At every game I have mentioned my characters background and blacksmithing, with an eventual plan for magic item crafting, other players and even GMs have chimed in that crafting is a waste of time.
Please note that none of them were disrespectful about my character or my choice, they simply pointed out it was something they stopped wasting their own time on. This makes crafting feel like a 'noob trap'.
Taking crafting (specialty crafting, magical crafting, inventor etc) just to be thematic is hurting your party by not taking medicine feats, combat support feats (Bon Mot) or other directly and mechanically useful feats. To me it seems that characters that invest in crafting are not pulling as much weight as non-crafting characters in society games.
Appropriate level items can always be purchased by characters in society play so scarcity is never an issue.
Items can't be traded so I can't even make something interesting for another player.
I have three questions really.
1. Am I wrong and crafting is actually worth it over buying items?
2. Are characters with crafting feats at a mechanical disadvantage?
3. Can this be fixed without making crafting an auto-take?
Bonus question: Can trading crafted items ever be both useful and balanced for society play?
Please note I am new to both society play and 2e so I may have misread, or completely missed something, that is really obvious. If this is a tired topic I apologise as I did search but no previous discussions seemed to really articulate or answer my questions.
