Making sense of Crafting

[Bruno Kristensen]

Ok, I've talked with one of my players about this, and we agree that crafting doesn't make any sense.

To illustrate the situation, here's an example:

A craftsman with a total of +20 in Craft (Armor) wants to make a suit of full plate armor.

According to the rules, every week, he rolls a Craft check (DC 10+ armor bonus) and multiplies the skill check by the DC to get the progress in SP.

A suit of full plate costs 1500 gp or 15000 sp. If we assume he is taking 10 and he adds +10 to the DC because he wants to finish as soon as possible, he gets a result of 890 sp per week. It will take him just under 17 weeks to finish the suit, which I guess is fine enough.

But now he wants to make a suit of mithril full plate. It costs 10500 gp (105000 sp), but the DC remains the same. So if he again takes 10 and "rushes", it will take him just under 118 week (more than two years) to finish the suit of armor.

Should it take longer to make a suit of armor out of a special material? Possibly. But the primary reason mithril full plate is so expensive is that mithril is rare and difficult to obtain, not because it is difficult to craft.

Another issue then comes, when we consider having assistants (which most armor smiths had historically). The rules doesn't specify otherwise, so by RAW, only thing the assistants can do is Aid Another. Let us say he has 4 assistants (any more would probably get in the way of each other), which adds +8 to his skill rolls. The armors would then take 13½ weeks or 95 weeks, respectively. Certainly better, but still a very long time.

Would it be reasonable to assume that each person could work on a part of the suit of armor (perhaps with a slight penalty)? After all, a suit of full plate armor is not one piece of metal, but many small (the largest being the cuirass/breast plate).

Thoughts?

[TDLofCC]

I had the same problem .. some of your questions are answered here :)

Check my thread here

I have to admit, I like the idea of just paying the cost for adamantium/mithral materials instead of using to calculate the time to create the armor.

I hope someone can clarify this ... would make the skill come back instantly ;)

-TDL

[Viletta Vadim]

Oh, the crafting rules are borked on multiple levels. You may be better off just winging those, since the time spans are so unreasonable; if the character secures a good forge and a few assistants and has the skills, you may as well just say it takes a couple weeks and be done with it if it's for personal use. If it's for making a living, you go back to standard wealth-acquisition rules for Craft.

[Twowlves]

Or fork over the cash for a wizard to cast Fabricate on your pile of Mithril/Adamantine.....

[Nebelwerfer41]

Twowlves wrote:

Or fork over the cash for a wizard to cast Fabricate on your pile of Mithril/Adamantine.....

One simple fix would be to house-rule some sort of feat that cuts the production time in half to make crafters worthwhile. That feat could double the bonus added by outside aid to boost. I don't see something like that as game-breaking.

[Twowlves]

3.5 had optional rules letting you increase the craft DC by increments of 10, drastically cutting down on craft time. Bumping up the craft DC from 18 to 38 for mithril full plate and then getting +8 from 4 assistants (using Aid Another)helps.

[PirateDevon]

Twowlves wrote:

Or fork over the cash for a wizard to cast Fabricate on your pile of Mithril/Adamantine.....

And pray the wizard has a decent craft skill...

What about just not converting to sp? Your target number is in GP and you produce in GP which inherently cuts down all production times. Plate takes a week and a half. Mithril would take 11 weeks...add four guys and it takes 9.5 (I am using Bruno's numbers)

I think you could have more than 4 guys as long as the forge is big enough. They are working during the night doing the fine shaping and rough hammering. You pay them 3 sp a piece a day so 2 gp a week per guy?
So throw 20 guys into the forge working 24/7 as "aid another" to your "quick build" weekly check.(MONTAGE).

That combined with not converting the GP to SP means your "team" would complete production on a suit of mithril plate to a little more than 5 weeks? Still "a lot" of time but a hell of a lot more manageable than 2 years.

Costs an extra 800 Gp though for all the wages...but that still seems like a decent cost/production advantage since you only need 1/3 the cost materials.

What do you folks think?

[Caineach]

I'm sorry, but have any of you guys ever actually tried to forge anything? 17 weeks seems short to me, even for someone skilled doing it. I've seen people work metal on a forge, its not a quick process.

http://www.higgins.org/Research/armorerscraft.shtml
I would like to find a more detail site, but this describes potentially dozens of crafters taking several weeks for a plain set of armor, and months for a decorated one.

Personally, I would allow the assistants to make checks to complete pieces with the master assisting all of them, and making the check himself. Divide the price of the product by the number of people splitting the work for determining time (if appropriate as it is in this case.)

Perhaps there should be a supervisor feat for craftsmen allowing a master to aid many apprentices on longterm check?

[PirateDevon]

Caineach wrote:

I'm sorry, but have any of you guys ever actually tried to forge anything? 17 weeks seems short to me, even for someone skilled doing it. I've seen people work metal on a forge, its not a quick process.

http://www.higgins.org/Research/armorerscraft.shtml
I would like to find a more detail site, but this describes potentially dozens of crafters taking several weeks for a plain set of armor, and months for a decorated one.

Personally, I would allow the assistants to make checks to complete pieces with the master assisting all of them, and making the check himself. Divide the price of the product by the number of people splitting the work for determining time (if appropriate as it is in this case.)

Perhaps there should be a supervisor feat for craftsmen allowing a master to aid many apprentices on longterm check?

I have.

And I understand your point but we are talking about a world where dragons fly and heroes defy the laws of common science.

I will point out however that there really is no need to make extra rules to add more "workmen" - aiding the primary crafter's check makes the value go up and the time accelerate, you could just as easily claim that the primary crafter is making only one piece or connecting multiple pieces or supervising or whatever and (in my example) the other twenty guys are making the pieces to connect or are doing the initial grunt work. My point is that the labor of other individuals is accounted for and affects time, why complicate that more?