Introduction
One of the things that I always hated about how 3rd edition and it's descendants worked is the Craft, Profession, and Perform skills. This is my attempt to rework them as usable and unbroken skills for making money. Remember that an adventurer isn't going to be doing these as a normal method of earning a living, but a PC will. I'll edit this as I receive useful feedback. Generally, I use Pathfinder rules, but will note if I deviate from this.
I'm operating here on a simple economic principle - high profits attract competition. In a free economy, if someone's making a lot of money, others will enter that market and competition will drive prices down. If blacksmiths, for example, consistently earn hundreds of gold per day while a farmer only earns a silver, everyone and their brother will become a blacksmith if they have the ability to. This may be impossible depending on local government, but a free market evens things out over time.
Working Rolls - Profession, Perform, and Sometimes Craft
I'm going off the following values from the Pathfinder rules, though I'm pretty sure it was the same for 3.5:
Untrained workers earn about 1sp/day. Trained workers earn about 3sp/day. (Those are minimum values.) In a 30 day month, this means wages start at 3gp/month and increase with training. This is backed up in the 3e supplement Stronghold Builder's Guidebook (pg. 42), which gives monthly wages on various castle staff - suggesting minimum wages for jobs such as maids and servants, though with final values greatly exceeding 9gp per month for more highly trained people. Still, even here it rarely exceeds 4 times the minimum wage.
What does this mean? Earning money from a Profession (or Perform) check should earn about this much. I would suggest the following rule: a skill check is made for a day's work. If you are untrained in the skill, meeting a DC 10 earns you 1sp. If you don't meet the DC, but fail by 5 or less, you earn 5cp instead. If you are trained, however, meeting a DC 5 earns you 1sp, and you earn an additional 1sp for every 5 points you beat the DC by. Hence, you get the following:
Check DC Trained Wages Untrained Wages
5 1sp 5cp
10 2sp 1sp
15 3sp 1sp
20 4sp 1sp
+5 +1sp +0sp
Crafting Items: Rules that Work!
Crafters should earn roughly the same values as above, but we need to consider other factors. First off, the existing crafting rules are nonsense - so I'm gutting everything but the DCs.
Length of Time
Perhaps one of the silliest things about the existing crafting rules was the amount of time it took to make things. It was based purely on price of item and size of skill checks! This meant that someone with a +10 to Craft(Armorsmithing), and taking 10 each check, will take 276(!) days to make normal full plate, and pay 500gp for materials. Selling it for 1500gp gets them a profit of 1000gp, or 3.61gp per day! Might take a while to get paid, but at that rate any blacksmith should own the whole village in no time... and hopefully, the lord never needs full plate for his army within a year, because each soldier needs his own blacksmith! It gets even crazier with masterwork mithril armor - that takes 1,933 days
and gives a profit of 7000gp, for the slightly higher wage of 3.62gp/day. So how do we fix this? We do it in two parts - first, we set a time frame for each item, and then, we change the cost of materials to better reflect the wages above.
I'm going to use the following as a better measure of time (you may want more categories, or less - up to you):
Item Category Time to Make Average Time
Light Weapons 1d2 days 1.5 days
One-Handed Weapons 1d3 days 2 days
Two-Handed Weapons 2d3 days 4 days
Light Armor 2d4 days 5 days
Medium Armor 2d8 days 9 days
Heavy Armor 2d12 days 13 days
Alchemical Items and Poisons 1d3 hours 2 hours
Other Items Varies Varies
The GM secretly makes a roll to see how many days it will normally take, then multiplies this by the Craft DC - this becomes the completion total. The player then makes a check for each time unit of work - days for items that take days, hours for items that take hours, etc. Alternatively, you could multiply a completion total by 24 to convert it into hourly checks, and again by 60 to convert it into minute-by-minute checks. If he fails to meet the DC by 5 or more, you ruin 5d10% of the raw materials, and have to pay that amount to finish. Otherwise, subtract the check from the completion total; if the completion total is 0 or less, the item is finished, otherwise it isn't. The player may make an Appraise check (DC 10) to get an estimate, to the nearest 10%, of how much of the original completion total remains.
So, how much are the raw materials? Remember, we want the profits to be about equal to the wages above. To determine this, we first round the Craft DC down to the nearest multiple of 5 (For masterwork items, use the DC of the masterwork component, 20). Untrained crafters should not be able to make masterwork items, even if they can reach the DC, but otherwise treat them as trained. Most items should then earn about 2 silver per day, with higher quality items earning 3 silver per day, and masterwork about 4 silver per day. Multiply this by the average number of days. (For items measured in hours, or even minutes, assume an 8-hour work day and find the fraction accordingly.) Subtract this number from the sale cost and you have your material cost.
Examples: Let us take our armorsmithing friend with the +10 check again. He wants to fashion a suit of full plate, a Craft DC of 19. The GM secretly rolls 2d12 and gets 17. He multiplies the two values for a completion total of 323. If the blacksmith takes 10s on all his checks, he'll finish in those 17 days. If he rolls high, he'll do it quicker; low, and he'll take longer. So long as he doesn't roll a 14 or lower, he doesn't need to shell out any more cash than his normal starting materials. To figure those, we round down to the nearest multiple of 5 - 15. At a DC 15, he should be earning about 3 silver per day. The average time it takes to make a suit of full plate is 13 days, so he should earn 39 silver out of this. That means that we take the sale price of full plate (1500gp) minus the labor costs (39sp) and we get the cost of materials (1496gp and 1 sp). He's making about 2sp and 2 cp per day - less than normal because he's taking 4 days longer than average.
The same person wants to make mithril full plate, which is masterwork. The GM secretly rolls, getting a 9 this time. The completion total is 180 for the masterwork component and 171 for the rest, for a total of 351. Taking 10s, the armorsmith will finish the item in 18 days. The cost of materials can be found by multiplying the average time (13 again) by the wages for a DC 20 item (4sp/day) or 52sp. Subtract that from the 10,500gp cost of mithril full plate and you get 10,494gp 8sp materials cost. He's making 2sp and 9 cp per day, approximately - again, working longer than average on an item leads to a lower payrate.
Now our armorsmith is commissioned to craft some simple leather armor. The Craft DC is 12, so the material cost is 10gp - (2sp * 5 days), or 9gp. The GM rolls 2d4 and gets 4, for a completion total of 48. Taking 10s, the armorsmith will finish it in 3 days.
You may even wish to break it down further, determining how much of a day is used. In the last example above, the armorsmith would actually finish about 2 hours into Day 3, leaving him with 6 hours to begin another project. He would be earning 1gp for 2 1/4 days of work, which comes out to 4 sp and 4cp per day - a nice wage, for his level of expertise, which makes sense as he is finishing it faster than usual. At those wages, he could even afford to take on an assistant, for an addditional +2 to hich check... though whether that would be cost effective is up to him.
Just as one last example, I'll give a blacksmith making common horseshoes for village farmers' animals. There is no price for such listed in the rules, so I'll estimate them at 3 copper each. We'll say making them has a Craft DC of 12, and takes 4d10 minutes, with an average of 22 minutes. (That could be off, I'm not a blacksmith.) Since it has a low Craft DC, it should pay about 2sp/day to make them. In an 8 hour work day, figure that he could make 21.8 or so of them, which comes out to just under a copper a piece. In other words, raw materials should be about 2 coppers per shoe.
Let's say our village blacksmith has an Intelligence modifier of +1. We'll say he's level 2, so he has 2 ranks in Craft(Blacksmithing), and a +3 bonus for it being a class skill. He also has Skill Focus. This gives him a total modifier of +9. The GM rolls secretly, and gets a result of 24 - 288 completion total. The blacksmith isn't rushed, and takes 10. For this particular shoe, it will take him 15 minutes.
Hmm, the tables lost something in the copy paste from the original. Also, I'm thinking the masterwork component should be averaged, not added. So the mithril full plate above should be 351/2.
My Making Craft Work takes steps to fix Craft. It addresses issues in a manner similar to what you've mentioned.
I'll check that out. I wonder if items shouldn't have a fixed time, though, rather than a secret random GM roll? Or maybe a lower range, like average-2+1d3, which would make it within 1 day of the average time?
I'll check that out. I wonder if items shouldn't have a fixed time, though, rather than a secret random GM roll? Or maybe a lower range, like average-2+1d3, which would make it within 1 day of the average time?
What I did was linked time to item complexity, masterworkness, and special materials. It's still not realistic, but that wasn't my goal. Instead, I wanted a system that was flexible, usable, and got rid of the bizarre features of the current Craft rules that result from linking craft times to item prices.
For example, consider two characters making metal spheres of identical dimensions. One character works in iron, the other in gold. Assume equal Craft (metal sphere) bonuses. The character working in gold will take longer to craft essentially the same item simply because gold costs more than iron. Making Craft Work remedies this silliness.
Just to get it out of the way . . . .
As a DM I don't care how long the local blacksmith takes to fix a horseshoe. I don't even care how long it takes a PC to fix a horseshoe. Why is the PC fixing horseshoes instead of eliminating the goblin tribe that's poisoning the town's water supply?
The DM has to worry about where the PCs are going, how their actions affect the greater world, what's happening in the rest of the story, make changes to the story based on what the PCs do, keep an eye on what the BBEG is doing to beat the PCs, roleplay a dozen different NPCs over the course of an evening, run effective combats using the bad guy's feats/skills/stats/magic items.
Explain to me why I should have to worry about how long an NPC armorer takes to craft a suit of chainmail? Why not handwave and say "I'm really backed up, it'll be done in about two weeks. . . . Oh, you're offering me more money? Yeah, I can probably get it done by Friday"?
See what I did there? Poof, waved the magic DM wand and eliminated a whole bunch of stuff that has no bearing on a cool story.
How is it that NPCs crafting mundane items becomes something that takes more time than deciding what I want on my pizza?
Doug,
No one is saying you need to worry about craft rules. But the ones presented in game now, which the PCs can explicitly use, don't make any sense. What's wrong with people trying to come up with a better system? You're free to ignore it.
Ken
Ken, here are three questions that need to be asked when creating additional rules:
What is the cost of these rules (in terms of time, complexity, learning curve, etc)?
What are the benefits of these rules? Here, it's "more realistic" crafting, whatever that means.
Does the benefit exceed the cost?
I have to say the answer to the third question is "no."
Look at Terquem's story. How hard was that for the DM to pull out of the air? Under a craft/profession system, the DM is digging for numbers, likely breaking out a calculator, making a bunch of rolls . . . for what? To determine that it takes x days to craft a sword instead of y days?
Do these rules help the flow of the game? No. Do they help tell a better story? No. Do they satisfy the need to make crafting "more realistic"? No, because PCs aren't going to be crafting large numbers of items. If they do, you're playing the wrong game. D&D doesn't reflect crafting and professions. Those are background traits that don't help the PCs stave off a barbarian invasion, defeat a dragon, or delve into the black mysteries of the unknown.
Now, you may not like the tone I've taken, and that's okay, but the questions remain. Why are the PCs worried about crafting armor rather than defeating the goblin horde? Why should I spend time to determine that an NPC blacksmith earned 4sp/day, and why does this time exceed the amount of time it takes to say "canadian bacon and pineapple"?
Just putting this out there - your initial assumption of the wealth that a PC would make from selling full plate is wrong because PCs can only sell items at half price. So after spending almost a year making it and spending 500 gold, the PC only gets paid 750 gold - a profit of 250 gold, or about 9 silver a day.
I do also have to agree that doing this much math just to come up with the answer of "you always make a couple silver a day" seems overly complicated. The handwavyness of the original rules suit me just because making Profession checks is not something the PCs should be spending a lot of time doing to make money.
Also, Craft, Perform, and Profession are notably some of the worst ways to make money in the game - do they really need to be nerfed? I just don't see the argument that "Crafting makes too much money".
But there were no stores, no buying anything, no selling anything. So yeah, I wouldn't have minded some better crafting rules.Ken
So, the characters couldn't buy raw materials anyways, which is a core component of the crafting rules as they currently stand. I'd think you'd have to come up with a mini-system, much like what's going on with Kingmaker's kingdom building system, which goes outside of the normal rules and won't necessarily work for another type of game.
Yes, for your specific situation, a different system would be needed. Much like the proposed Mass Combat rules in a later episode of Kingmaker will work great for the setting, but might not be scalable for an assault on Minas Tirith.
A bunch more rules to perform actions that aren't important to the story of the PCs lives isn't worth it. In the grand scheme of things, why create a new set of rules to determine that crafting a longsword takes 4.5 days instead of seven?
Three notes. First, I actually do need better crafting rules in my game - one of my players is an alchemist and made it part of his character that he enjoys brewing his own alchemical items and poisons. With the existing craft rules, it would take him weeks to brew up a dose of some expensive poison, when any given dose shouldn't take more than a few hours. I could hand wave it, but then why should he bother to put points into the skill any more? It's an aspect of his character he wants to develop, so I want something more realistic for him. Second, I'm majoring in finance with an economics concentration. Money puzzles like this are enjoyable to me, so the benefits of creating the new system did outweigh the costs. If they don't for you, don't use the system. Third, Thomas, I fully acknowledge that I'm inexperienced in actual crafting on a day to day basis. While I'd suggest that forge upkeep is included in the "materials cost" above, I fully realize that the times I gave are off. Ideally, each item would have its own time - after all, I'm sure that crafting a greatsword takes longer than a shortbow, but the times above assume equality for both. I was roughing it for the purposes of creating a system. More research is required to complete the system accurately, but since what I had already filled the first two requirements above, I stopped there. :)
I appreciate that you're a money geek. But economics doesn't work well in the static world of d20. There are no rules for creating the supply/demand curve. You want to make a system that's 'more realistic,' but economists and finance guys can't predict what the price of a particular commodity will be here in the real world. There is no way to factor the non-math pieces of a craftsman's life into a d20 equation. How, example, can you tell if a particular blacksmith has a nagging wife who demands fine wine, thus pushing him to spend more time at the forge? How do you account for the desire of an alchemist to save enough money to move to the big city? You can't, but those are very real aspects to a craftsman's life which impact his business.
Yes, a more costly poison will take more time to create. Why does it take days instead of hours? Maybe the raw materials weren't available. Maybe something has to reflux for a long time. Maybe there's a hundred different reasons that don't matter to the ultimate goal: crafting a poison.
There's no benefit of your house rules over the existing rules.
The crafting rules don't exist to allow the DM to 'quickly gage (sic) the life and times' of NPCs. They exist to allow PCs another option. First edition games existed just fine without crafting rules. Second edition games existed just fine with Non-Weapon Proficiencies. You, the GM, exist to determine the status of NPCs. Crafting rules don't take into account the effects of war or famine. Profession rules don't reflect what happens to a merchant's profits when the only road leading into the village is suddenly blockaded by bandits. Performance rules don't take into account the relative wealth of the community (because let's face it, there's a reason why the music business is focused in New York and Los Angeles and not Lawrence, Kansas).
The current craft/profession rules aren't perfect, but they give the GM a basis for how long an item takes to create. As for rarity, that's what price is for. The more expensive an item, the rarer it is. That's why you don't see every soccer mom driving around in a blinged-out minivan. How wealthy an NPC should be? You'll have to point out where the rules for saving money exist, because I seem to have overlooked them. Some craftsmen are rich, some are poor. You, as the GM, don't need to know that the blacksmith make 12gp 8sp 6cp last year. It doesn't help your game to know that information. It doesn't help your players immerse themselves in the world, because they don't know that information, nor will they have any reasonable means of getting that information.
See why sometimes 'realism' isn't that much fun?
Thanks, Doug! I'm totally incorporating those bathroom times into my next game!
As for economics... the static prices of the d20 system actually make the equations easier to work with. Real world economists can't predict accurately because there are so many factors working on the system in so many ways, not to mention future events which could have drastic effects on the market. But in a d20 economy, the GM only has to worry about the impacts of NPC motivations and those market changing events - both of which he is in control of, mostly. There is little need to worry about supply/demand curves because all prices are already at equilibrium price; it is a Marxist dream.
The blacksmith with the nagging wife? He spends more time at the forge, so you multiply his checks by the additional time he spends - a 12 hour work day would be x1.5. The alchemist saving up for a big move? Pretty much the same problem - in order to make more money, he'll work longer hours and set aside the extra... though perhaps I should develop rules for investing? (That was a joke.)
Price doesn't always reflect rarity of materials - it's a combination of rarity and utility. If my PCs just found a large supply of black lotus flowers, and decide to make a poison off of them, telling them it takes weeks because they don't have the materials is just silly. If the materials are on hand, then two items otherwise identical except their composition could take drastically different times.
I'm not saying my rules have universal utility, but there are situations where they have benefit. It isn't every game, but it is for mine. One could make the same argument about chase rules, or insanity, or taint - they work for those specific games that need better rules for such.
lots of stuff
Why should NPCs follow the same rules as the PCs? Where is it written that NPCs can't do anything different? I don't use crafting rules for NPCs, because they don't make sense! A PC isn't a blacksmith, he's a fighter/rogue/wizard. A blacksmith is a blacksmith. A blacksmith isn't going to become a 20th level blacksmith with a BAB of +15. Ever. In 3.5, the crafting rules existed in the Player's Handbook, not the DMG.
It is a waste of time to go through and determine how much money every NPC earns. Let me repeat that for those in the cheap seats: It is a waste of time to go through and determine how much money every NPC earns. It makes absolutely no difference to the players if you have that information or not. Make your blacksmith rich or poor, it really doesn't matter. Spending even 2 minutes working out how much money the blacksmith has is 2 minutes of wasted time that you could be entertaining the players. NPCs are the background. They need to be there, and there needs to be some level of verisimilitude, but the details are unnecessary, just like Bilbo Baggins' relatives. Sure, you knew some names and that they were rather money grubbing, but there's no reason to determine what those background characters did for a living, because it didn't matter to the story.
As for scrapping the craft system, yes, it's been done. Castles and Crusades did away with the entire skill system, replacing with with a relatively simple roll against a target number. Because guess what - sometimes playing the game is about the story, not about how many ranks of climb you took.
Improvements to the craft/profession system are welcome, but as I've repeatedly said, you need to weigh the benefits against the cost. Perhaps you find that this particular system has more benefits than cost. Fantastic. I don't, and there's been no data to suggest that it is, in fact, better. Perhaps if the OP would put some side-by-side examples up, I can see the error of my ways.
How long does it take an armorer to craft a suit of plate mail? Three weeks, and the character needs to stick around because the armorer is gonna need some measurements. Like how I did that? No dice rolls. Faster than breaking the immersion by looking up crafting rules, whipping out a calculator, plugging in some numbers, making the players wait.
Or do you actually believe that rolling dice is immersive?
D&D is not about crafting. That's why the system doesn't work well. You'll also find that rules for mining are unrealistic. By the way, the CR system usually doesn't work perfectly, and why aren't there rules to reflect that weapons and armor degrade over time?
There are some things that are important for the game. NPC crafting isn't one of them. (Nor are mining, or equipment degradation.)
Honestly just about any system you come up with is going to fall apart once it faces a player's knowledge of reality.
Let's say you want to make a chicken dinner. After looking up the price of a chicken wherever it is, you go through some formulas and come up with whatever it's supposed to take you.
Then you compare/contrast that with how long it takes to cut off a chicken's head, drain the blood, pluck the corpse, apply whatever seasonings are considered appropriate and finally cook it and serve it. Even Martha Stewart who has many ranks in Profession Cook is not going to make a chicken cook quicker beyond a certain point. It's physics.
And then the business of how much you make with skills really doesn't go into the logic of supply and demand. I mean, who's going to make more: the woman with 10 ranks in Profession Chambermaid or the woman with 0 ranks in Profession Courtesan but the willingness or at least desperation to give the oldest profession a try?
A certain amount of handwaving is necessary no matter how intricate the system you design to model reality.
Honestly just about any system you come up with is going to fall apart once it faces a player's knowledge of reality.
Let's say you want to make a chicken dinner. After looking up the price of a chicken wherever it is, you go through some formulas and come up with whatever it's supposed to take you.
Then you compare/contrast that with how long it takes to cut off a chicken's head, drain the blood, pluck the corpse, apply whatever seasonings are considered appropriate and finally cook it and serve it. Even Martha Stewart who has many ranks in Profession Cook is not going to make a chicken cook quicker beyond a certain point. It's physics.
And then the business of how much you make with skills really doesn't go into the logic of supply and demand. I mean, who's going to make more: the woman with 10 ranks in Profession Chambermaid or the woman with 0 ranks in Profession Courtesan but the willingness or at least desperation to give the oldest profession a try?
A certain amount of handwaving is necessary no matter how intricate the system you design to model reality.
Yes, but, the current rules require so much handwaving that honestly you might as well not even have the rules. I think that might be the OP's original point.
For example, let us take the example of your chicken dinner.
Method of Cooking A : Buy a prize hen (2 gold pieces), Kill it, clean it, add in spices from the orient (1 gold piece), cook it in a pot and make a stew.
Method of Cooking B : Buy an old stringy hen from the farmer (1 copper), Kill it, Clean it, Add in salt (1 copper), cook it in a pot and make a stew.
Method A and B both use the same physical steps (Buy a chicken, kill it, clean it, add spices, cook). Method A takes, due to the rules on using value of ingredients to determine time, 150 times longer than method B. If method B takes 2 hours to cook the chicken, then by RAW, method A takes 300 hours to cook the chicken (that is, it takes 12.5 days!).
How did I arrive at that number? 2 coppers for Meal B, 3 Gold for Meal A. 3 Gold = 30 Silver = 300 coppers. 300/2 = 150. Time is linear per RAW based on value, so, it takes 150 times longer to cook the chicken. Don't know about you, I don't want to eat a chicken that took 12.5 days to cook. My luck, salmonella would have taken hold by day 10.
Same occurs with a ring. A copper ring is harder to make than a gold ring (gold being softer and easier to shape), but easier than an iron ring. However, if I need two copper pieces worth of copper to make a ring, and 2 copper pieces of iron to make one, and 2 gold pieces worth of gold to make one. Then the gold ring takes 100 times longer to make than the copper, while the iron and copper rings take the same amount of time. For that matter, I could mix lead and gold for 5 silver pieces worth of gold/lead, and it would take the same amount of time to make that ring as it would to make a 5 silver piece steel ring the same size, despite the steel taking much more work (turning iron into steel, etc).
It get's worse if I add in gems on the rings. A quartz gem on a copper ring makes it take longer, but a 25,000gp diamond on the gold ring makes it take half a year to craft one ring. That's stupid.
Honestly, the crafting does need to be looked at again, and redone. I'm not sure I like this solution at all, having said that though.
Yes, but, the current rules require so much handwaving that honestly you might as well not even have the rules. I think that might be the OP's original point.
Hear, hear. To elaborate on your examples using part of Making Craft Work:
Bizarre Example the First
Erlic wants to Craft a one-pound silver ball. His brother Rynook wants to Craft a one-pound gold ball. A one-pound ball of silver is worth one-tenth as much as a pound of gold. Even though Erlic and Rynook work on pretty much the same project -- melting metal and pouring it into a mold -- Rynook must spend much longer on his one-pound ball simply because it's made of gold.
Bizarre Example the Second
Erlic next wants to Craft some full plate. Full plate costs 15,000 silver pieces and faces an armorsmithing DC of 19. Erlic has Craft (armorsmithing) +8. Let's be unrealistic and say that he rolls a 20 for each and every Craft check. 28 times 19 equals 532, which means it'll take Erlic 28 weeks to finish his full plate. So much for having time to adventure.
Bizarre Example the Third
Erlic and Rynook want to see who can craft an item first. Erlic decides to make a high-quality box (value 20 silver pieces, Craft DC 15). Rynook wants to make a crowbar (value 20 silver pieces, Craft DC 10). The brothers have only a +1 bonus for their checks as they are both untrained when making these particular items. Again, let's assume they both roll nothing but 20s. Here are the contest's results:
* Erlic: 21 times 15 equals 315, which is 15.75 times higher than the box's cost.
* Rynook: 21 times 10 equals 210, which is 10.5 times higher than the crowbar's cost.
* The Winner: Erlic, despite the fact he is making the more complicated item.
The rules for Craft haven't made sense. Ever. That they've survived in their senseless state through so many iterations of the d20 System boggles the mind.
I really hate that you're even selling that pdf for 1 dollar, you could be selling it for 40 cents and I'd still e annoyed.
I think if anything you should be giving that away for free, but whatever, that's just my opinion.
You want to make money, that's your choice.
Anyway, crafting really should have been fixed a LONG time ago, as you said before me.
I just have an issue with something that SHOULD have been fixed, and is a NEEDED fix to the primary core of the system.
Costing us additional cash. To me that's like selling someone a game console, and then telling them in order to use it, they need to buy a power pack off of you or it won't run.
Its b+*&~&$#. That's my opinion, use the nintendo 64 as an example, remember that power pack it had. Someone sells you one, without the pack. Now you have to buy the pack just to play it. That's how I feel about the craft system, it's missing a vital component, and when someone tries to sell me something for it to work how it should have worked in the first place.
oi...
I really hate that you're even selling that pdf for 1 dollar, you could be selling it for 40 cents and I'd still e annoyed.
I think if anything you should be giving that away for free, but whatever, that's just my opinion.
You want to make money, that's your choice.
You know, if you'd have asked nicely, I might have sent you a free copy, but since me expecting to get paid for being a writer/publisher elicits hatred....
This isn't the first time reworking the crafting rules has been discussed on these boards.
Crafting better Craft rules...
Crafting some Masterwork Craft Rules
At least three systems are discussed (one of them mine).
I have updated (and cleaned) up some of these rules above. Have a fresh look at them, HERE.
I have seen very few sets of crafting rules that works, but I've seen some that work better than others. (I'm actually rather curious about your Crafting rules Spes Magna).
But most, if not all crafting rules that I liked involved at least another variable other than price, be it complexity or crafting time etc.
Unfortunately, the PHB only list the prices (and weight) of things, so converting EVERY item can be a chore. To facilitate that, my approach was rather loose, which I'm sure leads to other bizarre situations that might not suit everyone's fancy.
That being said, there is a relatively easy way to eliminate the golden cannon ball conundrum; don't account for the price of the (unusual) material for the purpose of crafting time.
So a crowbar weights 5 lbs and worth 2 gp. If gold worth 10 gp/lbs, making a crowbar out of gold should cost 52 gp. Now we know that this price isn't right because a) we should subtract the price of 5lbs worth of iron from the total and b) gold is more than twice as heavy as iron, so the golden crowbar should weight somewhere around 12-13 lbs BUT lets assume for a second that a golden crowbar weights 5 lbs and costs 52 gp...
Its crafting time shouldn't be based on an object worth 52 gp, it should be crafted as a 2 gp item with an extra 20 gp of raw materials accounting for the gold. Even if that's still not realistic (you'd expect the goldsmith to make a bigger profit from such an item), it makes more sense as far as the crafting time goes.
'findel
Actually not so much.
I've dealt in RL with jewelers who use the lost wax method. They price their works by the style with one price for silver and another for gold and occasionally a third price for bronze or pewter. Working with precious metals they just charge the extra for the cost of materials.
Actually not so much.
I've dealt in RL with jewelers who use the lost wax method. They price their works by the style with one price for silver and another for gold and occasionally a third price for bronze or pewter. Working with precious metals they just charge the extra for the cost of materials.
Exactly. In other words, they charge for their actual effort + cost of materials. The actual effort is in no way related to the effort, nor vice versa. So bronze vs copper vs gold vs silver vs platinum is just a difference in what they are using as a medium. They charge for their time and effort to make it stylish, and add on a 'bump' for the type of material. The expense of the material doesn't affect how long it takes them to make an item.
Its crafting time shouldn't be based on an object worth 52 gp, it should be crafted as a 2 gp item with an extra 20 gp of raw materials accounting for the gold...
Make that an extra 50 gp accounting or the gold...
Laurefindel--
The google docs link you gave leads to a document that's inaccessible. Could you change the permissions so we can see it?
Laurefindel--
The google docs link you gave leads to a document that's inaccessible. Could you change the permissions so we can see it?
Oups, fixed
Oups, fixed
Looks good! I will have to try and break it soonest, just to see the cracks. My real desire is a system that allows players to craft with 'in-game' consequences' and NOT allow them to set up shop and never adventure. I believe there were a number of MW longsword Flame Wars at one time...
I really hate that you're even selling that pdf for 1 dollar, you could be selling it for 40 cents and I'd still e annoyed.
I think if anything you should be giving that away for free, but whatever, that's just my opinion.
You want to make money, that's your choice.
You know, if you'd have asked nicely, I might have sent you a free copy, but since me expecting to get paid for being a writer/publisher elicits hatred....
Actually, now you've gone and misinterpreted my meaning.
Nor does it matter what I say now I assume, as you most likely shall not share it even if I'm sincere. As you most likely won't believe me.
I was not saying that you wanting to get paid for being a writer = hatred.
What I was saying, and not just to you, but IN GENERAL. Is that someone should have fixed the system a LONG time ago, and that we shouldn't have to pay for it to be fixed. I wasn't speaking to you, but rather in general, and expressing my opinion to you.
As I said, if YOU desire to not share such information, that's your choice. I don't hate you personally, I hate the fact that such a system has not been corrected and made available to the public. I'm sure someone probably tried multiple times, I've tried a bit, but failed.
Anyway, think what you wish, I can't change it. Not lying, it would be nice to get a copy, but I'm not expecting anything now, lol.
Oh, but just as a side note, the manner in which you phrased that entire response could be taken as an insult. A Passive Aggressive shot at me to be precise.
Actually, now you've gone and misinterpreted my meaning.
First rule of communication: If someone misinterprets the message, the message wasn't clear enough.
Anyway, think what you wish, I can't change it. Not lying, it would be nice to get a copy, but I'm not expecting anything now, lol.
Email me at mark at spesmagna dot com. This applies to everyone. For today only, send me an email, and I'll make sure you get Making Craft Work for free. It might make take me a day or two to get the emails returned, so be patient.
Oh, but just as a side note, the manner in which you phrased that entire response could be taken as an insult.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Actually, now you've gone and misinterpreted my meaning.First rule of communication: If someone misinterprets the message, the message wasn't clear enough.
Anyway, think what you wish, I can't change it. Not lying, it would be nice to get a copy, but I'm not expecting anything now, lol.Email me at mark at spesmagna dot com. This applies to everyone. For today only, send me an email, and I'll make sure you get Making Craft Work for free. It might make take me a day or two to get the emails returned, so be patient.
Oh, but just as a side note, the manner in which you phrased that entire response could be taken as an insult.Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Fair enough, I tend to lack when explaining my messages properly.
Also, very generous of you, and then.. I think I just got pwned. Touche, Good Sir.
Edit - Thank you, Spes Magna Mark.
Contributor
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I just purchased a copy. I admire your generosity, Mark, and look forward to seeing what you've done with Craft.
This issue came up a while back when my players wanted to have a set of full plate armor crafted for the paladin and realized they'd have to wait months before the smith finished it.
I just purchased a copy. I admire your generosity, Mark, and look forward to seeing what you've done with Craft.
Thanks for the purchase and the kind words. :)
This issue came up a while back when my players wanted to have a set of full plate armor crafted for the paladin and realized they'd have to wait months before the smith finished it.
I've bumped into that before. Making Craft Work tends to greatly reduce crafting times. This often isn't terribly realistic, but I'm usually not concerned with realism as much as I am with usable and fun.
I would have purchased a copy, lol, but I don't have the means to do so, aside from the cash to do so.
Thus I was unable to, though as I said, my opinion as to why we shouldn't have to (NOT FROM MARK) really, but from the core designers. Is that it should have been fixed a long time ago.
However, since Mark was generous and seems to be a pretty cool guy. I gave him a review, hopefully that will aid in increasing sales.
I could perhaps try and advertise the product as well to some of my acquaintances. In fact I think that's what I shall do.
Anyway, once again, Thank you, Mark. I'd hug ya, but I'm not sure how you'd react, lol.
Edit - Thank you, Spes Magna Mark.
You're quite welcome.
Anyway, once again, Thank you, Mark. I'd hug ya, but I'm not sure how you'd react, lol.
I'd be more worried about my wife's reaction. :)
Well maybe she'll giggle as you are hugged by another man. That or she'll smack me.
-hugs- [Prepares for Wife Combat]
Email me at mark at spesmagna dot com. This applies to everyone. For today only, send me an email, and I'll make sure you get Making Craft Work for free. It might make take me a day or two to get the emails returned, so be patient.
Just did. Looking forward to comparing your system with Laurefindel's.
From what I've seen in the past, Laure has some REALLY great stuff, and very detailed. I just skimmed over her newest google doc of her crafting system.
It looks very well detailed, and probably works well. I'm assuming as to bring things into a far more realistic aspect. Which I like very much, however, I feel that bringing prices into it were not required. Though I guess could be mistaken, she seems to know a heck of a lot about economics.
Anyway, I've read some of her past threads.
I feel that although her stuff is great, it's far too large and complicated. Not to mention just sifting through to take pieces out is time consuming because of all the text you must search through.
In my opinion, Laure probably has the most realistic system, and to me that's awesome. I usually go about saying how I love realism. On the other hand,I think Mark's system is far superior in the aspects of simplification and ease of use. Now aren't those descriptions redundant.
I'm choosing Mark's system, no offence Laure, you did an amazing job.
I've just looked over Mark's system (since he was kind enough to send me a copy--thank you, Mark) and Laurefindel's as well. Quite honestly I find them complementary rather than contradictory. I like Mark's system of judging time by complexity of the task (I've already house-ruled something similar for my games) and I like Laurefindal's system of having different tiers depending on the complexity of a profession.
That said, there are some small contradictions. Laurefindel has special materials require a special feat to be used profitably (and extra feat requirements are something I don't like as a rule) whereas Mark just increases the DC for using the various special materials. I prefer Mark's approach on this, simply because making Darkwood harder to work than oak makes reasonable sense and saves the need for a feat.
That said, Laurefindel admits that some of the times suggested will need to be adjusted just to pass the reality check, something that really needs to be stressed.
I mean, look at a scenario where you have a halfling wanting to roast a duck, a human wanting to roast a goose, and an ogress wanting to roast a swan. We can assume they all have the same relevant stats and same ranks in Profession Cook or Craft Cooking. The PF/SRD systems will produce ridiculous results based on the price of the meat, and even running this scenario through either of the systems' engines (Laurefindel's and Mark's) it still says that the task of roasting a waterfowl will take the same amount of time regardless of size and it will take several days. Running it through reality says they will each take less than a day, but the swan will need the longest cooking time and the duck will be done first.
All the systems also both look at crafting as a solitary effort, or at most the work of a very small team, unlike what would be done in reality with something like a barnraising or building a bridge.
Building a bridge out of a stand of trees is one of the tasks listed in the Fabricate spell, and if you cross-reference to the Lyre of Building (also created with Fabricate) it mentions "The effect produced in but 30 minutes of playing is equal to the work of 100 humans laboring for three days." This goes with the idea that you can actually have 100 humans laboring together on a single project, which in the case of a lot of things makes sense.
Personally I'd patch the systems to allow work by solo artisan, a small team, and finally by a full guildhall depending on what's being crafted and if the work can conceivably be parted out or in fact must have a team. If the queen wants a wedding dress, one assumes one seamstress will work all year on the project along with a couple assistants. If the queen needs it faster, one can assume there will be a bigger team, if not a full guild hall going into a frenzy of activity to get everything done.
Or you use magic, which is what happens when new bridges miraculously appear where there were none there yesterday.
Mr. Fishy read the "Making Craft Work" Waaaaaaaaaay better than the core rules which were defended with a, get over it and a quit whining and a ingore. Mr. Fishy likes that the Item in question set the DC and time not the, COST? WTF?
By the way what is Mr. Fishy's Troll Score?
BUY MAKING CRAFT WORK or Mr. Fishy will flame you[with real flame].
I've always thought the crafting should have 3 factors, personally.
Complexity (As a Multiplier)
Base Skill (As a base unit of measure)
Weight of Object (as a multiplier)
So, for example. Cooking. Base skill would say a meal takes 1 hour, by default.
Complexity would be :
Extremely Simple : x0.25
Simple : x0.5
Average : x1
Moderately Complex : x1.5
Complex : x2
Extremely Complex : x3
Insanely Complex : x4
From our cooking example, making a sandwhich would be extremely simple (x0.25), while making a seven course meal for the king's party would be Insanely Complex (x4).
Next would be weight (or size). Which would be :
Tiny : x0.25
Small : x0.5
Medium : x1.0
Large : x1.5
Huge : x2
Collosal : x3
Gargantuan : x4
So, from our cooking example, feeding a baby might be a tiny meal, whereas feeding the kings 200 guests at his four course meal would be gargantuan (x4).
So, for a single meal for a halfling for breakfast it would be 1 hour (base) * average complexity (x1) * small (x0.5) : 30 minutes.
For a Seven Course Meal for the king's party would be 1 hour (base) * 4 (insanely complex) * 4 (gargantuan) = 16 hours (which I find about right for a 7 course meal for 200 people).
Obviously that's just an example, and I've never had time to go through and set base times for various skills/endeavors, but that, to me, would be the ideal system. A set of tables that cover representative tasks, gives multipliers to times, and then also sets DC's.
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.
Now, if I can just get some time to work it up...