Crafting needs an errata change.


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Crafting items seriously just isn't a viable option for the players. I thought Pathfinder would make it actually viable when taking it in from 3.5 but let's face it crafting still takes forever.

First of all, in any realistic sense the players would probably need to craft their own equipment given their class. Example: The quintessential Adamantine Full Plate Armor. Unless you're dexterity based or a spellcaster, this is the armor the character in question would eventually wear.

Except that the crafting rules require you to craft 1500 gp worth of the armor, with 9000 gp worth of the masterwork component (adamantine). Your crappy littLe craft check is in silver pieces. Per week.

Now to buy this from an NPC? Ignoring the fact that full plate must be made to a certain person, this is way too expensive to make in any sensible time. Unless your NPCs just live in the realm of DM fiat (a terrible tool), the average Expert at level 10 would have a craft check of:
10 ranks
3 from trained class skill
3 from skill focus (armorsmithing)
2 from Master Craftsman (armorsmithing)
4 from Intelligence of 18 (generous for an NPC)
totalling 22.

On a take-10 of 32, those DCs are easily boostable by 10 as per the "fast craft" rule (hah fast crafting), meaning that going off the DC 30 adamantine this expert crafts 960 silver, or 96 gp per week.

WOW. That means it will take him 93 weeks just to make the adamantine component. That's over two years to make a suit for one person.

This is clearly just an NPC, right? Now let's take a maximized character. I had this Dwarven Defender character I liked to play who crafted his own armor (had a large backstory based around dwarven shenanigans relating to this). So I looked at how I could max the crap out of this. Ready?
3 from trained class skill
3 from skill focus (armorsmithing)
2 from Master Craftsman (armorsmithing)
2 for the dwarven alternate trait relating to crafting with metal
2 for a reasonable Aid Another every day assuming there are forge hands and apprentices helping
10 for having a Synaptic Mask with a +10 Shard in it corresponding to Craft (armorsmithing) [Only available if Psionics Unleashed is allowed]
2 for having masterwork tools
10 ranks assuming a level 10 character.

Now, this characters armor had AAAAALLLL the stuff. All 3 optional modifications making the full plate part cost 4050 and the adamantine part cost 9000.

On a take 10 check of 44 (WOW), that's crafting:
44 x 39 = 171.6 gp per week, 23.6 (rounded to 24) weeks for mundane part
44 x 40 = 176 gp per week, 51.1 (rounded to 52) weeks for adamantine

Yikes. That's 66 weeks for the armor. No adventuring party is just going to take over a year off. This needs changing.

Not convinced? Okay, so your archer wants a composite bow. There's a freaking enchantment that mitigates the strength modifer problem. For a measly 1000 gold (500 for those with someone in the party with Craft Arms and Armor) you just need to make a Masterwork Composite longbow without the strength modifier. That's 300 for the masterwork component, 100 for the bow itself. A simple character at 5th level can have a craft of 10, enough to make the take-10 DC 20 masterwork check.
That's 20 x 20 = 40 gold per week, 8 weeks for masterwork
20 x 15 = 30 gold per week, 4 weeks for the composite bow

This is with only Aid Another and 5 ranks in a class skill. Minimal investment but it still takes 12 weeks!

What sickens me the most?

"You can craft any early firearm for a cost in raw materials equal to half the price of the firearm. At your GM’s discretion, you can craft advanced firearms for a cost in raw materials equal to half the price of the firearm. Crafting a firearm in this way takes 1 day of work for every 1,000 gp of the firearm’s price (minimum 1 day)."

Guns are made like magic items. Seriously? In a few days one guy can go through the complicated process of treating metal, forging it into a perfect cylinder, cutting a wooden stock, treating the stock, and making intricate mechanisms for firing.

Rule number 1 of any tabletop game: if a player wants to specialize in something it should bring benefit. This is some 3.5 garbage here. It actually discourages players from doing this just through time cost.

Now I know the converse problem: if a player can craft something in a short amount of time he can make a lot of money, right? Crafting at 1/3 and selling at 1/2. I've done the math and it roughly works out to where selling something you craft repeatedly and simply using Craft as a Profession check (which it does say can be done) makes about the same amount of money, give or take depending on your ranks, what you can craft, the most optimal way to use time, etc.

Paizo, please. Gunslingers tick me off to no end and then you give them the ability to work for a couple days and come out with a revolutionary double barreled gun. Archers take weeks to carve wood. Armorsmiths can't even risk taking a holiday else it interrupts their crafting. This system clearly needs a revision.

I mean seriously, even with outside sourcebooks it STILL takes over a year to make adamantine armor on a craft-optimized character.


While I agree that crafting needs an update, an adamantine full plate set should take at least 6 months to craft. A master crafter does nothing in a hurry.


Even then there should be some way to expedite the crafting.

You can increase the DC by 5 to double the amount you make of a magic item and have a Valet archetype familiar cut the time required in half to craft magic items at 4x speed.

And yet magic just can't do anything whatsoever to help make mundane items.

Liberty's Edge

I'm not disagreeing with your premise (far from it), but Skill Focus will add +6 with 10 ranks in the skill.

It doesn't invalidate your point by any means, though.


IT doesn't fix all problems, but one possible solution is to just ignore the price of the special materials when determining crafting time. A suit of mithral full plate or adamantine full plate would take the same amount of time to craft as a suit of steel full plate.

If the material is harder then normal to work (adamantine, with twice the hardness of steel, may be considered hard to work) could add a fixed amount of time. Maybe +2 weeks to the crafting time.

And if an Expert can get to 10th level, then so can a wizard. And no one will hire an expert to spend years to craft a single suit of armor when the wizard can do it within a day with a single casting of Fabricate.


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Theomniadept wrote:
WOW. That means it will take him 93 weeks just to make the adamantine component. That's over two years to make a suit for one person.

You've got some serious unexamined assumptions going on. Do you have a clear vision of how long it should take for a crafting PC to make a suit of adamantine plate?

Two years doesn't seem like a crazy number TBH, and if you're playing "dudes who live in this fanrtasy world and have adventures", it's not at all unreasonable. Of course, if you're playing "stage III terminal bone cancer, level 20 in 6 months or bust!", then 2 years is the same number as "infinity".

Now, I have a very clear idea of how long it should take to hammer out a suit of adamantine plate: "One montage". I also know how long it takes an actual craft-specialized character to make a suit of adamantine plate: 1 standard action.

But you clearly want some kind of number between 1 round and 2 years. So why don't you tell us that number instead of demanding that the devs provide you with a number you like?


Jeraa wrote:

IT doesn't fix all problems, but one possible solution is to just ignore the price of the special materials when determining crafting time. A suit of mithral full plate or adamantine full plate would take the same amount of time to craft as a suit of steel full plate.

If the material is harder then normal to work (adamantine, with twice the hardness of steel, may be considered hard to work) could add a fixed amount of time. Maybe +2 weeks to the crafting time.

And if an Expert can get to 10th level, then so can a wizard. And no one will hire an expert to spend years to craft a single suit of armor when the wizard can do it within a day with a single casting of Fabricate.

"You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship."

Still requires craft investment, and magic in this way just puts everything out of business (although I admit every system with magic make sin OP).


Theomniadept wrote:

Even then there should be some way to expedite the crafting.

You can increase the DC by 5 to double the amount you make of a magic item and have a Valet archetype familiar cut the time required in half to craft magic items at 4x speed.

And yet magic just can't do anything whatsoever to help make mundane items.

There was a whole discussion on fabricate and this exact scenario which led to the devs releasing a ruling that explicitly stated that fabricate can indeed fabricate a suit of adamantine full plate. Problem solved.

But lovingly hand crafting it, amidst the other work a master crafter would likely have, just takes good old fashioned sweat, time, knowledge, tools, and material.

In real life, just because you are a master crafter, it doesn't mean that you make certain things faster than a journeyman, it means you make it at a much higher quality. Or that you can make it while the journeyman doesn't even know how.


Theomniadept wrote:


"You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship."

Still requires craft investment, and magic in this way just puts everything out of business (although I admit every system with magic make sin OP).

Only a DC 20 check. A 9th level wizard (minimum to cast Fabricate), with 2 ranks in Craft(Armor) and a 20 Intelligence (not that unlikely, its the wizards primary stat*) could achieve that by taking 10. Thats with only the investment of 2 ranks into the skill.

*16 base, +1 boost at 4th and 8th level, +2 Headband of Intellect. Since the wizard would most likely have at least a +2 headband by this time, the skill included could very well be Craft(Armor). Meaning no real additional investment at all is needed, as the wizard would of had the headband anyway for his spellcasting.

And yes, of course magic puts everything mundane out of business. Thats been a known problem for over a decade (At least since 3.0 D&D). If you follow the rules/guidelines as laid out in the books, then you get a highly magical society. To use 3.X D&D again, you get Eberron. Magical artificers cranking out magical items. Enchanted streetlights. Sentient magical constructs (or undead regiments) made for war. Flying ships. Magical food dispensers. Fixing that to make the world more mundane, where magic isn't the go-to problem solver, would require either outright ignoring the problem or a complete overhaul of the magic system.


So why doesn't the hypothetical NPC Mastercraftsman have Masterwork tools or apprentices/journeymen/other assistants helping him?


Pendin Fust wrote:
Theomniadept wrote:

Even then there should be some way to expedite the crafting.

You can increase the DC by 5 to double the amount you make of a magic item and have a Valet archetype familiar cut the time required in half to craft magic items at 4x speed.

And yet magic just can't do anything whatsoever to help make mundane items.

There was a whole discussion on fabricate and this exact scenario which led to the devs releasing a ruling that explicitly stated that fabricate can indeed fabricate a suit of adamantine full plate. Problem solved.

But lovingly hand crafting it, amidst the other work a master crafter would likely have, just takes good old fashioned sweat, time, knowledge, tools, and material.

In real life, just because you are a master crafter, it doesn't mean that you make certain things faster than a journeyman, it means you make it at a much higher quality. Or that you can make it while the journeyman doesn't even know how.

In my group we have the following house rules regarding the craft skill.

1) Craft results are in gold pieces instead of silver pieces.
2) Special materials increase the value of the item but not the time to craft it. Instead you use the base cost as the difficulty of the work does not change (the DC of crafting does not increase in core, which means any smith that can create an armor regularly has no more difficulty in doing so with adamantine or mithral).

Thus a dwarven smith with a +12 craft (1 rank, +3 class skill, +3 skill focus, +1 Int, +2 racial, +2 mwk tools) would get 440 gp worth of work done each week on a suit of armor (assuming DC 20 and taking 10). It would take him about a month to make a single suit of full plate armor (1500 gp).


Vod Canockers wrote:

So why doesn't the hypothetical NPC Mastercraftsman have Masterwork tools or apprentices/journeymen/other assistants helping him?

Just forgot to add them, but even then that's only a +4 to a skill that would reduce the overall time by a week or two.

I realize Fabricate is just shenanigans all over the place but there really should be some benefit to having invested into such skills.


Ashiel wrote:

In my group we have the following house rules regarding the craft skill.

1) Craft results are in gold pieces instead of silver pieces.
2) Special materials increase the value of the item but not the time to craft it. Instead you use the base cost as the difficulty of the work does not change (the DC of crafting does not increase in core, which means any smith that can create an armor regularly has no more difficulty in doing so with adamantine or mithral).

Thus a dwarven smith with a +12 craft (1 rank, +3 class skill, +3 skill focus, +1 Int, +2 racial, +2 mwk tools) would get 440 gp worth of work done each week on a suit of armor (assuming DC 20 and taking 10). It would take him about a month to make a single suit of full plate armor (1500 gp).

I love the part that I bolded.

It makes crafters more... fantasy like. A level 10 crafter look more like an amazing crafter with this.
And it makes spells vs mundane closer to each other when talking about crafting, which is better.


I actually like that idea. Other skills have bonuses granted from having certain amounts of ranks in them, so why not Craft?

Like, 5 ranks in craft allows crafting in silver pieces per day instead of per week, 10 ranks for gold pieces per week, 15 ranks for gold pieces per day?

Shadow Lodge RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8

Just gonna throw this out here, but have you looked at the Amazing Tools of Manufacture?


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Making Craft Work is outstanding. It addresses your concerns very well, and only costs 99 cents. I'm not usually a buyer of third-party material, but this was the best $1 upgrade to Pathfinder I've ever seen!


Yeah, but third party to me has a lot of problems; namely, that Paizo themselves does not acknowledge the problems in their system.

Renchak, that item is -amazing-. Plain and simple. I have never seen that item before; it actually makes the skill useable! This is the exact same feeling that I got from learning about the Trapmaker's Sack (which made that skill actually useful). I will remember this for my characters in the future!


1. Sorry for double post, but I misspelled Benchack

2. Does that set of crafting tools mean it isn't worth it to put more than 6 ranks into a craft? I mean 6 ranks + 3 for class skill + 4 for tools + 2 aid another + 4 for INT score, not to mention a cheap +2 headband of Intellect keyed to give one craft max ranks means you auto-succeed the check.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I think a lot of these issues could be solved by simply creating a feat that lets you create gp per check instead of sp, basically creating a Master Alchemist feat for each crafting type. You could even add a second feat that allows you to craft at magic item speeds.


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I've given my players this option on top of using Making Crafting Work. Of course, this is for a high magic game.

Legendary Craftsman
You are capable of amazing, near-magical feats of craftsmanship.
Prerequisites: Master Craftsman, 9 ranks in one Craft skill chosen for Master Craftsman
Benefit: Once per day when using one Craft skill chosen with Master Craftsman, you can duplicate the effects of the masterwork transformation or fabricate spell. This is an extraordinary ability.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Each time it applies to a different Craft skill.


Theomniadept wrote:
Yeah, but third party to me has a lot of problems; namely, that Paizo themselves does not acknowledge the problems in their system.

Is "2-2½ months" the number you were looking for? What makes it a better number than "1" (montage, standard action, year)?

Liberty's Edge

Theomniadept wrote:


Now to buy this from an NPC? Ignoring the fact that full plate must be made to a certain person, this is way too expensive to make in any sensible time. Unless your NPCs just live in the realm of DM fiat (a terrible tool), the average Expert at level 10 would have a craft check of:
10 ranks
3 from trained class skill
3 from skill focus (armorsmithing)
2 from Master Craftsman (armorsmithing)
4 from Intelligence of 18 (generous for an NPC)
totalling 22.

Actually:

10 ranks
3 from trained class skill
6 from skill focus and 10 ranks in the skill (armorsmithing)
2 from Master Craftsman (armorsmithing)
2 from masterwork tools
10 for having a forge and working in it (Ultimate Campaign)
2 for each apprentice helping you and achieving 10+ on his craft check (let's assume you have 2 normal apprentice that suceed half of the time, for a net +2 modifier)
2 and double production speed for a skilled helper with Cooperative crafting
2 from Intelligence of 14

total: 39
Taking 10 we have a skill check result of 49

Boosted DC of 30, he produce 49*30*2= 2,940 sp/weep, or 294 gp week.
total cost of a damantine full plate, 16,500
56.12 weeks to make the adamantine full plate.

Building a full plate armor isn't a single guy activity, it is the work of a whole shop.

In our world crafting a Maximillan armor could require upward to two years, so building this armor made of ultra hard material in a bit more than a year seem appropriate.

- * -

Personally I would keep separate the production of the needed adamantine ingots from the actual armor production and that would further reduce the production time.

Liberty's Edge

About fabricate:

Sean K Reynolds wrote:


Irranshalee wrote:
but can it be a full plate since full plate takes cloth, leather, and armor?

The spell says "material of one sort." Cloth, leather, and metal are three different materials. I'm a lenient GM and would probably let you make a suit of full plate out of the component materials, but as written the spell doesn't let you do that.

Everything you've asked about is either answered in the spell description, or answered because there's nothing in the spell description to indicate what you're implying in your interpretation of the spell.

So to make a adamantine fullplate you need the adamantine ingots, the clot for the padding, the leather for the buckles, a casting of fabricate each component (as a minimum one for the metal part of the armor, one for the padding and one for the leather straps) and them you need some actual crafting to assemble the components.

Still way faster than making all the armour by hand, but not instantaneous.


So, we have a DC 19 suit of fullplate with a masterwork component.

Cost of adamantine fullplate: 16350 DC 19 + 10 for rushing
Cost of Masterwork: 150 DC: 20 + 10 for rushing

Our Lv 10 expert has

10 ranks
3 class skill
6 skill focus
2 from Master Craftsman (armorsmithing)
2 from masterwork tools
10 for having a forge and working in it
2 for an apprentice, but RAW you can have as many of these as you'd like
2 and double production speed for a skilled helper with Cooperative crafting
2 from Intelligence of 14
5 from heart of the fields

and a 5% discount from eldritch smith.

So +44 +10= 54*2*29 or 30 with only one apprentice.

Masterwork is 1425 sp and adamantine fullplate is 155325

Fullplate: 155325/3132= 49.6 weeks
Masterwork: 1425/3240= .5 weeks

So 50 weeks with one apprentice.

Make that 10 apprentices and it's 44 weeks.

Is that really that long of a wait for the best non magical armour in the game?

Designer, RPG Superstar Judge

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Google how long it takes to craft chain mail or full plate.


So, that's the target time for a 5th level person with the bonuses to their roll you'd expect such a character to have?

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Where's this FAQ that explicitly said Fabricate can make adamantine armor, and by extension, any masterwork item?

==Aelryinth


Prodigy adds +4 to the check, dwarves and gnomes get racial bonuses. You'd be amazed at how high you can get that check up. It's min maxing and optimizing on the opposite side of the screen. Isn't there also a class that gets to add level or half level to the check?


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@Aelryinth: The FAQ is Here

Quote:

Fabricate: Can I use this to make a masterwork item or an item with a special material?

Yes and yes. In effect, the spell is only saving you time compared to crafting the item nonmagically; you still must provide the raw materials (which costs you 1/3 of the item's price).
The spell doesn't require a Craft check if you're making an item that doesn't require a high degree of craftsmanship, such as a desk, door, club, outfit, or simple kind of armor.
Creating a desk with a secret compartment, a door that matches a wall when it is closed (i.e., a secret door), or a masterwork item count as items with a "high degree of craftsmanship," so you must succed at a appropriate Craft check against the DC to craft these sorts of items with the spell. In general, any item that has a Craft DC of 15 or higher requires you to succeed at a Craft check to fabricate the item.
If you want to create (for example) a mithral chain shirt, you need to provide the mithral and other materials needed for the chain shirt (costing 1/3 of the item's price). Because mithral items are always masterwork, you would have to succeed at a Craft check to successfully create the item.
As with the normal crafting rules, if you fail this check by 4 or less, you fail to create the item but do not ruin your materials (and could cast the spell again using those materials). If you fail by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials and have to pay half the original raw material cost again.

—Pathfinder Design Team, 06/06/13


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Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Google how long it takes to craft chain mail or full plate.

Something that strikes me as amusing is that the crafter in question had 10 ranks in the skill and was optimized for it, along with gear, assistants, etc. No human being in the history of the world has ever been 10th level. It's just impossible by mortal standards.

It's like saying "google how far you can jump". World record holders have jumped - with extreme training - less than 30 ft. In D&D, they can out jump this effortlessly at 10th level.

10 ranks = 10 feat.
Take 10 = 10 feet.
+3 class skill = 3 feet.
+6 strength (or Dex for Pathfinder) = 6 feet.

Net result is the ability to jump 29 feet anytime you feel like it. If you roll even average (11+) you exceed the world record of a long jump (in over 50 years nobody has cleared a full 30 feet). That's also assuming that we're not optimized for jumping (like world class jumping athletes would be), so we're not talking about fast movement, skill focus, or acrobatic which would allow greater than ever preformed jumps as a casual day to day activity.

It seems odd to suggest that a super human crafter who exceeds the skill and technical ability of real people by such an extreme and otherworldly margin are shackled to the expectations of the mundane in such a way.

An olympic medalist might look like this.
1st level Expert, acrobatics feat (+2 acrobatics/fly), skill focus (acrobatics), 1 rank, +3 class skill, +2 dexterity = +11 Acrobatics. Enough to BEAT the world record for the long jump on a roll of 18-20 (15% chance). Which is pretty generous given that 29.x feet have been the standing record for more than 50 years.

A normal smith? +5. 1 rank, +3 skill, maybe +1 from stats. Enough to forge common armors routinely. An extremely skilled but mundane smith would be able to hit numbers similar to the olympic medalist, and would be a peerless individual in reality, where casually he exceeds masterwork quality by taking 10, with nary the help of a single assistant.

It seems bizarre to try and liken a 10th level character who has emphasized ANY skill in the game to the mundane unwashed masses that we are in reality.


Thinking further on it, it actually astounds me even more when you consider the fact that it seems a common theme to take things that are actually possible for people to do in reality and make them require relatively huge amounts of feats and/or levels to perform in game.

>.>


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Oh, which reminds me of a house rule I left out before on accident. Instead of adjusting the DC of the crafted item by a flat +10 (seriously, who came up with this?), you can increase the DC as desired. So if you've got a +15 to your Craft Skill you can increase the DC to 25 to work faster (even if the item is usually lower than DC 25). Next level you get to +16? DC 26. Crafting a little faster each time.

EDIT: In our games, if Diego's 10th level craftsman with the 49 check result taking 10 wanted to craft a suit of full plate he would net 49*49=2,401 gp worth of work per week. Meanwhile a more mundane smith would need to take 20 (with all the slowness that involves), or in the case of the olympic smith would need about a month of work.

EDIT 2: And it's not like the Paizo staff is overly concerned with realism. Alchemists in Pathfinder can create alchemical goods at goofy speeds without resorting to magic. I mean at 3rd level they make items at +100% speed. At 18th level you can create any alchemical item - on the spot - as a full-round action. That's literally the ability to go "oh hey, here, I mixed this bomb that takes about half a week for someone with a +10 Craft Alchemy skill to make, except I did it in 6 seconds.

Seriously, why on earth would someone say "google time it takes to make armor"? Why didn't anyone at Paizo "google armor and notice that plate mail was bullet proof"? >.>

EDIT 3: Or are we doing the whole "well it's a class feature" thing? Does this mean that if someone wants to do superhuman things with skills (but not all skills, because clearly you can do superhuman things with some skills but strangely not all skills) we need a class for it?

Behold the class for those who want to craft things!

Dat Crafter
1: +1 craft (whatever)
2: +1 craft (whatever)
3: +1 craft (whatever), swift crafting (+100% craft speed)
4: +1 craft (whatever)
5: +1 craft (whatever)
6: +1 craft (whatever)
7: +1 craft (whatever)
8: +1 craft (whatever)
9: +1 craft (whatever)
10: +1 craft (whatever), swift crafting II (+200% craft speed)
11: +1 craft (whatever)
12: +1 craft (whatever)
13: +1 craft (whatever)
14: +1 craft (whatever)
15: +1 craft (whatever)
16: +1 craft (whatever)
17: +1 craft (whatever)
18: +1 craft (whatever), swift crafting III (it's nommagical fabricate!)
19: +1 craft (whatever)
20: +1 craft (whatever), Capstone: You endured taking a stupid class for 20 levels to be able to say you're not the equivalent to an under-educated 1st level blacksmith.

Hurray! :D


Forgemaster (Cleric; Dwarf) wrote:

Master Smith (Ex)

At 5th level, a forgemaster can craft mundane metal items quickly, using half their gp value to determine progress, and can craft magical metal items in half the normal amount of time.

If not for the crappy domain choice this would actually be a pretty cool archetype. I have one as my main weapon crafting NPC in my homebrew campaign.

Alchemists get to add their level to Craft (alchemy), maybe we can get a sort of Artificer class that gets to add his level to the craft checks, or something along those lines.

Liberty's Edge

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Ashiel wrote:
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Google how long it takes to craft chain mail or full plate.

Something that strikes me as amusing is that the crafter in question had 10 ranks in the skill and was optimized for it, along with gear, assistants, etc. No human being in the history of the world has ever been 10th level. It's just impossible by mortal standards.

A often repeated opinion with very little basis for it.

Yes, some check for action like jumping can support that, but what is the skill check to free climb a mountain with difficulty 5 or 6?

25 A rough surface, such as a natural rock wall or a brick wall.
30 An overhang or ceiling with handholds only.

So normally 25 with point touching 30. There is people that do that routinely.
So it they take 10 they need a skill bonus of 20 to succeed.

Let's see:
- strength 18 +4
- class skill +3
- masterwork gear +2
- skill focus +3
= +12, taking 10 = 22
so they need at last 8 levels to routinely succeed at their check,

Add that sometime the surface is crumbling (at least a +2 to the DC) and wet (+5 Surface is slippery) and you need 10+ levels to routinely succeed.

Or what level is the guy that survived a 8,000 feet fall without a parachute?
Or Master Sergeant Raul (Roy) Perez Benavidez that survived "a total of 37 separate bayonet, bullet and shrapnel wounds received on multiple occasions over the course of the six hour fight between the 13 men and an enemy battalion," still fighting and aiding the wounded till the end of the fight? Even considering an average value of 4 hp for each wound, we have a total of 148 hp of damage. Fighter with toughness, con 18 and an average of 8 on each dice = level 12 (156 hp, he was still standing when evacuated).


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I think it is important to try to bear in mind that the intersection between reality and D&D rules (any edition) is relatively small. Trying to argue that real life somehow follows hit point or skill rules is insane.

I'd say crafting should be faster just so that it isn't yet another area a spellcaster can make a non-caster look like a chump. I don't think real life really needs to enter into it, especially when in fantasy stories, myths, and the like crafting can be a lot faster than it was historically.

Throw the crafters a bone! I liked the crafting as a gold rate instead of silver as well adjusting the craft DC point by point for speed.

And as a point of comparison, it's a bit bizarre when you can enchant powerful magicks into an item far, far faster than you can actually make the item. That's weird, eh?


Theomniadept wrote:

Crafting items seriously just isn't a viable option for the players. I thought Pathfinder would make it actually viable when taking it in from 3.5 but let's face it crafting still takes forever.

First of all, in any realistic sense the players would probably need to craft their own equipment given their class. Example: The quintessential Adamantine Full Plate Armor. Unless you're dexterity based or a spellcaster, this is the armor the character in question would eventually wear.

Except that the crafting rules require you to craft 1500 gp worth of the armor, with 9000 gp worth of the masterwork component (adamantine). Your crappy littLe craft check is in silver pieces. Per week.

Now to buy this from an NPC? Ignoring the fact that full plate must be made to a certain person, this is way too expensive to make in any sensible time. Unless your NPCs just live in the realm of DM fiat (a terrible tool), the average Expert at level 10 would have a craft check of:
10 ranks
3 from trained class skill
3 from skill focus (armorsmithing)
2 from Master Craftsman (armorsmithing)
4 from Intelligence of 18 (generous for an NPC)
totalling 22.

On a take-10 of 32, those DCs are easily boostable by 10 as per the "fast craft" rule (hah fast crafting), meaning that going off the DC 30 adamantine this expert crafts 960 silver, or 96 gp per week.

WOW. That means it will take him 93 weeks just to make the adamantine component. That's over two years to make a suit for one person.

This is clearly just an NPC, right? Now let's take a maximized character. I had this Dwarven Defender character I liked to play who crafted his own armor (had a large backstory based around dwarven shenanigans relating to this). So I looked at how I could max the crap out of this. Ready?
3 from trained class skill
3 from skill focus (armorsmithing)
2 from Master Craftsman (armorsmithing)
2 for the dwarven alternate trait relating to crafting with metal
2 for a reasonable Aid Another every day assuming...

2 years to make adamantine full plate sounds about right to me. Not sure about how long it should take to make a gun, but the 2 years for adamantine full plate sounds right on the money. That's an investment in time and energy. Will most PCs do this... hell no, but that's what NPCs are for.

Liberty's Edge

Drachasor wrote:

I think it is important to try to bear in mind that the intersection between reality and D&D rules (any edition) is relatively small. Trying to argue that real life somehow follows hit point or skill rules is insane.

I'd say crafting should be faster just so that it isn't yet another area a spellcaster can make a non-caster look like a chump. I don't think real life really needs to enter into it, especially when in fantasy stories, myths, and the like crafting can be a lot faster than it was historically.

Throw the crafters a bone! I liked the crafting as a gold rate instead of silver as well adjusting the craft DC point by point for speed.

And as a point of comparison, it's a bit bizarre when you can enchant powerful magicks into an item far, far faster than you can actually make the item. That's weird, eh?

Faster? ok, but not to the point some people seem to argue.

The problem is that you produce "X value" of items every day, but in some instance that don't reflect the difficulty of making the item but instead the rarity of the material or the special market for it.

All the poison prices reflect the danger of making them and the problems in selling them in most cities. But the RL check to make them is relatively simple and require relatively little time.

What people seem to forget and is not well reflected in the rules is that most armorer shops had multiple people doing multiple jobs at the same item.
Cutting the leather for the straps and affixing the buckles to them was done by apprentices. Same thing for the first rough polishing of the armor pieces and so on.

Cooperative crafting should be the norm for crafting NPC and it should stack:

Quote:


Cooperative Crafting

Your assistance makes item crafting far more efficient.

Prerequisites: 1 rank in any Craft skill, any item creation feat.

Benefit: You can assist another character in crafting mundane and magical items. You must both possess the relevant Craft skill or item creation feat, but either one of you can fulfill any other prerequisites for crafting the item. You provide a +2 circumstance bonus on any Craft or Spellcraft checks related to making an item, and your assistance doubles the gp value of items that can be crafted each day.

Probably the best solution would be to make it a form of teamwork feat or create a new similar feat that is a teamwork feat where the bonuses stack.


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Diego Rossi wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Google how long it takes to craft chain mail or full plate.

Something that strikes me as amusing is that the crafter in question had 10 ranks in the skill and was optimized for it, along with gear, assistants, etc. No human being in the history of the world has ever been 10th level. It's just impossible by mortal standards.

A often repeated opinion with very little basis for it.

Actually there's very much basis. As much basis as saying that "While Goku can blow up the world with his awesome martial arts, real martial artists are as an ant to the sun by comparison". Human beings are just not high level creatures. Most of the things that we have as being supernatural beings of mythological legend (such as hydras) are actually pretty mild in the scale that is D&D.

Human beings have to fear normal mundane things. We fear falling down. We fear getting stabbed by a knife for fear we'll bleed to death. We get sick and can die from mundane diseases. The d20 system defines DCs as this:

SRD-Skill DCs wrote:


Difficulty (DC) Example (Skill Used)
Very easy (0) Notice something large in plain sight (Spot)
Easy (5) Climb a knotted rope (Climb)
Average (10) Hear an approaching guard (Listen)
Tough (15) Rig a wagon wheel to fall off (Disable Device)
Challenging (20) Swim in stormy water (Swim)
Formidable (25) Open an average lock (Open Lock)
Heroic (30) Leap across a 30-foot chasm (Jump)
Nearly impossible (40) Track a squad of orcs across hard ground after 24 hours of rainfall (Survival)
Quote:


Yes, some check for action like jumping can support that, but what is the skill check to free climb a mountain with difficulty 5 or 6?

25 A rough surface, such as a natural rock wall or a brick wall.
30 An overhang or ceiling with handholds only.

Except that most rough stone surfaces are DC 15 which puts them in the realm of stuff an experienced climber can do. The DC 25 version is for one where there are no handholds of any sort, merely being somewhat rough (and are the sort that you would likely need pitons and ropes to assist with unless you were suicidal). Or it would take you a while if you were extremely, extremely skilled.

Feats: Athletic, Skill Focus (Climb) +5
Ranks: 1, +3 for class skill = +4
Strength: 20 (18 base, +2 racial) = +5
Taking 10: +10
Result = 24.
Masterwork Tool allows our climber to hit DC 26 routinely due to his or her incredibly physical fitness and tools. Climbing across a ceiling is another thing entirely. I'm not sure I know of any human beings that can do that routinely. Without the masterwork tools you COULD do it, but it would come with risk of falling (because you'd have to actually test against the DC rather than taking 10).

These incredibly skilled individuals are climbing on stuff. The majority of the surfaces they climb on with relative ease are what would be defined as about DC 15 in the rules as they clearly have handholds to grasp. There are some individuals who attempt the dreaded DC 30. Some succeed, others fail. Hitting the DC 30 means traveling about 10 ft. with each successful climb check.

Quote:
Or what level is the guy that survived a 8,000 feet fall without a parachute?

That depends. Can he do it more than once? Extreme statistics willing you could take as little as 20 points of damage from such a fall. Which a Pathfinder commoner could survive if their racial bonus was in Constitution. What you land in/on can also by RAW affect the amount of damage you take. It's my understanding he wasn't swan-diving into a concrete floor.

Quote:
Or Master Sergeant Raul (Roy) Perez Benavidez that survived "a total of 37 separate bayonet, bullet and shrapnel wounds received on multiple occasions over the course of the six hour fight between the 13 men and an enemy battalion," still fighting and aiding the wounded till the end of the fight? Even considering an average value of 4 hp for each wound, we have a total of 148 hp of damage. Fighter with toughness, con 18 and an average of 8 on each dice = level 12 (156 hp, he was still standing when evacuated).

Truly a heroic individual. They don't give those medal away like party favors. But he could do that without being 12th level. Barbarian 5 (representing military training) with the Invulnerable Rager option would give him 38 base HP. Throw in an 18 Con (15 base, +2 race, +1 4th level) and that's another +20 HP for 58. Add Endurance, Diehard, Toughness and toughness for another +5 hp and functionality under extreme duress (he can continue to act until -18), giving him 64 Hp, DR 2/-, and the ability to keep pressing onward despite wounds that were noted as being serious and bleeding.

Assuming 4 damage per attack like you did, he would have been left at -10 HP with 8 more effective HP remaining due to Diehard (which for the record actually sounds like the description of this man found on wikipedia as he was brutalized but through sheer determination continued to function despite his body telling him it was time to roll over and die pretty much the whole time).


But aren't mid-level Pathfinder characters already crafting at heroic speed? They can make a suit of masterwork plate mail in a tenth of the time a real-world armourer would have taken. It's just the adamantine that's the problem.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Diego Rossi wrote:
Drachasor wrote:

I think it is important to try to bear in mind that the intersection between reality and D&D rules (any edition) is relatively small. Trying to argue that real life somehow follows hit point or skill rules is insane.

I'd say crafting should be faster just so that it isn't yet another area a spellcaster can make a non-caster look like a chump. I don't think real life really needs to enter into it, especially when in fantasy stories, myths, and the like crafting can be a lot faster than it was historically.

Throw the crafters a bone! I liked the crafting as a gold rate instead of silver as well adjusting the craft DC point by point for speed.

And as a point of comparison, it's a bit bizarre when you can enchant powerful magicks into an item far, far faster than you can actually make the item. That's weird, eh?

Faster? ok, but not to the point some people seem to argue.

The problem is that you produce "X value" of items every day, but in some instance that don't reflect the difficulty of making the item but instead the rarity of the material or the special market for it.

All the poison prices reflect the danger of making them and the problems in selling them in most cities. But the RL check to make them is relatively simple and require relatively little time.

What people seem to forget and is not well reflected in the rules is that most armorer shops had multiple people doing multiple jobs at the same item.
Cutting the leather for the straps and affixing the buckles to them was done by apprentices. Same thing for the first rough polishing of the armor pieces and so on.

Cooperative crafting should be the norm for crafting NPC and it should stack:

Quote:


Cooperative Crafting

Your assistance makes item crafting far more efficient.

Prerequisites: 1 rank in any Craft skill, any item creation feat.

Benefit: You can assist another character in crafting mundane and magical items. You must both possess the relevant Craft skill or item

...

Eh, yet another feat so that a dozen trained people can still not replicate what any 9th+ wizard can do with a single spell? No thanks.

The game has people with fantastic skills of mythic proportions. No reason to try to hold crafting by the neck and insist on some sort of realism. Though I could see modifying the rules for assisting others if there's an obvious division of labor available. Heck, it's not hard to ad-hoc it by breaking down a crafting job into multiple crafting jobs -- all by the rules, pretty much.

Require a feat for that? Pure madness, my friend. You want to make one for looking both ways before you cross the street too? A real problem that crops up even with official books is making a bloody feat for trivial mundane crap anyone could do.


Ashiel wrote:
Diego Rossi wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Google how long it takes to craft chain mail or full plate.

Something that strikes me as amusing is that the crafter in question had 10 ranks in the skill and was optimized for it, along with gear, assistants, etc. No human being in the history of the world has ever been 10th level. It's just impossible by mortal standards.

A often repeated opinion with very little basis for it.

Actually there's very much basis. As much basis as saying that "While Goku can blow up the world with his awesome martial arts, real martial artists are as an ant to the sun by comparison". Human beings are just not high level creatures. Most of the things that we have as being supernatural beings of mythological legend (such as hydras) are actually pretty mild in the scale that is D&D.

Human beings have to fear normal mundane things. We fear falling down. We fear getting stabbed by a knife for fear we'll bleed to death. We get sick and can die from mundane diseases. The d20 system defines DCs as this:....

Or you know, the DC20 could just not represent the real world very well (which it doesn't). Some stuff you need several levels to replicate. Other stuff allows you to win at the Olympics at 1st level. To say nothing of how the HP system is really not reflective of reality at all (nor is it trying to be).

Square Peg, Round Hole.

Or, d20 don't give no crap about Bernoulli.


Matthew Downie wrote:
But aren't mid-level Pathfinder characters already crafting at heroic speed? They can make a suit of masterwork plate mail in a tenth of the time a real-world armourer would have taken. It's just the adamantine that's the problem.

The problem is more on a base level. Take a look at this example smith, a person who's dedicated a huge amount of their study and life to smithing.

1st level expert
+1 rank in Craft
+3 class skill
+1 Int modifier
+2 masterwork tools
+3 Skill Focus
Total +10 Modifier

Their craft check taking 10 is 20. Working on a suit of plate mail (DC 19), they do 380 sp of work every week. The cost of a suit of plate mail is 1,500 gp, or 15,000 sp. This means it will take an expert smith with masterwork tools almost 40 weeks to create a single suit of mundane plate armor.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Ignore the special material, and the times work out just fine. Include the special material, and you make that kind of armor much more special to find. 40 weeks for one 1st-level smith to make full plate is a sensible period of time.

It's not much use for a 9th level NPC wizard to waste ranks in craft(armorsmithing), when the requests for adamantine full plate are probably about as frequent as an armor smith could make it in the first place. Not many can afford the stuff.


*shrug* 66 weeks for a master craftsperson to make adamantine full plate sounds fine to me.

Quote:
No adventuring party is just going to take over a year off.

Huh. People play weird, AFAIC. :D


Majuba wrote:

Ignore the special material, and the times work out just fine. Include the special material, and you make that kind of armor much more special to find. 40 weeks for one 1st-level smith to make full plate is a sensible period of time.

It's not much use for a 9th level NPC wizard to waste ranks in craft(armorsmithing), when the requests for adamantine full plate are probably about as frequent as an armor smith could make it in the first place. Not many can afford the stuff.

Considering a vast majority of smiths are 1st level, real smiths could make armor in 5-8 weeks, and this smith in particular is incredibly optimized, it's really not okay.


Aratrok wrote:

Ignore the special material, and the times work out just fine. Include the special material, and you make that kind of armor much more special to find. 40 weeks for one 1st-level smith to make full plate is a sensible period of time.

It's not much use for a 9th level NPC wizard to waste ranks in craft(armorsmithing), when the requests for adamantine full plate are probably about as frequent as an armor smith could make it in the first place. Not many can afford the stuff.

A 9th level wizard doesn't even need to invest much in craft.

INT : 16 [base] + 2 [race] + 2 [level] + 2 [item] = 22 (+6 modifier)
So by taking 10, you can craft almost anything not masterwork in a couple round (DC 16 or less routinely). You have also 30% chance to create ANY item at all.

With 1 rank, you got +10 total. So with 4-5 ranks (weapon smith, armor smith, jewelry and bows, for example, and maybe the one to craft locks), you can craft ANYTHING, routinely (=> by taking 10).
The only items that are "hard" to craft with it will be alchemical items, but they're not very useful at 9th level...


Pupsocket wrote:
Theomniadept wrote:
WOW. That means it will take him 93 weeks just to make the adamantine component. That's over two years to make a suit for one person.

You've got some serious unexamined assumptions going on. Do you have a clear vision of how long it should take for a crafting PC to make a suit of adamantine plate?

Two years doesn't seem like a crazy number TBH, and if you're playing "dudes who live in this fanrtasy world and have adventures", it's not at all unreasonable. Of course, if you're playing "stage III terminal bone cancer, level 20 in 6 months or bust!", then 2 years is the same number as "infinity".

Now, I have a very clear idea of how long it should take to hammer out a suit of adamantine plate: "One montage". I also know how long it takes an actual craft-specialized character to make a suit of adamantine plate: 1 standard action.

But you clearly want some kind of number between 1 round and 2 years. So why don't you tell us that number instead of demanding that the devs provide you with a number you like?

This is pretty much what I think as well: there is no "correct" amount of time for something to take in-game, other than your personal preference.


Avh wrote:
Aratrok wrote:

Ignore the special material, and the times work out just fine. Include the special material, and you make that kind of armor much more special to find. 40 weeks for one 1st-level smith to make full plate is a sensible period of time.

It's not much use for a 9th level NPC wizard to waste ranks in craft(armorsmithing), when the requests for adamantine full plate are probably about as frequent as an armor smith could make it in the first place. Not many can afford the stuff.

A 9th level wizard doesn't even need to invest much in craft.

INT : 16 [base] + 2 [race] + 2 [level] + 2 [item] = 22 (+6 modifier)
So by taking 10, you can craft almost anything not masterwork in a couple round (DC 16 or less routinely). You have also 30% chance to create ANY item at all.

With 1 rank, you got +10 total. So with 4-5 ranks (weapon smith, armor smith, jewelry and bows, for example, and maybe the one to craft locks), you can craft ANYTHING, routinely (=> by taking 10).
The only items that are "hard" to craft with it will be alchemical items, but they're not very useful at 9th level...

You forgot Crafter's Fortune (+5 luck bonus on your next craft check)

10 + 6 (int) + 5 (Crafter's Fortune) + 4 (1 skill rank) = 25 and 21 without the skill point.

You can craft anything you want in a round.


@Drachasor : you're indeed right.

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