I need to vent and hear some thoughts from other wise board denizens about frustrations with people messing with crafting, with stubborn players, etc. Please bear with me:
After our Savage Tide session last night, me, another player (whom we'll call "the Wiz") and the GM had a long conversation about magic item crafting. The Wiz feels as though crafting needs to be "fixed" because "Crafting has become a lot less useful now that we're at 17th level."
Some background information: we're playing the Savage Tide AP. The Wiz has Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion, and Craft Wondrous. He is also a wizard (as one might suspect). The wizard was requesting (and eventually received) a modification to crafting times because he felt that it took long to make "really useful" high-level items (the specific item that he wanted to craft was a robe of the archmagi) because we were gaining levels so quickly in game time (going through a dungeon takes a couple of days tops, resulting in relatively quick level/wealth gain).
Our GM obliged by adjusting the crafting time to a number of days equal to 2 multiplied by the square root of the item's cost. I don't think this is necessarily bad as a mathematical adjustment, but I objected to the idea that we needed to change anything at all, particularly on the grounds of the the Wiz's specific points he used to support his claim, to wit:
1) His crafting feats are "less useful" because his time is "more valuable." He tried to make some kind of argument about how since his downtime is "more valuable" (which I don't think can even be justified) at higher level, that he gets less value out of crafting several less expensive items than a single big-ticket item. I countered by saying that he still gets the full benefit of the feat, which is to effectively double his cash on hand. Perhaps I am being obtuse here, but I completely fail to see his point on this at all.
2) The implicit assumption that all of his feats should remain equally useful at all levels. I specifically pointed to Cleave as an example of feat that becomes more or less useful depending upon what level you were - he countered by saying "but the designers didn't INTEND for crafting feats to become less useful, so that point doesn't matter." I found this to be an unprovable and insufficient answer. Having played in a 1-20 AP before (Age of Worms) as a character who could craft magic items, I feel he should have gone into this with the knowledge that at high levels, the pace of the adventure quickens sufficiently to give one less time to do a lot of dedicated crafting. I feel like he's asking for the mechanics of the game to change to compensate for the fact that he feels that he made a sub-optimal feat choice.
3) It's practically impossible, he claims, to craft any high-end magic items because his gold is "tied up" and not being useful to him during crafting, and he might, at the end, decide he doesn't want the item anymore and he's lost all of that time. I countered that this is in no way different from being a non-crafter who has to save up money to buy a high-end item (as my barbarian did for his primary weapon) - other characters have to let a big pile of loot remain "useless" until they can buy an item, which they may then decide they don't want anymore. He countered that it's worse for him because he COULD be using that time crafting other, smaller, useful things for the whole party. But that also remains true of the non-crafter - they could be spending stuff on potions or other wondrous items.
So I'm frustrated. I don't think this is going to break the game or anything, but I'm really aggravated by the attitude and what seems to me to be specious reasoning of the whole process. Part of it is that this particular player is not very good at the strategy of the game in general (he's the topic of this thread I started a while back), and I feel like he's trying to change or manipulate the rules to make his weak character more effective... instead of just building/playing his character more effectively (he actually has improved in his spell selection and tactics since I started that thread, but he has retained some bad habits. I recommended him using Quicken to prepare a 3rd or 4-th level buff, but he blithely replied that he hardly saw the use in wasting a 7th or 8th level spell slot to get one extra low-level buff. He then opened the next combat by casting Time Stop, rolling only two rounds, and casting two 3rd/4th level buffs on himself. [FACEPALM]).
So I guess a couple of questions:
1) Does anyone think I'm totally off-base here, that my line of reasoning in the argument was not particularly strong?
2) Does anyone else tend to run into a lot of frustration when dealing with characters who want to craft a lot?
3) Does anyone else have good houserules for adjusting crafting times?
4) What does everyone think of our own houserule equation?
Our GM obliged by adjusting the crafting time to a number of days equal to 2 multiplied by the square root of the item's cost. I don't think this is necessarily bad as a mathematical adjustment, but I objected to the idea that we needed to change anything at all, particularly on the grounds of the the Wiz's specific points he used to support his claim, to wit:
So, after complaining the item creation took too long, the GM houseruled something that makes it take even longer? It only takes 1 day (8 hours of crafting time)for every 1000gp to make an item with core rules.
+1 sword, 1000gp to make.
Core: takes 1 day
DM's housrule: 63 days [square root of 1000 is 31.6, x2 is 63.2)
Robe of the Archmagi, 37,500gp to make
Core: 37.5 days
Houserules: 387 days
So unless I am misreading something or misinterpreting something, how is that supposed to help?
Also, with the core rules, you can add +5 to the skill DC to craft a magic item in 4 hours per 1000gp, instead of 8 hours per 1000gp. The Robe of the Archmagi could potentially be created is as little as 19 days. (Still, thats 3 weeks of crafting.)
I'm confused by the OP's complaints.
As long as the other player isn't being excessively disruptive with his complaints why does it matter if him and the DM can work out a compromise on crafting times that makes PC crafting more useful?
Presumably he's not just crafting for his own benefit?
Our GM obliged by adjusting the crafting time to a number of days equal to 2 multiplied by the square root of the item's cost. I don't think this is necessarily bad as a mathematical adjustment, but I objected to the idea that we needed to change anything at all, particularly on the grounds of the the Wiz's specific points he used to support his claim, to wit:So, after complaining the item creation took too long, the GM houseruled something that makes it take even longer? It only takes 1 day (8 hours of crafting time)for every 1000gp to make an item with core rules.
+1 sword, 1000gp to make.
Core: takes 1 day
DM's housrule: 63 days [square root of 1000 is 31.6, x2 is 63.2)Robe of the Archmagi, 37,500gp to make
Core: 37.5 days
Houserules: 387 daysSo unless I am misreading something or misinterpreting something, how is that supposed to help?
Also, with the core rules, you can add +5 to the skill DC to craft a magic item in 4 hours per 1000gp, instead of 8 hours per 1000gp. The Robe of the Archmagi could potentially be created is as little as 19 days. (Still, thats 3 weeks of crafting.)
I'm sorry, I think I must have had the equation wrong. If I understand it correctly, to determine the crafting time, you still use the 8 hours/1,000gp equation, but instead of using the base price of the item, you use the square root of the item's base price times 2.
So a 25,000 gp item under the old system takes 25 days (or 12.5 if you "hurry") and under the new system it would take 10 days (or 5 if "hurried").
I'm confused by the OP's complaints.
As long as the other player isn't being excessively disruptive with his complaints why does it matter if him and the DM can work out a compromise on crafting times that makes PC crafting more useful?
Presumably he's not just crafting for his own benefit?
I don't think there's anything wrong with the feat as-is. And even if he were dissatisfied with his current feats, I would much rather him petition to swap out feats than change the entire crafting system.
The crafting system as written seems to work well in games where there is plenty of time between adventures for downtime casting + the ability to access core materials and space to craft. In APs where there isn't a lot of time to downtime craft this can make some craft feat of very limited utility.
In those cases I'm not entirely against rebalancing craft to make it more useful after all a craft feat is a significant investment in character abilities.
In those cases I'm not entirely against rebalancing craft to make it more useful after all a craft feat is a significant investment in character abilities.
No more so than any other single feat though, right?
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1) His crafting feats are "less useful" because his time is "more valuable." He tried to make some kind of argument about how since his downtime is "more valuable" (which I don't think can even be justified) at higher level, that he gets less value out of crafting several less expensive items than a single big-ticket item. I countered by saying that he still gets the full benefit of the feat, which is to effectively double his cash on hand. Perhaps I am being obtuse here, but I completely fail to see his point on this at all.
If he's getting less time to craft and gold is coming in faster, he isn't doubling his cash on hand because he doesn't have time to efficiently turn his wealth into useful items. And if the items that he really wants are too expensive to craft in this limited time, he isn't getting the other benefit of the feat, which is to make sure that you can obtain the exact items you want. He might still be able to craft a few less expensive items and get some use out of the feat, but if he wants expensive items within a reasonable time frame he has to buy them, whereas a few levels ago the most expensive items he could afford could still be crafted within his downtime.
In short, long item crafting times do decrease the use you'll get out of crafting feats at higher levels.
2) The implicit assumption that all of his feats should remain equally useful at all levels. I specifically pointed to Cleave as an example of feat that becomes more or less useful depending upon what level you were - he countered by saying "but the designers didn't INTEND for crafting feats to become less useful, so that point doesn't matter." I found this to be an unprovable and insufficient answer. Having played in a 1-20 AP before (Age of Worms) as a character who could craft magic items, I feel he should have gone into this with the knowledge that at high levels, the pace of the adventure quickens sufficiently to give one less time to do a lot of dedicated crafting. I feel like he's asking for the mechanics of the game to change to compensate for the fact that he feels that he made a sub-optimal feat choice.
I can see your point here a bit, but if he isn't a great strategist he may not have known going into this that his crafting feats would be less useful in late game. In that case, it's not unreasonable for the DM to cut him a bit of a break so he can continue to have fun, especially if it's not making him overpower the rest of the party.
3) It's practically impossible, he claims, to craft any high-end magic items because his gold is "tied up" and not being useful to him during crafting, and he might, at the end, decide he doesn't want the item anymore and he's lost all of that time. I countered that this is in no way different from being a non-crafter who has to save up money to buy a high-end item (as my barbarian did for his primary weapon) - other characters have to let a big pile of loot remain "useless" until they can buy an item, which they may then decide they don't want anymore. He countered that it's worse for him because he COULD be using that time crafting other, smaller, useful things for the whole party. But that also remains true of the non-crafter - they could be spending stuff on potions or other wondrous items.
The crafter actually does lose more if he changes his mind about an item.
1) He loses the time spent saving the money, same as the non-crafter.
2) He loses the time he could have spent using a different less expensive item, same as the non-crafter.
3) He loses the time he could have spent crafting an alternate item, after having saved the money.
4) He may lose the gold invested in that item. It's my understanding that scrapping a magic item in progress ruins the raw materials. So he can continue crafting, resell the item, and recoup gold costs but not lose more time, or he can scrap the item, regain crafting time, but lose a large chunk of gold.
(3) might in some cases balance with the fact that the crafter needs to save less money than the non-crafter (1), but it sounds like you have a lot more gold than time, so the cash-saving element is shorter and less important than the crafting time element.
1) Does anyone think I'm totally off-base here, that my line of reasoning in the argument was not particularly strong?
2) Does anyone else tend to run into a lot of frustration when dealing with characters who want to craft a lot?
3) Does anyone else have good houserules for adjusting crafting times?
4) What does everyone think of our own houserule equation?
1) You're not totally off-base, but I think your frustration with the player's poor strategy may be causing a bit of antagonism that otherwise wouldn't come up. Do you think perhaps that he's being coddled?
2) I've been frustrated by crafting times before. I once took 3 levels to make a +4 Belt of Dexterity for the group's Ranger because we didn't get a lot of downtime (and that was using quick crafting). And then shortly after I finished it the party got a large bounty, with gold to burn on crafting again.
3) I think that making crafting time increase by the square root instead of linearly is a fine solution.
The new item Amazing Tools of Manufacture to speed things up, but you have to tie those to a specific Craft skill, not Spellcraft, which is complicated for Wondrous Items.
+1 sword, 1000gp to make.
Core: takes 1 day
DM's housrule: 63 days [square root of 1000 is 31.6, x2 is 63.2)Robe of the Archmagi, 37,500gp to make
Core: 37.5 days
Houserules: 387 days
Sorry, you just stepped on my toes in a major way, so I'm going to take the opportunity to vent:
+1 sword, approximately 1110 gp to make.Core: Takes frickin' 7-8 WEEKS to make
- Approximately 8 weeks to craft a masterwork sword (40 g.p. per week to craft a 320 g.p. sword)
- ONE DAY to add the +1
So pity the poor fools who actually took Craft(Weapon) or Craft(Armor), thinking they'd have time to make anything in a standard (non-Kingmaker) AP. There's a factor of almost 100 difference between the time it takes to craft weapons or armor vs. the time it takes to craft magical items.
Returning to the OP's post, any time any magic user complains about the time it takes to craft any magic item, I simply say, "Suck it up! Try making yourself a masterwork greatsword some time!"
But I tend to agree that meddling with the times it takes to craft items just because a player doesn't like having to take the down time is never a good idea.
EDIT: If I sound bitter, it's because I had my fighter take a bunch of levels in Craft (Weapon), thinking it would be fun to spend a few weeks crafting custom weapons for all the other party members, and even having my (talented rather than talent-less like me) wife do sketches of all the cool custom weapons. Then I started making the first one (a masterwork rapier) and learned that it would be MONTHS before I finished even one. Made me a LOT less sympathetic towards magic item crafters...
If he has a problem with crafting times, have him use Plane Shift to travel to a fast time plane. Or he can create a Demiplane that has fast time. Between Plane Shift and Teleportation type spells no player is ever far from where he or she wants to be. They can spend a single 'normal' day in a fast time place and gain 24 days for crafting (GMG p185). There are even faster planes where time flows at a rate of 1round = 1day but they are more rare.
If he does not want to find a safe fast time plane he can create his own at level 17 with the 9th level spell Greater Create Demiplane. With that he gets 2days for every 1day in the real world. Perhaps you could allow him to accelerate this even further (but that is a house rule).
- Gauss
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Taking crafting feats seems to me to be kind of a waste of a feat if you're going to be playing a game with a lot of time-sensitive deadlines...which includes most APs.
I know that if I personally am trying to save the multiverse from Demogorgon, I'm probably not going to take a "time-out" to make a staff of power.
Kthulhu, you can use a Ring of Sustenance + Rope Trick at early levels to get a full day of crafting in. At higher levels the planar fast time technique allows you to not have to take too much time out.
Neither really changes how much time you are devoting to adventuring.
- Gauss
How so?
Normal adventuring days seem to be: Wake up, burn an hour for memorization, adventure about 12-13hours at most, relax until it is time to sleep, sleep in as safe a place you can find for about 8hours, repeat.
Based on that, in both of the below examples the following applies: I adventure for 12 or so hours. More than enough to fry all of my resources. Then I 'rest' for another 12 hours (this rest includes rememorization).
Ring of Sustenance+Rope Trick: Of those 12 hours of 'rest' only 2 are spent sleeping. 8 are spent crafting, and 1 more are spent prepping for the next day.
Fast Time plane (1hr = 1day as per GMG p185): Of those 12 hours of 'rest' we are instead in another plane. Those 12hours of normal time = 12days of fast time (assuming the lower level fast time).
In neither case are you taking time away from adventuring (ie: stopping the BBEG).
- Gauss
Joesi:
Yup, you answered your own question.
I am unclear what you mean with the extra-dimensional space comment. Perhaps you were merging the early level technique with the later level technique. Early levels (level 5 through about level 10) you use a Ring of Sustenance + Rope Trick. Later levels (about level 11 on) you use Plane Shift to travel to a fast plane.
The Plane Shift technique requires several spells (possibly more): Plane Shift (Cleric 5, Sorc/Wiz7) and either Word of Recall (Cleric 6) or Teleport (Sorc/Wiz 5). Minimum level to do this for a 4 person group would be level 9.
I am not stating it would be safe at level 9 to do this. It could be hazardous so you might need a means to avoid the detrimental affects of a plane such as Planar Adaptation (Cleric 4, Sorc/Wiz 5).
Rope Trick should work on the planes you travel to and since the time that flows inside a rope trick is the same as the plane you are on it should still be fast time. A common misconception is that Extradimensional spaces are another plane, they are not. The Paizo staff have stated this.
The departure requires Plane Shift, the return requires both Plane Shift and Teleport. So yes, upon return the group will have 2 less spells for the day. That too can be dealt with if you chose to make a scroll of those spells and use them instead.
In short, this is barely doable at level 9 but it should not be necessary at that point. By level 13 or so you should easily have the means to pull this off. At level 17 you can create your own plane with it's own fast time.
- Gauss
Tharkon:
Most people use accelerated crafting (+5DC) in order to make a magic item in half the time. As a result of this a +1 sword does take 1 day to make. However, it is important to keep the difference straight.
Jeraa's +1 sword example in post 2 did not include a comment about the accelerated time. My guess is he was just making a simple error (cost vs price).
- Gauss
I appreciate everyone chiming in on my +1 sword example, so let's answer some questions:
@Joesi: Saying that I found/bought the sword kind of defeats the entire point. I'm bitter because my fighter wants to craft a cool-looking sword with his own sweat, blood, and tears as part of his character development (roleplaying) and it takes weeks to make, instead of the hours a wizard puts in to craft something at nearly 100x the value.
@Tharkon: It's a fighter, not a wizard. So get rid of the +5 INT. And what magic item gives me +10 to crafting? So at level 10 I'm at +2 tools, +3 class, +10 ranks, +2 feats = +17 in total. And even at 2.6 weeks, that's a whole bunch of ranks and a specialized feat for a 320 g.p. item, instead of the 8 hours it takes a wizard to make a 1000 g.p. item with ranks in something he's going to take anyway (Spellcraft) and a more generalized feat. (Craft Wand lets you make any wand for any spell you know, and you can even find a Cooperative Crafter to put in spells you don't know. Craft Armor and Craft Weapon are totally separate skills, solely used for item creation.)
And the major difficulty is that it's a roleplaying block, rather than a 'power gamer' block. Of course I can buy much better weapons off the rack. But my fighter is smitten with the party's bard and wants to make her something nice. But has to run off for 2 months to do it. While the competing wizard can hand her a much more expensive item in just a day. Stupid wizards!
So yes, the crafting rules for weapons and armor are realistic. Yes, I could consider myself an 'executive' and just hire some schmoe to make the stuff for me. But if a fighter really wants to craft things, at 21 feats you'd think there'd be a 'fast crafting' feat or something he could take to massively speed things up to the point that he can compete with a wizard in crafting times (even 100 g.p. per day would be nice).
The implicit assumption that all of his feats should remain equally useful at all levels. I specifically pointed to Cleave as an example of feat that becomes more or less useful depending upon what level you were - he countered by saying "but the designers didn't INTEND for crafting feats to become less useful, so that point doesn't matter."
Fail on his part. Why do feats have prerequisites? If they're equally good at all levels, then why not pick up Spell Perfection at level 1. It's as good as Iron Will, right?
Yes, news flash, Brew Potion is not as useful at level 20 compared to level 1. Iron Will can easily triple a character's will save at first level. At level 17 it's a marginal increase. Not all feats are equally useful at all point in the game.
So I guess a couple of questions:1) Does anyone think I'm totally off-base here, that my line of reasoning in the argument was not particularly strong?
2) Does anyone else tend to run into a lot of frustration when dealing with characters who want to craft a lot?
3) Does anyone else have good houserules for adjusting crafting times?
4) What does everyone think of our own houserule equation?
Frankly, I think your wizard player is engaging in a lot of wanky special pleading and I totally sympathize with your frustrations with him. If he doesn't think the crafting is working with the time constraints of the campaign, he can do what the rest of you are doing... saving up his cash to BUY his items at full market prices. Chances are he's benefited quite nicely from the feats before now. If they become eclipsed by events and changes in the campaign, he should adapt - not expect the rules to adapt to him and his perceived needs.
That said, if the DM thinks that the rules aren't working they way he wants them to work or the gaming table as a whole thinks they should work, then by all means adjust them. I'd be more inclined to base crafting times on something other than inflated market prices, but I'd still make powerful items take a long time to create... because they should take a long time to create.
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So yes, the crafting rules for weapons and armor are realistic. Yes, I could consider myself an 'executive' and just hire some schmoe to make the stuff for me. But if a fighter really wants to craft things, at 21 feats you'd think there'd be a 'fast crafting' feat or something he could take to massively speed things up to the point that he can compete with a wizard in crafting times (even 100 g.p. per day would be nice).
You could buy better tools.
So yes, the crafting rules for weapons and armor are realistic. Yes, I could consider myself an 'executive' and just hire some schmoe to make the stuff for me. But if a fighter really wants to craft things, at 21 feats you'd think there'd be a 'fast crafting' feat or something he could take to massively speed things up to the point that he can compete with a wizard in crafting times (even 100 g.p. per day would be nice).You could buy better tools.
Don't worry; they're on my shopping list.
I'm only 5th level at the moment, so they're a wee bit out of my price range...