GM's, help me understand not allowing crafting

Even if the odds of finding a katana in a fantasy Viking setting are super low, that just leads to fun side quests, like finding a master smith to make an Ulfberht katana.

Even if the odds of finding a katana in a fantasy Viking setting are super low, that just leads to fun side quests, like finding a master smith to make an Ulfberht katana.

Or, y'know... having the PC take ranks in Craft (Weapons). Then at L5, they spend a feat on Master Craftsman, and later at L7 spend a feat on Craft Magic Arms and Armor. Finally, instead of spending Downtime researching a rare Viking katana maker, trekking to them, requesting a special sword, going on side quests to prove worth or gather materials, and finally waiting for said crafter to complete your blade of legend, you forge your own.

I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin...

Or, y'know... having the PC take ranks in Craft (Weapons). Then at L5, they spend a feat on Master Craftsman, and later at L7 spend a feat on Craft Magic Arms and Armor. Finally, instead of spending Downtime researching a rare Viking katana maker, trekking to them, requesting a special sword, going on side quests to prove worth or gather materials, and finally waiting for said crafter to complete your blade of legend, you forge your own.

I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin...

That's fine. But far less epic and memorable. "Oh I just killed a bunch of guys until I inexplicably gained the ability to make the sword myself." That just doesn't hit quite right. And it requires quite a bit of downtime that isn't available in a lot of campaigns.

Melkiador: Hey, I just gained a level, and I inexplicably learned how to...

Flex my will and force raw magic into a weapon (Arcane Strike)

Use Perception x3 better than I did a minute ago (Skill Focus: Perception)

Learned how to throw my tongue 10' (Grippli; Agile Tongue)

All three of these feats can be chosen after L1. All three could be a jarring, sudden change to the PC that may have had no story-based justification prior to hitting an odd level. In other words, 5 minutes ago when the party entered the dungeon, Kermit's tongue was normal and used only for eating and talking; he defeated some monsters and suddenly the tongue is 10' long and can pick someone's pocket.

Point is: many new feats are weird.

Are you willing to use ABP? Ever use 3PP material in your games? If the answer is yes to both, one way to go to solve the Downtime challenge is to use Spes Games' alt crafting rules. Under these making a katana costs the same but is considered a "moderate" complexity item; DC 14, 4 days' worth of time needed.

Adding magic to the item is the item crafting rules: +1, 16 hours; +2, 64 hours and so on. I get that this is a really long time. However...

Requesting NPC master craftsman to make you a +2 katana... 64 hours. Asking the GM if there's a rare katana in their game world you can quest for; time varies for side quest, but possibly 64 hours.

My point is that if you're willing to have NPCs craft unique items for the PC or to have the PC peel off the main plot for a side quest to upgrade their gear, it could potentially take the same amount of time as the PC making it on their own.

There are solutions to all of the mechanical reasons for not allowing crafting.

I'm not saying to not allow crafting. Just that it doesn't make much sense that killing things has made you better at it. At least for the arcane strike or agile tongue, you practiced hitting things doing what gave you experience in the first place. It's not like you were constructing bridges in the middle of your adventuring or combat.

"How I learned healing by shooting arrows?"

I don't think anyone wants to play DegreeFinder, where you roleplay your magic/religious/sword studies.

I don't think anyone wants to play DegreeFinder, where you roleplay your magic/religious/sword studies.

You say that, yet people want to play Craftfinder where they maximize their downtime doing various magic item creation.

Yeah, but that actually accomplishes something more than a nonmagical piece of paper.

Yeah, but that actually accomplishes something more than a nonmagical piece of paper.

In this theoretical, it would accomplish being able to accomplish the crafting bit.

What do the PCs do? Like, what's a day like for them in other people's games? L1 vanilla Human Fighter with Int 12, Craft (Weapons)+5; what does this PC do all day?

Every APL1/CR1 fight lasts, on average, 2-3 rounds. Based on healing resources from, say, a dedicated full caster but barring Channel Energy or consumables, this PC can potentially start the day at 12 HP and survive approximately 7.40 combats in the day before a PC with a Healer's Kit would have to resort to trying a DC 20 Heal check to keep this PC alive and in positive HP.

So, figure an adventuring day featuring somewhere between 3 greater than APL fights in a day to up to 10 lower than APL fights in a day. That's what THIS fighter could sustain with their party before the spells ran out for the day. That's what, between 72 to 150 seconds of their day spent in battle? 72 + 150 then divided by 2 is, say, an average of 111 seconds, or roughly 1.85 minutes.

So... say the PC spends 2 minutes in battle in a given day before these battles threaten to outright kill the PC. Figure another 58 minutes' worth of time spent searching around the site of each battle, scouring every inch of the scene for any potential clue, hidden treasure, NPC to save, etc. Generously, that's an hour out of this character's day spent "adventuring."

Even if this PC is spending this 1 hour of adventuring in the middle of a barren wasteland contained within a Tundra environment type, removing another 8 hours for sleep leaves this PC 15 hours unaccounted for in the day. What do they do with that time?

Traveling? Maybe they wax on with the other PCs about crafting techniques until he bores his compatriots to death. Eating lunch or resting between encounters? Could be eating w/1 hand, pouring over an old journal from his mentor on how to fold metal into runes BETWEEN layers of the blade without weakening the piece. Striking camp in the morning? Well, might only take about 15, 20 minutes, but the prepared casters need an hour; the extra time could be spent repairing nicks and scratches in your weapons, tapping a masterwork weapon to hear how it "sings" to gauge its suitability for enchantment (working towards later feats) and so on.

There are narrative ways to explain the PC growing into the feats. There are mechanical ways around the mechanical challenges of mundane and magic crafting.

TOZ wrote:

Yeah, but that actually accomplishes something more than a nonmagical piece of paper.

In this theoretical, it would accomplish being able to accomplish the crafting bit.

Yeah, but even fewer people would play that than 1E Pathfinder now.

What do the PCs do? Like, what's a day like for them in other people's games? L1 vanilla Human Fighter with Int 12, Craft (Weapons)+5; what does this PC do all day?

It depends on the environment, but the majority of my PCs try to have a life. They don't craft while eating (sometime they will eat while crafting, but that is different), but they could chat while eating, or simply relax.

I recall people saying they see no problem with a spellcaster spending 16 hours a day for a few decades casting Create demiplane and Permanence to have their demiplane. I have problems seeing how someone could do that for more than a few days or weeks.

Generally, I pick 1 or 2 ranks in a skill that will be a hobby. Nothing really useful, simply something that will flesh the character and my idea of him.

I recall people saying they see no problem with a spellcaster spending 16 hours a day for a few decades casting Create demiplane and Permanence to have their demiplane. I have problems seeing how someone could do that for more than a few days or weeks.

I have a player that frequently wants whoever is playing a caster (or an NPC caster) to constantly cast Orisons/Cantrips when they're not at all needed "just in case" because "you can cast as many as you want, what's the problem?" (EG: Disrupt Undead while wandering through a town "because there might be hidden undead we don't know about!" even when there's literally NO reason to think there would be undead around.)

Diego Rossi wrote:

I recall people saying they see no problem with a spellcaster spending 16 hours a day for a few decades casting Create demiplane and Permanence to have their demiplane. I have problems seeing how someone could do that for more than a few days or weeks.

I have a player that frequently wants whoever is playing a caster (or an NPC caster) to constantly cast Orisons/Cantrips when they're not at all needed "just in case" because "you can cast as many as you want, what's the problem?" (EG: Disrupt Undead while wandering through a town "because there might be hidden undead we don't know about!" even when there's literally NO reason to think there would be undead around.)

I'm thinking this might cause a mob to form. The common folk don't know much about magic and are superstitious. They might think the character is cursing them. It might only need a few bad things to happen to create a domino effect while the character is liberally blasting magic everywhere.

You might want to save this until the 3rd time (or later) they do this, otherwise they might think you are singling them out because they are annoying you.

You might even want to hand out a warning or two. Have the some of the common folk whisper as the character uses their magic, or ask what are they doing.

...otherwise they might think you are singling them out because they are annoying you.

Because you are.

is this still going on?... LoL

So what reasons or justifications are we GM's using to prevent PCs from using these skills and abilities? More than that, why don't we WANT them making their own gear?

Yeah, that's my bad and why my friends like me to GM, or lacking that, point the min/max cannon at something other than the main plot. But at that, I can tell you that I have avoided a situation which has a lot to do with ...

Here's my thing R to the K: unless my players are absolute total noobs, they likely know some items like the Deck of Many Things are campaign-wreckers. If they still want them... its' EVERYONE'S campaign to wreck, including theirs. If the players are nihilists or shenanigan-types that just want to see the campaign world burn, let 'em.

and so knowing a campaign takes collaboration, and also being this guy:

One would think so, but in my experience I've always had that one player (generally the same exact person every campaign) that always tries to push the boundary/limit. They would typically come up with a contrived backstory to shoehorn them in, even though it didn't really make sense IMO. Thankfully we were always playing in Golarion so while the choices were far fetched, none were impossible. Just a long long way from home.

I have created the perfect balance not only for crafting but also the downtime rules for creating organizations using one principle, what happens in downtime stays in downtime until the GM and party decide it would be cool and/or necessary to bring it in to the main plot.

And as a player playing a Gnome with neuro-divergence, it would make sense no other way than each moment of downtime being put to some ridiculous use. As such, my few recent for examples:

"Hey guys, you know all that leather armor that was too heavy and worthless to carry around, what would you say if I already cut out the best pieces, pressed them together using the glue I made from the hooves of the boar that attacked us, and sewed them all into a leather lamellar? Anyone want to use it right now? It's still a little wet from curing? No? Maybe later then?"

"Hey guys, you know that fabric I have been weaving every night since I put on that ring that made me never hungry and let me sleep in five minute catnaps a few dozen times a day, wait, have I told you about that? Well I have now, but anyways, I made this blanket to look just like the woods behind us, and the horses always look so cold, so I made one for each of them, so now when we sleep (well, you sleep) no one can sneak up and find our horses to steal. Do you think they would like wearing them? Oh, we could wear them? I guess we could wear horse blankets to blend in too."

"Hey guys, you know how I spent the last month collecting lost horseshoes? Guess what, it turns out four of them were magical. Well not magical, but I sold them for scrap I had enough money to make them magical. What happened to the money? Well you see I used it to make these magical. How? Well if you have gold and use it, it becomes magic. Doesn't everyone know how to do that?"

"Hey guys, you know that room full of alchemical fire I made the other week. Not the one that exploded, but the one next to it that miraculously didn't explode yet? Yeah, I was thinking about that one and I realized that if we control the timing of explosions within a tripart cylinder within a system of pistons we can create a lot of spinning motion. For what? I dunno, drying laundry."

"Hey guys, do you remember that time I sent the spinning laundry machine into the sky above the capital and it only exploded yards away from the cathedral, what if we found a way to make it explode on top of things we want it to explode? No, you're right, that's a too impractical way to hang out laundry."

OmniMage wrote:

...otherwise they might think you are singling them out because they are annoying you.

Because you are.

Don't you mean they are? I'm not the one annoying the GM in question.

But yeah, maybe I'm being too nice to the player. Bring on the mob.

Don't you mean they are?

Generic you.

I'm thinking this might cause a mob to form. The common folk don't know much about magic and are superstitious.

In the standard Golarion setting the common folk know a lot about magic, but lack specific knowledge about it. three fourth of the bard's tales, theater comedies and dramas, historical tales, and church sermons would have some reference to magic, good or bad.

The CRB says you can find 1st-level spellcasting services in a small town, i.e. in a town with 2001-2,000 people you can find, as a minimum, a guy making a living casting 1st-level wizard spells and another one that does the same with 1st-level clerical spells.

The Game Mastery Guide says you can find someone willing to cast a 1st-level spell for you in a thorp with a population of 20 or less. Essentially anyone has a person in the family or an acquaintance that can cast some spell.
People knowing some magic and spellcasting, in Golarion, are as common as people knowing how to assemble a PC from the components and resolve basic problems with it a<re in the first word today.

Naturally, if you are playing in a different setting that can change.

Knowing a little about the basics of magic doesn't mean they're going to panic any less when a stranger zaps them with a spell they have no way to identify.

Nearly every person on earth knows about and has probably had some sort of medical shot. What do you think the reaction would be if someone went around and randomly injected people with an unknown substance with no explanation and without their consent? I don’t know anyone who would put up with that.

Yeah, while people have a general awareness of magic they generally lack an understanding of specifics, especially being able to identify any specific instance of magic (especially if it has non-obvious effects).

Casting magic on someone without prior approval or explanation will would be equivalent to assault (or worse).

I have a player that frequently wants whoever is playing a caster (or an NPC caster) to constantly cast Orisons/Cantrips when they're not at all needed "just in case" because "you can cast as many as you want, what's the problem?"

Tell them "no problem, but no automatization - you need to announce every single casting".

That shuts down the issue, because no one want to have to constantly say "I cast Disrupt Undead" every six seconds.

The same solution also works against "I fill the dungeon by casting Create Water 500 times" - if you want to do that, you have to say it 500 times.

Knowing a little about the basics of magic doesn't mean they're going to panic any less when a stranger zaps them with a spell they have no way to identify.

No, but that will be somewhat informed panic, not superstition.

Superstition will have you react to a woman with leukocoria or a kid with a stick, informed panic will have you react to something that actually resembles spellcasting.

Nearly every person on earth knows about and has probably had some sort of medical shot. What do you think the reaction would be if someone went around and randomly injected people with an unknown substance with no explanation and without their consent? I don’t know anyone who would put up with that.

I was speaking of "reacting because of superstition". People will react to random spellcasting, but probably will do it in a different way.

File this topic under "RAW can't always make everyone happy."

So often, it's The Most Important Rule that matters the most.

Whether you only want crafting RAW or feel that crafting RAW don't suit your campaign, the most important thing is to communicate that with your table. Ideally, that would happen before a campaign kicks off, but regardless it should be a discussion that involves more than just an on-the-spot ruling by fiat.

Personally, I'm completely sympathetic with players who don't want their characters' inventories to be limited to whatever was worn or carried by things they killed, or that they found lying around said creatures' lairs. On the other hand, I'd expect players to understand that in a living world not every resource is readily available, nor is every market capable of paying for (or even accepting!) the things they want to offload. Likewise, I'd want them to consider whether it's feasible for someone to craft magical items using thousands of gold pieces' worth of resources while working and living out out of their backpack. I'd feel much better about crafting if someone were doing it out of their Tiny Hut, bespoke Demiplane, or something in between. I'd feel even better if they had a reasonable means by which to bring their crafting equipment along... whether that be a caravan of wagons driven by henchmen, or an array of Bags of Holding. I'd expect adventurers traveling through the wild to understand that, unless they can guarantee privacy and security in the environment they're in, there can be no guarantee of a random encounter not occurring during the 2-8 hours they're dedicating to crafting.

Where downtime is concerned, I see eye to eye with those who don't hit "pause" on their worlds' events. I also really like the Background Skills rule, not just to encourage players to flesh out their characters, but so that downtime isn't uneven. While the Wizard is crafting her new staff, you can recruit henchmen, perform your new masterpiece, clean out the town's cardsharks, or whatever. No one is entitled to equal rewards during downtime, but equally no one needs to just be sitting around.

Regardless, I'd express all the above to whoever I was gaming with, in advance.

Just because something is known does not meant there is not a lot of superstition about it or believe the truth. There are still people who think that the lunar landings were faked. There are also a lot of people who don’t believe in what science proves is true. Find almost any scientific theory and you will find people who think it is fake.

Your average peasant knows about as much about magic as the average person does about nuclear physics. In both cases the average person has no clue how either of them works. I can watch a movie where someone is building a nuclear reactor and understand the plot, but that does not mean I have the slightest clue on how to do it. So, the peasant has heard stories of magic, that does not mean they have a clue as to how it works.

Your average peasant is probably going to react very poorly to anyone they think is casting a spell on them. This is going to be the equivalent to pointing a gun at someone. If someone points a gun at me, I am probably going to try and get away. Once I am safe, I would probably try to figure out how to take the person down. At the least I am going to call the cops.

I like cantrips or orisons in my games, but I'd likely have folks freak out if Disrupt Undead were cast on them by some weird adventurer too. Back to crafting and incremental downtime though...

So I'm watching The Mandalorian last night and the one NPC blacksmith is making a piece for someone in the episode. She takes some scraps, melts 'em in a crucible, hammers 'em, melts them again until liquid, then pours the metal into a form that she hammers a bit more. All totaled, 1 piece took a few hours by the events of the show.

The steel is supposed to be this impossibly hard stuff that, when forged into armor deflects laser blasts. Seems to me like in PF1 by RAW that should've taken days if not longer. Maybe its her amazing skill, or some sci-fi forge that defies the laws of physics or something, whatever. Bottom line, it ate up a couple minutes of the show's runtime.

This series has had a LOT of these forging montages. The armor is central to Mandalorian culture and the crafting of it is tied to their mythology. Even the different insignias and flourishes all signify something unique to the person in the armor.

This just got me thinking again about how GMs with no crafting say that crafting eats up too much time and is kinda boring. The Mandalorian gives examples of how to not have those outcomes, IMO.

The NPC blacksmith basically had a magical forge. Which now makes me wonder about the lack of magical forges I've come across in Pathfinder adventures. There's an artifact one in Giant Slayer, and that may also be the end of the list. The reason may be the same reason we don't have a lot of non-combat magic, but I feel like magic forges should be rather common.

There's little room for magic forges to do anything actually relevant mechanically. The Runeforge was the only one I can think of, which related more to magic item rules.

I'm thinking this might cause a mob to form. The common folk don't know much about magic and are superstitious. They might think the character is cursing them...

Thankfully whoever is playing the caster(s) in the campaigns have always said no so it's never been an issue.

But I would fully have at least a few NPCs react in a "WTF are you doing?" kind of way.

Back to crafting and incremental downtime though...

(As a general quote and to break this up into a separate comment):

Of the games I've run, some would be better campaigns to have crafters in than others and if someone wanted to play one I'd hope they would express their interest beforehand so that both I and the other players would know.
If it were a campaign where there woudn't be a lot of time for crafting I'd be sure to let them know because managing your player's expectations is pretty important to a good campaign.

The most important function of a magic forge is its ability to keep the surrounding cool (similar to modern highly efficient forges). But that is not really useful when the temperature is not really issue and its more expensive than its worth.

If you had high tech setting than magic forges would become more relevant as an alternative to regular forges.

I like cantrips or orisons in my games, but I'd likely have folks freak out if Disrupt Undead were cast on them by some weird adventurer too. Back to crafting and incremental downtime though...

So I'm watching The Mandalorian last night and the one NPC blacksmith is making a piece for someone in the episode. She takes some scraps, melts 'em in a crucible, hammers 'em, melts them again until liquid, then pours the metal into a form that she hammers a bit more. All totaled, 1 piece took a few hours by the events of the show.

The steel is supposed to be this impossibly hard stuff that, when forged into armor deflects laser blasts. Seems to me like in PF1 by RAW that should've taken days if not longer. Maybe its her amazing skill, or some sci-fi forge that defies the laws of physics or something, whatever. Bottom line, it ate up a couple minutes of the show's runtime.

This series has had a LOT of these forging montages. The armor is central to Mandalorian culture and the crafting of it is tied to their mythology. Even the different insignias and flourishes all signify something unique to the person in the armor.

This just got me thinking again about how GMs with no crafting say that crafting eats up too much time and is kinda boring. The Mandalorian gives examples of how to not have those outcomes, IMO.

The Mandalorian armour is a good analogy for my problem with the Pathfinder crafting rules. The crafting scenes in the show destroyed the mystique surrounding the armour, and were also some of the most boring parts of the show.

In Pathfinder magic item creation feels transactional, the consequence being that there is no sense of wonder, or lore, or danger, or adventure, or mystique, or anything else about magic items that makes them the slightest bit interesting. On top of that, it’s ruined the discovery part of the game. When our table finds magic items and other treasure all anyone thinks about is: how much can we sell it for to fund creation of the items we actually planned our builds around?

I like cantrips or orisons in my games, but I'd likely have folks freak out if Disrupt Undead were cast on them by some weird adventurer too. Back to crafting and incremental downtime though...

So I'm watching The Mandalorian last night and the one NPC blacksmith is making a piece for someone in the episode. She takes some scraps, melts 'em in a crucible, hammers 'em, melts them again until liquid, then pours the metal into a form that she hammers a bit more. All totaled, 1 piece took a few hours by the events of the show.

The steel is supposed to be this impossibly hard stuff that, when forged into armor deflects laser blasts. Seems to me like in PF1 by RAW that should've taken days if not longer. Maybe its her amazing skill, or some sci-fi forge that defies the laws of physics or something, whatever. Bottom line, it ate up a couple minutes of the show's runtime.

This series has had a LOT of these forging montages. The armor is central to Mandalorian culture and the crafting of it is tied to their mythology. Even the different insignias and flourishes all signify something unique to the person in the armor.

This just got me thinking again about how GMs with no crafting say that crafting eats up too much time and is kinda boring. The Mandalorian gives examples of how to not have those outcomes, IMO.

It depends a lot on the quality of the armor. Mass-produced munition armor could be produced rapidly.

Better technology makes a lot of difference, as well as going for cheaper versions and shoddier manufacture.
Reddit is a questionable source, but this guy cites some serious sources: during the 15th-16th centuries, how was the process for making "munition plate armor" different from the process for making better quality armors?

"Regarding time of manufacture, this is harder to come by. It is estimated that a number of workshops collaborating in 15th century Milan could produce one full armour for a man at arms in a day. It is possible that each of these workshops could create one or more munition harnesses for infantry (if they were set up to do so). However, the exact time is hard to calculate."

Note the part I bolded: "a number of workshops collaborating". That is very different from a single guy hammering at a forge.
And a blast furnace isn't something the typical Pathfinder smith has.
Personally, I feel that most of Golarion is in the late Renaissance stage, so well-equipped workshops will have blast furnaces and XV or XVI-century equipment. Traveling and small towns/hamlets smiths probably will not have nor need them.
Adventurers are not the norm, so they will have whatever they feel they need and can pay for.

Making proper full plate with our technology can take months by a single person, maybe a few days if spread between a bunch of people. You need to take the measurements of the client, design the armor that fits them, hammer each piece of metal to fit the designed template, make or buy all the cloth that will go inside the armor, make or buy all the bolts and fittings, attach everything, test fit, fix any mistake, polish everything, treat eveything with protective oil (if needed), then apply any extra fancy decoration not added in the previous steps.

Mandalorian armor is not made of steel, its made of either Beskar (fantasy super metal) or Durasteel (fantasy steel alloy). Both of which have the property of being resistant to laser fire and lightsabers. You do not want "hard" armor unless its ceramic because hard materials tend to be brittle (this is why hard swords shatter).

What you want from actual armor is for them to be tough and pliable. So that it can resist more damage before it fails, but can still be repaired by banging at it. The extra protection coming from a thicker piece of metal, not a harder metal.

TV shows usually don't show the actual process to make armor or weapons, because "pouring metal looks cooler than a guy hammering some random metal".

What's funny is casting weapons and armor would generally result in poor quality blades and armor.

Generally someone smithing actual weapons or armor would start with a bar or ingot of metal, and they would thin it out and increase the area until it reached the desired thickness and general shape. You basically take a plate of steel and shape it with gentle heating and a hammer to make it into plate armor.

But that's exactly why plate armor didn't ever become very wide spread. It was cheaper and faster to make other types of armor, that while not as protective allowed larger armies to be fielded with more significant protection.

In Pathfinder magic item creation feels transactional, the consequence being that there is no sense of wonder, or lore, or danger, or adventure, or mystique, or anything else about magic items that makes them the slightest bit interesting.

So, if magic item creation is restricted or banned, there's more wonder in the game? Can't they still buy items? Isn't there still an entire section of the Core book that explains what spells + skills and CL go into making most items, so players know mechanically what creates them? Won't there still be a financial incentive for players to hoard a bunch of items to sell later for better gear?

These are all true. Lots of things regarding items blunt the fantasy of PF1. You can ban item creation and also say "there's no magic marts" such that PCs can't buy, sell or even trade magic items. You stand over your players' shoulders and forbid them from looking at the section of the Core book, AoN, PFSRD and other sources for rules on item creation and the details of each item. All of this would, in theory, force a sense of "wonder" about magic items.

But let's go even a step further: how do you feel about Spellcraft and Knowledge (Arcana)? The fact that Detect Magic is a cantrip? That with a high enough skill check, by RAW a PC can ID a cursed item as well as all the properties of a standard, non-artifact magic item? Does that remove a sense of wonder?

4 PCs, L1, are brutally ambushed by a cross between a python and a velociraptor in the woods. A simple DC 12 Knowledge (Arcana) check ID's the monster as a Tatzlwyrm, a kind of dragon; a higher check tells the PCs to beware it's poison breath weapon and more. Does THAT remove wonder from the game?

My point is only that there are many rules in this system that could, in theory, ruin the "fantasy" of the game. You can either restrict or eliminate all of them, playing with the Swiss cheese of what's left of PF1, not play this system at all, or you could find a way to narrate around these systems.

And if hammering metal isn't "based" enough for modern media to cover it, why is the symbol of Tony Stark or really the Iron Man mystique in the MCU a guy hammering at a primitive forge, or a fade to black with the sound of the hammering echoing in the background? There are ways to add pathos and passion to these scenes; you can make item creation cool if you'd like.

It takes work though, and buy in from the players. After reading through this thread I understand that doing that work isn't enjoyable for some which is why they remove or restrict item creation. I appreciate this insight.

Casting armor shouldn't affect the "quality" exactly. But it is a problem of fitting. High quality armor was fitted to the individual. Of course, in Pathfinder fitting isn't accounted for at all. Someone 4 feet tall can instantly use the armor of someone 7 feet tall.

I have suspected the pushback to magical crafting is mostly about the balance and loot issues. Crafting can get you your items at half cost, which breaks the expected optimization for given levels. But besides the discount, it can also give you items perfectly tailored to work with a given character. That's fine for niche cases, like keeping someone focused in a rare weapon well equipped, but applied more generally it results in characters stronger than the adventure expects.

Besides the issues with expected power levels, item crafting often makes loot less exciting. By level 12, you can only rarely give your PCs magic items they will enjoy in monster loot, because they will have already crafted stronger versions of those items with their discounts and downtime. And while you could always aim higher than the power level of what they are crafting, that just furthers the power imbalance mentioned above.

Automatic Bonus Progression fixes most of the power issues, but makes the loot even less exciting.

Forging creates stronger metal than casting. It stretched and aligned in one direction which makes it less likely to shatter. Casting will definitely produce lower quality products.

Forging creates stronger metal than casting. It stretched and aligned in one direction which makes it less likely to shatter. Casting will definitely produce lower quality products.

Which is why the mandolorian makes no sense with their metalworking… they put in all that time and effort forging the bars only to melt them down and cast them effectively wasting hours of work… you can cast metal into a refined ingot to remove unwanted impurities (or to add specific ones for certain alloys) and then forge that refined ingot to make a strong durable item… but it doesn't work the other way around… the folds and alignments made from forging are completely lost when melted down to cast, and if you folded in other metals or minerals you may as well have just tossed them into the crucible with the unworked ingot if you’re just going to cast it anyways…

The metal is the big thing on the Mandolorian. I only watched part of the series but from what I remember it takes a special forge to work with that metal. If I remember right, they basically put the metal in and out comes the finished product completely ready. Who knows what is happening in the forge. It could be similar to a 3D printer which would make it closer to forged than cast. Science fiction is a lot different than fantasy so comparing them is often futile.

In Pathfinder magic item creation feels transactional, the consequence being that there is no sense of wonder, or lore, or danger, or adventure, or mystique, or anything else about magic items that makes them the slightest bit interesting. On top of that, it’s ruined the discovery part of the game. When our table finds magic items and other treasure all anyone thinks about is: how much can we sell it for to fund creation of the items we actually planned our builds around?

To be fair, that's an issue with the system and not magic item creation specifically. You are expected have certain magic items by certain levels, and wealth is another resource to be spent. This might not have been such an issue if more than half of all magic items weren't some combination of overpriced, lackluster, too specific, and just not usable with certain playstyles.

Imagine if feats were treated the same way.

"And after the grueling fight with the razordemons you... *rolls on table* are now able to spend feats to learn Prone Shooter, Mobility, Widen Spell, and Deceitful.
Oh, Clustered Shots? Yeah you'll have to find a trainer in a large town and spend two of your feat slots to learn it."

Re: casting vs. forging

With even basic automation and volume production techniques, there is actually not a large difference between the quality of the results from "casting" (which has several variations) and individually "forging" (again, there are several variations) items. Not to mention there can be overlaps; it's less of an either/or choice than some may think. Pattern welding (which is what most people think of as "forging") is one way of making quality steel, but not the only one; actually, pattern welding was originally developed to compensate for poor quality smelting and alloying or lack of volume production.

Even the customization issue for plate armor, toward the end of when it was still in use, was less an issue of "making the armor pieces from scratch" than "modifying the pre-made, armor 'kit' pieces" for an individual's measurements; unless the person was much larger or smaller than expected.

From what I have read, some modern alloys have better characteristics for melee weapons or armor use, even when cast, than traditional forged alloys.

In a fantasy world and in the modern one it is not that hard to automate the more time-consuming and repetitive parts of forging like hammering away the impurities of the metal.
Doing that is even "fantasy". Both in RL legends and fantasy novels, gods, legendary blacksmiths, and other characters have "helpers" that they created or summoned, be them entire races, automatons, or constructs, sapient or not.

I never read the Conan novels or comic books, but in the movies the titular character looks to understand the "riddle of steel." Steel itself was a fantastic metal in 1eD&D, akin to other special materials in PF1E. All this is to say, people IRL playing these games seem to know a lot and have an interest in ancient forging techniques.

However the armor gets made, in my own games it can be made by a PC if they want to. A couple folks in this thread and others speak of the "wonder" of discovering a magic item. I don't see a lot of that in my own games, likely because I play with folks that are veterans of several different game systems.

I have however seen a small but sustained burst of passion though from players making their own things. Like, REALLY their own. Inventing a new wondrous item unique to their character, or the one gal that played a ranger and created a set of archery gloves, a special bow and a pair of boots that all worked together. There was even the Pharasmin that never got to enchant the daggers but they made special, cobalt-tinted cold-iron daggers, one each for the party members, as a symbol of the group.

This is not universal, I get that. It has been however a way in my own games for my players to engage with the setting and narrative, really connect w/their characters.

A couple folks in this thread and others speak of the "wonder" of discovering a magic item. I don't see a lot of that in my own games, likely because I play with folks that are veterans of several different game systems.

Likely, because they have already crafted any item they could want before you have the opportunity to give it to them.

Often, being given something makes it worthless.