Hey guys! I have a question to ask of you.
So, one of my players was interested in making a Dwarf fighter who would craft arms and equipment. Unfortunately, a few searches on the topic reveals that it takes quite a large amount of time to make most armor.
I'll be honest with you though, I haven't yet fully grasped the craft rules, so I'm in no position to start pumping out rules on it. I think I understand enough to get the basic concept, though.
Now, I also know that in real time it takes a long, long time to make full plate and its ilk, but I'm not necessarily looking for realism here.
That aside, I was wondering if anyone had tried to shorten the crafting times to allow a PC to play that sort of role. Bear in mind though, my player has no intention of "ruining the economy" or anything like that with this; he just wants to be able to craft armor for himself and maybe another PC or some NPC friends. I trust him. He's been a faithful player for some time now, and as a DM I want to help him be able to fulfill his desired role rather than outright deny it. So, I'm looking to compromise.
Now, as a DM, I don't want to take those 77 or so weeks it takes to make full plate and cut them down to 3 days; I still want there to be a sense of accomplishment when he finally finishes. Maybe (lets say, through magic or something) its cut down to several weeks or so. Maybe more, I'm not quite sure.
So, I'm asking if anyone has ever tried this, and what the ramifications were of the changes? Was it possible?
ALSO: I won't be changing the rules on enchanting or making magic items, those are fine as is. It's primarily the armor I'm worried about.
A simple change is to interpret (check result times DC) as gold pieces of progress, not silver pieces. That cuts 77 weeks down to a little under 8 weeks.
You could also allow an assistant or two to work on separate pieces of the armor for the first 90% of the construction. (The final 10% is putting all the pieces together, so the assistants could only aid another during those checks.) If the PC can make a check of 30 while taking 10 and the assistants can make a check of 20, using the fast crafting rules, the PC would make progress of 30 (check) * 30 (DC) = 900/week, and each assistant would make progress of 20*20, for a total of 800 per week. Two assistants would drop the time down to about three to four weeks.
Four weeks is still a long time in campaign time, but it's much more likely to be achievable.
Well, if you're using magical aid, Fabricate does stuff instantly.
Now, then. The following list includes options. Taking every last one of them may be overmuch, but picking and choosing and tweaking can help.
You could bring back the 3.5 system, where you could increase the creation DC by any amount (not just Pathfinder's +10) to accelerate crafting, effectively making the rate of progress equal to your ability plus ten, squared.
There are numerous skill-boosting spells that you may want to consider making available or applicable through some means or another; Magecraft (Eberron) is a personal-range first-level Wizard spell that grants +5 Craft for a day, though you could easily make it touch-range instead, to let the mage help the Fighter out. You could also let Divine Insight (Spell Compendium) apply, for another +6-15.
You could also invent a spell. Say, a 2nd-level spell that makes materials more workable, letting you make a week's progress in a day, again letting the mage assist.
You could ignore the normal constraints on Bardic Music and say the Bard could spend the day being inspirational and granting the Inspire Competence bonus to crafting, again raising the skill and accelerating crafting.
And you could bring back the dwarves' racial +2 to Craft checks involving metal.
Also, hiring a hireling or three as an assistant to aid is standard fare.
There's also the possibility of giving the dwarf access to some ancestral forge in his clanhold (or whatever), with some magic or another of significance. Perhaps the weeks-to-days effect, or perhaps it has a sustenance effect that allows him to work 24/7, tripling productivity, or perhaps it just grants an extra +5-20 to crafting.
Let's see... hm... Putting all of those into effect, except the switch from silver to gold and ancestral forge, then come level three... I'll assume 12 Int and masterwork tools, +3 from ranks, +3 from the class skill bonus, +5 from Magecraft, +6 from Divine Insight, +2 from Inspire Competence, I'll say +2 from aid another, that comes out to a +24 Craft skill. Masterwork full plate is 16500 silver. We willingly boost the DC to 34 to rush. That's 1156 silver per period. 14.27 periods. With the week-to-day spell, two weeks and change, by combining the abilities of four PCs and an NPC. That sound like the kind of thing you're looking for?
While it is assumed that the armorsmith creates the armor from scratch, it doesn't have to be so. As a matter of fact, a low middle age / renaissance armors would have been through several craftsmen and workshops before completion.
The character could start from steel sheets rather than iron bars. Some parts may be created in another shop while the smith is at work etc. In game terms, the armor could have a 'head start' as far as value progress goes.
'findel
I've always wanted to do it the other way around..
The current rules for magic items are:
The creator also needs a fairly quiet, comfortable, and well-lit place in which to work. Any place suitable for preparing spells is suitable for making items. Creating an item requires 8 hours of work per 1,000 gp in the item's base price (or fraction thereof), with a minimum of at least 8 hours. Potions and scrolls are an exception to this rule; they can take as little as 2 hours to create (if their base price is 250 gp or less). Scrolls and potions whose base price is more than 250 gp, but less than 1,000 gp, take 8 hours to create, just like any other magic item. The character must spend the gold at the beginning of the construction process. Regardless of the time needed for construction, a caster can create no more than one magic item per day. This process can be accelerated to 4 hours of work per 1,000 gp in the item's base price (or fraction thereof) by increasing the DC to create the item by +5.
I'd set the rate at 1 caster-day per 10 GP of the item's final creation price, with a note that additional casters working on the same project count as an extra mage-day, but add +2 to the DC of the casting.
I'd do the same thing for mundane crafts - every 10 GP of list price represents 1 artisan-day to create the item.
Then again, I'm always the person who point out that plate mail armor needs about 300 GP worth of work to be fitted to someone who it wasn't specifically built for, and prefer grittier, low magic, hardscrabble fantasy worlds.
"Martin of Wal's Blue Light Emporium of Magical DooDads" makes my teeth ache. :)
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I told the dwarf warrior who is maxing out his smithing that for every assistant plus 2 apprentices he hired, he could half his smithing time. This means if he hired 2 assistants and four apprentices, he could make it in 1/4th the normal time, etc. This is more how things worked for making things like full plate as I understand it anyway, with less skilled workers doing most of the gruntwork, and the master smith overseeing the final piecework and fitting together of the pieces. Plus it allows the skills to be actually usable in a adventuring setting, just takes a bit more gold to do it, unless you set up your own smithy.
Thanks a million you guys!
My player and I are going to look over these choices and decide which one we might implement. Glad to see there's been some thought behind it.
I decided that for crafting nonmagical items the crafting time was day-based instead of week-based. it seems to have worked out well, and is now something like real-time.
I actually just posted a revamped craft skill here.