There have been several threads bashing the current craft rules as being either "unrealistic", "taking so much time to create even simple items that no PC would ever bother", or "both". As I see it, part of the problem is that the 3rd edition designers (and everyone else who has since inherited the original flawed system) wanted to create a generic method/formula that could be used to represent creation costs and times for all mundane items and leave valuable pages for things like cool spells and sorcerer bloodlines instead of tables on how to make nails.
While coming up with individual creation costs, times, and DCs for everything on the mundane equipment list would take the Pathfinder designers way too much time that they could (quite legitimately) put to other uses, we as players and GMs could probably throw such a project together fairly quickly if we worked together.
For example, there was discussion in an earlier thread about how the current rules break down if you try to craft a sewing needle. Under the current system, a 1st level expert with 1 rank in Craft (blacksmithing) probably has a +5 or +6 bonus meaning an average roll of 16. If the DC for a sewing needle is 10, they beat the DC on average. According to the forumla, they complete 16 x 10 or 160sp worth of work in 1 week. That's 32 times the base price and 1/32 of a weak is 5 hours 15 minutes.
I am no expert at all in medieval smithing practices, but 30 minutes on Google has helped me learn that the typical practice used circa 1300 would be to cut off 5 inches of thick copper wire, heat and cool one end to make it malleable (a process called annealing), beating that end flat and punching a hole. If there are some experts out there that could tell me which part of this process takes over 5 hours, please let me know!
My proposed mechanic for crafting sewing needles (which is a proto-type for my new crafting system) is as follows:
Item: metal sewing needle
Market Price: 5sp
Raw Materials: 2sp
Creation Time: 1 hour or 5 hours for 10
Base DC: 10
Items that take less than a day are either you succeed or you don't. Items that take more than a day you make a check each day to make progress and failing by 5 or more means you mess up half of the raw materials.
A craftsman would be able to take 10 using the Base DC. Alternatively, he could choose to lower the DC by 5 but take twice as long and be able to take 20 on the check, or could raise the DC by 5 halving the creation time and not be able to take 10 or 20 on the check.
If anybody is interested in helping me out in this project, please let me know. I would suggest that the easiest method would be to claim the item(s) you have knowledge about or would like to briefly research in advance on a first-come, first-served basis.
We houseruled that PCs, when they craft, take 1/5th the time. So instead of 1 week (5 days, 40 hours), it takes a PC 1 day, 8 hours).
Otherwise NPCs haven't changed.
Working out craft DCs for mundane items doesn't seem to strike the larger community as a terribly exciting activity - which I can't say I find too surprising (no offense, of course). Me, I've got some general crafting rules to put out there, but I'd rather not jack your thread since it's a different approach than you're interested in using.
I will observe, though, that the sewing needle example isn't really as absurd as you make it out to be. DC 10 * 15 average result = 150 sp/wk. Average medieval work week is 8*7= 56 hours, so the smith produces about 2.6 sp of work per hour - a needle thus takes 2 hours, not 5+. Still not especially reasonable, of course, but better than you make it out to be.
Working out craft DCs for mundane items doesn't seem to strike the larger community as a terribly exciting activity - which I can't say I find too surprising (no offense, of course). Me, I've got some general crafting rules to put out there, but I'd rather not jack your thread since it's a different approach than you're interested in using.
I will observe, though, that the sewing needle example isn't really as absurd as you make it out to be. DC 10 * 15 average result = 150 sp/wk. Average medieval work week is 8*7= 56 hours, so the smith produces about 2.6 sp of work per hour - a needle thus takes 2 hours, not 5+. Still not especially reasonable, of course, but better than you make it out to be.
Heh, I never claimed it was going to be exciting. The only reason I'm thinking of taking it on is because I have just started GMing a home-brewed Golarion "colonize the new world" campaign where the PCs are going to have to deal with the fact that if they want something from the equipment list, they'll have to have it made as there is no general store to get things.
As for your counter-example, I had neglected to consider the 8-hour day, so your 2.6 hours is correct. Indeed, maybe it does take 2.6 hours to make a single sewing needle, but I can't believe that it takes 5.2 hours to make 2. There have to be advantages to mass production (just ask the auto industry), but the current crafting rules don't reflect that at all.Please feel free to post your crafting rules if you like. The main purpose of this thread is to come up with some viable alternatives to the RAW rules (as opposed to the other Craft-bashing threads out there that are just forums for complaining).