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I posted this originally in the General section, and now seems like the right time to bring it up ...
One of the places that D&D falls down is in the basic premise of Craft or Profession. Either it doesn’t meet the stated economic scale, or it doesn’t serve the characters at all because making a high-price item is beyond the care or effort of a character.
So, let’s look at economic scale.
D&D (and thus Pathfinder) implies an untrained labourer gets 1 sp per day, or 3 gp per month (and their upkeep might be 2 gp per month, so they eke out a small living above and beyond the daily grind). That’s fine there. It then says that skilled labourers can earn 1 gp per day, or 30 gp per month. That seems fine too, right? And then it scales up from there.
Let’s look at Perform – if a troubadour can make a DC 15 check, he can earn 5 sp per day. A Perform check of DC 20 earns 1.65 gp per day on average, and a Perform check of DC 25 earns 3.5 gp per day. No issues versus the economic scale above.
So, let’s look at Craft. A 1st level character can easily get a +11 to Craft (+3 trained, +3 skill focus, +1 rank, +2 MW tools , +2 for Int modifier). So, under the SRD check, they can earn half their skill check in gp per week – that’s 10 gp per week, or about 1.5 gp per day. Fairly close to the economic baseline.
Now let’s take a look at a 10th level character, with a +25 in Craft (+3 trained, +6 skill focus, +10 ranks, +2 MW tools, +4 Int modifier). Under the SRD check, they earn 17 gp per week, or 2.5 gp per day. Again, reasonable to the economic baseline, right? But that’s a 10th level character. 10th level wizards are flying around, 10th level barbarians have burning fists, and 10th level experts earn 2.5 gp per day.
Worse yet, a 10th level expert (cobbler) makes the same amount as a 10th level expert (lawyer). That’s not very reasonable.
Now take that 10th level character example above – let’s say they are an armorer commissioned to make a suit of full plate worth 1,500 gp. Converted into sp, that’s 15,000 sp. The DC is 19, which is an automatic success, and on average the armorer will roll an 10 (rounded for simplicity). That’s 190 sp per week, or complete it in 15 weeks. I’m not sure 3 months is reasonable for a full time armorer, although if he sells his plate, he’s earned a hefty profit of 1,000 gp, which is significantly higher than 2.5 gp per day.
Take another example – an adamantine dagger is 3,002 gp. It would take a 10th level character 158 weeks to make. A little long for a dagger, regardless of what it is made of.
So, with the SRD, there are a number of issues to deal with
a) There is no difference in profession to deal with different incomes
b) There is very little range of income for someone invested in craft, and it doesn’t scale well compared to Perform
c) When the economics start scaling up, the craft skill becomes unwieldy for length of time to craft things.
So, while D&D economics is certainly a hot topic, here is how I would address it with the Craft skill:
CRAFT (INT)
You are skilled in the creation of a specific group of items, such as armor or weapons. Like Knowledge, Perform, and Profession, Craft is actually a number of separate skills. You could have several Craft skills, each with its own ranks, each purchased as a separate skill.
A Craft skill is specifically focused on creating something. If nothing is created by the endeavor, it probably falls under the heading of a Profession skill.
Check: You can practice your trade and make a decent living. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the craft’s daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. (Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day.)
If you practice a low-risk craft (cook, groom, animal trainer, farmer, etc) and can make a DC 15 check you can earn your Craft check in gp per month. If you fail your check, you earn nothing this month.
If you practice a medium-risk craft (armorer, weaponsmith, mason, architect, etc) and can make a DC 20 checkm you can earn twice your check in gp per month. If you fail your check, you earn nothing this month.
If you practice a high-risk craft (alchemist, shipwright, etc) and can make a DC 25 check, you can earn 4x your check in gp per month.
The basic function of the Craft skill, however, is to allow you to make an item of the appropriate type. The DC depends on the complexity of the item to be created. The DC, your check result, and the price of the item determine how long it takes to make a particular item. The item’s finished price also determines the cost of raw materials.
In some cases, the fabricate spell can be used to achieve the results of a Craft check with no actual check involved. You must make an appropriate Craft check, however, when using the spell to make articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship.
A successful Craft check related to woodworking in conjunction with the casting of the ironwood spell enables you to make wooden items that have the strength of steel.
When casting the spell minor creation, you must succeed on an appropriate Craft check to make a complex item.
All crafts require artisan’s tools to give the best chance of success. If improvised tools are used, the check is made with a –2 penalty. On the other hand, masterwork artisan’s tools provide a +2 circumstance bonus on the check.
To determine how much time and money it takes to make an item, follow these steps.
1. Find the item’s market price in gold pieces.
2. determine whether you are making a low-risk, medium-risk, or high-risk craft item, as above.
3. Pay one-half of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.
4. Make an income check as above to represent a week’s worth of work. If the check succeeds, your income roll determines progress towards the market value of the item. If the result equals the price of the item, then you have completed the item. If the result equals double or triple the price of the item, then you’ve completed the task in one-half or one-third of the time. Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner. If the result doesn’t equal the price, then it represents the progress you’ve made this week. Record the result and make a new Craft check for the next week. Each week, you make more progress until your total reaches the price of the item.
If you fail a check by 4 or less, you make no progress this week.
If you fail by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials and have to pay half the original raw material cost again.
Create Masterwork Items: You can make a masterwork item: a weapon, suit of armor, shield, or tool that conveys a bonus on its use through its exceptional craftsmanship, not through being magical. To create a masterwork item, you create the masterwork component as if it were a separate item in addition to the standard item. The masterwork component has its own price (300 gp for a weapon or 150 gp for a suit of armor or a shield) and a Craft DC of 25. Once both the standard component and the masterwork component are completed, the masterwork item is finished. Note: The cost you pay for the masterwork component is one-third of the given amount, just as it is for the cost in raw materials.
Repair Items: Generally, you can repair an item by making checks against the same DC that it took to make the item in the first place. The cost of repairing an item is one-fifth of the item’s price.
Action: Does not apply. Craft checks are made by the day or week (see above).
Try Again: Yes, but each time you miss by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials and have to pay half the original raw material cost again.
Special: You may voluntarily roll against a higher-risk DC to increase your progress check. This allows you to create the item more quickly (since you’ll be multiplying your check against more gp to determine progress). You must decide whether to increase the DC before you make each weekly check.
You can choose to make an item with only one-quarter the value of the item in raw materials, but you suffer a -10 to the check.
To make an item using Craft (alchemy), you must have alchemical equipment. If you are working in a city, you can buy what you need as part of the raw materials cost to make the item, but alchemical equipment is difficult or impossible to come by in some places. Purchasing and maintaining an alchemist’s lab grants a +2 circumstance bonus on Craft (alchemy) checks because you have the perfect tools for the job, but it does not affect the cost of any items made using the skill.
So, with the above example, it removes the DC chart, simplifies the skill, and scales better at higher levels.
A 1st level character with a Craft of +12 can on average 24 gp per week in progress towards a suit of armor, making the above suit of full plate in 62 weeks. A 10th level character with a Craft of +25 could make a high-risk check to get an average progress of 140 gp per week, or complete the suit in 10 weeks.
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I'd go a step further in simplifying Craft checks.
Consider:
Making a Craft checks earns you gp based on your Craft check.
Selling an item earns you gp equal to half the item's market price.So, why not say that all of the gp you earn from making Craft checks comes from selling items you are crafting? And if you want to make a specific item with a Craft check, just apply the gp you earn towards that item. As soon as you've earned gp equal to half the item's market price, you've created the item.
No converting anything into sp. No tracking raw materials costs (which are factored into the gp you earn on a successful Craft check). No inexplicable disparity between the amount you earn when not crafting a specific item and the amount you earn when crafting a specific item.
I really like this, am immediately inducting it into my house rules, and hope that it finds it's way into the rules.
Craft as it stands is horrible. It never gets used in my games because our DMs care about scale and timing. If something takes 9 weeks to make, that's 9 weeks out of adventuring to make a masterwork breastplate.
The time it takes to craft something versus its cost does not scale well. It's terrible enough that I was going to come up with some examples to demonstrate the time inflation, then realized how much effort it was.
"Taking 10" also, was an integral part of crafting: who really wants to roll 16 craft checks to make a single set of full plate, and take a year's time out of their adventuring life to do it?
if you think thats bad you should check out trap making. smearing contact poison on a door knob takes weeks;)
if you think thats bad you should check out trap making. smearing contact poison on a door knob takes weeks;)
I've turned trapmaker PCs for just this reason. I would love to play them. And the rules slam you in the face. With a pickaxe.
Something needs done about the time scale.
The simplest solution could be to keep the costs in gold pieces when trying to figure out the time needed/spent.
I went ahead and posted a breakdown of the skill. I hope it's correct. I may have missed a thing or two.
I cried when I made it. ;) Just...cried.