Building mundane and not quite so mundane equipment

[Wycen]

I use the word building instead of crafting because after searching the forum for this question it is clear that crafting magic items is the preponderant use of the word "craft", followed by spellcraft.

But indeed, I do want to understand how to use the skill Craft: whatever.

Craft: Whatever. Weapons, alchemy, cabinets. I've read the first couple paragraphs a few times when at lower level when we had downtime in the city.

But I've never really read the whole thing and never actually tried to craft an item from scratch.

In this case, a spear. It seemed easy enough: convert the price into silver pieces, make your Craft Weapons roll and multiply your craft check by 12 (the DC of a simple weapon is 12) and if the result is greater than or equal to 20, you've spent a week (or less) successfully creating a spear.

But then I wondered what happens when you want to make it out of exotic material like adamantine. And it gets a bit wonky.

Two separate sections, with 2 different rolls, but with concurrent time frames or craft the easy portion and then after that start hammering on the MW portion? Do you convert the MW price into silver pieces like the mundane portion or stay with the gold piece value as the masterwork section sorta-kinda implies?

Thanks

[VRMH]

I started typing about how you were making things needlessly complicated, but then I read the actual rules...

It is needlessly complicated!

I always just increased the value of the base item, increased the DC and then just rolled. But that blurb about "you create the masterwork component as if it were a separate item in addition to the standard item" throws a wrench into the works, and honestly I can't see why.

[Tarantula]

You do masterwork separate to represent you can make a spear, but not make a masterwork spear.

Example: Crafting a spear. Purchase price is 2GP.
1) Price in silver: 20SP
2) Craft DC: 12
3) Pay 1/3rd price... 6SP 6CP.
4) Craft check. For the example, we got a 12, the minimum for success.
Craft result (12) x Craft DC (12) = 144. This is the cost in silver pieces we crafted in a week. Divide by 7 for a day, and we get 20.5. Enough to have made the spear in 1 day.

Masterwork check:
1) Cost of masterwork weapon, in silver: 3000SP
2) Craft DC: 20
3) Pay 1/3rd price... 100GP
4) Craft check. Lets say we got a 12 again. This fails making the spear masterwork, and ruins 1/2 the raw materials. We have to pay another 50GP to try again.

4) Alternate: We make a 20 and succeed.
Craft result (20) x Craft DC (20) 400. At this rate, it would take 7.5 weeks to masterwork this spear. Once the sum of the masterwork craft checks is greater than 3000, you now have a masterwork spear.

All in all, pretty simple. Alternately, you could give up on the masterwork of the spear, and just have a normal spear instead if you were failing and spending too much money on it.

[agentJay]

Tarantula, I want to say thank you for clearly answering the question with concise examples. I wish more people gave examples when answering questions so that when someone that did not write the initial question (me) comes and reads it, I can understand fully what is going on without doing any further research to understand the question or the answer. I applaud you and hope others will read this and start posting answers like this. I especially enjoy the lack of short hand that could have more than one meaning or shorthand that I don't have a clue what it means.

Thanks again,

+J

[Wycen]

So, let me plug in the numbers for a spear of adamantine.

Masterwork check:
1) Cost of masterwork weapon, in adamantine: 30,000 SP
2) Craft DC: 20
3) Pay 1/3rd price... 1000 GP
4) Craft check. 20 (just for minimum success).

Craft result (20) x Craft DC (20) = 400. That represents 1 week of progress. If we divide 30,000 by 400 that's 75. At the current rate of progress, rolling a 20 for the crafting check every week, it'll take 75 weeks to craft a masterwork adamantine spear.

Is that correct?

I will note that something doesn't compute because in the equipment section it states that adamantine weapons cost +3000 gold. But the crafting rules state you use 1/3 the cost in materials; so 1/3 of 3000 is 1000 gold. So....eh?

I'm no statistician, but with a +10 to your roll, that's a 55 % chance of success if you roll a 10 or more. So you'll fail roughly half the time with with a masterwork item, if your skill modifiers are around +10.

So you'll need an apprentice who'll Aid Another for +2. Assuming a blacksmith or weapon-smith counts as an "artisan" you can get masterwork artisan's tools for another +2 to the roll.

So, making mundane items seems like a reasonable expenditure of time and material. I'm not so sure about masterwork/exotic items and materials.

[njharman]

> but with a +10 to your roll, that's a 55 % chance of success if you roll a 10 or more. So you'll fail roughly half the time with with a masterwork item,

You are not a master with only +10 Craft. Would not expect you to be able to craft masterwork items.

[Tarantula]

Yes, crafting an adamantine weapon costs you 1,000GP in materials. Merchants charge the other 2,000GP as cost for the 75weeks or less of work.

Also, crafting is something you can take a 10 on. So if you have at least a +10 modifier you can take 10 and make that spear for sure in 75 weeks.

Sidenote: +10 is not hard to get. Class skill makes every hero get a +3. +1 for the rank. Gnome gets a +2, we're up to +6. Masterwork Artisan tools (55gp) is another +2. Now we're up to +8. 14INT gives the last +2. That's a level 1 character who can easily make masterwork weapons. Just not very quickly. If this is a wizard, crafter's fortune can give him another +5 every day.

Lastly, once a wizard can cast level 5 spells, there is the Fabricate spell. All of your crafting needs in a 1 standard action spell.

[Master_Crafter]

The wonky part is when you start making items out of different, often expensive materials.

Take for instance making two spheres, one of iron, a notoriously hard metal to work with by many standards, and one of gold, a metal which can simply be melted down and cast into a mold.

The iron sphere costs, say, 10sp, while the gold one costs closer to 1000gp (10,000sp).

Although both have the same craft DC, it will take you at least 1000x longer to make the gold sphere you could melt down and cast into a mold over a cookfire than it would to make the iron one you would have to hammer into shape over an anvil.

Also compare that to the time it would take to make an ornate jewelry box (maybe 50gp) with complex inlays and a hinge. The box should have a higher craft DC by aproximately 5 points, but can still be made faster then the gold sphere for some reason.

[Ansel Krulwich]

A reasonable house rule:

Only calculate the crafting time based on the base item (plus masterwork if the material grants it) and not on the special material cost. A mithril breastplate shouldn't take any longer to craft than a normal masterwork breastplate.

[Wycen]

That is something of a reasonable house rule, if you have no baggage from gaming for so long. I remember reading the 2E Volo's Guide to something and think it described adamant, a version of adamantine, as being brittle. So, maybe different materials are harder to work with.

But I'd love it if the book actually stated plainly how the cost modifier and prices for purchase and crafting interacted with each other.

[Ansel Krulwich]

Wycen wrote:

But I'd love it if the book actually stated plainly how the cost modifier and prices for purchase and crafting interacted with each other.

It does state it plainly. Master_Crafter described it above. More expensive mundane items take longer to craft regardless of why they are more expensive.

[Master_Crafter]

I would definitely agree with that house rule, & is indeed how we run things in our group with one small modification: difficult materials to work with increase the craft DC, which thus increases the risk of failure.

We also do not factor the cost of expensive mundane components into the time it takes to craft magical equipment, assuming those components (such as a masterwork weapon) it readily available. & if it is not, that component must be purchased or crafted separately.