The cost involved already makes guns unbelievably rare, which is also why the base cost drops depending on how wide spread firearms become.
Gunsmithing isn't meant to represent creating a firearm from scratch. That's why the costs go up to 1/2 base cost. I find that the best way to represent it is as simple assembly of the firearm. There isn't really a need for a check since he takes the time to make sure the pieces are fitting and working properly, since it is assumed that it simply works.
Where is he getting the pieces for the guns? They're just available or he's picked them up along the way. Sure it's handwaving, but it's no different than 5gp giving spellcasters an infinite supply of every possible material component they will ever need when they buy their spell component pouch, or diamond dust being available at every street corner.
Yes, this is a work around for the normal craft rules, but it is necessary to make firearms viable while keeping with their rarity and expense. The fact that they explode from normal use sets them apart for everything else created by the Craft skill and makes them more like a cursed item created by a mage.
A mage can make a +1 sword in about the same time as a Gunsmith can make a...
I never looked at it that way before. I like this and it definitely makes sense. Thanks for breaking that down and making sense of it all.
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I am in agreement that the Gunsmithing "patch" was made necessary by the fact that the general crafting rules don't scale properly as items get beyond the 100-gp range.
I, too, would rather see a reworking than just a patch.
Here's an odd suggestion: How do people feel about a log scale for crafting? Once you get to 100 gp, multiply each additional result by 10; once you get to 1000 gp, multiply each additional result by 1000; etc.
Under this rule, the masterwork mithril craftsman above does:
134.4 gp the first week (total 134.4 > 100, triggers x10)
1344 gp the second week (total 1478.4 > 1000, triggers x100)
13440 gp the third week (total > 10,500, finishes)
So that 20-level expert is going to make just about anything in a few weeks with the raw materials. Seems to work pretty well.
We could line it up with magic crafting by capping things at 1,000 gp a day (which this master will hit in the third week).
I like that, but it should really affect everything. I have a level 4 character who wants to craft a simple composite longbow, but it's going to take him a month and a half to two months to build it, we don't have time for that.
I do agree that any changes to the Craft rules should be applied uniformly. That's actually my biggest desire.
Technically they do. You can make firearms with the Craft (firearms) skill. It's just super expensive to do so because you are making the entire thing by hand and the techniques to speed it up just aren't there. If you have to have the Craft skill match up completely you can increase the proliferation of guns. All guns cost 10% to make at that point. That means that a pistol worth 1000gp in the earliest period has a base price of 100gp, which is why gunslingers in that period also don't get Gunsmithing for free.
Now, I realize that overdark or someone might try and jump on this, since the drastic price drop does make guns a far more attractive option than bows, especially since advanced firearms don't explode. However, that's kind of the point. Guns helped speed on the end of the knight and the longbow once they became reliable and easier to make after all.
I explained above how Gunsmithing likely doesn't involve building from scratch, and how it follows the magic item build rules. The only except there is that there is no roll because the gun would normally be considered a flawed item. What would you call a crossbow that explodes on a 1 after all.
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Your math is wrong. Players sell for half price, not base price.
If I make something for half its worth, then sell it for half its worth, what is my profit?
Income from sale - Cost of material = Profit.
In the case of the 10,500gp armor:
Income from Sale (1/2 Worth - As per the Selling Treasure section of the PFSRD and Core Rulebook) - Cost of Materials (1/3 Worth - As per craft skill use)
5250gp - 3500gp = 1750gp ProfitIn the case of the 1,106,000gp gun supply:
Income from Sale (1/2 Worth - As per the Selling Treasure section of the PFSRD and Core Rulebook) - Cost of Materials (1/2 Worth - As per Gunsmithing feat use.)
553,000gp - 553,000gp = 0gp ProfitIn 79 weeks, the Gunslinger spent 316 times the amount the Expert did and made nothing. He has likely starved to death, as a 1st level character can't afford that kind of expense or he has extremely annoyed and violent investors with deep pockets after him!
Not that this facts are going to be acknowledged. After all, you completely ignored a discussion that pointed out that very flaw and did nothing to address the...
When did I say the gunsmith was a player.
And your math is wrong.
Sale of 10,500 gp armor. Cost of materials (10,500/3 = 3,500) So 10,500 - 3,500 = 7,000 gp profit.
Sale of 1,106,000 woth of guns. Cost of materials (1,106,000/2 = 553,000) 1,106,000 - 553,000 = 553,000 profit. (Sounds like a good living to me.)
Also if you don't know the difference between treasure and crafted items than I don't know what to say to you.
Your math is wrong. Players sell for half price, not base price.
If I make something for half its worth, then sell it for half its worth, what is my profit?
Income from sale - Cost of material = Profit.
In the case of the 10,500gp armor:
Income from Sale (1/2 Worth - As per the Selling Treasure section of the PFSRD and Core Rulebook) - Cost of Materials (1/3 Worth - As per craft skill use)
5250gp - 3500gp = 1750gp ProfitIn the case of the 1,106,000gp gun supply:
Income from Sale (1/2 Worth - As per the Selling Treasure section of the PFSRD and Core Rulebook) - Cost of Materials (1/2 Worth - As per Gunsmithing feat use.)
553,000gp - 553,000gp = 0gp ProfitIn 79 weeks, the Gunslinger spent 316 times the amount the Expert did and made nothing. He has likely starved to death, as a 1st level character can't afford that kind of expense or he has extremely annoyed and violent investors with deep pockets after him!
Not that this facts are going to be acknowledged. After all, you completely ignored a discussion that pointed out that very flaw and did nothing to address the...
When did I say the gunsmith was a player.
And your math is wrong.
Sale of 10,500 gp armor. Cost of materials (10,500/3 = 3,500) So 10,500 - 3,500 = 7,000 gp profit.
Sale of 1,106,000 woth of guns. Cost of materials (1,106,000/2 = 553,000) 1,106,000 - 553,000 = 553,000 profit. (Sounds like a good living to me.)
Also if you don't know the difference between treasure and crafted items than I don't know what to say to you.
So the feat is broken because only NPCs are capable of making a profit off of it... NPCs under the control of the GM... Who isn't likely to care or bother.
Care to explain why the expert is guaranteed buyers in a time period when few people can use the weapons, few people can afford them or their ammo, and they are unreliable and will need repair and maintenance?
Since NPCs are clearly out to abuse the system, why don't they optimize and take a level of aristocrat for the money and social class and then go expert for the skill points? Really, it's the commoners own fault for not bothering to bend the rules in their favour.
Also if you don't know the difference between treasure and crafted items than I don't know what to say to you.
Read the Rules
Selling Treasure
In general, a character can sell something for half its listed price, including weapons, armor, gear, and magic items. This also includes character-created items.
Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself.
How is it that a merchant automatically knows if a sword was found in a horde or if it was the character who made it?
And explain to me a simple, basic economic principle.
How does a merchant who buys an object at full market value make a profit when he then turns around and sells it again at full market value?
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Since NPCs are clearly out to abuse the system, why don't they optimize and take a level of aristocrat for the money and social class and then go expert for the skill points? Really, it's the commoners own fault for not bothering to bend the rules in their favour.
Yeah because having a level of aristocrat guarantees those things. Right.
But you obviously have a better handle on the rules than me. Whatever.
Since NPCs are clearly out to abuse the system, why don't they optimize and take a level of aristocrat for the money and social class and then go expert for the skill points? Really, it's the commoners own fault for not bothering to bend the rules in their favour.Yeah because having a level of aristocrat guarantees those things. Right.
But you obviously have a better handle on the rules than me. Whatever.
Um... you apparently missed the sarcasm in that.
But you still haven't explained how the feat, in the hands of the GM, breaks the game. If the GM has decided on rare firearms he's not going to make them proliferate. And if he wants to make Jeremy Gunsmith a millionaire he can just say "Jeremy Gunsmith is a millionaire" and it's done. Why would the GM use that complicated scheme?
When did I say the gunsmith was a player.
Are you suggesting that all this time you were worried about a GM? Who can fiat himself into anything, without breaking any rules? Who can say an NPC got rich for any reason at all, without actually needing rules to support it? All this fuss?
I don't believe you.
Also if you don't know the difference between treasure and crafted items than I don't know what to say to you.
For the players, or is this GM territory again? I must admit I was following your line of reasoning for a bit, however disagreeing with you, but you've lost me completely.
Because I seemed to have missed it, where are the rules for reducing costs/increasing proliferation (including the part about not getting Gunsmithing)
I'm particularly interested in seeing why bullets (little soft metal balls) are so expensive even without proliferation when damn near anyone could do it with an hour of instruction, a very basic set of tools, and a fire.
The proliferation is discussed on page 135 under the "Firearms in your campaign" heading. It discusses "No Guns", "Very Rare Guns", "Emerging Guns", "Commonplace Guns" and "Guns Everywhere". This discusses what options are available (gunslinger only being available in Emerging Guns periods) and the costs (Commonplace gun materials base cost being 25% of currently listed).
As for why bullets are so expensive that early on probably has to do with the care required. You need the bullets to be the right weight and size and be perfectly smooth. In a period where its extremely difficult to ensure that barrels are all the same size, that's probably going to be time consuming and use more materials than putting together a sling bullet.
Other than that, don't know what to tell you. Just what "raw materials" are varies from object to object after all.
Why is it hard to ensure barrels are the same size? The can't fold metal around a high carbon bar the same way every time?
Because they aren't standardized. Early firearms are very rare, and the people who make them even rarer. While they all learned from what is eventually the same source, they're going to have their own method of doing things as apprentices became journeymen, spread out, found their own way of doing things and became masters with their own apprentices.
You are right that it isn't hard to fold barrels around a rod. But ask yourself this. How easy is it to get a bar crafted to exact measurements in a pre-industrial society. They'll be really close, but close isn't the same as exact. Unless all the gunsmiths are literally using the same rod for every barrel they make.
It doesn't take much different to keep a powder gun from firing if the barrel is a little too big or, worse, exploding because the bullet gets stuck coming out.
Early firearms are not precision machines. It isn't super difficult to get the bullets the right size, but it's just enough to make it a little difficult. Hence the cost and the clear intent that gunslingers are meant to make their own bullets until guns are found everywhere.
I like that, but it should really affect everything. I have a level 4 character who wants to craft a simple composite longbow, but it's going to take him a month and a half to two months to build it, we don't have time for that.I am in agreement that the Gunsmithing "patch" was made necessary by the fact that the general crafting rules don't scale properly as items get beyond the 100-gp range.
I, too, would rather see a reworking than just a patch.
Here's an odd suggestion: How do people feel about a log scale for crafting? Once you get to 100 gp, multiply each additional result by 10; once you get to 1000 gp, multiply each additional result by 1000; etc.
Under this rule, the masterwork mithril craftsman above does:
134.4 gp the first week (total 134.4 > 100, triggers x10)
1344 gp the second week (total 1478.4 > 1000, triggers x100)
13440 gp the third week (total > 10,500, finishes)
So that 20-level expert is going to make just about anything in a few weeks with the raw materials. Seems to work pretty well.
We could line it up with magic crafting by capping things at 1,000 gp a day (which this master will hit in the third week).
Okay, what's your recommendation for it applying to everything (by which I think you mean lower-cost items)?
The point of a logarithmic scale is that it leaves low-cost items at their current craft times, while making it take a lot LESS extra time to make higher-cost items.
Still, a composite longbow costs 100 gp, so I don't see how it's taking you more than a month. What's your total Craft mod, +5? Taking 10 on the check, you can consistently make 22.5 gp of progress a week and complete the longbow in 31 days. That seems reasonable for someone not very well-trained in Craft, and someone with a fair bit more skill could do so even faster.
I guess the reason I like the logarithmic scale is that I don't really think the Craft rules are broken until you get beyond 100 gp.
Got to dot this thread so much humor in it. No offense meant. :)
Edit: Raise Thread!
"Why won't you die?!"
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So I think it's time to stare at people with my googly eye until they feel uncomfortable.
What if Craft was reworked so that the build time isn't based upon the cost of the item but just the difficulty? Using the system as written, ignore the normal costs and treat the items effective sp cost for build time as its DC squared. Now a DC 20 item is crafted in the amount of time it takes to make something that normally (by RAW) costs 40gp regardless of whether it actually costs 1gp or 4,000gp.
So it takes the same amount of time to make one acid bolt (40gp) as it would to make a masterwork carriage for a gargantuan creature*? Um... ok?
*Carriage is 100gp, Masterwork is 300gp, and size increase for armor (being used for example purpose) is x8, for a total of 3200 gp
Edit: It also takes the exact same amount of time to make a single javelin (1 gp) as the gargantuan masterwork carriage.
<Glares>
To be honest I'm betting there is little to nothing that can be done to "fix" crafting in PF/D&DWell, for starters, take the table that has Craft DCs and add a column that says "Time Required to Craft." Then replace everything else in the skill with some version of: you can try to reduce the time required to craft by doing X; every time you fail a check by more than Y, you waste Z amount of materials/time.
The problem with attaching times to the difficulty and not the cost is that you end up with it making even less sense. It means you can construct a two story 10 room stone structure (which is a complex item, DC 20) by yourself in the exact same time that it takes someone to make a lock (complex item, DC 20), a single tindertwig (Alchemy, DC 20) or in less time than it takes one man to make a composite longbow for a +3 Str mod (DC 21).
And of course, if you start adding weeks per gp into it, you're going to hit the same issue where some items take absolutely forever to make.
I think SRT4W has it. There's not really going to be a way to realistically represent crafting. The best I can think of off the top of my head is to just let it take a number of days equal to GP/ 10 or 100 or something. Don't really care about the particulars though as I'm sure there's flaws in that people have already gone over.
There is nothing new or interesting to post on this subject.
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There is nothing new or interesting to post on this subject.Yeah because that was both new and interesting.
Oh wait, I meant it was neither new or interesting.
Great! We're in complete agreement! This thread can end on an up note :D
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Great! We're in complete agreement! This thread can end on an up note :DThere is nothing new or interesting to post on this subject.Yeah because that was both new and interesting.
Oh wait, I meant it was neither new or interesting.
No again you just fall into the category of 'if this was all you had to contibute why bother', just go away. But with your screen name I can see that, thats probably not going to happen.
No again you just fall into the category of 'if this was all you had to contibute why bother', just go away. But with your screen name I can see that, thats probably not going to happen.
Again we have consensus! Who says the internet is all about arguing and fighting :)
Still waiting Overdark.
I cleaned up some posts. That wasn't necessary.
What if Craft was reworked so that the build time isn't based upon the cost of the item but just the difficulty? Using the system as written, ignore the normal costs and treat the items effective sp cost for build time as its DC squared. Now a DC 20 item is crafted in the amount of time it takes to make something that normally (by RAW) costs 40gp regardless of whether it actually costs 1gp or 4,000gp.So it takes the same amount of time to make one acid bolt (40gp) as it would to make a masterwork carriage for a gargantuan creature*? Um... ok?
*Carriage is 100gp, Masterwork is 300gp, and size increase for armor (being used for example purpose) is x8, for a total of 3200 gp
Under the log system, it's about two orders of magnitude more expensive, so would take about three times as long.
This seems reasonable to me.