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So, got me.
The intent of craft is to make something, and these rules do that job.
If you want to craft something, you can do so. If you don't succeed at once then you can continue working on it until you're done or you fail and ruin the materials. If something is precious, it tends to need more precise work. It is designed for degrees of success.
some of you guys are missing something...a lot of things are for game balance, they don't want you to be able to make masterwork items for very little extra cost or time and just be able to turn around and sell them for 10 times profit or be able to have all masterwork items at level 1...then masterwork isn't special anymore... like we say in my group "this is a game and not the real world, cuz otherwise i could stand in the middle of a ten foot hallway!"I agree that a lot of it is for balance, but that doesn't really work with poisons. There are tons of magical items (both permanent and single-use) that are cheaper and quicker to make then poisons, but have similar effects.
Where's the balance in that?
Ability Damage (particularly Con damage) has rightly or wrongly been costed extremely high in 3.x versions of the game. The old 1e system was basically that poison was something evil NPCs used and should be verboten in standard games (D&D has always been written from the perspective of Good PCs), 3.x accepts their use to a degree but part of the trade-off is that they need to cost so much so that they don't become use every encounter items.
One of the "issues" with crafting rules (I'm talking most crafting rules mind you, not only default 3.X rules) is that it rarely take in consideration the many conditions that may have inflated the price/creation time from the craftsman who created the item to the customer that uses it. In this case, lets look at factors that makes poisons different from most mundane items:
The illicit nature of the poison trade may force craftsman and their intermediaries to go "underground" and artificially boost the market price. A poison may be sold for 500 gp, yet cost 50 gp to create and 450 gp to make sure the craftsman doesn't get caught (in whatever extra cost you deem necessary). In which case, the poison itself should be created as a 50 gp item...
Also, most rules assume a fixed ratio of raw materials for the final result, which may not be adequate for each object. One good example is that a cannon ball made of solid iron should be harder to make (read take longer to create) than a cannon ball made of solid gold, although the market price of the golden ball should be significantly higher. This should be corrected by treating the golden ball as an ordinary cannon ball for the purpose of determining the crafting time, plus an extra charge in gold equal to its weight in gp (or something of the sort). In the case of poisons, it is possible that this 500 gp poison requires a main ingredient coming from halfway across the world that in itself costs 450 gp to acquire. Again, the poison should be crafted as a 50 gp item, with an extra 450 gp charge.
Finally, Most crafting rules fail to include a batch process. Some poisons can be similar to alcohol in their making. In this case, making several doses may not take significantly more time than producing a single dose. So while our poison may cost 500 gp and be crafted as a 500 gp item, the poison maker could be working on several doses of the same poison simultaneously during the same time period.
In conclusion, making a universal crafting rule that partake every single possible situation for every type of product might be both difficult and overly complicated.
I'd suggest using the present crafting rules and make a house-brew addendum including specific options that may be applied for poisons only, such as a proportion of the price that covers for the illicit nature of the trade (which does not count against the market price of the item as far as the crafting rules are concerned), a potential proportion of the market price that covers extra-expensive ingredient and procedure (which once again would not count against the market price of the item as far as the crafting rules are concerned) and the possibility to work on several doses of the same poison simultaneously (possibly rolling for each dose separately).
If that still doesn't work, I'd invite you all to check at my Craft/Profession/Perform rules HERE. Scroll all the way at the end of the tread for the most recent version. Note that under these house rules, an "item" resulting from a batch process would be covered by the Profession Skill.
Also on a different note:
My Tier-Base-Round rules as mentioned earlier can be found HERE.
'findel
Do people ever try using Aid Another when crafting items? A master craftsman with a workshop full of journeymen and apprentices could get a large number of bonuses on their skill check, allowing them to make things much faster.
Not much, actually. Unless you have a team so massive as to be absurd, the kind of team that would get branded as abuse in nigh any other case.
The intent of craft is to make something, and these rules do that job.
If you want to craft something, you can do so. If you don't succeed at once then you can continue working on it until you're done or you fail and ruin the materials. If something is precious, it tends to need more precise work. It is designed for degrees of success.
The intent of F.A.T.A.L.'s magic rules is to allow for the casting of magical spells, and those rules do that job. If you want to cast a spell, you can do so. That does not mean those rules are at all well-executed, however.
No one's denying that it is technically possible to create things with the Craft skill. It is the quality of these rules and their contribution to the game as a whole that is in question, and these rules are utterly horrid. Using these rules consistently is punitive, obstructive, in direct opposition to heroic fantasy and adventure in general. And it gets worse and worse as levels go on, as the mundane items needed to contribute become more and more expensive. And thus, the point that they enable crafting at all is irrelevant.
Do people ever try using Aid Another when crafting items? A master craftsman with a workshop full of journeymen and apprentices could get a large number of bonuses on their skill check, allowing them to make things much faster.
Another way to speed up crafting, is to break complex items being manufactured down into components. Each component can be worked on separately with supporting aid another checks (Assembly Line) and then all put together. That should allow for a substantial speeding up of the item fabrication process.
For poisons, one could interpret part of the higher time costs due to the time needed to track down and distill more exotic components. If the player already has the components, one could give a significant circumstantial reduction in the time needed to manufacture the poison. That said, I can also see why some people would want to house-rule poison making so it takes less time.
50 people working together in a lab (approx. cumulative +100 modifier) can make 2 doses of Dark Reaver Powder each week.
That still seems off to me.
Why should I have to take the leadership feat and dedicate ALL of my followers just to be able to make a couple doses of poison? Also, how does one explain the reasoning behind that scenario? What are the followers getting out of making ME poisons? Furthermore, once I set them up in my little factory, what is the point of me crafting the poisons at all? I might as well leave it to them, or buy them to begin with.
Congratulations, you've expanded the realm of poisoncrafting to spellcasters AND people with the Leadership feat/warehouses full of slaves.
The intent of craft is to make something, and these rules do that job.
Is it ever possible for rules not to do the job, as you see it?
Congratulations, you've expanded the realm of poisoncrafting to spellcasters AND people with the Leadership feat/warehouses full of slaves.
And don't forget the folks who carry around homunculus sweatshops in their portable holes. But then, that's back to spellcasters, I suppose.
Since you seem to have missed my last paragraph that addressed the issues with Poison making, I have bolded it for you. I would love to hear some thoughts as to the proposals I made in the bolded paragraph regarding poisons.
Except when you have to invoke houserules for base defense of a rule, you are admitting the rule is indefensible.
I'm not the one getting pissed because people are complaining about rules, neither, for that matter, are the designers.
I didn't say you were. I was defending my motives.
Well actually the rules on poison I think are just fine. This is Golarion a world where there are no modern day labs. The Apothecary who is brewing his poison actually has to find said components first whether on the market or elsewhere and then prepare them.To make that potent poison for buyer. Basically the apothecary is spending most of his time drying out components or boiling or any of the other numerous tasks involved in preping to get that poison just right. In addition the making and sale of poisons is for the most part illegal so he has scant time when he can do it without arousing suspicion. So I dont know what the whole fuss is about.
Some points...
...not all games take place in Golarion.
...The crafter clearly does not spend all that time getting components, as he does that at the beginning of the craft process by spending 1/3 of the market price in gold to GET THE COMPONENTS.
...If it really is all about "spending most of his time drying out components or boiling or any of the other numerous tasks involved in preping to get that poison just right" then there should be no problem at all with doing multiple batches/doses simultaneously, right? The rules do not clearly support that notion, which is one of the many flaws in the crafting rules.
...the illigality of poison will vary from campaign to campaign and even from place to place within a campaign. Also, some poisons might be illegal whereas others might not be. In other words, that isn't a good basis for a hardline rule as it is too much of a variable.
Well, what confuses/concerns some of us is... what kind of game do those rules suggest?
They don't make any sense given any identifiable game. They are too detailed for 'craft rolls aren't that important, just say you make something,' they are too inconsistent for 'makes game economy work well,' they are too loony for 'simulation of reality.'
If you can identify what they were shooting for, please tell us, it's not at all clear.
And the problem is that the rules AREN'T abstract. They are, in fact, very very precise. I would have vastly preferred more abstract craft rules.
Hah. I would have preferred a simpler system, myself. I would have enjoyed something that let a ranger/bowyer live off their own skill as much as possible. Is that a valid avenue for RP?
Yes.
I'd like to play an armorsmith/weaponsmith who ventures from her village and fights the trolls along the mountainside. Who works to outfit an army in a desperate revolution to overthrow an anarchist and who ultimately fights alongside them.
A fighter who maintains their own equipment.
A rogue who crafts his or her own instruments and poisons because they can't be gotten on the "main market."
A fighter stranded among raiders, or who is a raider, and anything they have, they fight, make, or steal. Doesn't have to be a "low-magic" game, although such games classically are.
I remember the long hours explaining the mundane crafting rules to confused, new players. Confused, older players. An abstract, simpler system would be appreciated on both sides of the fence.
None of the above concepts are invalid. Many of them are "classic." Many of the above concepts would be aided, not hampered, by a simpler, more abstract system.
I'm not sure precisely what the current crafting system is intending to accomplish. I've used it in my games, and ultimately ended up in one of three routes:
A. Removing crafting from the game because the group preferred fewer house rules. In this game, players stopped crafting or making RPable concepts that involved it.
B. Introducing new rules to replace it. In this case, the thieves were happier, rangers were happier, fighters were happier, and crafting concepts stayed in the game and flourished.
C. Keeping crafting in the game because the group preferred the "adventures do grand and amazing things. Crafting isn't grand or amazing." Crafting rules were left as-is, and in this game, players stopped crafting or making RPable concepts that involved it.
In no sense or case were the crafting rules "as written" kept around or actively used. :/ The lesson I've learned, from a sample size of gamers ranging 100+ or so over the last few years, is that: if you want crafting to "fit" in your game, the rules need altered. If you don't want mundane crafting in the game, then keep the rules as-is, as they're a good deterrent from that focus.
It depends on what the game group, and the GM, values.
So yes there is kvetching going on about crafting and honestly I feel it's likely that a good deal of the kvetching is being done by people who have never featured PC crafting in their games. Yes, it's unfair to expect a perfect game but I think there are a ton of good ideas that could be mined for DMs that feel the need to abandon the current system and go with something more "realistic".Oh, I craft in my games. I do a lot of crafting. Many of my characters are some manner of artisan as well as an adventurer. The warrior/smith is an archetype I make use of frequently, and I consider it one of the more fundamental and iconic archetypes out there, particularly among dwarven warriors. Most of my Rogues make their own poisons and alchemic goods. Most of my gnomes put that racial alchemy bonus to use.
At its zenith? I had one character, an Artificer, who had no fewer than twelve Craft skills. Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Bowmaking, Alchemy, Poisonmaking, Boat Building, Sculpting, Pottery, Blacksmithing, Metalworking (don't ask me the difference between blacksmithing and metalworking, but it matters when making golems), Cooking, and a couple others for making golems, plus Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering for making bigger ships as per Stormwrack.
She had very pointed use for every single one of those skills except for cooking, but that one was more fluff than anything. She made and enchanted nearly all the party's gear, kept the warforged in cheap poison, kept everyone else's supply of alchemic goodies up, and had plans for an array of homunculus and golem minions had the campaign gone on longer. (The extreme end of the spectrum, I'm aware.)
So I'd say I have a fair bit of experience with crafting. Enough to know that if you intend to do any amount of regular crafting, even if it's just the assassin making her own poisons (a very minor use), you pretty much can't use the standard crafting rules to any degree without horribly disrupting game flow unless time...
There are alot of interesting things in your post but I'm going to limit my comments to the following.
A) You are obviously an edge-case. I assume that you are either using some system that allows craft ranks to count for multiple crafting skills or you are functioning as a dilletante with a handful of ranks in a ton of different crafts otherwise you are talking about spending 12 ranks per level on craft which is definitely nonstandard behavior.
B) Craft use is extremely time consuming. When you are talking a polymath character ala Leonardo Da Vinci, you would anticipate him overseeing the implementation of his projects but for the most leaving portions of the actual work to subcontractors and assistants. Basically a PC crafter would be coming up with plans (drawings, mock-ups) and then giving it to an assistant to do the vast majority of the crafting and then coming back to it at the end to make sure what was done was done right. Even then Leonardo was notorious for leaving projects unfinished for years at a time.
C) D&D in it's current configuration is not geared towards extensive downtime. There are no enforced training periods between levels as people learn and perfect new skills. Training periods are great for a simulation but utterly suck for narratives (who wants to have to leave the dungeon after gaining a level?) and from a game standpoint (where zero to hero can occur in a small period of game time). However making craft be an instantaneous thing breaks versimilitude (such that D&D has...) and as such has to happen during downtime. Simply put if you want Reed Richards popping out an item in a couple of panels you probably need to be playing Mutants and Masterminds and not D&D.
3.x does provide an escape clause for crafters in the fabricate spell. It's high enough level that it doesn't break the already fragile economy of the game and can provide PC crafters with a way of generating x amount of gear in a compressed timeframe.
Anyway is incredibly difficult to create a system that works well with all aspects of the D&D economy. How do you make a system that keeps the Turnip economy functional, i.e. lots of labor being spent on fairly menial tasks in the same system where mid-tier PCs can throw around thousands of GP without a concern? This doesn't even get into the wish economy which make crafting more or less meaningless.
I think it could be done but it's totally not possible to make it workable in the word count alloted to the Craft skill in Pathfinder. Maybe a 16-32 page supplement but not in a couple of paragraphs. So while I would love to have a better system I think the current routine of handing it off to the DM to sort out would've been the strategy I would've used as well.
Powerful items are expensive. Expensive items take longer to make. This has nothing to do with history, realism, or economics. It's a matter of game balance.
The OP and a few others are complaining that they can't make powerful items quickly and at 1/3rd the normal price. The reason that you're not allowed to do that has, again, nothing to do with history, realism, or economics. It has to do with game balance.
Does anyone really think that if the OP were allowed by the rules to make powerful poisons by the gallon, a single dose of which costs as much as a house, that every attack he or she made, every attack anyone in his or her party made, wouldn't be coated with that poison? And that the very next complaint wouldn't be, "Why can't I sell things at full price and triple my money? And then do it again. And again."
The crafting rules get the job done. As a DM I prefer rules that let me say, "Yes, you can get that done before the next adventure." Instead of, "Yeah I know the rules say you can, but I think that's too much." Incessant whining ensues.
Better system:
'Crafting items may taken anywhere from a day to a month, depending. Assume any reasonable downtime allows crafters with an appropriate workplace to make any mundane equipment the character has resources for.
A crafter can make any item so long as it's possible by taking 20.
Items made this way are for player use only, and can only be sold to NPC at cost.
Craft checks are made while on the road to repair items, for Master Craftsman, and other more immediate purposes.'
Done. Maybe 1/4 page.
You're welcome.
Powerful items are expensive. Expensive items take longer to make. This has nothing to do with history, realism, or economics. It's a matter of game balance.
What's the game balance in crafting a mundane item take 10x as long as much more powerful magic items? Or having a mundane item take incredibly long to craft or, for a little more money, buy it in an hour downtown?
A) You are obviously an edge-case. I assume that you are either using some system that allows craft ranks to count for multiple crafting skills or you are functioning as a dilletante with a handful of ranks in a ton of different crafts otherwise you are talking about spending 12 ranks per level on craft which is definitely nonstandard behavior.
A little of column B, a little of column C. Most of those skills, I only needed 1-5 ranks in, with an eternal wand of Magecraft going a long way to getting even that to yield a +13-16 score (and why Artificers can't cast Magecraft under their own power, I can't tell you). For many crafting skills, objects demanding a result above twenty do not exist. Most constructs only demand a result of twelve or so. All higher ranks serve little purpose besides very slightly increasing rates of production. The only crafting skills I kept maxed out really were poisonmaking and alchemy, as those actually have higher-end creations, as well as... I don't remember if it was blacksmithing or metalworking; something that would've helped make higher-end golems as well as patching up the warforged.
However, do note that this was an unusual character, even for me. More frequent is the mage who takes full ranks in Craft: Alchemy, or the sneak who takes full ranks in Craft: Poisonmaking, or the warrior who takes either weaponsmithing or armorsmithing (and probably takes a token rank in the other), and even those disrupt the game tremendously when brought into play.
B) Craft use is extremely time consuming. When you are talking a polymath character ala Leonardo Da Vinci, you would anticipate him overseeing the implementation of his projects but for the most leaving portions of the actual work to subcontractors and assistants. Basically a PC crafter would be coming up with plans (drawings, mock-ups) and then giving it to an assistant to do the vast majority of the crafting and then coming back to it at the end to make sure what was done was done right. Even then Leonardo was notorious for leaving projects unfinished for years at a time.
Which, unfortunately, the rules do not include. If they had, it could have been a much better system. However, even dedicated wrights, homunculi specifically created for the sole purpose of aiding their creators in the making of stuff, can only perform the creation of magical items in their master's stead in the manner you speak of. For mundane goods, they use their own skill ranks.
C) D&D in it's current configuration is not geared towards extensive downtime. There are no enforced training periods between levels as people learn and perfect new skills. Training periods are great for a simulation but utterly suck for narratives (who wants to have to leave the dungeon after gaining a level?) and from a game standpoint (where zero to hero can occur in a small period of game time). However making craft be an instantaneous thing breaks versimilitude (such that D&D has...) and as such has to happen during downtime. Simply put if you want Reed Richards popping out an item in a couple of panels you probably need to be playing Mutants and Masterminds and not D&D.
The way craft points work is not simply popping out an item out of thin air, nor is it instantaneous. It's an abstraction. It assumes the creation of items is going on anyways. When you spend craft points to make a crossbow, you're not going from scraps to crossbow in a single night. The system assumes that you've been working on the crossbow for some time, and the final day's labor is simply finishing touches.
In the case of my rather extreme Artificer, she traveled with many, many incomplete projects, schematics, an alchemic lab, spare parts, and so on, and her family business had warehouses throughout the realm where she could procure the parts required for a rush job. The only real exception to this was ships, since carrying around an extra hull is rather silly, but other than that? We are talking about a game where tap dancing on lava stops being dangerous around mid levels. I'd say 'you can make stuff in a timely manner' isn't infringing too much farther on that verisimilitude.
3.x does provide an escape clause for crafters in the fabricate spell. It's high enough level that it doesn't break the already fragile economy of the game and can provide PC crafters with a way of generating x amount of gear in a compressed timeframe.
It's also high enough level to be a worthless consolation that doesn't help the matter one whit. By level 9, there isn't much left to craft through mundane means, save a scant few remaining useful alchemic toys, maybe one ship per campaign, the odd equipping of an army, and some bodies for golems. You may as well cast Minor Creation to create entire barrels of black lotus extract at that point.
A lower-level magical solution would be useful. Fabricate? Not so much. And there's no use for caring about the economy. It isn't fragile at all; it's shattered against the ground, and beyond all sense to begin with, as far as the rules themselves are concerned.
Anyway is incredibly difficult to create a system that works well with all aspects of the D&D economy. How do you make a system that keeps the Turnip economy functional, i.e. lots of labor being spent on fairly menial tasks in the same system where mid-tier PCs can throw around thousands of GP without a concern? This doesn't even get into the wish economy which make crafting more or less meaningless.
Simple. Boot the turnip farmers out a window for the duration of game design. They are not a concern, nor is the economy; 3.5/PF doesn't have any serious domain management or economic rules that are worth two figs anyhow. Such rules should be made to accommodate the adventure, not the turnip farmers who don't have any actual rules representing them anyways.
Powerful items are expensive. Expensive items take longer to make. This has nothing to do with history, realism, or economics. It's a matter of game balance.
And a completely normal suit of full plate is more powerful than a scroll of Meteor Swarm? And the adamantine sword is nearly as powerful as a giant robot crab? Interesting.
The OP and a few others are complaining that they can't make powerful items quickly and at 1/3rd the normal price. The reason that you're not allowed to do that has, again, nothing to do with history, realism, or economics. It has to do with game balance.
No, the complaint is that after investing character resources into the creation of already mediocre items, it is nigh impossible to actually create them. I don't know if you've noticed, but even at a third of market, poison tends to suck, especially as levels rise. And the other goods you can make with crafting tend to provide only minimal savings over the course of a career.
Does anyone really think that if the OP were allowed by the rules to make powerful poisons by the gallon, a single dose of which costs as much as a house, that every attack he or she made, every attack anyone in his or her party made, wouldn't be coated with that poison? And that the very next complaint wouldn't be, "Why can't I sell things at full price and triple my money? And then do it again. And again."
Certainly not! As you said, a single dose costs as much as a house. I'm not about to waste a house and a half on a bunch of rabble. Even at a third of market, poison is ridiculously expensive. As for using crafting to turn a profit? Just another reason why the current crafting system is unserviceable, chief.
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I am disagreeing that the designers are shifting any burden, since it rest firmly in the GM's realm to accept, create, or prohibit gameplay rules and issues. I'm the one who said its not a hallmark of bad game design, so someone did say it! >:P
Not everyone is going to be happy with the rules as they are written, sometimes you'll just have to houserule and move onIf it's the GM's realm to accept, create, or prohibit gameplay rules and issues, then what exactly is the realm of the game designer? I've always been of the opinion that it is the game designer's realm to accept, create, or prohibit gameplay rules and issues and that it is the GM's realm to customize those rules to his/her particular game.
The way you describe it, game designers aren't needed.
Way to straw man.
Its the designers job to create the rules and present them in as airtight a capacity as possible. In this case the craft rules are presented in such a way as to prevent a PC from taking advantage of them for fast money gain, while trying to be somewhat simulationist.
The GM'S job is to accept those rules, create new rules to replace the old ones, or denounce and prohibit use of those rules in his games.
That is the essence of rule 0.
Way to straw man.
Its the designers job to create the rules and present them in as airtight a capacity as possible. In this case the craft rules are presented in such a way as to prevent a PC from taking advantage of them for fast money gain, while trying to be somewhat simulationist.
The GM'S job is to accept those rules, create new rules to replace the old ones, or denounce and prohibit use of those rules in his games.
That is the essence of rule 0.
And by that criteria, the perfect ruleset would read, "The GM is God. Ask your GM before doing anything."
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Its the designers job to create the rules and present them in as airtight a capacity as possible.I'm glad we agree. Now, what we're discussing is whether or not the crafting rules are airtight.
In this case the craft rules are presented in such a way as to prevent a PC from taking advantage of them for fast money gain, while trying to be somewhat simulationist.And you seem to believe that the -only- way to create craft rules to prevent PCs from taking advantage of them is to make it substantially harder to craft mundane items than magic items of equal power.
I disagree.
Way to put words in my mouth.
I never said that. I merely stated the author's intent as James himself put it. Poisons are costed highly because of the danger they present. Therefore the crafting rules make it hard to craft poisons quickly, because they are death dealing potentials and giving them to PC's at lower levels (since the craft DC is based off the save DC) makes the game grind to a halt when suddenly, everyone is getting poisoned at a whim.
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Its the designers job to create the rules and present them in as airtight a capacity as possible.I'm glad we agree. Now, what we're discussing is whether or not the crafting rules are airtight.
In this case the craft rules are presented in such a way as to prevent a PC from taking advantage of them for fast money gain, while trying to be somewhat simulationist.And you seem to believe that the -only- way to create craft rules to prevent PCs from taking advantage of them is to make it substantially harder to craft mundane items than magic items of equal power.
I disagree.
Way to put words in my mouth.
I never said that. I merely stated the author's intent as James himself put it. Poisons are costed highly because of the danger they present. Therefore the crafting rules make it hard to craft poisons quickly, because they are death dealing potentials and giving them to PC's at lower levels (since the craft DC is based off the save DC) makes the game grind to a halt when suddenly, everyone is getting poisoned at a whim.
I'm not kvetching about poisons being expensive. I'm kvetching about why magic items of comparable value are so very, very much easier to craft.
I've asked for anyone here who believes it should be that way to defend that position.
Noone has defended that position.
But you just said I was defending that position by saying I agree with it. I merely stated the intent and swooped in to defeat the strawman tactic. If you're going to argue with someone about the designer's job, then you had best knwo what the designer's job is.
And you put words in my mouth when I explained the position. You're again assuming I'm defending that position. Answer the words, do not assume the intent.
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And by that criteria, the perfect ruleset would read, "The GM is God. Ask your GM before doing anything."Way to straw man.
Its the designers job to create the rules and present them in as airtight a capacity as possible. In this case the craft rules are presented in such a way as to prevent a PC from taking advantage of them for fast money gain, while trying to be somewhat simulationist.
The GM'S job is to accept those rules, create new rules to replace the old ones, or denounce and prohibit use of those rules in his games.
That is the essence of rule 0.
Right, Villetta I'm tired of the "Rule 0 is a stupid idea" tactic. Get a new way of arguing please. I explained the positions of GM and Designer and suddenly this is your job to come out and magically say "GM'S are horrible people and you should never allow them any kind of power, because then they'll walk all over you?"
Because every time you swoop in to basically yell at anyone who mentions rule 0 you are saying just that. Whether you intend to or not.
Way to put words in my mouth.
I never said that. I merely stated the author's intent as James himself put it. Poisons are costed highly because of the danger they present. Therefore the crafting rules make it hard to craft poisons quickly, because they are death dealing potentials and giving them to PC's at lower levels (since the craft DC is based off the save DC) makes the game grind to a halt when suddenly, everyone is getting poisoned at a whim.
Except... it isn't. Besides, as the game defines the market, you can just go out and buy poison by default anyways. And there are things that are far more dangerous than poison at a far lower cost, without spending months and years maintaining a supply. Even a mundane greatsword is more and more consistently deadly than most poisons.
The death-dealing potential of Thognak the Destroyer, Al McBackstabin, Archsage Splodeydeath, and Victor von Spendsalldayasafrigginbear is not increased overmuch by the addition of these highly expensive and marginally effective poisons.
And mind, if the party's burning through high-end poisons, they're going through a ton of money, to their own detriment.
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Way to put words in my mouth.
I never said that. I merely stated the author's intent as James himself put it. Poisons are costed highly because of the danger they present. Therefore the crafting rules make it hard to craft poisons quickly, because they are death dealing potentials and giving them to PC's at lower levels (since the craft DC is based off the save DC) makes the game grind to a halt when suddenly, everyone is getting poisoned at a whim.
Except... it isn't. Besides, as the game defines the market, you can just go out and buy poison by default anyways. And there are things that are far more dangerous than poison at a far lower cost, without spending months and years maintaining a supply. Even a mundane greatsword is more and more consistently deadly than most poisons.
The death-dealing potential of Thognak the Destroyer, Al McBackstabin, Archsage Splodeydeath, and Victor von Spendsalldayasafrigginbear is not increased overmuch by the addition of these highly expensive and marginally effective poisons.
And mind, if the party's burning through high-end poisons, they're going through a ton of money, to their own detriment.
Right...of course.
Because in a perfect world we have a Barbarian, Druid, Rogue, and Wizard in every group.
And of course brute force and violence are always preferable to subtle maneuvers.
And lets forget every dosage of poison taken increases the poison dc by 2 under the pathfinder rules.
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you put words in my mouth when I explained the position. You're again assuming I'm defending that position. Answer the words, do not assume the intent.You wrote
In this case the craft rules are presented in such a way as to prevent a PC from taking advantage of them for fast money gain, while trying to be somewhat simulationist..you did not write
The game designers claim that the craft rules are presented in such a way as to prevent a PC from taking advantage of them for fast money gain, while trying to be somewhat simulationist..Perhaps if you wrote a bit more clearly there wouldn't be any confusion.
But where did I say specifically "My thoughts are?"
I'm merely talking about what James already said, where a lake of poison is a gold mine.
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From now on, I'll assume that any post you write isn't describing your thoughts, but rather what you think someone else's thoughts are, okay? I'll just kinda guess randomly as to who you think you are channelling from post to post - Ghandhi, King Arthur, Madame Currie, a circus bear, etc.But where did I say specifically "My thoughts are?"
Well when you read James first post, its quite clear that is designer intent with the craft rules. Does it do this perfectly? No. Does it accomplish its purpose? Yes, but not in the way intended. That's the purpose of debate. The rule functions, and is able to prevent the abuse that occurs.
That's MY OPINION on the matter.
What was my fix?
The system slows down by 1/10th when you have to convert everything to SP.
Why not just make it produce GP worth of work each day?
You become 10x's faster and suddenly you aren't working three months to work on that full plate, maybe over a week.
Which is a fully acceptable amount of time.
What house rule?
The time reduction for having already procured the reagents (in the very section you bolded) is a houserule, not laid out anywhere in the rules themselves.
Though the notion that procuring reagents is a part of the crafting process is rather silly considering Fabricate bypasses the entire crafting process (apparently including the gathering of reagents) entirely.
There's also some language talking about penalties for failure. While you can definitely interpret these to refer to the ruining of existing materials, couldn't it be equally valid to interpret them as failed attempts to obtain the exact concentration, purity, and quantity of rare components?
It could be interpreted that way. If you add reams of text that aren't there and deliberately interpret it in the least intuitive way possible in a manner liberal enough to enable loopholes such as Pun Pun.
However, none of that gives any time discount for having the materials already, and the very existence and nature of the Fabricate spell strongly implies (if not flat states) that the acquisition of the raw materials precedes the first Craft check.
And still, none of this explains why a plain gold wedding band takes five hundred times longer to make than an otherwise completely identical ring of iron, particularly since you're more likely to have a few gold coins on you than a few iron ingots. The justifications sought are so forced, so tacked on, so unsupported by the text as to be absurd.
All I'm pointing out is that the craft skill is not as detailed as you think it is, and that there are other valid interpretations of the text. The actual text leaves some space for creativity, and if the GM wants to give a circumstantial bonus to some part of the crafting process (cost, time, difficulty) that seems to be a reasonable application of the rules. You seem to be approaching the game as though you are a computer and there can be only one possible interpretation. I am suggesting, that since I am a living, thinking human being I can read most pieces of text and get multiple interpretations. Check out literary analysis for additional examples of multiple interpretations from the same piece of text. This isn't house-ruling.
I am not approaching my game as a computer. I am examining the rules on their own merits. There are no provisions within the rules for the cost/time/difficulty adjustments. They are not a part of the rules, therefore they are houserules independent from the system itself. That does not mean it is wrong to adjust cost, time, or difficulty in ways not laid out within the rules, but if you do so, it has nothing to do with the system, and if the only way to make the system usable is to houserule it with such cost/time/difficulty adjustments that are not so much as hinted at within the rules, then the rules are unusable on their own merits. And a rule that requires you to interpret it as having multiple unwritten clauses just to get it to work is every bit as broken.
With the rules, as written, devoid of the GM overriding the crafting rules entirely, the Craft skill cannot be used on any significant and regular basis without disrupting the flow of the game, therefore the rule fails to contribute to the game as a whole.
Right...of course.
Because in a perfect world we have a Barbarian, Druid, Rogue, and Wizard in every group.
And of course brute force and violence are always preferable to subtle maneuvers.
And lets forget every dosage of poison taken increases the poison dc by 2 under the pathfinder rules.
...
It doesn't matter what the party composition is. Every class is designed to be deadly. Even the Bard is designed to be deadly, and poisons are already available on the open market as the default, so the wonky crafting rules do next to nothing to decrease availability.
And there are already dozens of spells more powerful and dangerous with regards to subtlety than any poison, no matter the DC, that don't require you to blow half WBL to get them to work.
Poisons just aren't very deadly compared to what a normal party of adventurers is expected to be anyways, subtle or no.
I'm curious as to why a barbarian with a two handed weapon can rip off a dragon's leg, but a high level wizard can't make rat poison in less then a month.
You can whinge about "well well well in the Renaissance..." as much as you want, but the game very clearly left realism and historical accuracy far behind, long ago.
As far as rules go, there's a simple way of looking at them. There are two very easy criterias I look at - sometimes both, sometimes either/or.
1) Is this a good balancing factor?
Answer: No, not really. Poison isn't all that jawsome, especially not compared to other abilities. Consider that even using poison gives you a risk of just infecting yourself with it, and that it has the same flaws as potions as being a one-shot go, and most characters wouldn't use poison to begin with, prices non-withstanding.
2) Is it fun?
Answer: No. If your character wants to use poisons, the entire party gets to laugh at him. It's the same issue that hit traps - someone thinks "Wow, I'd love to make a sneaky kobold trapper type!" Then he takes one look at trap prices and crafting requirements and goes "...Welp. Nevermind."
Crafting rules are flawed. That doesn't mean I hate Paizo or I'll never play Pathfinder again or anything silly like that. It means...well, that the crafting rules are flawed - and that's it.
There seems to be 2 issues at contention here.
1) High value items (magic items excluded) take too long to craft.
2) Poison use using craft poison (as opposed to harvesting poison directly from poisonous animals) is too time consuming and weak vs other GP equivalent options.
The first issue makes crafting useless outside of games with extensive downtime.
The second makes the poisoner PC archetype pointless, and as James indicated early invalidates cool ideas like a lake of poison.
A relatively easy fix for issue 1 would be to make the craft check result in GP worth of progress a day (x10 increase in production). For low cost items it results in outrageous production capacities that clearly do not make sense if you are actually concerned with how the Turnip economy works but you also don't need to wait around months while the smith makes you a new set of armor.
Besides if I want high simulationism in my game, I'll probably play Harnmaster on Harn. Don't get me wrong I love me some Harn but it's clearly not the game that most people playing D&D are looking for.
Issue 2 is clearly a factor of how damn expensive poisons are in the game.
Illustrative point: Hemlock is worth 2,500 GP in D&D. The raw material is the leaves, seeds or roots of the hemlock plant (a relatively common perennial). The plant contains coniine which is the poisonous alkaloid toxic to humans (and other animals). Note a dose of 6 to 8 leaves (or a smaller quantity of seeds and roots, even less for refined hemlock) is a lethal dosage.
Obviously any farmer should transfer production to Hemlock as it's value is far higher growing poppies for opium or coca for cocaine ;)
I would suggest that 2,500 is far too high and there should be some sort of nominal cost associated with procuring a refined version of the poison (making someone eat 8 leaves is not particularly stealthy) so let's go with a market value of 25 GP. This way it's relatively easy to procure but high enough that not every irate farmer's wife is going to use it to kill their husband.
So let's go with a hundredfold reduction in price in general. Other poisons like drow sleep gunk (elven curare methinks) would probably retain a relatively high value (it's only 75 GP a dose) so maybe only a 3-10 fold reduction making it 7.5 GP- 25GP a dose.
Keep some stuff like dragon bile ridiculous high, after all you have to slay a dragon to collect it, but make it's primary function as critical reagents for various magical concoctions, poisoning being a secondary function (or just make the DC scale with dragon age brackets so that elder wyrm dragon bile is pure concentration vileness.
Possible outcomes of this change would be that lots of evil creatures would be able to effectively use poison. Societal pressures would probably keep PCs from using it too much, law enforcement figures frown on use of contact poisons in barroom brawls for instance. But the kobold trapmaker? Yeah he can make a spiked pit with contact poison on the spikes without needing an ungodly amount of GP. The NPC assassin? Yeah she can use poison blades at low levels without fear of giving the PCs too much gold when she gets killed.
A 10-99% reduction in poison base costs actually makes poison something the PCs need to fear until they have neutralize poison spells routinely prepared. Further it makes crafting them somewhat in line with their utility.
Powerful items are expensive. Expensive items take longer to make. This has nothing to do with history, realism, or economics. It's a matter of game balance.
The OP and a few others are complaining that they can't make powerful items quickly and at 1/3rd the normal price. The reason that you're not allowed to do that has, again, nothing to do with history, realism, or economics. It has to do with game balance.
Does anyone really think that if the OP were allowed by the rules to make powerful poisons by the gallon, a single dose of which costs as much as a house, that every attack he or she made, every attack anyone in his or her party made, wouldn't be coated with that poison? And that the very next complaint wouldn't be, "Why can't I sell things at full price and triple my money? And then do it again. And again."
The crafting rules get the job done. As a DM I prefer rules that let me say, "Yes, you can get that done before the next adventure." Instead of, "Yeah I know the rules say you can, but I think that's too much." Incessant whining ensues.
I think you are misunderstanding the intent of my posts. I'm not trying to break the game. Why would I? Why would anyone? A broken game isn't fun for anyone. I am merely trying to find a way to make a nonviable bit of the rules viable.
If I DID want to break the game, I wouldn't even bother coming here for discussion. I would just go ahead and do it. It would be as easy as taking up Leadership and having my followers supply me with an infinite amount of poison of my choosing. If some of them work via profession to earn money and the others craft one dose of poison each, it might even effectively be FREE.
If I DID want to break the game, I wouldn't even bother coming here for discussion. I would just go ahead and do it. It would be as easy as taking up Leadership and having my followers supply me with an infinite amount of poison of my choosing. If some of them work via profession to earn money and the others craft one dose of poison each, it might even effectively be FREE.
Why even bother with the feat? Go Artificer. Get yourself some dedicated wrights to craft away, using 3.5's Craft: Poisonmaking rules (1/6 base cost, progress in gp) and set up a homunculus sweatshop in a portable hole. If you're really feeling frisky, rev up a couple minor schema of Plane Shift and send your little minions to a some plane with the flowing time trait so that they can get a year's worth of work done in a round and then flood the market.
Why even bother with the feat? Go Artificer.
Our group has chosen to stick with Pathfinder core for the time being.
I think a universal reduction in price is not a good solution. Just as the current solution makes expensive mundane items too expensive to craft, a universal reduction will lead to cheap mundane items being too easy to craft.
What is needed is something which will reduce the cost (time and gold) of expensive mundane items without making cheap mundane items too plentiful.
Behold the CRAFT MULTIPLIER, in use in our campaign. Apply multiplier to amount of SP/week of production, as well as the amount of gold earned if used as a means of earning a living (we have multipliers for professions too). Not every craftsman is going to make equal amounts of income...boo-hoo, not everybody lucks into a family that practices a well paying craft/profession!
Woodworking/Clothier/Leatherworker? x1 Multiplier
Armor/Weaponsmithing? x2 Multiplier
Alchemy/Goldsmith/Jeweler? x3 Multiplier
GMs, adjust multipliers as you see fit; I could easily see Gemcutter being x10 multiplier.