Alternative Method for Determining Success with the Craft Skill

[Hockey_Hippie]

Hey folks,

I have a campaign where I play a Gnome who specializes in Jewelcraft (go figure) and during the last session an idea of how to determine success or failure was stumbled on.

Basically, the player tells the GM what he wants to do (in this case it was a necklace with 6 20 HP gems and 1 40 GP gem). The GM then assigns a difficulty value (DV) as to what he thinks will be the effort involved in making said thing. For arguments sake let's say it is 200 in this case (I have no idea what number he did pick). The intrepid jeweler then makes one jewelcraft roll per day until the collective total (CT) of all of his jewelcraft rolls meets or exceeds the GM's pre-determind DV. This indicates the piece is been finished. The GM then divides the DV by the number of days it took the PC to reach that number. This gives a grade of quality of work (QOW) with the higher number being better quality and lower number not so much.

So for our necklace, if it took the Gnome jeweler 8 rolls (days) to make the DV (200 in this case) the QOW would be 25. If it had taken the Gnome 10 days, the QOW would be 20, and thus a necklace of lesser worth.

This obviously works best with things made over time, as opposed to say a cook baking a cake.

Opinions?

HH

[VoodooMike]

Hockey_Hippie wrote:

Hey folks,

I have a campaign where I play a Gnome who specializes in Jewelcraft (go figure) and during the last session an idea of how to determine success or failure was stumbled on.

Basically, the player tells the GM what he wants to do (in this case it was a necklace with 6 20 HP gems and 1 40 GP gem). The GM then assigns a difficulty value (DV) as to what he thinks will be the effort involved in making said thing. For arguments sake let's say it is 200 in this case (I have no idea what number he did pick). The intrepid jeweler then makes one jewelcraft roll per day until the collective total (CT) of all of his jewelcraft rolls meets or exceeds the GM's pre-determind DV. This indicates the piece is been finished. The GM then divides the DV by the number of days it took the PC to reach that number. This gives a grade of quality of work (QOW) with the higher number being better quality and lower number not so much.

So for our necklace, if it took the Gnome jeweler 8 rolls (days) to make the DV (200 in this case) the QOW would be 25. If it had taken the Gnome 10 days, the QOW would be 20, and thus a necklace of lesser worth.

Since you don't list the effect of your "QOW" rating, its hard to respond. In general it seems like it reduces crafting skills to "speed of work" moreso than capability, as anyone with (or without, really) the crafting skill can create any item, it just takes some people longer than others.

That kobold with a head injury and a club foot can make a war galleon so long as he has nothing better to do with his time, but by your system the "QOW" would be lower than that of a master shipwright. So of course the game effect of quality is going to matter. Plus, there really are some things that just shouldn't be possible without a certain level of skill, and that isn't going to be accounted for here.

[Hockey_Hippie]

VoodooMike wrote:

Hockey_Hippie wrote:

Hey folks,

I have a campaign where I play a Gnome who specializes in Jewelcraft (go figure) and during the last session an idea of how to determine success or failure was stumbled on.

Basically, the player tells the GM what he wants to do (in this case it was a necklace with 6 20 HP gems and 1 40 GP gem). The GM then assigns a difficulty value (DV) as to what he thinks will be the effort involved in making said thing. For arguments sake let's say it is 200 in this case (I have no idea what number he did pick). The intrepid jeweler then makes one jewelcraft roll per day until the collective total (CT) of all of his jewelcraft rolls meets or exceeds the GM's pre-determind DV. This indicates the piece is been finished. The GM then divides the DV by the number of days it took the PC to reach that number. This gives a grade of quality of work (QOW) with the higher number being better quality and lower number not so much.

So for our necklace, if it took the Gnome jeweler 8 rolls (days) to make the DV (200 in this case) the QOW would be 25. If it had taken the Gnome 10 days, the QOW would be 20, and thus a necklace of lesser worth.

Since you don't list the effect of your "QOW" rating, its hard to respond. In general it seems like it reduces crafting skills to "speed of work" moreso than capability, as anyone with (or without, really) the crafting skill can create any item, it just takes some people longer than others.

That kobold with a head injury and a club foot can make a war galleon so long as he has nothing better to do with his time, but by your system the "QOW" would be lower than that of a master shipwright. So of course the game effect of quality is going to matter. Plus, there really are some things that just shouldn't be possible without a certain level of skill, and that isn't going to be accounted for here.

Oh I agree, this is by no means perfect, far from it. This was meant to be a more of a food for thought thing as opposed to a finished product. Though I would think that someone with a higher mod (ergo more ability) would reach the designated DV before someone with a lower mod and because of that, more often than not, the formers QOW would be higher than the latters, no?

And as stated earlier, this is something that would be used selectively, probably moreso on things that take time to do as opposed to things whipped up in a single days work.

And yes the QOW at the point of this is DMs discetion. It could probably be charted, but at this point isn't. Feel free to make some suggestions there.

For example what would the standard QOW need to be to produce a masterwork item?

HH