Is this game-breaking or cheesey?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Dennis da Ogre wrote:
I'm not sure why this is relevant. The sum of the "Price" of all the items the character is to start with must be less than the wealth per level. Regardless of class, race, skills, or feat selection.

And the crafter has "lower price" as an ability. The masterwork full plate is now 550g, which is within the 1000g budget, and all is right in the world.

To do otherwise is on par with saying the Cleric's not allowed to heal, or the Barbarian's not allowed to get bonus damage from Rage; the character is investing heavily in the ability to get a discount, and you're denying the discount. That's a Bad Thing.

Dennis da Ogre wrote:

Other things I don't allow:

"My 3rd level elf bard spent the last 200 years hustling cards and entertaining and earned 5000GP."
"My rogue earns 500gp/ week picking pockets."

Again, starting gold is 1000g. That you can make an income still doesn't change that starting gold is 1000g. However, that the crafter gets discounts does not affect starting gold, it affects starting prices.

The Exchange

Dennis da Ogre wrote:
PirateDevon wrote:
Oh something didn't click but it does now...if you feel this way, and obviously there are a couple of people and that is cool, then the OP in this case (and his party) should designate which of their paid for items were made by the druid, yeah?

I'm not sure why this is relevant. The sum of the "Price" of all the items the character is to start with must be less than the wealth per level. Regardless of class, race, skills, or feat selection.

Basically players cannot benefit from class features before game play begins.

Other things I don't allow:
"My 3rd level elf bard spent the last 200 years hustling cards and entertaining and earned 5000GP."
"My rogue earns 500gp/ week picking pockets."

It doesn't matter...it just actually addresses the flavor of the game which I feel was more the substance of the OPs question in the first place. What I was trying to get at is if the OP's DM felt as you do, then the work around is to buy what you can with your GP as per the rules and then say that one of those items was "crafted" by the druid in the prologue of the game...it is merely a flavor/narrative thing.


Viletta Vadim wrote:
Again, starting gold is 1000g. That you can make an income still doesn't change that starting gold is 1000g. However, that the crafter gets discounts does not affect starting gold, it affects starting prices.

Incorrect, again. There is no such thing as gold by level. The only time you get "starting gold" is at first level, and there's no way in the core rulebook to start with 1000g at first level. It's wealth by level, and no more than 10% of that is supposed to be coin and non-magical equipment. That means you can't spend 100% of your wealth by level as cash, which is what you're talking about.


Fergie wrote:
Why should ANYONE get to do things before the rest of the group? If the caster can craft, why can't the rogue steal? Why can't the fighter battle in the arena? Why can't the Bard perform for money?

Because the DM arbitrarily says they can or can't? Just like every other facet of the game?

Fergie wrote:


Starting wealth is not a measure of what you can produce or earn. It is an arbitrary amount based on what it takes to have each class equipped so they are equally effective on day 1 of the adventure. There is absolutely no reason feat or skill selection should make allow one character to somehow change these starting values.

If this were true extent of it, they should have differing tables for the classes. As time goes on and levels gained, the differences in "effectiveness" change between the classes, we all know this, or at least should by now.

Fergie wrote:


At higher levels this becomes a total game breaker.

The problems at higher levels are not due to wealth, if anything wealth is what allows the majority of the classes to keep up with a game breaking minority of the classes and is an equalizer not a game breaker. The actual rules of the game are what break the game in later play not wealth, it has been this way for awhile.

Fergie wrote:


But isn't a character without crafting feats inherently better then one with? Not really. Many feats are not used for days or weeks at a time. I would say that about half the feats on the list are used LESS then the item creation feats. Does the guy who takes Diehard deserve to start with more gold because he may not use his feat in the first level of play?

What kind of characters are you talking about? Players who randomly roll to determine what skills to put points into or what feats to take? Obviously I can only go from personal experience or what I have seen others do, but I'm fairly confident the vast majority of players put skill points in skills they plan on using and take feats that will be used. And I will also say people tend to come up with creative ways to use things they are good at. Mages don't take a feat to bump up DCs of thier spells and not use it for weeks at a time, fighters don't take a feat that gives them a bonus to hit with a weapon and then not use that weapon for days+, etc etc.

If you want to look at it in monetary gain, Diehard allows the the guy with it to fight longer, which allows them to have a longer time to fight and increases the chances to kill "the bad guy" and get the goodies. Its more active and its much more risky but in return the gain is far better than what the guy with craft X is going to be getting by crafting "before" the adventuring world begins.

Also if you read the DMG, the wealth table is FAR from being set in stone, they are guide lines. Things should be around there at that level. As a guide line saying you should have 10,000g at this level but the character has 8,000 or 12,000 gold doesn't make me want to have a coronary as having around 10k gold isn't the same as saying "you have 10k gold". Some people waste money, some save it that alone will cause decrepancy in normal play. Some people save money by crafting their own items and that will put them ahead of the guide line every time if you actually take the time to map it up the levels. So I have to say letting a character start at the X level with Z amount of gold that ends up being Z+Y total worth is one of the less "game breaking" problems that crop up regularly. And it doesn't come up very regularly (maybe more now as there is no XP loss for crafting now). The time requirements alone will make sure it won't come up during regular play when working on something substantial. The only time it can shine is when there is massive amounts of downtime.

Hell, even PFRPG has a feat or trait that gives players a huge amount of gold right out the gates not to mention the Familiar Bond out of core gives the mage a masterwork item which could be worth 10x's what the mage normally starts with (masterwork weapon I'm looking at you). There was even a feat that gave the character 1000 gold/level when the character took it back in 3.5 IIRC. Point is the character invested in the feats and skills and got some sort of NON game breaking advantage via momentary increase, chances are they aren't going to be able to just drop everything when they want to craft up an item once the game gets going. You may not like it, but it isn't a large problem by any stretch of the imagination and it has a lot less book keeping and effort involved than trying to figure out how much a character made every day via perform the 4 months before the adventure started. DM's like simple quick things that don't make thier life more complicated usually.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Viletta Vadim wrote:


And to you, because you have that +10 Craft: Armorsmithing skill, the worth of masterwork full plate is 550g. Not 1650g. Because you can make it yourself.

Please. [Sarcasm] So when I come to your gaming table. And you say I can start with 10,000gp. I say I used the 10,000gp as raw materials to make 30,000gp worth of iron pots (or other typical items DC10 so it can be done with a no skill at all). Which I sold at half price so I start with 15,000gp. Then I say I repeated this process X times so I actually have 10,000 * (3/2)^X in gold pieces. [/Sarcasm]

Now I understand you are investing your character resources into wealth building and you do deserve some compensation for that. But you cannot just go and through a multiplier on your total character wealth because of it.

I think using the percentages on p400 is reasonable compensation. Meaning 90% of your wealth is tied up in capital (items at full market value) and your last 10% you can spend how you want. If you have magical creation feats this functionally doubles the value of the last 10%, given your character 110% of the starting wealth of your fellow players. Crafting could give up to 120% if you like your mundane items.

This keeps your fairly close to the expected wealth values and rewards you for investing in these abilites. But not by such a staggering amount.


Viletta Vadim wrote:
Stuff.

There is no guidance on this in the book so it's essentially GM's judgment. I'm not saying you are wrong to play it that way, it's not the way I run my table. Very simply, characters don't benefit from feats selected before they begin play. I just think it opens a huge can of worms. Why would someone be able to craft magic items but not mundane ones? Why would one person be able to use a feat/ skill but others are denied?

Another example, rangers and druids can't have a stable full of griphons they raised from eggs.

A person with the craft skill cannot spend his gold on raw materials to craft tons of stuff before game play begins either.


PirateDevon wrote:
It doesn't matter...it just actually addresses the flavor of the game which I feel was more the substance of the OPs question in the first place. What I was trying to get at is if the OP's DM felt as you do, then the work around is to buy what you can with your GP as per the rules and then say that one of those items was "crafted" by the druid in the prologue of the game...it is merely a flavor/narrative thing.

This makes a lot of sense and allows the players to tie their character concepts together.


Zurai wrote:
Incorrect, again. There is no such thing as gold by level. The only time you get "starting gold" is at first level, and there's no way in the core rulebook to start with 1000g at first level. It's wealth by level, and no more than 10% of that is supposed to be coin and non-magical equipment. That means you can't spend 100% of your wealth by level as cash, which is what you're talking about.

Baseless rubbish. A suit of masterwork full plate is not cash. That someone officially bought gear as the origin story of their swag is just as valid as them inheriting their father's sword; the brash young noble spending a big stack of family gold on gear and rushing off to adventure with said stack of gear is every bit as appropriate as the Fighter whose equipment has been passed down for five generations. Neither's starting with more than 10% wealth as gold anyways.

What's more, crafting doesn't preclude gifts or inheritance or imply that you purchased the materials at all; your master could just as easily have footed the bill for materials (that 550g in expenses) and the product, the masterwork full plate, was the character's masterpiece that marked the end of their apprenticeship.

None of this is any more unreasonable than the Rogue stabbing people. It doesn't break any rules, it makes sense, the characters are paying the price in character-creation. There's no reason this should be such a sticking point.


Viletta Vadim wrote:
Baseless rubbish.

Let's leave the hyperbolic verbiage alone, shall we? I've been completely polite to you; there's no reason for you to start blowing fire out your mouth.

Quote:
A suit of masterwork full plate is not cash.

Nor is its price 550 gold.

Your problem is that you're unfairly giving certain characters playing time that you're not granting other characters. You're telling the mage with Craft Wonderous Item that he's allowed to spend 3 weeks of pre-game time crafting, while at the same time telling everyone else in the party that they have no pre-game time to do anything with, even though they may well have invested permanent resources towards methods to increase wealth.

Furthermore, the rules specifically state that players are supposed to start out with equal amounts of wealth:

PRD wrote:
As PCs gain levels, the amount of treasure they carry and use increases as well. The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game assumes that all PCs of equivalent level have roughly equal amounts of treasure and magic items.


First off, obviously there are a million different ways to handle this, and all of them are equally valid. I have started campaigns off at 2X treasure, and others "you can make a club and wear the rags of a slave". It is totally up to the DM and depends heavily on the setting, and first couple of encounters. After the TPK mentioned in the OP, I would probably throw them some kind of bone.

I think we have been focusing on the Wealth, we forgot about the other key part of the discussion - STARTING! if there was to be a baseline assumption I would say that it is that everyone starts at the same basic time and day. The time when every characters back story leads them together, and that is the start of the game. At that moment, everyone should be able to tally up their weapons gear and coin, and it should be about equal to what is listed on the starting wealth table (or the table for higher level characters). That to me is the base assumption. If I were to show up at a tournament, with my Level X character, I would not expect to be allowed to have more then the amount listed in the table in the book.

There is a ton of crafting that does NOT take a long time. Scrolls up to 4th level, 1st level wands, any potion, and the first 20 wondrous items can all be made in a single day. enchanting +1 Armor 2 days. +1 weapon 3 days. These feats are not boat anchors if you are not allowed to use them before everyone else exists. A day here, a long weekend there, and you can craft plenty on additional items for low to mid level. Once you hit the high levels, it really is up to the DM to allocate downtime as they wish.

As for my previous comment about the 15th level wizard, he would have about 350,000 worth of items, vs 240,000 for everyone else. I really don't see the balance in that.


Deyvantius wrote:

So my group was just subjected to a TPK at the hands of a dracolisk and so we are starting a new campaign at Level 6.

Would I be wrong to ask my DM since I am playing a Druid that I be allowed to craft my own magic items before play begins.

This would essentially allow me to have a +2 set of armor and weapon rather than a +1

First, an answer to the original question. As a lot of people have said, it really all depends on how your DM likes to run games. Are 6th level characters in his/her games lucky to have +1 gear by the time they get to 6th level or is it normal for everyone in his/her games by the time they are that level to have +2 or even better gear? What starting wealth/gear you start with is up to the DM, as is pretty much every other rule/situation in the game so long as you are not gaming in an organized or competitive situation. And what you want your character to do is neither game-breaking nor cheesy, at least in my DM experience.

As for the wandering that this thread has done over to the topic of starting wealth for characters created higher than 1st level. When a DM sets a limit on a character's wealth/worth, then that is it. No playing with the rules to get more is going to help, regardless of starting level or skills or feats. It does not matter what kind of wealth a character could have earned during all the down time that may have existed before reaching the current level, in my book that wealth no longer exists other than what the characters are allowed to start with. Whether all this past wealth was spent on living expenses, healing fees, lost while gambling, stolen, lost in a fire, or lost in the destruction of the character's home town, as in the OP's background for his Druid. Whatever wealth a newly made higher level character could have been gained if that character had actually been played since 1st level is simply gone in some way or another. And some of those ways could easily be used in the current/future plots for the game, again as in the OP's description.

Lantern Lodge

I'd allow the crafting. it doesn't increase wealth by level. it gives discounts on items that are purchased in a totally broken economy. the average commoner makes around 2 gold pieces a month. a home to live in costs hundreds or even thousands. a horse costs 300 gold pieces, a donkey costs 8, which even then is 4 months salary for the commoner. for the price of a +1 sword, you can own a mansion. why does the magic weapon, which is only slightly better than it's mundane cousin, cost the price of a mansion?

i reccomend adjusting the economy.


Luminiere Solas wrote:
I'd allow the crafting. it doesn't increase wealth by level.

Yes, actually, it does. Assuming you have the feat for every item you're going to make, it doubles your wealth.


Luminiere Solas wrote:

I'd allow the crafting. it doesn't increase wealth by level. it gives discounts on items that are purchased in a totally broken economy. the average commoner makes around 2 gold pieces a month. a home to live in costs hundreds or even thousands. a horse costs 300 gold pieces, a donkey costs 8, which even then is 4 months salary for the commoner. for the price of a +1 sword, you can own a mansion. why does the magic weapon, which is only slightly better than it's mundane cousin, cost the price of a mansion?

i reccomend adjusting the economy.

The economy is designed to deal with player power and nothing else. Items are priced based on their impact to characters. Obviously magic weapons are more than slightly better than their mundane counterparts, otherwise no one would spend the gold on them, instead they would buy other items.


Dennis da Ogre wrote:
Luminiere Solas wrote:

I'd allow the crafting. it doesn't increase wealth by level. it gives discounts on items that are purchased in a totally broken economy. the average commoner makes around 2 gold pieces a month. a home to live in costs hundreds or even thousands. a horse costs 300 gold pieces, a donkey costs 8, which even then is 4 months salary for the commoner. for the price of a +1 sword, you can own a mansion. why does the magic weapon, which is only slightly better than it's mundane cousin, cost the price of a mansion?

i reccomend adjusting the economy.

The economy is designed to deal with player power and nothing else. Items are priced based on their impact to characters. Obviously magic weapons are more than slightly better than their mundane counterparts, otherwise no one would spend the gold on them, instead they would buy other items.

Yeah, but it's pretty funny how small the difference between a masterworked and a +1 weapon is for the price.

Seriously, in game unless the DM decides to give me such a weapon in a treasure hord, I never buy a +1 weapon. I use a masterworked until I can afford a +2 value weapon.


kyrt-ryder wrote:

Yeah, but it's pretty funny how small the difference between a masterworked and a +1 weapon is for the price.

Seriously, in game unless the DM decides to give me such a weapon in a treasure hord, I never buy a +1 weapon. I use a masterworked until I can afford a +2 value weapon.

This is true. The biggest reason to get +1 weapons is if you are going to bump into DR/ magic. Having to kill a standard action to oil your weapon can be a killer.

Lantern Lodge

the bigger wealth is drawn from any of 5 other resources.

the 6 resources are

experience points
feats
skill points
attributes
levels
wealth

any of the former 5 are being invested in to feed the latter 1. most of the time, the middle 4 on this list are the ones used, in 3.5 it was all 5 of the top 5.

feeding of this one resource costs from 5 others.

personally i'd rather keep the resources as is, and if i am a caster, contribute a portion to the party crafting horde. but not the whole thing, i'd have the other casters contribute. but i play in a 5-7 man group. (depending on whether the same 2 of the guys show up or not. the party cleric has his rpgga meets here and there and is more consistent than the 2 that missed more than they show. those 2 both play rangers. both of them suboptimal rangers. the party mystic thuerge makes them both redundant. being outright better at tracking, and scouting. it's a thing called a pet falcon. the rangers are XP leeches. melee damage dealer, it's called a half orc cleric of gourum with the war and strength domains, healer, look above, tank, same guy again, support melee, dwarf 2 dual wielding fighter and elf monk, support caster, mystic thuerge with a falcon animal companion, we had a human priestess of sarenrae who got killed by stirges, replaced by a human twin dagger wielding rogue, who died and is going to be replaced by a proper wizard. who may or may not cover the save or dies. and a few missing buffs.)

Dark Archive

Taking the Weaponsmith background back in 1st edition and using it to justify having a free weapon was cheesy.

This is just proper use of skills and feats. That's what they're there for. For every point you've sunk into craft skills, that's less for Perception, Stealth, etc. For every craft feat, that's one less Spell Focus or Vital Strike.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Viletta Vadim wrote:


It doesn't break any rules, it makes sense, the characters are paying the price in character-creation. There's no reason this should be such a sticking point.

[sacrasm] Its time to distribute the treasure guys. 1 for the wizard, 1 for me. 1 for cleric, 1 for me. 1 for the fighter, 1 for me. Isn't that fair guys. I'm a proffesional irregular accountant... err craft wealth, so I could get 3x the wealth of you poor people.[/sarcasm]

Using your DC20 craft taking 10 with a +10 on the check. You are getting 41.25 weeks worth of you labor for free crafting that MW Full Plate. The person with skill in profession, or anything else that can be done to make money, should be getting paid 41.25 weeks of their labor for free.

The price you are paying in character creation isn't nearly enough to offset the power gain represented by using the crafting skill/feats as a wealth multiplier. Telling your GM you have 1.5-3 times the value of equipment of the next guy just doesn't fly.

As I said in my previous post. In my home campaigns a softy, and if you come with a good back story and some justifaction I'd be willing to reward you. Allowing you start with maybe 110% of the starting wealth I gave everyone else.

Starting someone at 200% wealth is going to cause problems at the table. Giving everyone 200% wealth is going to mean I am going to have to adjust every encounter to compensate with the inflated power level of the group. Its just not going to happen. There is a reason that the crafting feats are banned in the Pathfinder Society organized campaign and this is it.

Dark Archive

Maezer wrote:
[sacrasm] Its time to distribute the treasure guys. 1 for the wizard, 1 for me. 1 for cleric, 1 for me. 1 for the fighter, 1 for me. Isn't that fair guys. I'm a proffesional irregular accountant... err craft wealth, so I could get 3x the wealth of you poor people.[/sarcasm]

If your game is including a 41.25 week break in between every single instance of treasure, then it's got bigger problems than one of the characters having too much money.

The 'problem' is easily addressed by not having 41.25 week breaks after every session, thereby not allowing the crafter to triple every single copper groat that comes his way. He'll be able to craft when you choose to allow him to craft, and not until.

And the success of selling his crafted goods, if he chooses to sell stuff rather than craft for personal use or party use, will also be dependent upon the DMs kindness in making buyers available, not including any interruptions, providing free access to crafting supplies (forges aren't cheap to buy, and they certainly aren't something you can carry around from town to town) and a lack of thieves coming in the night to 'borrow' relatively small high-ticket items (such as masterwork weapons), which could fenced for a tidy sum. Unlike the local craftsmen, the adventurer probably won't have paid the local guild for 'protection,' after all, and even if he kills a thief or two who foolishly underestimate the power of himself and his allies, he's not going to be welcome in Ye Olde Towne of Luckport if he keeps dumping bodies in the street.

He gets an extra item or two at character generation, and *when you choose to put some downtime in the adventure,* he gets a chance to craft up some new equipment. If he paid the feats, he should be able to use them for personal use, but if he starts just crafting to make money, you can say, 'Oh, adventure hook! Gotta go stop the volcano from exploding, which, not-so-coincidentally, will drown your workshop in a river of lava if you don't drop everything and stop it!'

It's not like having a Crafts skill or an Item Creation feat on a character sheet gives the player the right to dictate the pace of the campaign after all, and order the rest of the party (and the game world itself) to 'wait a few weeks, while I hammer out this masterwork breastplate that I'm gonna sell...' The game goes at the DMs pace. A generous DM will give the crafter time to make use of his skills, but not give the crafter free reign to put his game on indefinite hold.

And hey, if the player wants his character to make breastplates 24/7 and skips going on adventures because he's too busy, tell him that's cool, but Crafter Bob is now an NPC, and maybe his *adventuring* character will get to buy a breastplate off of him someday. It's Dungeons & Dragons, after all, not Merchandise & Marketing.


As for me, I sit right in the middle on this one.

Yes, you spent a feat on this ability, so you should see some benefit from it. To those who disagree, I ask this: If it were your character, would you ever choose to start with one less feat than everyone else (say, skip your level 1 feat, never take it, pretend it never existed)? No, you wouldn't. If you have invested a precious feat resource, you should have something to show for it. If not, then take Dodge instead and get a nearly-always-useful +1 AC bonus.

But No, you can't double your gear. The Wealth By Level chart should represent what you have right now, more or less. It's not intended as a general ledger showing every coin earned and spent and detailing your life savings.

So where is the middle ground?

Going by the 25%/25%/25%/etc. rule, you must distribute your starting coin in multiple directions (no spending it all on one item). So, if I were the DM, I would let you pick one item of your choice per feat. If you have two crafting feats, you could pick two items. They could both be in the same category, or not - your choice. The base price of the item could be higher than the 25% limit in that category as long as your production cost falls within the limit -and- you are high enough level to craft that item.

In the end, you'll start with fewer "active" feats than anyone else since your crafting feats are more of a "downtime" feat you use when nobody is adventuring. And you'll start with a little more than your expected wealth, maybe even as much as 25% more per crafting feat that you start with - but that's a long way from doubling your starting cash.

Happy middle ground.

That's how I would do it.


DM_Blake wrote:
Yes, you spent a feat on this ability, so you should see some benefit from it. To those who disagree, I ask this: If it were your character, would you ever choose to start with one less feat than everyone else (say, skip your level 1 feat, never take it, pretend it never existed)? No, you wouldn't. If you have invested a precious feat resource, you should have something to show for it.

Except that this is a misguided argument. Nothing in those feats implies that they only function before the game starts, or even that they're allowed before the game starts. That means there's no basis for anyone to say you're forcing them to pretend that feat is discarded for no gain. The character will have exactly as much chance to use it once the game starts as all the other characters have the chance to use their feats.


Viletta Vadim wrote:
Dennis da Ogre wrote:
I'm not sure why this is relevant. The sum of the "Price" of all the items the character is to start with must be less than the wealth per level. Regardless of class, race, skills, or feat selection.
And the crafter has "lower price" as an ability. The masterwork full plate is now 550g, which is within the 1000g budget, and all is right in the world.

Can't believe it took me this long to think of these responses...

First, the crafter does not have "lower price" as an ability. He can't go up to a shop and just pay 550g for a set of masterwork full plate. He has "craft item for cheaper than I can buy it in a store but it takes a lot of time" as an ability.

Second, and less trivially, the Craft skill is not trained-only. That means that anyone can craft essentially any mundane gear they want, given enough time.

Dark Archive

Zurai wrote:
The character will have exactly as much chance to use it once the game starts as all the other characters have the chance to use their feats.

Which fits my DMs prerogative argument. If I don't want you to ever be able to use your Spell Focus (enchantment) feat, then you'll be fighting undead, constructs, plants, vermin and oozes for a long time. If I don't want you using your Dodge feat, your character will be hit by lots of color sprays and sound bursts and acid breath weapons and whatnot.

There are some feats that I can't easily stop you from using, like Improved Initiative, but I, as DM, get to decide exactly how many times during the game you will have the necessary downtime to craft items, the necessary environment to craft items, and the necessary city access to sell crafted items. Allowing the craft skills and feats to work as written is only a problem if I allow a single player to control the flow of the game. That's never happened, and so it's never been a problem.

It's why they aren't allowed in RPGA type play, because the players don't have a single DM who can say, 'No, you don't get 4 weeks off to make money.' And so they need a rule that says, 'Make a Profession, Perform or Craft check and get a lump sum of money instead.'

If a game has a DM, this is not a problem. Making the skills and feats worthless, under the assumption that they must be balanced for use in games that don't have DMs, is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The default assumption is that a D&D game will have a DM, so it's, IMO, silly to 'balance' the game for a game situation that isn't what the game was built to do in the first place.

(On the other hand, essentially DM-less play is certainly an option, and coming up with a blanket rule for people who play D&D like Warhammer Quest, where you stat up some encounters and then flip down room tiles as you progress and roll to see what's in that room, with different players handling different 'DM duties,' could be useful, to stop one player from just arbitrarily declaring that he's spending six months crafting between delves. But, as far as I know, that's not the normal play style, and D&D generally has DMs.)


DM_Blake wrote:

As for me, I sit right in the middle on this one.

Yes, you spent a feat on this ability, so you should see some benefit from it. To those who disagree, I ask this: If it were your character, would you ever choose to start with one less feat than everyone else (say, skip your level 1 feat, never take it, pretend it never existed)? No, you wouldn't. If you have invested a precious feat resource, you should have something to show for it. If not, then take Dodge instead and get a nearly-always-useful +1 AC bonus.

You could suggest the same thing with skills. Why would you choose to start with craft if you are virtually throwing the skill points away? Half the benefit of handle animal is the fact that you get to train animals, why couldn't I have a kennel filled with gryphons? It's like throwing the skill away.

Basically, if you take the craft feats you always have a point in the game where you get no benefit until you actually use the feat.

Quote:
Going by the 25%/25%/25%/etc. rule, you must distribute your starting coin in multiple directions (no spending it all on one item). So, if I were the DM, I would let you pick one item of your choice per feat. If you have two crafting feats, you could pick two items. They could both be in the same category, or not - your choice. The base price of the item could be higher than the 25% limit in that category as long as your production cost falls within the limit -and- you are high enough level to craft that item.

This is a nice compromise and IMO more accurately reflects the break even nature of the feat.

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

For a while I allowed this, by the same arguments everyone else is using, but then I realized where I'd gone wrong on it all.

The vast majority of player wealth is obtained in the form of items, right? Not cash. By RAW, items sell for half value. And then, with crafting feats, you create other items for half price.

The crafting feats are not a wealth multiplier, but rather a wealth transmuter. They represent the ability to turn one treasure into another with no loss. Someone with no access to crafting has to take what they find, or lose half the value by turning it into something else. It's very much an in-play benefit, by no means worthless just because you can't exploit it pre-game when starting at a higher level.

Furthermore, there is one specific way in which I'm comfortable letting crafting be used during an advanced start: to directly violate the standard distribution. You've got Craft Magic Arms and Armor? Go ahead and blow 100% of your funds on a sword, because nothing would stop you from buying a normal distribution with your standard wealth, then selling it all and making the sword anyway.

Edit: re-reading it, that's basically what Blake said. So yeah. :)


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
DM_Black wrote:


I ask this: If it were your character, would you ever choose to start with one less feat than everyone else (say, skip your level 1 feat, never take it, pretend it never existed)? No, you wouldn't.

Yes. If I could get a 50% discount on everything that could be made with Craft Wondrous Item and/or craft Magic Arms and Armor for the life of the character I'd spend a feat on at least one of those with every character.

Set wrote:


He gets an extra item or two at character generation, and *when you choose to put some downtime in the adventure,* he gets a chance to craft up some new equipment. If he paid the feats, he should be able to use them for personal use, but if he starts just crafting to make money, you can say, 'Oh, adventure hook! Gotta go stop the volcano from exploding, which, not-so-coincidentally, will drown your workshop in a river of lava if you don't drop...

For the example at hand (MW Full Plate worth 1650gp +450gp in other goods) he is bringing 210% of the set starting wealth of 1000gp to the table of the starting wealth to the table. As I said, I don't have a problem going over the set limit or rewarding those who build back story/reasons for their decisions. I recommended putting it at 110% which I came to by taking the effect of Craft Magic X on the final 10% of the characters disposable wealth.

If you are going to play the act of god card to control player wealth that works. In fact, its undoubtedly the best solution as you can custom tailor it to the exact situation at hand. So perhaps some intrepid thief steals the MW Full Plate in session 1 and the PC rounds up his friends to go recover it and only to finally recover it when the loot is closer to level appropriate. It could be a fine party gathering hook very true.

Balancing wealth via the act of god card, by not letting them use the feats by limiting the opportunities for their use, or altering the economy to fix the imbalance I see as little difference from saying don’t do it however or limiting its effect to a more manageable bonus than 2x character wealth.

I see Craft Magical Item feats in my campaigns as a transformative magic. The character with the feat takes X value of magic items acquired during adventuring and turns it into X value of magic items the party actually wants over X/1000 days. Most players see this as quite a valuable service worthy of a feat expenditure, particularly in campaigns with no Super MagicMart. And I tell players taking it that is what they are getting, not a wealth multiplier.

As for Crafting/Profession/Perform skills. They are niche skills which may or may not come into play. As the GM I’ll try to create minor perks and/or use them as something to tie the plot together. Perhaps they might make a trivial amount of money from them. I hope the primary use of this money would be to further roleplaying rather than the increase the power level of the character. Money earned from a mundane job should go to more mundane causes. Perhaps it would enable you to live in a better house, to romance an NPC, to support a struggling charity, as an excuse to foster rebellion against a tyrant, or so you can afford a better class of ale. And if you’re a professional merchant bent on creating a trade empire then put your money back into the business. Don’t expect to have 50% more magical items then the person next to you at the table.

Members of the party should be in the general ballpark of the expected wealth per level. Encounters are designed expecting characters to have about the same amount of gear. Being significantly over or under geared forced the GM to do quite a bit of work to adjust things to your true power level. I personally try to keep my players between 90-120% of the expect wealth and have generally had good results.

The Exchange

Zurai wrote:
DM_Blake wrote:
Yes, you spent a feat on this ability, so you should see some benefit from it. To those who disagree, I ask this: If it were your character, would you ever choose to start with one less feat than everyone else (say, skip your level 1 feat, never take it, pretend it never existed)? No, you wouldn't. If you have invested a precious feat resource, you should have something to show for it.
Except that this is a misguided argument. Nothing in those feats implies that they only function before the game starts, or even that they're allowed before the game starts. That means there's no basis for anyone to say you're forcing them to pretend that feat is discarded for no gain. The character will have exactly as much chance to use it once the game starts as all the other characters have the chance to use their feats.

So wizards don't get to have a bonded item and if they took Improved Familiar they can't have it when they start play? A 6th level wizzo took Imp.Fam. at 3rd level as a feat and isn't able to start the game at 6th with that Familiar by your reasoning.

If you interpret in any other way you are not being fair to both players. The Wizzo's power level is increased because of his feat...just like the crafting druid.


I would definitely allow it. It's been a standing fare in nearly every game I play in, DM, etc. If you are willing to spend the feat slots, then go right ahead.

I once played an Elf Wiz/Ftr/Eldritch Knight who exclusively used only items he made(except for artifacts and the like). He forged his weapons and armor himself with his blacksmith skill and enchanted everything on his own. The DM got a kick out of it because I was one less player to fight over who-gets-what when it came to loot, and I had my own limits to my gear as far as Caster Level to enchant, so I wouldn't be too overpowering too soon.


tejón wrote:

The vast majority of player wealth is obtained in the form of items, right? Not cash. By RAW, items sell for half value. And then, with crafting feats, you create other items for half price.

The crafting feats are not a wealth multiplier, but rather a wealth transmuter. They represent the ability to turn one treasure into another with no loss. Someone with no access to crafting has to take what they find, or lose half the value by turning it into something else. It's very much an in-play benefit, by no means worthless just because you can't exploit it pre-game when starting at a higher level.

Just my opinion...

I kinda sorta agree, but I feel like you are missing a very integral perspective of starting wealth. It can represent the value of items your character would have found by this point. That is only one representation. The money could have come from anywhere.

What if my new character is a 6th level Fencer(fighter) who comes from a wealthy family, who has decided it is his time to leave the mansion and prove his worth? The starting wealth could be money his family put back for him.

What if my new character is a down-on-his-luck wizard who never had a copper to his name, who suddenly came into a huge windfall of money from a recently deceased relative?

My point is, starting wealth is not always equal to gear found. It is much simpler. It is the money you use to equip and gear your character as you see fit(DM abiding). Simply spending it all on magic items is one of the simpler ways of doing it, but it could also be a representation of the character's assets. What if I make a character and I only spend 1% of my starting wealth on items, keep the rest as cash, and then use it to enchant items once the game starts? All that's going to do is slow the game down right from the get go. Just my opinion, but it's the player's money. They should spend it as they like(again, DM abiding).


I believe that the wealth by level MUST represent the value of the items + cash, otherwise players can easily game the system to get more out of it than they deserve. To preserve balance, it is necessary.

Or you absolutly MUST tell everyone that pre-game crafting is an option, and even allow characters to craft for one another, pre-game. Otherwise, you have just penalized some character concepts at the expense of others. And before you say anything about "they had the options", try to think if YOU showed up with a character and the DM said:

"Ok, so all these other characters decided not to optimize their build, so they all get double wealth to start and +2 to all their stats. Let's see...you did a good job optimizing your character. Good job. You get nothing. Now, let's have some fun!"

You would be pissed. You might not leave, but pissed, certainly. That is what it feels like to come to a game with an ascetic warrior with social skills (samurai-like) and be told that others who pumped their crafting skills now get more and better equipment than you do.

So, if you allow it, you NEED to tell everyone before hand that it is allowed. And then watch as everyone comes with crafted items. And trounces your encounters. And anonymously mocks the DM on the Paizo message boards.


Dark_Mistress wrote:
If the GM assigns X amount for magic items and you have the feats. Then i don't see why not.

Agreed, Can't see any real valid reason to penalise a player who did choose Item Creation feats.

Of course you'll always get some crafty so-so who tries to abuse it like an old forgotten toy.


Zurai wrote:
DM_Blake wrote:
Yes, you spent a feat on this ability, so you should see some benefit from it. To those who disagree, I ask this: If it were your character, would you ever choose to start with one less feat than everyone else (say, skip your level 1 feat, never take it, pretend it never existed)? No, you wouldn't. If you have invested a precious feat resource, you should have something to show for it.
Except that this is a misguided argument. Nothing in those feats implies that they only function before the game starts, or even that they're allowed before the game starts. That means there's no basis for anyone to say you're forcing them to pretend that feat is discarded for no gain. The character will have exactly as much chance to use it once the game starts as all the other characters have the chance to use their feats.

Not misguided at all.

So the players roll up their characters and show up to the first game session. The DM tells them they're all sitting at a tavern one evening when a bunch of trolls barge into town and start smashing and killing. They heroically rush into battle to save the town.

The fighter can use his power attack, cleave, great cleave, weapon focus, weapon specialization, and dodge feats immediately.

The rogue will get to use his weapon focus, point blank shot, precise shot, and improved initiative immediately.

Etc.

But the OP's character will be missing a feat. He took a crafting feat and it will do him no good at all right now.

Heck, those trolls migh be very numerous, and they might capture some villagers and carry them back to a huge underground troll lair. The PCs might go in hot pursuit, only to find out that beneath the troll lair is the underdark - and the trolls sold the villagers to drow slavers who intend to use them as sacrifices in a ritual on the next full moon. One of the captured villagers is one of the PC's mothers, so they pursue. And pursue. And by the time they rescue the villagers, they've all gained 5 levels.

And during all that time, the OP still never used his crafting feat. Not even once.

No, I still say, if the player invests in the feat, his character should get immediate use of it. Not overpowered use, or unbalancing use, but there should be some immediate benefit.


Mirror, Mirror wrote:

I believe that the wealth by level MUST represent the value of the items + cash, otherwise players can easily game the system to get more out of it than they deserve. To preserve balance, it is necessary.

Or you absolutly MUST tell everyone that pre-game crafting is an option, and even allow characters to craft for one another, pre-game. Otherwise, you have just penalized some character concepts at the expense of others. And before you say anything about "they had the options", try to think if YOU showed up with a character and the DM said:

"Ok, so all these other characters decided not to optimize their build, so they all get double wealth to start and +2 to all their stats. Let's see...you did a good job optimizing your character. Good job. You get nothing. Now, let's have some fun!"

You would be pissed. You might not leave, but pissed, certainly. That is what it feels like to come to a game with an ascetic warrior with social skills (samurai-like) and be told that others who pumped their crafting skills now get more and better equipment than you do.

So, if you allow it, you NEED to tell everyone before hand that it is allowed. And then watch as everyone comes with crafted items. And trounces your encounters. And anonymously mocks the DM on the Paizo message boards.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but in the 8 years we've gamed under 3.0/3.5/PF rules, this has never been an issue. Warriors come to the table with the items they bought, those who can craft and took the time and necessary bookkeeping, also did so. Our melee players don't fool with it because they either just didn't feel like it, or had other plans for those feat slots. Thos of us willing to part with some feat slots and do some extra homework got the better items, which, in turn help to make up for the missing feats.

Also, in some campaigns, Item Creation is almost a necessity. We may be campaigning deep in the wilderness where there aren't any handy magic shops available to buy potions, wands etc. In these games it's almost necessary to have someone on hand who can craft such items.


Jandrem wrote:
Maybe I'm just lucky, but in the 8 years we've gamed under 3.0/3.5/PF rules, this has never been an issue.

First time I ever saw someone allow it, they only took Wondrous Items, but doubled their entire wealth-by-level. It was mid-level (10th actually), and they completly dominated the party in abilities shorn up by magic items.

It was a bitter pill for those that started the game at level 1 and slogged through dungeons to gain their few precious magic items. There was a serious discussion that the Rogue should just murder the new character and disperse the goods to the rest of the party. IN GAME and IN CHARACTER!

So it all depends, but when someone feels shafted, they tend to take out their frustrations or leave the game, neither of which is a particularly favorable outcome.


Mirror, Mirror wrote:


First time I ever saw someone allow it, they only took Wondrous Items, but doubled their entire wealth-by-level. It was mid-level (10th actually), and they completly dominated the party in abilities shorn up by magic items.

It was a bitter pill for those that started the game at level 1 and slogged through dungeons to gain their few precious magic items. There was a serious discussion that the Rogue should just murder the new character and disperse the goods to the rest of the party. IN GAME and IN CHARACTER!

So it all depends, but when someone feels shafted, they tend to take out their frustrations or leave the game, neither of which is a particularly favorable outcome.

That really sucks, I'm sorry to hear the game turned out that way. It's understandable too. What works in one campaign doesn't necessarily work in another... In our games the non-casters were just never really concerned, and happy with what they had. Typically, if there was a crafter in the party, the other players were happy to have them around. They were our go-to guys for getting certain items or enchantments we couldn't find in town. We did an Eberron campaign that went all the way to level 30, and had an Artificer in the party. He was everybody's best friend to say the least.


Mirror, Mirror wrote:
Jandrem wrote:
Maybe I'm just lucky, but in the 8 years we've gamed under 3.0/3.5/PF rules, this has never been an issue.

First time I ever saw someone allow it, they only took Wondrous Items, but doubled their entire wealth-by-level. It was mid-level (10th actually), and they completly dominated the party in abilities shorn up by magic items.

It was a bitter pill for those that started the game at level 1 and slogged through dungeons to gain their few precious magic items. There was a serious discussion that the Rogue should just murder the new character and disperse the goods to the rest of the party. IN GAME and IN CHARACTER!

So it all depends, but when someone feels shafted, they tend to take out their frustrations or leave the game, neither of which is a particularly favorable outcome.

I think the problem is the player and not the crafting. I would never craft ALL of my magic items, and when i started recent campain in which we started at 10, I put my own limit of 1/3 my starting gold into crafting, and so far I am not any stronger then the rest of the party (mostly because most of the crafting went into making an amulate of mighty fists for my dragonblood/dragon disciple sorc who was melee oriented, and the martial characters in the party were able to buy an equivalent sword for less then what it cost me to craft the amulet). So I dont think there was a 'power' offset there. There were just a few items that I really wanted that I didnt have to worry about 'being available'.


tejón wrote:

The vast majority of player wealth is obtained in the form of items, right? Not cash. By RAW, items sell for half value. And then, with crafting feats, you create other items for half price.

The crafting feats are not a wealth multiplier, but rather a wealth transmuter.

Exactly this.

If you wanted to reflect the real benefit of the feat you would have to first start by giving everyone random treasure. Perhaps 80% items and 20% gold. Then the crafter could customize from there. Of course very few groups actually dole out random treasure to higher level groups so essentially everyone in the party gets the benefit of the feat even if no one takes it.


A lot of people seem to be invoking the, 'everything you have at half-cost,' gig, which is really getting silly. Getting everything at half-cost is a massive investment; Arms/Armor, Wondrous Items, Rod, Staff, Rings, Wands, Scrolls, just to cover the basics by the end. If someone's pouring six feats into their crafting, they'd better get a serious return; if they're not getting better gear both for themselves and the party out of the deal, then there is no point to the feats at all and the character blew six feats to just sit there and look pretty. And even with all those feats, there will still likely be items they need well before they can make 'em, that you'll have to buy at market anyways; I'm willing to be you'll want that handy haversack well before level 9.

And skills! People are acting like skill-based crafting gives you awesome stuff from beginning to end, but really, it's only any use at all for a very brief time. A character's probably only going to use weaponsmithing twice per party member, tops; once for a masterwork weapon, once for a primary weapon made of a special material. Maybe a couple more times for other special materials. All for a lump sum savings a few times in your career if you can spare the time (and that's a big if). The only crafting skills that are consistently useful throughout your career are Alchemy and Poisonmaking, since they yield expendables, but even those become obsolete and yield trivial savings before too long.

Saving 220g on a 300g masterwork dwarven waraxe is significant, true. However, if the dwarven smith wants a +1 waraxe, makes the axe herself, and then takes it to be enchanted, that process costs her 2110g instead of 2330g. A 9% savings. And it gets worse with level. That starting gear is just about the only useful thing the smith could make unless she finds a huge stack of time later to craft her own mithral full plate and adamantine waraxe later (another set of savings that means less with every level).

And if you have someone in the 1000g starting wealth game with self-made masterwork full plate? Sure, looking at the market price on the full plate itself says the market price of all her gear is over two thousand (though she is still in complete compliance with spending allowances), but it doesn't matter. All she has over the alternative banded mail is +2 AC and -1 ACP, the latter of which doesn't matter and the former of which, while very nice, is not remotely a gamebreaker. What's more, come level three, the entire party will have three grand each. Level four? Five grand each. That's not long, and the savings become less and less meaningful with every passing level. That one character may have gotten a mediocre advantage for a brief period of time that diminishes drastically as the game goes on doesn't detract from the game or unbalance things one whit.

Zurai wrote:
Second, and less trivially, the Craft skill is not trained-only. That means that anyone can craft essentially any mundane gear they want, given enough time.

They can make it, sure, but quite likely at a dramatically increased price if you can't take 10. Every time you fail by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials and have to pay to recover them. The masterwork component of a weapon takes eight checks to create. Even if you succeed on an eleven, that's a 50% chance you won't make any progress at all (meaning, on average, you'll need 15 checks to make the thing), and 30% of the time, you're ruining half the raw materials. On average, that means you're ruining materials five times along the way if you don't have the skill to take ten every time, which brings the tab on that masterwork sword to seven sixths of market. Which is a cost increase. It gets worse when you're trying to make stuff out of special materials.

Dennis da Ogre wrote:
You could suggest the same thing with skills. Why would you choose to start with craft if you are virtually throwing the skill points away? Half the benefit of handle animal is the fact that you get to train animals, why couldn't I have a kennel filled with gryphons? It's like throwing the skill away.

A griffon kennel is entirely different from having the standard sword/shield/armor suite and you know it. Particularly since it's completely useless; eggs still cost 3,500g each, after all (unless that changed), and you can't direct more than two in a round, maybe.

And this invokes the completely unrelated issue of the wild kingdom game. Whether pre-game or during play, it can make perfect sense to train a pack of fifty war dogs, and legally you could, but ultimately you can't for the simple reason that keeping tabs on fifty dogs bogs the game down something awful.

However, if the player brings a griffon rider character and wants to pay the 3,500g for a griffon egg and have raised it from birth, and has the Handle Animal skill sufficient to back it up, then that's totally appropriate and perfectly reasonable and should be allowed. It makes perfect sense for a griffon rider to have raised her own griffon, particularly before setting off on adventure, just as it makes perfect sense for the dwarven warrior/smith to have made her own weapons and armor, particularly before setting off on adventure.

Mirror, Mirror wrote:
I believe that the wealth by level MUST represent the value of the items + cash, otherwise players can easily game the system to get more out of it than they deserve. To preserve balance, it is necessary.

Pish posh. The dwarven warrior/smith taking ranks in armorsmithing to get the masterwork full plate is no more unbalancing or inappropriate than the half-orc Barbarian putting that +2 attribute into strength in order to hit harder.

Mirror, Mirror wrote:
You would be pissed. You might not leave, but pissed, certainly. That is what it feels like to come to a game with an ascetic warrior with social skills (samurai-like) and be told that others who pumped their crafting skills now get more and better equipment than you do.

"Start with better swag" is an extremely common advantage in many systems; D&D's Craft skill and item creation abilities are little different. Folks who take those "start with better swag" abilities start with better swag, just as folks who take the "hit harder" ability will hit harder than you, and folks who take the "jump good" ability will jump better than you do.

And you can always ask them to make a fancy sword for you later, unless some sort of vow of poverty is a part of your character concept, in which case you shouldn't get worked up over items at all.

Mirror, Mirror wrote:
So, if you allow it, you NEED to tell everyone before hand that it is allowed. And then watch as everyone comes with crafted items. And trounces your encounters. And anonymously mocks the DM on the Paizo message boards.

Character creation is a group activity. Crafting ain't a surprise to be sprung; of course it's stated up front. However, it ain't gonna break the game like that. Folks'll have an edge to start, sure, but that edge dulls right quick and it takes a lot of downtime to keep it honed.

Mirror, Mirror wrote:

First time I ever saw someone allow it, they only took Wondrous Items, but doubled their entire wealth-by-level. It was mid-level (10th actually), and they completly dominated the party in abilities shorn up by magic items.

It was a bitter pill for those that started the game at level 1 and slogged through dungeons to gain their few precious magic items. There was a serious discussion that the Rogue should just murder the new character and disperse the goods to the rest of the party. IN GAME and IN CHARACTER!

So it all depends, but when someone feels shafted, they tend to take out their frustrations or leave the game, neither of which is a particularly favorable outcome.

Sounds more like the DM was being overly stingy with the magic items and then someone came in with an appropriate starting stash and some investment in more. More like mixing "low-magic" (in the 'you don't get wealth-by-level' context) with "high-magic" (in the 'complying with design assumptions') model, that the guy coming in was set under different rules, and the original party was under-equipped (you should have a lot more than a 'few precious magic items' at level 10). Possibly without adequate expertise in how to put magic swag to use in comparison to the newcomer.

However, 1) The fact that Craft Wondrous Item specifically is so ridiculously sweeping is a known issue independent of the crafting system itself; it's a problem with Craft Wondrous Item, not a problem with crafting, 2) If Craft Wondrous Item alone did double his wealth, that means he took some huge constraints in only using wondrous items, and 3) Crafting is a party-buffing tool, not a keystone to individual power. Making your own swag at a discount then hoarding it and not allowing the wealth to spread to the rest of the group is a player issue, not a crafting issue.

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32

Viletta Vadim wrote:
A lot of people seem to be invoking the, 'everything you have at half-cost,' gig, which is really getting silly. Getting everything at half-cost is a massive investment; Arms/Armor, Wondrous Items, Rod, Staff, Rings, Wands, Scrolls, just to cover the basics by the end. If someone's pouring six feats into their crafting, they'd better get a serious return; if they're not getting better gear both for themselves and the party out of the deal, then there is no point to the feats at all and the character blew six feats to just sit there and look pretty. And even with all those feats, there will still likely be items they need well before they can make 'em, that you'll have to buy at market anyways; I'm willing to be you'll want that handy haversack well before level 9.

Two feats covers 90% of the things you'd want to buy.


A Man In Black wrote:
Two feats covers 90% of the things you'd want to buy.

That's a specific problem with Craft Wondrous Item, not crafting in general.

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32

Viletta Vadim wrote:
That's a specific problem with Craft Wondrous Item, not crafting in general.

So? It's still a problem if you allow getting everything for half cost at character creation because someone in the party took the feat.


A Man In Black wrote:
So? It's still a problem if you allow getting everything for half cost at character creation because someone in the party took the feat.

When fixing a problem, it's better to actually fix the problem itself rather than blast an entire perfectly fair chunk of the game. If Craft Wondrous Item is a problem, but Craft Wand, Forge Ring, Scribe Scroll, Craft: Weaponsmithing, Craft: Armorsmithing, Craft: Bowmaking, Craft: Alchemy, Craft: Poisonmaking, and Craft: Boatbuilding are all fine, why zap the perfectly fair laundry list over Craft Wondrous Item? Even Craft Magical Arms and Armor is fine, despite being a huge chunk of party expenses, simply because it's appropriately constrained in what it can do.


This has been an interesting discussion.

It boils down to DM decision of course. The players before play were NPCs so what did they do.

The argument nobody deserves a free year to make their own whatsit is a valid one. "I can make and I can sell" should not be a formula for infinite money or perhaps the player would never adventure.

I think the reasonable approach is to come up with a percentage that is really the character's seed money.

P.400 makes a clear suggestion that the starting wealth should be apportioned so as to represent a compromise of equipment not just one super awesome item.

It is reasonable to assume that a crafting character has crafted - a fighter has fought, a spell caster has cast. Is it reasonable to assume that a crafting character has been able to craft for _himself_? and that the craft was useful or even successful? How likely is it that a crafter begins with debts and obligations to his suppliers customers?

The argument that craft is not a trained only skill and that each character is conceivably capable of the same feats is also interesting.

The original premise, for me, makes a few more items likely. If a village is destroyed, what is the chance that something special was left behind and not looted? If the four survived, would they be the first to check the bodies of the heroes of the village, to examine the weapons hoards such as they are?

I think for me it is reasonable that crafters receive between 10 and 25% discount on their expenses. I would be content to reduce that to 5 crafting rolls each worth 5% of their total wealth. The DC would be 15 plus or minus a number based on their background wealth. This would mean by the way that they'd have to buy all their equipment as normal, just like the other players. I would return the discounted price in portable wealth.
Characters with multiple crafts would get 5 rolls per craft but no more than 25% would be available.

I would be content to let all the players use up to 2 crafts under these circumstances and accept untrained rolls too.

Of course thats only me, right now.
There have been some interesting opinions on this. From different angles but valid nonetheless.

Sigurd

I think


A Man In Black wrote:
So? It's still a problem if you allow getting everything for half cost at character creation because someone in the party took the feat.

+1

Basically, Viletta Vadim's saying that having better items is part of the cost-benefit. That's fine, but let's say this is a higher level game starting with, oh, 150,000gp.

You select items appropriate for your character.

I craft an item of physical perfection, and another of mental perfection. +6 to all stats, and I still have a little left over.

Or a lower powered game. You start with normal equipment, I craft my own Masterwork equipment.

As a multiplier (x2), the effect is greater the more you have to work with. 1k vs 2k is not such a big deal you say? What about 100k vs 200k? Or 200k vs 400k? Is that also ok?

Magic items are a big part of the game. So big, in fact, CR assumes certain magic items being available. The higher you go, allowing that doubling pre-game becomes a bigger and bigger advantage.

Saying that Weapon Focus is just as valuable as Forge Ring is not just laughable, it totally ignores the equipment component of the game.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I say stop worrying about gold pieces. It's a stupid tax code that should just be thrown out. Assign a level for every item the PCs can get, and say 'you are X level, you can have this many of X, Y, and Z items.' If you want to check how close a PC is to the guidelines, add the prices given in the book together and compare to the WBL chart. Then it doesn't matter how they came by their gear.


This is the point in the discussion where everything has been said about the topic and the next 5 pages of discussion are folks repeating the same arguments.

As for the original post, I don't think it's a question of cheesey or broken so much as what your GM's play style is so ask him. In some games it is cheesey and broken, in others not so much. Good luck.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

So we're allowed to threadjack Dennis?


Mirror, Mirror wrote:
I craft an item of physical perfection, and another of mental perfection. +6 to all stats, and I still have a little left over.

And you've pretty much wasted the vast majority of your starting wealth on a pair of extra shiny items that ultimately don't get you very much ahead when you look at the price tag.

Mirror, Mirror wrote:
Or a lower powered game. You start with normal equipment, I craft my own Masterwork equipment.

That's perfectly fair. You invested a big pile of skill points to get that +1 AB, -1/2 ACP, after all, maybe with a boost to AC as well. Perfectly fair, and not game-breaking, and meanwhile I'm spending my skill points in a way that matters more to me. Your Fighter took the "make better swag" skills, my Barbarian took the "manage badass mount" skills. You have the better swag, I have (or will have) the badass mount.

Mirror, Mirror wrote:
As a multiplier (x2), the effect is greater the more you have to work with. 1k vs 2k is not such a big deal you say? What about 100k vs 200k? Or 200k vs 400k? Is that also ok?

Except most crafting abilities ultimately don't get you that multiplier. Craft: Armorsmithing will become obsolete in short order and yield diminishing returns. Forge Rings only halves the cost of your rings. Craft Magical Arms and Armor only applies to arms and armor.

If you use Craft Magical Arms and Armor and then pour nearly everything into your arms and armor to get weapons and armor well beyond the rest of the party, that's maybe a +1- or +2-equivalent edge, and it's about all you have for your gear. Or you have that extra +1 alongside standard gear at standard price, which is perfectly fair; you invested the feat and have the spellcasting and all that rot.

If you have a Wizard who gets Craft Wand, then only has self-made wands at reduced cost, that mage doesn't have any gear but wands. She has a lot of wands, and the "craft boatloads of wands" tactic could well be made viable by the reduced cost of those wands, but she still only has wands.

And if you invest six or seven feats so that you can craft everything in a standard suite yourself? You absolutely deserve the effects of doubled wealth. After all, doubling wealth amounts to a 40% increase in effectiveness of gear due to quadratic progression, and if you're doing that at the cost of six feats? Perfectly appropriate.

Craft Wondrous Item is still a separate problem.

Mirror, Mirror wrote:
Magic items are a big part of the game. So big, in fact, CR assumes certain magic items being available. The higher you go, allowing that doubling pre-game becomes a bigger and bigger advantage.

You're going outside the paradigm of whether pre-game crafting is cheezy to assert that any crafting at all is cheezy, which is well outside the issue. And with crafting feats, you're investing a feat to increase your effectiveness. With any other feat, you're investing a feat to increase your effectiveness. It's just that one increases effectiveness indirectly through gear.

Mirror, Mirror wrote:
Saying that Weapon Focus is just as valuable as Forge Ring is not just laughable, it totally ignores the equipment component of the game.

Now you're comparing a first-level feat to one you can't even qualify for until level seven and has additional requirements besides. And it's a bad first-level feat, besides.

TriOmegaZero wrote:
I say stop worrying about gold pieces. It's a stupid tax code that should just be thrown out. Assign a level for every item the PCs can get, and say 'you are X level, you can have this many of X, Y, and Z items.' If you want to check how close a PC is to the guidelines, add the prices given in the book together and compare to the WBL chart. Then it doesn't matter how they came by their gear.

Except that's a major houserule that has nothing to do with the system itself, and if you don't either remove crafting abilities entirely or make allowances for the folks who do take those abilities, it becomes very blatantly unfair to the folks who do take them.


VV-

I just don't get this "6 or 7 feats" business. Fighter had weaponsmithing and armorsmithing. 2 feats later, he is crafting.

Bard takes Wondrous Item and Magic Arms/Armor and has most of what they would ever want.

Wiz takes Craft Staff and Wonderous item, and had his ring or rod through Arcane Bond. 2 feats.

Cleric does the same as the Bard.

And crafting in-game gives others to do something else with the time. It's balanced by the kind of campaign and the options open to the others. Pre-game, it's just free stuff.

As a Wiz, I would probably just take Craft Rod, Quicken spell, and have as many quicken rods as I could craft.

Ultimately there are many, many items of good value you could craft that give you an edge over your fellows. So why again shouldn't the Ranger have spent some of his gold training Griffin mounts? He starts with a Griffin?

Well, I'm training a Dire Polar Bear! Or a Tyrannosaurus! I just sink all 100gp of my funds into it, so now I have a trained 12hd monster to follow me around.

Doesn't this sound even vaugely stupid? If so, crafting has a very similar effect, and you should at least recognize that. Others would allow it woth 10% to 25% of the starting wealth, and that's probably ok. At 100%, it's nuts, unfair, unbalancing, and an excellent argument for those DM's who want to throw crafting out of the game entirely.

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