Off Topic, Is Mr. Fishy a god within the Golarion Pantheon, because if he is!
Something like -2 for a tiny or extremely simple meal, up to +8 for a gargantuan or insanely complex meal. Add on things like unusual components/materials (+1 to +5) and masterwork (+10) and you get a system that's flexible, relatively easy to work with after a couple of practice runs, and that makes intuitive sense.
Trouble is, you get into situations like the difference between cooking a duck and cooking a goose. The duck may be tiny and the goose may be small, but the cooking process is the same and the difficulty no greater with the larger bird. It will take longer, but just because that's a matter of physics.
Similarly, it's almost as easy to make several gallons of punch rather than a single cup. It's just a matter of mixing, and if you have the right ingredients, whipping up enough to serve the king and all his guests isn't much different than making enough to serve a single person.
As for Masterwork, I personally feel it should be something that can occasionally be achieved by lesser craftsmen and seldom reliably by master artisans. In other words, people with an Appraise check should be able to look at a sword an realize it came from the forge of the great dwarven smith Thunderstein but wasn't his best work, whereas another sword by Thunderstein's apprentice might be of masterwork quality due to the apprentice getting lucky. As opposed to the current system where the Masterwork quality is done as a deliberate design and is basically Pimp My Sword.
I prefer making it so that Masterwork occurs when someone exceeds the DC by 20+ This even makes it so that you can have stuff like the goodwife telling her daughter, "Why dear, this is perfect! This lemonade is fit for the King's table itself!" and have it be the actual truth. I mean, making lemonade is a simple task, an a clever kid with the right tools, good ingredients and help from mom should be able to get a roll of 25+ exceeding the difficulty of 5 it takes for a simple task.
Trouble is, you get into situations like the difference between cooking a duck and cooking a goose. The duck may be tiny and the goose may be small, but the cooking process is the same and the difficulty no greater with the larger bird. It will take longer, but just because that's a matter of physics.Similarly, it's almost as easy to make several gallons of punch rather than a single cup. It's just a matter of mixing, and if you have the right ingredients, whipping up enough to serve the king and all his guests isn't much different than making enough to serve a single person.
As for Masterwork, I personally feel it should be something that can occasionally be achieved by lesser craftsmen and seldom reliably by master artisans. In other words, people with an Appraise check should be able to look at a sword an realize it came from the forge of the great dwarven smith Thunderstein but wasn't his best work, whereas another sword by Thunderstein's apprentice might be of masterwork quality due to the apprentice getting lucky. As opposed to the current system where the Masterwork quality is done as a deliberate design and is basically Pimp My Sword.
I prefer making it so that Masterwork occurs when someone exceeds the DC by 20+ This even makes it so that you can have stuff like the goodwife telling her daughter, "Why dear, this is perfect! This lemonade is fit for the King's table itself!" and have it be the actual truth. I mean, making lemonade is a simple task, an a clever kid with the right tools, good ingredients and help from mom should be able to get a roll of 25+ exceeding the difficulty of 5 it takes for a simple task.
Nothing will ever be perfect. The duck/goose and cup/gallon issue will always be there in some form or another. No system can be perfect all the time. To me, the big issue is the current system is always wrong all the time.
As to the 'accidental masterwork', I don't see it. Mainly due to the ingredients. You aren't going to get a masterwork sword using bad tools, bad iron, and bad charcoal. You can get a bad sword using good iron, good tools, and good charcoal, but not vice versa. Which means, you plan for making masterwork items by using the best materials, best tools, etc. The lemonade comes closer. I'd just handwave it that NPC's occasionally make masterwork stuff without meaning to, but it's because they used really good ingredients and got lucky (the lemons were just the right ripeness, the sugar at it's sweetest, and the girl just got everything right). But, you still need the right materials. You can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.
Not saying you should be able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but you still could conceivably make a masterwork pigskin pouch.
And quite honestly the whole "the finest this, the finest that" really starts to look like merchants' mark-up and price gouging. Ingredient quality goes as a gradient and a lot depends on the use you're going to put something to. The cheap wine you wouldn't want to drink may yield a superior flavor when used for stewing meat to make beef bourguignon, and even the wine that's turned to vinegar may be useful for deglazing a pan or for that matter for use as vinegar. Of course, this is mostly just more handwaving and I'm just trying to come up with a way to say "You gather exactly what it is you need" without coming up with a reality-bending x10 multiplier on the cost of all the ingredients.
Probably the easiest way to deal with it is to just say that Masterwork only occurs in situations where you're using the perfect tools and/or the perfect workshop setting. But I do like the idea of the happy accidents and the master artisans who are never cocksure of achieving perfection every time.
I think a fair deal of the issues with Craft comes from the confusion between Craft and Profession. More than goods vs services, the main difference between the two, IMO, is that the Craft rules allow for a quicker production. Unfortunately, there are no clear rules for a BETTER production.
Cooking a duck, a turkey, a calf and an elephant may have different cooking time, but none can be significantly shortened by a master cook. A master cook will make it taste better or at the very least, will make a more enjoyable meal out of it, but there is no way to cut the cooking time by 90%, never mind by half. That also is a matter of physics.
Everything that skill makes BETTER should be a profession, regardless if the product is a physical, tangible object. Similarly, everything that can be done FASTER should be a craft.
Again IMHO, professions and crafts should be mutually exclusive OR merged together as one skill (call it trade or whatever) with an underlying rule allowing for quicker OR better turnout.
'findel
The ladies got a valid point... Hmmm.
There's a lot to be said for merging it all into one variety of skill, though the question then comes as to what stat would rule the existing trade. Does an innkeeper rely more on Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma?
It's also rather hard to find a skill that makes anything that doesn't rely on physics in one way or another: pots need to fired in a kiln, paint and varnish needs to dry, dye takes time to set in the dye pot, etc.
I think the only sensible way to deal with it is to keep the crafts as the skills that make things and the professions as the skills that deal with trade and administration and maintenance and completely divorce the mechanics from the time frame. Dyer may be a craft and laundress may be a profession but neither of them are going to be able to do much about the rate at which wet wool dries apart from agreeing that it depends on the thickness of the cloth, the heat, and the ventilation.
I think it solves a lot of problems for the GM to simply set a reasonable timeframe for everything and say that trying to rush the work only works up to a point unless you are actually using magic, in which case yes indeed, you can have your castle built in a day.
As long as you are changing Profession and Craft... Here is my own rant with these skills.
[rant]
A skill is supposed to be a craft is "something is made".
Why on earth is Cook a Profession and not a Craft? Reasons why "cooking" should be a craft: 1) Something is made (a meal). 2) cooking is just alchemy with edible ingredients, and alchemy is a craft. 3) making it a profession means that it is a trained only skill. That means when the party ranger hunts down a deer, everyone in the group will be eating raw meat if no one took 1 rank in "Profession: cook" because according to the rules, they can't even attempt to prepare a meal unless they have 1 rank in the profession. It makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE to make cooking a craft.
Ditto for profession: Brewer. Again, it's just alchemy with edible ingredients.
And don't get me started on "Profession: Soldier". Apparently, no fighters or warriors get paid for their work unless they have ranks in "Profession: Soldier", but hey, those militia/conscripts (level 1 commoners) over there have a rank, they must be better soldiers somehow, and therefore worth more money.
[/rant]
This is such a minor part of the game... but I COMPLETELY understand where you are coming from. These skills are a pet peeve of mine that disproportionately annoy me, far more than any other "unrealistic" aspect of the game. For my part, perhaps its because I really enjoy cooking, so I'm annoyed that someone is saying that cooking is a skill that I supposedly "can't attempt". I think I'm a great cook, thankyouverymuch!
I say, change the skill if it makes you happy and makes things more realistic.
A master cook will make it taste better or at the very least, will make a more enjoyable meal out of it, but there is no way to cut the cooking time by 90%, never mind by half. That also is a matter of physics.
Ways to shorten cooking time...
1) deep fry
2) George Forman Grill (cooks both sides at once)
3) cut into smaller pieces (same ammount of food, but more surface area)
Just sayin. :p
But, to a certain extent, you are right. Actually, cooking SLOWER (lower temp for a longer time) than you need to sometimes results in better tasteing food. Although, there again, there is a limit to how low you can go.
A skill is supposed to be a craft is "something is made".
In principle, I agree. However, some 'made' things don't make sense when the craft rules are applied; therefore in the framework of the game, they shouldn't be crafts.
Cooking and brewery are among those, mainly because these process can't be accelerated (much) by skill. Skill will result in better product, with varying levels of 'better' between basic and masterwork. The rules as written don't support that concept very well, mainly because as far as adventuring goes, that's relatively irrelevant. Therefore these skill are classified as professions.
Now there ARE shortcuts as you said, like fast brewing beers and deep frying, but these are different recipes; it doesn't necessarily need a better cook to deep fry a turkey instead of baking it, or cutting it in smaller pieces. Besides, cooking slower might result in a better meal. The craft rules don't really apply here, although I do admit that cooking is basic chemistry, and alchemy already exists as a craft...
'findel
Moving crafts over to professions due to the ability of reality to break the crafting rules makes little sense if you bother to look for examples of professions that can break the profession rules. I mean, look at accounting: An accountant who can do the work faster with the same accuracy is more valuable than one who does the work slower with the same accuracy. Is it therefore a craft instead, especially since Intelligence makes more sense for Accounting than Wisdom? Forest Gump may be wisdom boy but I sure as hell wouldn't want him preparing my taxes.
Fact is, reality can break any game mechanic unless the game mechanic has a large loophole marked "Please apply common sense." A vintner is not incompetent because it takes years for a good red to mature. It's simply a fact of winemaking. Alchemy is a craft despite the fact that it still takes time for water to boil. And there are some crafts that can be picked up and put down again without any real trouble with quality, such as knitting, and others which require a lab setting or at least a reasonable amount of set-up and cool down time, such as chandlery.
There's also going to have to be a certain amount of handwaving going on with everything. If the wizard wants to use Fabricate for his by-the-book example of turning a stand of trees into a bridge, I'm probably going to have him roll Craft Woodworking to see how nice of a bridge it is, rather than require Profession Lumberjack, Profession Lumber Mill Operator, Profession Architect, Knowledge Architecture and Engineering, and Profession Carpenter or Craft Woodworking. Hell, I'd probably let him just roll Knowledge Architecture and Engineering if he doesn't have any of the rest, especially since the bridge is going to be used for the immediate need.
Of course Fabricate is its own problem. It's really hard to justify the price of paper in the main book when there are wizards with Fabricate who can look at a tree, do the math, and then turn it into an equal volume of paper.