 50-200 days off probably number a large majority of them, and they still might be using downtime extensively even so.

That is a good point.

And I'm confused by the disparaging comments about the crafting in 1st ed. You make it sound like that system is broken, but I've never seen it break anything. If anything, the amount of time required to craft items in 1st ed is prohibitively large.

If the crafting rules are useless above a certain point because things take too long, that's one version of "broken." Certainly, adamantine or mithril full plate were prohibitively long to craft without being so cheap as to break the system, because the mundane crafting rules didn't scale well on time taken, either.

In addition, crafting of magic items in 1st edition only increases the power of your party noticeably if you are giving out tons of currency. If you give someone 1,000gp they can change that into 2,000gp worth of magic items. But if you give out magic items or equipment, then they can only sell that at 1/2 its value. And that's coincidentally the same cost to craft an item like that. So, generic +1 armor that costs 1,000gp can be sold then those funds crafted into...wait for it....1,000gp worth of magic items.

Now, it can be argued that being able to pick your equipment without losing value is an advantage by itself. And that's a totally valid arguement, but it's not equivalent to doubling your wealth. If you want to minimize the effect of being able to craft exactly what you want, then just change crafting to cost 75% of the full price of the item. Or switch it back to the way magic item crafting worked in 3.5 where it also cost you XP.

I never liked the "costs xp" rule, because the crafter gets punished for crafting items for your other party members.

I think the point about being able to pick your equipment not being worth 2x value is valid, and why tying it to the other downtime systems of wealth creation is the logical approach. Leaving a "no cost reduction" version of the crafting rules is a little weird, but potentially leaves an option for people who play PFS, who might be capped at that 4-day version of crafting. It gives them flexibility without requiring magic shops everywhere, without breaking the PFS power curves.

What these new rules, at first glance, seem to do is create a world where you could conceivably buy and sell a good for essentially the same price, barring local conditions and frictional costs. If the only money saved by crafting an item yourself is a trade for time and the overhead of running a shop (basically), then finding an item and selling it for about the price you could have paid (the market price, instead of, mysteriously, half the price) means that crafting rules won't break the economy even if you get 100% of the market price (instead of PF1, where your brand new item had to sell for half because ... reasons(notably, the exact cost of raw materials assuming no failures on the craft role, so your labor had added literally 0 value). Haggling to sell an item for an extra 10% might actually be something that could be done without feeling weirdly inappropriate relative to the typical pricing.

I dunno, I'm actually super excited about the clarifications Mark has added. I've never ever liked the "used magic items lose value like college textbooks" pricing model.

Somewhat interesting.

MerlinCross wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

James Krolak wrote:

To make a single potion or scroll, it takes 4 days no matter what?

It only takes 4 days to create the most powerful item you can currently craft, and potions are typically crafted in batches, where you spend the time but get 4 potions' worth (alchemists can increase the batch size further as well for alchemical items like elixirs).

Okay not as bad. Useful for brewing when on the wagon to the next town.

And if you're willing to brew, say, the second-best healing elixir available instead of the best, you might wind up in a situation where your alchemist can brew a batch of 8 in one day (and of course, this isn't even dipping into the daily alchemical items you can prepare each day, we're talking permanent additional items).

I'm willing to brew what I can for the amount of time I can. Example, it took us a day or two to get out of the opening of Strange Aeons but I was able to make a potion a day to keep us going(After scrounging up some materials with some Perception and Survival Checks).

And yes I'd like to focus on the permanent crafted stuff. It's always handy to have a bottle of Cure Light Wounds or Shield always in the back pocket. If only for the fact that saves me from using up my Daily slots per day.

This sounds unnecessarily complicated. To make a single potion or scroll, it takes 4 days no matter what? That's a huge time sink.

And I'm confused by the disparaging comments about the crafting in 1st ed. You make it sound like that system is broken, but I've never seen it break anything. If anything, the amount of time required to craft items in 1st ed is prohibitively large. When I went through Rise of the Runelords a couple of years ago, time was the biggest limiter on what I could craft. And it sounds like you want to make that longer in 2nd ed?

In addition, crafting of magic items in 1st edition only increases the power of your party noticeably if you are giving out tons of currency. If you give someone 1,000gp they can change that into 2,000gp worth of magic items. But if you give out magic items or equipment, then they can only sell that at 1/2 its value. And that's coincidentally the same cost to craft an item like that. So, generic +1 armor that costs 1,000gp can be sold then those funds crafted into...wait for it....1,000gp worth of magic items.

Now, it can be argued that being able to pick your equipment without losing value is an advantage by itself. And that's a totally valid arguement, but it's not equivalent to doubling your wealth. If you want to minimize the effect of being able to craft exactly what you want, then just change crafting to cost 75% of the full price of the item. Or switch it back to the way magic item crafting worked in 3.5 where it also cost you XP.

Suffice to say, other people had different experiences with the system than you did.

I'm not a fan of level limiting what you can craft. In particular for the opposite - that a 20th level character who can craft at all could craft anything. I'd much rather have the proficiency level limit what you can craft - if you're trained you can make items level 1-5, if you're expert you can craft 1-10, if you're master you can craft level 1-15 items, and if you're legendary you can craft all items 1-20.

I'd also prefer the default time be tied to the item's quality - so 4 days might be enough for a standard item, but an expert item would take 8 days, a master item 12 days, and a legendary item 16 days. It's still way too fast for items that in reality took months to craft like a suit of full plate armor, but at least adds some amount of difference. And it still drastically reduces the time needed to make a +5 sword from 90 days to 16. I think it's a good feature if you can't create the most powerful items in just 4 days.

MerlinCross wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

James Krolak wrote:

To make a single potion or scroll, it takes 4 days no matter what?

It only takes 4 days to create the most powerful item you can currently craft, and potions are typically crafted in batches, where you spend the time but get 4 potions' worth (alchemists can increase the batch size further as well for alchemical items like elixirs).

Okay not as bad. Useful for brewing when on the wagon to the next town.

And if you're willing to brew, say, the second-best healing elixir available instead of the best, you might wind up in a situation where your alchemist can brew a batch of 8 in one day (and of course, this isn't even dipping into the daily alchemical items you can prepare each day, we're talking permanent additional items).

Will you be able to craft "batches" of lower level items, like a level 10 blacksmithing focused character, making a batch of level 1 swords?

No retraining class levels ? :-(

edduardco wrote:

graystone wrote:

This means long lived races with hundreds of years of experence at their craft can't make items without also being high level

Well that is an inherent part of a system with levels

Not so in pathfinder classic: you can skip prerequisited by increasing the DC and caster level sets the DC. A skill focused character can make an item with a CL well above their level. As such, it actually isn't inherent.

That was not the point. Also you still need to gain levels to increases skills, or gain feats that provided bonus.