Ok, my Halfling Wizard in our homebrew campaign finally hit level 4 and I could pick Magical Crafting. I have some thoughts and questions about formulas, which I hope can be either cleared up by the community by pointing out things I missed. Or maybe made clearer in the final version of the book.
First of all: I really like the basic idea of the new Crafting System. The Formulas could be a bit less expensive. As it stands right now, after you buy a formula of an item at your level, you need to spend about 10 day of extra crafting just to get the gold for the formula back.
This makes crafting pretty expensive, especially for items that's only needed once per party like some stat boosters or Bags of Holding. Unless for some reason you can only find an item's formula, but not the item itself for sale, you're most likely paying more if you craft it as opposed to just buying it. Well, unless you have tons of downtime and can craft for at least 14 days.
By the way: I also wish there would be a more immediate reward for a critical success on the crafting check. Saving more money per day is decent, but what if I want to mass-produce stuff and create all items in the shortest time possible? A Crit should still have some positive effect. Maybe something like reducing the overall price of the item by 5% or 10%.
These were my general thoughts. Now for some specific questions:
1. The basic crafter's book includes the formulas "for all the common items in this chapter". This chapter is the "Equipment" chapter, which includes to rules for Expert/Master/Legendary equipment. I can't find a rule saying that being E/M/L changes a item's rarity, so does the basic crafter's book include the formulas for things like Legendary Full Plate Armor? And if not, do I need to learn every quality/item combination separately or is it enough to learn "Master Weapon" to craft all weapons at Master as an example?
2. Special Materials: Similar to question 1, if I can craft an item - let's say a longsword - at the appropriate proficiency level, can I also caft it from special materials assuming I have the required amount of said material? Or do I need to learn Cold Iron Longsword and Adamantine Longsword separately?
3. Same with Scrolls/Wands. Do I need to learn them for every individual spell like "Wand of Heal"? For each spell level like "3rd level Wand"? Or just once per item type like "Wand"?
Well, I'm pretty sure that the second option is at least the RAI for question 3 but I'm at a loss with the other two qeustions. Any insight from the community would be welcome.