So, my players are going to start crafting but we all hate how the system is set up. My problem is I don't like how long everything takes to make because time in a RP sense is extremely arbitrary to me. Anyway end of rant.
Please be more specific. Are you talking about mundane item crafting (with the Craft skill) or magic item crafting?
Both systems are equally bad, I hope someone link 3pp/house rules for better craft for mundane and magical items.
Both systems are equally bad, I hope someone link 3pp/house rules for better craft for mundane and magical items.
This is exactly what I was trying to say.
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Making Craft Work
There's that one book for a dollar. Quick and easy fix I guess.
You could also just search crafting rules in the Suggestions/Houserules/Homebrew search box. The base rules are notoriously bad, and everyone and their mom has had a hand in trying to make it work. I personally had given up on craft as is.
Myself, I hand wave a lot of it, none of this bajillion craft checks nonsense; just 1. Though I do require the player have a reasonable way to get resources to craft the object, none of the handwaving gold into materials nonsense.
You can only jack up (and thus roll for) an item (that you actually have craft ranks in) if it's actually complicated. Magical items need specific rare and unique items that the player may have to go on a quest for or make a deal with a really shady character. Nat 1 on a magical item means it's cursed, but the player/character may still want to use it because of all the work they had to go through.
Making Craft Work does a good enough job of shortening and simplifying mundane crafting - does nothing with magic items crafting.
My honest opinion is that magic crafting seems to be workable out of the box - and it's mundane crafting of simple, yet expensive mundane items that is screwed up. For magic items, cost = power, so higher cost, more power means more time to enchant it. That is acceptable. for mundane items, however, the biggest cost is special materials, which should NOT increase crafting time, yet does significantly. One way to really quickly fix the mundane crafting issue, is to NOT include the cost of special materials in your crafting time. Just handwave that it's the same number of steps to forge silver into a dagger as it is steel. Not entirely accurate, but it makes the system less intrusive in your world.
Arguably it's very reasonable that special materials increase crafting time.. they take longer to obtain, and more importantly, are that much more difficult to work with. It's one thing to crank out simple pig stickers that you're going to pass onto conscript troops, but the making of mastercraft blades IS a project of weeks, which is why they're so bloody expensive.Making Craft Work does a good enough job of shortening and simplifying mundane crafting - does nothing with magic items crafting.
My honest opinion is that magic crafting seems to be workable out of the box - and it's mundane crafting of simple, yet expensive mundane items that is screwed up. For magic items, cost = power, so higher cost, more power means more time to enchant it. That is acceptable. for mundane items, however, the biggest cost is special materials, which should NOT increase crafting time, yet does significantly. One way to really quickly fix the mundane crafting issue, is to NOT include the cost of special materials in your crafting time. Just handwave that it's the same number of steps to forge silver into a dagger as it is steel. Not entirely accurate, but it makes the system less intrusive in your world.
That's why I said this was 'not entirely accurate'. I know special materials would take longer to manufacture with - but not 2,000 times longer.
I think the magic item creation rules are fine as is. People tend to make it more complicated than it is.
First, just assume that you're taking 10 on the check, because you would be an idiot not to. So your spellcraft + 10 + any other bonuses (like aid another, Guidance, etc.) gives you the highest DC that you can meet.
The DC to make any item is 5 + Caster Level to cast the highest spell required + 5 per spell that you can't cast. If you can't meet this DC because there's to many spells required that you can't cast, you can get a scroll/wand/potion/another caster to lower that DC by 5.
The time required to make it is 1 day per 1,000g in the base price of the item. This can be cut in half if you can beet the DC by 5 or more.
I use Making Craft Work for everything but alchemical items, which sometimes end up taking even longer with that system. For those I use the Alchemy Manual. Not a ton of crafters in my group so far, but I was looking to avoid the 12-week-long crafting process for a cold iron sword one of my players waited through early on.
I think the magic item creation rules are fine as is. People tend to make it more complicated than it is.
First, just assume that you're taking 10 on the check, because you would be an idiot not to. So your spellcraft + 10 + any other bonuses (like aid another, Guidance, etc.) gives you the highest DC that you can meet.
The DC to make any item is 5 + Caster Level to cast the highest spell required + 5 per spell that you can't cast. If you can't meet this DC because there's to many spells required that you can't cast, you can get a scroll/wand/potion/another caster to lower that DC by 5.
The time required to make it is 1 day per 1,000g in the base price of the item. This can be cut in half if you can beet the DC by 5 or more.
Some corrections:
- It is not specifically Spellcraft - an appropriate Craft skill for the item being made can be used as well.- the 'Caster Level' of the item, used for calculating the DC of the item, is not tied to the spells the items requires, it is tied to the published CL of the item in the description, which in many cases is arbitrary. The only items that do not list an explicit CL are the non-named weapon and armor enhancements, in which the CL is 3x (enhancement bonus) or 3x (enhancement equivalent of special properties), whichever is greater.
I think the publish system for magic item works pretty well assuming you take 10. The only change we have made is to allow (caster level) identical items be created per day as long as the total cost of the items is less than 1000gp. It shouldn't take an entire day for an experienced crafter to scribe a CLW scroll.
Technically, it doesn't take all day to craft the scroll, there's just the limit to only one item per day. You could, without changing the rules, craft one each day in your free time (takes very little time to do). That said, the limit of one per day IS a silly rule, especially for duplicate items, and I've seen that houserule posted often.
In my homebrew crafting rules, repetitive crafting actually receives a bonus in efficiency.
For my own campaigns I've switched over to the Magic item crafting rules in Unchained and added a bit of house rules.
My main issue was I felt the Core book system was
1) too easy for players. Just drop down money and a bit of time and poof Item of my desire.
2) too simple. Single Skill roll and done
3) too cheap. 50% off really skews power level of the group after a while
The system in Unchained handles 2 and 3 quite well on it's own. The various challenges solves 2 by confronting the players with situations that can be worked into the game session and make them depend on both other players and other skill and the base cost starts at 85% instead of 50%. It can get cheaper if the PCs put in the effort as a group but by and large it's 85%
That leaves point 1.
For that I pulled a the Talismanic Components from Ultimate Campaign and expanded it a little. Basically each magic item or item enchantment has a recipe. When you take an Item creation feat you get some simple recipies right away but the rest you need to research or find.
A +1 Weapon enchantment for example might need Arcane Dust
The Flaming weapon enchantment might need Salamander's Blood.
A Bag of Holding might need Displacer Beast Hide.
etc...
Most of these things are stuff you can't buy in shops so players have to go collect them on their own. You can even make an adventure out of it if you want
Players can make Substitutions if they want but each one adds a Complication to the creation process.
So as an Example
Wizard wants to make a +1 Flaming Sword. (Market Price 8000 gp)
He's Got 500 gp in Arcane Dust and 500 gp in Salamander's Blood
He makes the "Preparing the Vessel" test on his own and sets the Base cost for crafting at 85% So 6800 gp -500 in dust and -500 in Blood he needs another 5800 gp in assorted Materials
It'll take 8 days to make and there is 1 extra challenge about half way.
Now lets say instead of Salamander Blood he decided to use Ashes of Fire Elemental which he got on his last adventure, thinking "That's close enough right" That would add 1 more challenge to the item creation.
Little bit of work DM side cause you need to come up with the components needs for each item, and players need to keep track of what recipies they know. Plus it gets the PCs doing stuff like harvesting the monster for bits and activly looking for components.
The way I see magical crafting is the same as the way I see magic in general.
If I were to re-write the rules, spellcasting would be the "shortcut" method. Normally, you can use normal skills, worldly instruments and materials, and spend time and effort to make the effect you want. This goes with ritual magic as much as it does magical item crafting.
What spellcasting does is allowing you to perform these exact tasks, but quicker and in a general (not specialized) way, as long as you pump enough magic into it.
So a spellcaster using spellcraft can pump his magical ability (spell slot after spell slot) into crafting the magic item, but the crafter using his specific craft skill, with supernatural ingredients and recipe instructions (carving runes under a full moon, bathing it in the blood of a lycanthrope, etc), gets it done with a lower DC and less cost.
Trying to hammer that round peg into the square hole (spellcraft checks and spell slots spent) simply costs more due to the excess waste.
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Regarding crafting in general...
I'd start with decoupling the time it takes to make something from the cost of the item/materials.
Time taken should be based on the complexity of the item in question.
Cost of the materials and one-time cost of instruments are an entirely seperate matter.
And if someone wants to start selling this stuff, or even play "Markets & Merchants", I'd resort to Profession checks.
Take the cost of materials, find out how much can be made per week based on a take10 average, factor in overhead costs based on locale (licenses, shop/labour costs, taxes or bribes, etc), and run a profession check to figure out how good of a salesman you are and how much you make.
This would be part in parcel with a bit of a codification of what it means to have downtime.
So while one guy goes and crafts and plays merchant, others can do things like learn knowledge or language ranks, or practice a skill (gaining an additional rank/level as long as practice is maintained), etc.
It's why I haven't tackled this thing right off (besides the massive table of "how long does it take to make things"), because I'd want to do it right and do it completely... which would involve some kind of "Ultimate Secular" type of book.
I had some thoughts on expanding Animals (pets, mounts, and level of intelligence, etc).. it would probably fit in such a book.
Some corrections:
- It is not specifically Spellcraft - an appropriate Craft skill for the item being made can be used as well.
- the 'Caster Level' of the item, used for calculating the DC of the item, is not tied to the spells the items requires, it is tied to the published CL of the item in the description, which in many cases is arbitrary. The only items that do not list an explicit CL are the non-named weapon and armor enhancements, in which the CL is 3x (enhancement bonus) or 3x (enhancement equivalent of special properties), whichever is greater.
- It's Spellcraft OR an appropriate Craft skill. I didn't mention that part because it's very rare that your Craft skill will be higher.
- Yes, for armor and weapon enhancements, the CL is 3x the bonus. Not all items have to be made at the CL listed however. Items that duplicate the abilities of spells can be made at a lower caster level than listed, minimum being the lowest level required to cast the spell.Though the listed Caster Level for a pearl of power is 17th, that caster level is not part of the Requirements listing for that item. Therefore, the only caster level requirement for a pearl of power is the character has to be able to cast spells of the desired level. However, it makes sense that the minimum caster level of the pearl is the minimum caster level necessary to cast spells of that level--it would be strange for a 2nd-level pearl to be CL 1st. For example, a 3rd-level wizard with Craft Wondrous Item can create a 1st-level pearl, with a minimum caster level of 1. He can set the caster level to whatever he wants (assuming he can meet the crafting DC), though the pearl's caster level has no effect on its powers (other than its ability to resist dispel magic).