Quick question on the difference between original crafting and unchained crafting

[Kiniticyst]

For mundane crafting, when it says "Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week’s worth of work", does that mean the week happens, then you roll the craft check at the end? Similarly, for Unchained crafting, do I spend the whole day, regardless of how long it takes me to make the item? Because I can throw together 5 Shuriken in about half an hour. Math below for anyone interested, but above is the question I need the answer to.

An example of crafting 5 Shuriken with mundane crafting: (original craft rules, not unchained).

DC18 for an exotic melee weapon, have 11 in Craft (weapons) at level 5, roll a 10 for a total of 21. Check was successful so now multiply the result by the DC, so 21 x 18 = 378. I needed to get 10 (5 shuriken are one gold, so 10 silver pieces).

Not only did I double the needed '10', nor did I merely triple it, I got 37 times 10. In a week there are 168 hours, so dividing that by 37 we get 4.5. So it took me four and a half hours to make 5 shuriken.

But I am in fact a Forgemaster Cleric, so I use half the value to determine progress, as well as being able to craft metal items in half the time. So I beat the 5 silver progress by 75x, meaning it takes me just over an hour to craft 5 shuriken. With Signature Skill in Craft, I make them in half an hour.

With unchained rules it works out to be almost exactly the same. DC20 for the item, 4g of progress per day with the successful craft check of 21 and being able to craft metal items twice as fast from Forgemaster and Signature Skill means 5 shuriken every half an hour. Only difference being that with unchained rules you only pay 1/4 of the item's price, whereas with original crafting rules you pay 1/3rd of the item's price.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Kiniticyst wrote:

For mundane crafting, when it says "Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week’s worth of work", does that mean the week happens, then you roll the craft check at the end?

Yes, though you can also choose to proceed on a daily basis even in chained crafting.

regular Craft rules wrote:

Progress by the Day: You can make checks by the day instead of by the week. In this case your progress (check result × DC) should be divided by the number of days in a week.

Kiniticyst wrote:

Similarly, for Unchained crafting, do I spend the whole day, regardless of how long it takes me to make the item?

RAW yes (because few people really want to track PCs' activities hour by hour). But you can apply the extra progress to making more of the same kind of item. Don't think of it as "I spend half an hour making 5 shuriken and then sit around for the rest of the day"; think of it as "I make 80 shuriken!" If you only need 5 for some reason you can always sell the other 75.

BTW, while I didn't check your math, I did notice you assumed you were working 24/7. Both original and Unchained crafting mandate you work 8 hrs/day, 5 days/week. (Why do characters in an essentially medieval setting take weekends off? Because Aroden died, that's why!!!)

[Kiniticyst]

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

you can apply the extra progress to making more of the same kind of item.

Ahh, this I did not realise, I had seen other people saying you are limited to making one 'item' with the craft check (or bundles in the case of ammunition).

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

BTW, while I didn't check your math, I did notice you assumed you were working 24/7. Both original and Unchained crafting mandate you work 8 hrs/day, 5 days/week. (Why do characters in an essentially medieval setting take weekends off? Because Aroden died, that's why!!!)

Indeed I was, thanks for pointing that out, I had vastly overestimated the working time in the week. With swapping the 168 hours in a week to 40 working hours, then dividing it by 75 (the multitude I beat the 5 silver progress by). That equates to about 18 minutes to craft 5 shuriken with Signature Skill, so 130ish a day.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Kiniticyst wrote:

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

you can apply the extra progress to making more of the same kind of item.

Ahh, this I did not realise, I had seen other people saying you are limited to making one 'item' with the craft check (or bundles in the case of ammunition).

They were probably thinking of the pre-unchained crafting rules. Though even there I always blithely assumed ammo was made in batches of 50, the size you enchant it in, regardless of the size it's sold in. Looking now I can find nothing indicating ammo batch size at all.

Kiniticyst wrote:

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

BTW, while I didn't check your math, I did notice you assumed you were working 24/7. Both original and Unchained crafting mandate you work 8 hrs/day, 5 days/week. (Why do characters in an essentially medieval setting take weekends off? Because Aroden died, that's why!!!)

Indeed I was, thanks for pointing that out, I had vastly overestimated the working time in the week. With swapping the 168 hours in a week to 40 working hours, then dividing it by 75 (the multitude I beat the 5 silver progress by). That equates to about 18 minutes to craft 5 shuriken with Signature Skill, so 130ish a day.

Again not checking the math, you certainly have enough speedups piled on to be making gross amounts. Try making masterwork shuriken (at a base price of 310 gp per 50) to bring your rate down if you think making regular ones all day would get boring. :-)

[Kiniticyst]

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

Looking now I can find nothing indicating ammo batch size at all.

Yeah I'm still unsure about this, will stick to making regular weapons instead of ammunition I think.

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

Try making masterwork shuriken

Unfortunately, even though it's less complicated and you can do checks by the day, unchained crafting is just significantly slower than the old crafting rules when it comes to masterwork prices and up.

It would take me 20 days to make a masterwork trident with unchained:
4gp of progress a day, towards the 158gp needed (half the items price for progres thanks to forgemaster). So 40 days, or 20 days with signature skill.

It would take me two weeks to make it with the old rules:
1575 silver pieces of progress needed;
DC 20 check needed, assuming I take 10 for a 21 on the craft check; 20 x 21 = 420 silver pieces of progress in the week.
So a little under 4 weeks to make, or 2 weeks with Signature Skill.

Old rules are much less risky too, because I only need to make two craft checks. Not 20 consecutive, successful checks in a row. On that note, can you take 10 on craft?

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Kiniticyst wrote:

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

Looking now I can find nothing indicating ammo batch size at all.

Yeah I'm still unsure about this, will stick to making regular weapons instead of ammunition I think.

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

Try making masterwork shuriken

Unfortunately, even though it's less complicated and you can do checks by the day, unchained crafting is just significantly slower than the old crafting rules when it comes to masterwork prices and up.

It would take me 20 days to make a masterwork trident with unchained:
4gp of progress a day, towards the 158gp needed (half the items price for progres thanks to forgemaster). So 40 days, or 20 days with signature skill.

It would take me two weeks to make it with the old rules:
1575 silver pieces of progress needed;
DC 20 check needed, assuming I take 10 for a 21 on the craft check; 20 x 21 = 420 silver pieces of progress in the week.
So a little under 4 weeks to make, or 2 weeks with Signature Skill.

Yeah, that can happen when you can only just hit the DC. But Unchained accelerates a lot faster. If you can get your result up to 25, you'll do 8 gp/day with unchained or 10 gp/day with original. Bring it to 30 and those both become 12 gp/day. Bring it to 35 and they're 16 gp/day unchained, 14 gp/day original. Etc etc.

Kiniticyst wrote:

Old rules are much less risky too, because I only need to make two craft checks. Not 20 consecutive, successful checks in a row. On that note, can you take 10 on craft?

Absolutely! That's the usual way to do it. However, if you have people helping you with Aid Another, they can't, as Aid Another always forbids taking 10. So you don't really want help unless either you can succeed without it and are just hoping it will accelerate you, or your helpers can manage +9 modifiers and auto-succeed on the Aid. Actual risk should not be a factor.

For future reference, when making a magic item you can also take 10, whether you're using Craft or Spellcraft.