Crafting Sculptures vs Scribing Scrolls


Rules Questions


Still working through some of the specifics of my Druid build (will not possess or use metal/minerals - thus sacrificing all coinage and gems back into the earth immediately upon gaining them), and it seems that making a living sculpting objects to sell/barter is impossible vs trying to do it by scribing and selling scrolls.

is my math right here?
Scribe a CLW scroll (cost 12.5gp, sell for 25) and you can scribe 1 per day or around 100 gp per week net in our 8day week (we have an 8day week/32day month/64day seasons, and 256 day year based on cycles of the 4 moons) -and-, you can do this while adventuring at 2hr per day for those 1st lvl scrolls.

To earn 100gp crafting a 100gp value bone statue at a DC10 so as not to risk destroying it via failing check by more than 5:
100gp x 10 = 1000sp or "craft points" required to complete.
My Druid has +7 in craft (+1Int+1slot+3class+2MWK tool) a weekly 1d20 will avg 17 x DC10 = 170/8days= 21 craft points per day which is great if you're making a 10sp wooden holy symbol, but approx 49 days working 8hr per day to craft a 100gp statue?

Is my math right? If so, any insight to how this came out in the playtesting and why? am I missing some obvious loophole that would allow someone to get rich via crafting if you didn't do the 10xgp value or was this to prevent players from crafting their own MWK or magical weapons/armor w/o taking several game months of down-time? In which case you'd be levels behind the rest of your group, unless they agree to sit around and grow old while you craft it?

If the math is right, I'm going to parley with the GM to allow me to craft statues, trinkets, etc on a straight GP=craft points (while adventuring - but not using the same 2hr per day as scribe, so basically one or the other each day). Call it divine assistance in finding bone/wood/stones in the wild that are already in an interesting shape and I just need to bring out the dragon/horse/succubus statue that nature already started.

Scarab Sages

PCs sell items for half value. So they can only sell scrolls for 12.5, same as it cost to create them. Shops can sell for more because they are open full time and do nothing else, and can afford to wait keeping the item in inventory.

So in Pathfinder there is no way to "get rich crafting" unless you use the Downtime rules in Ultimate Campaign. use that instead, then you won't have to worry about calculating exact values of each item.


From

Pathfinder SRD

This process can be accelerated to 4 hours of work per 1,000 gp in the item's base price (or fraction thereof) by increasing the DC to create the item by 5.

Potions and scrolls are an exception to this rule; they can take as little as 2 hours to create (if their base price is 250 gp or less)

If Spellcraft is maxed you usually auto succeed on these check by taking 10. Also, many Wizards (at least) use Rope Trick Extended to get a quiet environment to craft for 8 hours or 4 with +5 DC.

Any decent Adventurer will take the +5DC to rush in 4 hours getting the benefits of 8 hours. It's not that much time considering you spend around 12 hours resting due to rotating sentinels to make sure you're not getting invaded during nights.


Don't take the money as gp too literal. Treat it as an abstraction or barter and trade to allow the game to move along smoother. And you can use Craft (sculpture) to earn income (its the same as a profession check), you do not have to handle creating the individual items then sell them, you can simply do a check daily or weekly to earn gold based on your skill check. (again, you don't have to call it gold, if you don't want to). There are tables in Ultimate Equipment for trade goods, valuables, etc. So trade your sculptures for bushels of wheat for instance, if it bothers you to use the term gold.


Craft (skill) wrote:

Practice a Trade

You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the craft's daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. (Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day.)

So with your +7 in Craft (sculpture), taking 10 would give a weekly check result of 17, or 8.5gp/week spent plying your trade. That isn't bad for a 1st level character, who spent his entire life up to this point amassing an average of 70gp in wealth (druid average starting wealth).


I guess one thing I didn't realize you could take 10 on craft, since failure by more than 5 means you ruin portion of the raw materials. Just re-read and saw the prohibition to avoid the failure penalty is only for taking 20. That makes "take 10" pretty nice even at 1st lvl for any class skills and a +1 ability mod - makes DC15s automatic, which covers a decent range of possibilities.

Can easily work this out with my GM since its not going to give me any game advantage - just allows me to still accept my cut of a treasure w/o keeping metal coins or gems.

I plan to craft my own scrolls, and eventually potions. But beyond making your own MWK ammo is it really worth taking any craft weapon/armor etc? It seems time prohibitive with such a slow completion rate even after a few levels up your only progressing 20-25GP per week....or months to make just a MWK weapon.


Mundane crafting has always been a bit screwed up math wise - and since most people don't do it, it never got the attention it needed. (Paizo didn't touch it and just copy and pasted wizard's mistakes). That said, Paizo did do some modification to it in Pathfinder Unchained, where there are alternate crafting and profession rules that if nothing else, at least make the times follow the actual object you're making a bit more.

Still, there are plenty of reasons to craft your own weapons, aside from just flavor. There is a definite cost advantage, especially when looking at the costs for special material weapons and armor. Then of course there are the flavor reasons to want to make your own gear.


regarding the actual time. A longsword, with a +5 take 3.33 days to create, using the core rules, and about 40 days for a masterwork longsword with a +10 skill check.


CraziFuzzy wrote:
regarding the actual time. A longsword, with a +5 take 3.33 days to create, using the core rules, and about 40 days for a masterwork longsword with a +10 skill check.

40 days for something you could buy after a couple weeks or less of adventuring hurts.

I'm using craft more for the RPing aspect, and as you noted it can add flavor. As relatively new to PF and teaching my children to play, looking for insight as to why you might take crafting in general. My daughter's PC has weaving, and she already used it successfully to assist the party making some "field litters" to haul loot through the wilderness. She also took Chef (profession), and used it for a really good RP encounter.
But since craft can be used w/o training, it seems like mundane uses could be done w/o burning any slots, and at the same time making something really nice would take longer than just buying (or paying someone to craft it while you're out adventuring).

I like the RP possibilities of having a specific craft slot, but I'm also a math guy, and know you're sacrificing bonus on life/death skills like survival, climbing, acrobatics, swimming, etc. RPing that personal look MWK longsword creation is fine until you fall to your death or drown :-).


Not all campaigns are continuous adventuring. In fact, that makes the least amount of sense of all adventuring styles. Most campaigns I run have ample amounts of downtime. Otherwise, you end up with the ridiculous situation where the level 15 human fighter is 22 years old.

If you have no downtime, you can throw out all the craft and profession skills, and likely never have most the uses of knowledge or perform either.


And I did mention earlier that the mundane crafting rules are pretty screwed up. Looking at these two examples, a Longsword being made with a +5 skill modifier, and Masterwork Longsword being made with a +10 skill modifier, here is the comparison of the various different crafting options:
The Making Craft Work is a 3pp crafing rules supplement. I feel it makes things TOO simple, but it is regarded as the best option out there if you intend to do a significant amount of mundane crafting, especially if you're looking to do special materials, because the crafting time is based mostly on the item complexity, instead of the cost.

--------------------------
Core Rules:
--------------------------
Longsword (+5 check)
15gp, DC15, 15*15=45sp/day -> 3.33 days

Masterwork Longsword (+10 check)
15gp, DC15, 15*20=60sp/day -> 2.5 days
300gp,DV20, 20*20=80so/day -> 37.5 days
TOTAL 40.0 days

--------------------------
Unchained Rules:
--------------------------
Longsword (+5 check)
15gp, Normal DC15, 2gp/day -> 7.5 days

Masterwork Longsword (+10 check)
315gp, Complex DC20, 4gp/day -> 78.75 days

--------------------------
Making Craft Work:
--------------------------
Longsword (+5 check)
Moderate: DC14, 4 days

Masterwork Longsword (+10 check)
Moderate: DC18, 6 days
--------------------------


GM 1990 wrote:
As relatively new to PF and teaching my children to play, looking for insight as to why you might take crafting in general

Most adventurers probably wouldn't.

They probably became adventurers in the first place because they are thrill-seekers, not basket-weavers. They rejected the "get a job and make a living" lifestyle in favor of a much more dangerous but also much more prosperous career. Any adventurer who doesn't die can make more cash in just a few days than a craftsman can make in a year.

From a mechanical aspect, adventuring for loot then buying what you want will leave more coin in your pocket and get faster results than the alternative of buying materials and making what you want. And from an RP perspective, most adventurers just aren't the kind of people who would choose that alternative method anyway.

You will, probably, notice that all the published adventures are full of dangerous encounters and piles of treasure and very rarely include any kind of encounter that is solved by crafting things - those kinds of skills are generally left for downtime in between the exciting adventures. Most game tables I've been in, even the heavy roleplaying groups, minimize this sort of activity in favor of spending more time on the more exciting adventures.

That's not to say that there are no exceptions, and you and your kids may certainly play it any way you like.

GM 1990 wrote:
My daughter's PC has weaving, and she already used it successfully to assist the party making some "field litters" to haul loot through the wilderness. She also took Chef (profession), and used it for a really good RP encounter.

This is awesome. If you're having fun then you're doing it exactly right.


Good stuff.

we're using all home-grown campaign material so easier to ensure reasons for taking some of these skills, or tweaking some of the timelines/allowed actions, but I also need to learn the RAW and mechanics so at least I can make decisions from a position of understanding possible issue when deviating.

My last campaign (over 20yr ago and with 2E) I had players taking the NonWpn Profs, and I looked for ways to incorporate them into gameplay to give incentive to take the weird ones. I like it when the players think out of the box a little and by incentivizing craft/profession ranks it can add a lot to the game beyond d20 attack rolls and damage. Kind of like burning them in climb or acrobatics can allow you to do a "super-human" accomplishment, incentivizing craft by letting them do something (even if it stretches the RAW a little), that makes for a more fun encounter is well worth it. At the very least its a little reward for not totally going min/max on everything.

so I think to your point about even good groups, it helps if the players and GM look for ways the craft/professions/performs could be incorporated into encounters or even combat.

This druid bone sculptor will be my PC in my son's first attempt at GMing, so trying to use the opportunity to show the family how deep "in character" you can go by letting your imagination run wild (but also that you need to discuss this kind of thing with the GM in advance to clarify how they want to run their table.) especially if it won't work in game mechanics and your character is going to die of starvation because you thought you'd be able to sacrifice all your metal and gem treasure and cover the difference by selling genuine hand-crafted bone dragons. :-)


CraziFuzzy wrote:

Not all campaigns are continuous adventuring. In fact, that makes the least amount of sense of all adventuring styles. Most campaigns I run have ample amounts of downtime. Otherwise, you end up with the ridiculous situation where the level 15 human fighter is 22 years old.

If you have no downtime, you can throw out all the craft and profession skills, and likely never have most the uses of knowledge or perform either.

makes sense. I use weather generator and current campaign area is in the northern temperate zone - so I could see taking winters "off" - or at least being -very- specific about what you head out to do, because you can die or freeze even with the right gear. Nobody wants to be in the position of rotating which day you get the druids 2x Endure elements, and which day you make fortitude saves to avoid freezing to death :-).

Thank you for demonstrating the math as well, I appreciate it, helps clarify some other ways to do it and the implications. I read somewhere just using GP rather than SP value is an option - but would go a little too fast IMO. I'll have to check out that Making Craft Work - looks like a better option.


Also, if you read in Pathfinder Unchained, one of the optional rules is the background skills. Essentially, this splits the various skills into Background, and Adventuring skills. It moves Appraise, Craft, Handle Animal, Linguistics, Perform, Profession, (most) Knowledge skills and two new skills -Artistry and Lore - into a new 'group' called Background skills. A character gets 2 ranks to assign to backgrounds every level, without taking away from the Adventuring skills. This allows players to add that 'real person' flavor to their characters without hurting their adventuring effectiveness.

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