I had a ton of players want to take crafts as skills. They liked the idea of making their own weapons and armor and the like. Then they had 14 days of down time and realized how little they could actually make.
It takes a good amount of time to make things, but it takes an insane amount of time to make masterwork items or expensive armor.
On the fly, since so many players were interested in crafting, I adopted the craft point rules from Unearthed Arcana, modified a bit.
The consensus around the table is that items should have a set time to make them, as in, say 2nd edition. A longsword would always take X days to make.
Beating the DC by Y would allow you to cut the time in half, for example.
Its just a thought, but while I like crafting, I think the current silver piece percentage and really long craft times just aren't conducive to making craft anything but a "flavor" skill.
I had a ton of players want to take crafts as skills. They liked the idea of making their own weapons and armor and the like. Then they had 14 days of down time and realized how little they could actually make.
It takes a good amount of time to make things, but it takes an insane amount of time to make masterwork items or expensive armor.
On the fly, since so many players were interested in crafting, I adopted the craft point rules from Unearthed Arcana, modified a bit.
The consensus around the table is that items should have a set time to make them, as in, say 2nd edition. A longsword would always take X days to make.
Beating the DC by Y would allow you to cut the time in half, for example.
Its just a thought, but while I like crafting, I think the current silver piece percentage and really long craft times just aren't conducive to making craft anything but a "flavor" skill.
Could you share some of the crafting rules you find useful? These sound really interesting.
I always liked the idea of a wizard maxing out gem cutting and jewelry making to create more powerful magic items like crystal balls, rings of elemental control, etc.
Crafting a masterwork item seems like it should be fun, not just save you money from going to a shop. Masterwork weapons add a +1 attack bonus, and masterwork tools or instruments add a +2 circumstance bonus to checks; masterwork manacles add 5 DC to escape. Only masterwork items can be enchanted to become magic items. Personally, I don't think that just any masterwork item should work equally well as a blank for magic item creation. It seems to me that for anything above +1 enchantment, the "magicking" of the item should be part of its crafting and no longer possible once the item is finished. Being able to craft a particular magic item should have a craft DC to master the secret, like a wizard's Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell level) to add a new spell to his book.
I think it's cool that you have players motivated to take crafts as skills. There should be tangible benefits in the rules to reward these players I think. What if we added the notion of affinity? It could give an additional +1 attack or +2 check, applicable after a roll, once per day, and possibly other benefits as well, depending on the power of the item. When you find a masterwork item, give a 1 in 20 chance of having affinity with it (not allowing rechecks). The advantage of crafting your own item is that you automatically get affinity.
Special commisioned items could automatically have affinity with the person who commisioned the item, at a substantial increase in cost. Affinity could be transferred automatically if the item is given willingly, like a sword passed down from a father to a son. Detecting affinity might itself be a Craft check, with a reasonable DC only sometime after purchase.
Perhaps every masterwork item could have a detectable alignment, providing even more incentive to craft your own (or that of a party member). A paladin could be limited to Lawful Good items, restoring a bit of the 1e magic item restriction for paladins.
Currently, masterwork items are non-magical, but what if limited magical properties were possible simply as a result of extraordinary craftsmanship? I think the notion fits a fantasy setting really well. Non-wizards could create items so skillfully that their artistry breathes a kind of life into them. Some rules along these lines would make Craft more than a flavor skill.
I'm just going to take making a sword as an example.
Most of the time it took to make a sword, even a masterwork one, was spent finding the properly smelted/carbonized ore at the beginning, and the fancy hiltwork at the end.
It really only took a matter of days to make a sword in the forge, and a few more days to grind/polish an edge. If we assume that having ranks in Craft means you can do these things yourself, we could say it takes about a week to make a masterwork sword (speeding up the crafting process to per day instead of per week gives us around 6-8 days, so I say round it off).
Then make the "fancy hilt" stuff as what makes it magical, and go into the 1000gp per day of work towards the magical effects.
I'd even go so far as to say that since it's just the etchings, gem fitting, and leather working being done, it could be done without need of the lab. Basically, done during downtime on the road.
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So here's how I'd change the rules:
All craftwork starts off making the Masterwork item, which requires 1 week. The alternative to this is simply buying a masterwork item off the shelf (oh no, 150 vs 300 gold, big deal).
Then you spend at least 4 hours of time per day (on top of the 8 required rest) imbuing the item, for a number of days equal to the price of the item divided by 1000 (1000gp per day, essentially).
Each day, crafters roll a craft check vs DC, while casters use up the spell requirement. I could see casters wanting to have Craft skills so they don't need to blow a slot per day making their item.
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Then as an alternative, you can bring in Craft Points from UA, which are a concept just like Action Points, that basically are used as a player to rewrite the story in your favor. Craft points being days of work assumed to have already been done in the downtime in the past towards this particular item.
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Then again, I haven't seen the new rules for crafting Jason is alluding to in his new feat, so maybe there's stuff about this already.
Here's what I did in my game:
Crafting Skill Changes - The Craft skill is virtually unchanged except for one aspect: Instead of making the appropriate Craft check to represent one week’s worth of work, the check represents one day’s worth of work. If you choose to make an item more quickly, you can make checks by the hour instead of by the day.
No one has used it as of yet, but I'll post the results if and when this happens.
Our modified craft system works like the Craft Point system in Unearthed Arcana, with the following exceptions:
You have to have a least a full day of downtime to finish a project, but you can finish any number of projects during that day. The main purpose here is to make sure that a PC can't mysteriously finish a bunch of wands in the dungeon right before the next tough fight.
I don't require any extra feats for crafting masterwork items, as the UA version does.
"Regular" crafting can still be used, but a character has to use up all of their craft points before they can start crafting by the rules as written.