So a hypothetical... Let's say someone ran a campaign where the party is the only group of humanlike beings alive on a given world, possibly even the first on that world, even if they're transplanted there from another world.
In which case, what's the general rules for how one deals with this if the craft rules (as written) would otherwise require spending gp in order to make anything (by trading for raw materials).
Or the question of how else they're expected to get those materials, or finding out of those materials they qualify as good enough for crafting if they can figure it out; such as if they skin a lion, how do you know if that's worth enough to cover the cost of hide armour.
I'm not sure if that would need to be a profession check, but that's the only thing I can think of (only paying them in "gp worth of stuff they gathered" rather than gp.)
I don't know... Any ideas?
If a barter system's been set in place, money can be substituted for whatever they choose to trade with: bottlecaps, punches to the face, whatever. If there isn't a barter system, all it takes is time. You're not spending money on resources, but in that case the resources will probably be scarce as well. If someone wants to make a lionpelt hide armour from scratch, they'd need thread, needles, a lion, and tools to prepare the pelt. They'd have to gather each of those pieces individually. If they've done that, seems fair he can make it for free.
As for determining how well-made something is, that's what Craft DCs are for. An armour is DC 10+ AC bonus. For a hide armour, that's DC 14. That's pretty low, seems to me, but still. As for spotting which parts are usable... I wouldn't really bother with that, unless you want to make it unnecessarily hard on your players. I'd say a decent Survival (or another Craft) skill check to properly skin the lion and fix the individual ingredients. Though I'd say the small tools are easy enough to make that they don't require a check. A comb is pretty easily made, for instance.
GP of stuff gathered seems to be the best method. Just replacing the lion drops 70gp with he has 50gp pelt, 15gp in bones, and 5gp in meat. Perhaps give them extra background skills akin to the rules presented in Unchained so they can still have their primary skills while being able to gather resources.
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