Hey people!
I wanted to ask some more experienced players about crafting. In other systems I've played, they're either the best abilities, or the worst. I haven't tried them in pathfinder yet, and wanted your thoughts on the matter. Do you like the system, do you need to have a crafter in your parties, do you warn players against such feats?
Are any of the crafting feats better than others? Is there a 'must have' in your book?
I'm thinking of delving into crafting myself, and I like the sound of wands (though I don't get the 4th level spell limit. Is there really no way to craft higher level spells into wands or a wand like item?), and crafting magic weapons. Wondrous items and potions aren't too bad... but i admit I get lost trying to figure out Rods, Staves, and rings. I think i've stared at the screen too long, and nothing is making sense anymore. Still, before I call it a night, I wanted to ask for the opinions of you all here.
Thank you for your time,
V
The best thing for a crafter is a ring of sustenance. Costs 2500, and adds 6 hours to your day for you to craft in? Yes please!
As for what is the best feat, craft wondrous items has the widest set of options, although I don't have enough playing experience to say for sure it's the best.
The best thing for a crafter is a ring of sustenance. Costs 2500, and adds 6 hours to your day for you to craft in? Yes please!
As for what is the best feat, craft wondrous items has the widest set of options, although I don't have enough playing experience to say for sure it's the best.
That added 6 hours can't be used to craft.
The caster can work for up to 8 hours each day. He cannot rush the process by working longer each day, but the days need not be consecutive, and the caster can use the rest of his time as he sees fit. If the caster is out adventuring, he can devote 4 hours each day to item creation, although he nets only 2 hours' worth of work. This time is not spent in one continuous period, but rather during lunch, morning preparation, and during watches at night. If time is dedicated to creation, it must be spent in uninterrupted 4-hour blocks. This work is generally done in a controlled environment, where distractions are at a minimum, such as a laboratory or shrine. Work that is performed in a distracting or dangerous environment nets only half the amount of progress (just as with the adventuring caster).
Though it does allow an extra 6 hours for non-crafting stuff, like adventuring.
What I meant is that it gives you time to craft without wasting the whole day. Your party won't want to wait for you for eight hours while you're crafting a scroll to make another buck for yourself.
I've found Craft Wondrous, and Forge Ring to be my favorite two. Arms and Armor can be useful in a low magic setting, Craft Wand has it's uses, but I find I used it a lot less than the other two, and Potions are best only if they're your focus, or if you're an Alchemist perhaps. At least in my opinion.
Wondrous just has a huge variety of options, and opens up the largest opportunity to create something custom with a bit of GM help if you need it. So many of the staple magic items fall into wondrous it's a hard one to pass up if you're going to be crafting.
Forge Ring is useful, in that you can create a good number of ring varieties, in a short amount of time. Plenty of good effects at low costs, and thus low time spent.
Rod is another solid one, largely in the savings it can confer, and allowing you to crate some nice rods a fair bit before you could normally. My only issue is how late it comes, so that depends a bit on campaign.
Crafting tends to either be one of the most effective things a spellcaster can do or the very worst.
It depends on the campaign and the GM. If he/she allows sufficient downtime, you get more effective magic stuff from crafting; if not, you waste the feat.
Scribe Scroll is also a good one if you have access to a wide selection of spells (clerics, druids, wizards who've put in the effort). You make a scroll or two for rainy days, taking spells where caster level isn't relevant and neither is save DC.
Overall, Wondrous Item is probably the most useful. Not everyone uses a weapon or armor, potions are expensive for what they do, staves are priced oddly. But everyone wants a cloak of resistance, or an amulet of natural armor, or a stat-boosting belt or headband. Or sometimes even other stuff.
I don't think I've ever run a caster without Craft Wondrous Item, and I never felt like I suffered for it. If you're interested, an Impossible bloodline sorcerer picks that up for free. Also, be sure to pick up as many spellcraft boosting items as you can. Gloves of Elvenkind works wonders for beating DCs of high CL items with spells you don't know.
Furthermore, with Leadership and Cooperative Crafting on your followers, you can increase your crafting rate exponentially.
Don't forget you can take ten on spellcraft.
Also remember, Spellcraft isn't the only way to make the DC's. All the items can be crafted with an 'applicable' craft or profession skill, if for some reason they are higher (there are more traits and feats that boost craft and profession skills than there are that boost spellcraft, as well as masterwork tools).
I'll have to remember the ring of sustenance, that could be nifty with scribe scroll and/or brew potion. It only takes 2 hours to make a scroll if the base is 250 gp or less, so there could be mischief to be had with those.
I just noticed cooperative crafting, and this sounds awesome. If i'm reading this right, it doubles the GP value of an item to be made in a day. 2,000 GP items in a day? Awesome. I wonder if you had an entire party with cooperative crafting, would it increase for each party member? That would be scary. A five man party all with cooperative crafting takes a week off from adventuring, and suddenly has 7 absurdly powerful magic items... yea, can't see that working lol. Or even the 250 base stuff I just mentioned, would it let you craft a 500 base gp item in two hours? Not that I know the base prices off the top of my head, but seems a lot of ways to take advantage of that.
Wondrous item does seem to be the popular choice for crafting. It has soooo many options, it's honestly overwhelming at times. With all those options, what do you craft first? It's crazy.
One of THE MOST IMPORTANT things for a crafter is getting a familiar with the Valet archetype. You get aid another with your own skills and you can craft twice the value in a day!
Then get the familiar to take the cooperative crafting feat
A valet familiar is already treated as having the cooperative crafting feat.
I'll have to remember the ring of sustenance, that could be nifty with scribe scroll and/or brew potion. It only takes 2 hours to make a scroll if the base is 250 gp or less, so there could be mischief to be had with those.
I just noticed cooperative crafting, and this sounds awesome. If i'm reading this right, it doubles the GP value of an item to be made in a day. 2,000 GP items in a day? Awesome. I wonder if you had an entire party with cooperative crafting, would it increase for each party member? That would be scary. A five man party all with cooperative crafting takes a week off from adventuring, and suddenly has 7 absurdly powerful magic items... yea, can't see that working lol. Or even the 250 base stuff I just mentioned, would it let you craft a 500 base gp item in two hours? Not that I know the base prices off the top of my head, but seems a lot of ways to take advantage of that.
Wondrous item does seem to be the popular choice for crafting. It has soooo many options, it's honestly overwhelming at times. With all those options, what do you craft first? It's crazy.
That's why you take Leadership with this. And make all your followers take Cooperative Crafting.
It's been a while, but I used this trick with a high level sorcerer and was able to craft 1.2 million gp worth per day with this little exploit. Since nothing was worth that much in the game, though, we just took care of the barbarian's sword of +wow and the rogue's daggers of +hell and +yeah, respectively.
I'll have to remember the ring of sustenance, that could be nifty with scribe scroll and/or brew potion. It only takes 2 hours to make a scroll if the base is 250 gp or less, so there could be mischief to be had with those.
I just noticed cooperative crafting, and this sounds awesome. If i'm reading this right, it doubles the GP value of an item to be made in a day. 2,000 GP items in a day? Awesome. I wonder if you had an entire party with cooperative crafting, would it increase for each party member? That would be scary. A five man party all with cooperative crafting takes a week off from adventuring, and suddenly has 7 absurdly powerful magic items... yea, can't see that working lol. Or even the 250 base stuff I just mentioned, would it let you craft a 500 base gp item in two hours? Not that I know the base prices off the top of my head, but seems a lot of ways to take advantage of that.
Wondrous item does seem to be the popular choice for crafting. It has soooo many options, it's honestly overwhelming at times. With all those options, what do you craft first? It's crazy.
That's why you take Leadership with this. And make all your followers take Cooperative Crafting.
It's been a while, but I used this trick with a high level sorcerer and was able to craft 1.2 million gp worth per day with this little exploit. Since nothing was worth that much in the game, though, we just took care of the barbarian's sword of +wow and the rogue's daggers of +hell and +yeah, respectively.
I don't agree that cooperative crafting will work for more than a pair of crafters for most items. There's simple no way for so many people to work on the same item at a time. Some large items, like a medium or larger construct, I would allow more. That doesn't mean your crafting cabal can't be divided into teams to work on multiple small items.
Regarding 1.2 million, that would imply 12 people working on the same thing - which is pretty excessive, even for a huge construct.
Cooperative Crafting requires you to have the feat you're assisting with and Craft Arms & Armor requires a CL of 5. As far as I know Leadership only ever allows you to have four followers (+ cohort) that are level 5 or higher?
One problem you run into is time crunch. As you level up a crafter you pick up what you think will be good, but then you run into situations like this: I can use my 9th level feat for Craft Rod, Quicken Spell or Leadership. I have 30,000 gold saved up and 4/5 other party members have no use for downtime and will cause trouble the longer we do nothing. Is it better to be able to make Quicken Rods, Prepare Quickened Spells or get a cohort with cooperative crafting and all my crafting feats?
I love the crafting system and wish more people used it. I think that Craft Wondrous Item is the strongest item creation feat, but all of them can be useful. You really want the setup of Rope Trick (8+ hour duration), Ring of Sustenance, 11 hours camping with crafter(s) not taking a watch. This lets you do a full days work while the rest of the party sleeps and all you had to do was shirk watch. I find it helps immensely if you can convince a second party member to share the burden of the crafting feats, not only because you now have more feats free and the group is churning out items twice as fast, but because now you have another party member who will argue for 11 hours of sleep/work and 13 hours of adventuring per day.
Cooperative Crafting requires you to have the feat you're assisting with and Craft Arms & Armor requires a CL of 5. As far as I know Leadership only ever allows you to have four followers (+ cohort) that are level 5 or higher?
Regarding 1.2 million, that would imply 12 people working on the same thing - which is pretty excessive, even for a huge construct
Which would imply a Wizard with a Wizard Cohort and 4 Wizard Followers and 6 Valet Familiars.
4/5 other party members have no use for downtime and will cause trouble the longer we do nothing.
This is something I don't understand about folks' complaints on this subject. I admit I haven't thoroughly read the downtime rules, but it sounds like a lot more game time spent on "downtime" activities than I would have expected. To me, downtime implies that it takes place outside of actual gaming time. At least, that's the way I've run it, or seen it run, in the old days when I played (say twenty years ago or more). You may need a couple of die rolls to decide what happened during the downtime, but that shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. So what am I missing?
I highly recommend the Focused Overseer feat. It will allow you to craft your gear at 1/8 its market value. Stacking it with various traits and other abilities I have been able to get over 90% savings on item crafting. (See this thread for more details.)
Suddenly, gold isn't such a limiting factor anymore.
(Time still is though, at least until you can create your own great demiplanes.)
4/5 other party members have no use for downtime and will cause trouble the longer we do nothing.This is something I don't understand about folks' complaints on this subject. I admit I haven't thoroughly read the downtime rules, but it sounds like a lot more game time spent on "downtime" activities than I would have expected. To me, downtime implies that it takes place outside of actual gaming time. At least, that's the way I've run it, or seen it run, in the old days when I played (say twenty years ago or more). You may need a couple of die rolls to decide what happened during the downtime, but that shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. So what am I missing?
Possibly nothing, different groups have different social dynamics. I would love to game with people who would give me 10 minutes to do the math and then hand out the goods and however much downtime happens and we get on with the game. That has literally never happened to me in 21 years of gaming. Either the GM wants to negate crafting feats so random encounters prevent it, or the other players get upset that one character is hogging the spotlight and decide to do something about it. I also do not get a straight answer for how much downtime the party is getting very often. A surprising number of GMs would rather let the party argue in character for an hour than answer the players questions about what is expected of them. Then after the hour wasted arguing it is made clear within 2 minutes what was supposed to be obvious, and the characters who argued against it are treated like morons, because the GM withheld information from a player.
Also in many home games, there is no pre written adventure and groups often end up wandering aimlessly after they get away from what the GM has prepared halfway through a session. So you end up in a "downtime" situation while the GM thinks up a new hook.
I highly recommend the Focused Overseer feat. It will allow you to craft your gear at 1/8 its market value. Stacking it with various traits and other abilities I have been able to get over 90% savings on item crafting. (See this thread for more details.)
Suddenly, gold isn't such a limiting factor anymore.
(Time still is though, at least until you can create your own great demiplanes.)
At least if you are taking downtime feats, it is likely you're also residing in a campaign that is using the downtime rules, and as such, time should not be an issue.
At least if you are taking downtime feats, it is likely you're also residing in a campaign that is using the downtime rules, and as such, time should not be an issue.I highly recommend the Focused Overseer feat. It will allow you to craft your gear at 1/8 its market value. Stacking it with various traits and other abilities I have been able to get over 90% savings on item crafting. (See this thread for more details.)
Suddenly, gold isn't such a limiting factor anymore.
(Time still is though, at least until you can create your own great demiplanes.)
Any campaign that is using downtime at all should be using the downtime rules. They make the mundane every day experience almost as exciting as adventuring.
Which would imply a Wizard with a Wizard Cohort and 4 Wizard Followers and 6 Valet Familiars.
Presumably the sorcerer had the arcane bloodline or a different way of gaining a familiar. The above post mentioned "people", I'm not sure if familiars were what he meant?
I highly recommend the Focused Overseer feat.
As far as I know Focused Overseer only lets you purchase capital at half value - not earn it. IE Focused Overseer lets you purchase Magic capital for 50g, but not earn Magic capital for 25g.
That said, Focused Overseer is still a decent feat because it lets you sidestep the "I need to build Hogwarts to make sure I have enough Magic Capital per day" problem.
Back on topic! I'm a big fan of the Downtime rules, but like the kingdom rules they can become (very) complicated if you don't have a good handle on it in the first place - it's really not something you want to sit down and figure out mid-session.
I typically handle downtime between scheduled sessions via e-mails or one-on-one mini-sessions of an hour or so unless it's a big part of the game (aka Kingmaker).
As far as I know Focused Overseer only lets you purchase capital at half value - not earn it. IE Focused Overseer lets you purchase Magic capital for 50g, but not earn Magic capital for 25g.
Read the last sentence of the benefits section.
As far as I know Focused Overseer only lets you purchase capital at half value - not earn it. IE Focused Overseer lets you purchase Magic capital for 50g, but not earn Magic capital for 25g.Read the last sentence of the benefits section.
I stand corrected! That's what I get for reading too much into "purchase one type of capital" - I need to spend less time on the rules questions forum.
I stand corrected! That's what I get for reading too much into "purchase one type of capital" - I need to spend less time on the rules questions forum.As far as I know Focused Overseer only lets you purchase capital at half value - not earn it. IE Focused Overseer lets you purchase Magic capital for 50g, but not earn Magic capital for 25g.Read the last sentence of the benefits section.
I made the exact same mistaken assumption the first time I read through it as well. The feat has really poor wording. It is actually unclear whether the last sentence is referring the ALL changes in the feat, or just the neglected capital section. The conflict is that the main part of the feat, spending a day of downtime to find the best deals on purchasing your preferred capital, is incompatible with spending a day of downtime earning capital.
Your attention to detail provides you with insights into how to more effectively and economically gain certain commodities.
Prerequisite(s): Focused Worker.
Benefit(s): You can spend a day of downtime to purchase one type of capital for half its normal cost (see Purchasing Capital). This capital must be the same as the focus capital you chose for the Focused Worker feat. However, the cost of the neglected capital, chosen as part of the same Focused Worker feat, increases by half again its normal amount. These changes in price apply to both the purchased cost and the earned cost of the affected forms of capital.
Special: You may take this feat twice, but only if you have also chosen the Focused Worker feat twice. This feat only affects one feat's focus capital. The second time you take this feat, choose the other focus capital from your Focused Worker feats.