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Ok.. in our current game, the person in charge of us says that we need supplies, and food is one of the things we need. So I look some things up.
1. You use life sciences to craft food from unspecified materials.
2. You spend full cash cost for the food you craft, but if you find food (scavenge) then the GM will let you take 10% off the cost of crafting food.
3. If your skill level exceeds the level of the food you are trying to craft by 5, then it takes half as long to craft it. If it exceeds it by 10 then it takes a quarter as long to craft it.
Ok, so those seem to be the rules.
Now the problems, as in what is left out.
1. No levels are listed for food items... so there is no way to tell what crafting levels will decrease time...
2. Let us presume that a common meal is a level 1 thing. If my skill with life sciences is 1 then I can make 1 meal in 4 hours. If it is level 6 then I can make 2 meals in 4 hours. If my level is 11 then I can make 4 meals in 4 hours and there is no improvement after that.
3. In addition to having life sciences 6 I have Profession Cook 11. As near as I can tell, having the profession cook just lets you earn money for every week you spend working based upon your level. Is that correct? It doesn't let me make edible food?
So am I missing anything? We are a ship in a star system with no stores. The ship doesn't have food, we need to get food for the ship. Finding food doesn't count as food, it just gives me 10% off the cost of making food? And Food doesn't have levels?
I have to be missing something, so could someone point out where in the rules I need to go looking? Thanks!
Boojum
You can craft with a relevant profession skill. Profession cook would definitely be the relevant skill for making food.
Is it important to the plot of the story that you have rules for crafting food? Is this a hunger/scavenging/starvation campaign?
Because, yeah. The rules for crafting food that you have listed* are a bit lacking. Probably best to houserule it if it is important, or handwave it with a skill check or two if it is not.
* I haven't actually looked up the rules for that, because it has never been important in a campaign that I have been part of.
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You can craft with a relevant profession skill. Profession cook would definitely be the relevant skill for making food.
HMMmmmm.. Ok, where do you see that? I see where it says that with the GM's approval you can use a science skill (like engineer) to earn a living, but I don't see anything at all about using a professional skill to make anything. Under crafting, it specifically says that Life Sciences is the correct skill to craft food. I must be missing something.
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Food pretty much has to be level 1, otherwise people wouldn't be able to buy food.
As to what it's crafted with, all crafting is done with UPBs, in an amount equal to the credit cost. Even food. It's a little weird - think Star Trek replicators, I guess?
Except that there is no replicators and not enough food to be had aboard ship. One of my characters jobs is going to be to get food and water for the ship. So I went and looked up what went into getting food. You can use Survival to get enough bare food to support 1 person per x points above 10 (which is far short of the food we are going to need) or you can pay money and craft it.. out of materials.. like dead animals (I presume) since nothing says what the proper materials are. and if you kill the animals yourself, it seems that you get a PRICE break on crafting, but you still can't craft for free.
On pg 233 of the CRB table 7-36, they have the levels for food items. The Life Science skill has,on page 142, Craft Food Or Drink, also Survival has Live Off The Land,on page 148, which can really help if you're near a habitable planet that's far from civilization. Profession cook is absolutely able to make food. I hope this helps you.
Edit: I missed your post by a minute, I would suggest investing in clear spindles aeon stones.
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On pg 233 of the CRB table 7-36, they have the levels for food items. The Life Science skill has,on page 142, Craft Food Or Drink, also Survival has Live Off The Land,on page 148, which can really help if you're near a habitable planet that's far from civilization. Profession cook is absolutely able to make food. I hope this helps you.
Edit: I missed your post by a minute, I would suggest investing in clear spindles aeon stones.
Page 233 of my CRB just has Item, price and bulk for food.. no levels. And it looks like it is impossible to get food for the ships crew. No money to make it even if we had the materials. I'm sorry, but the crafting system is really starting to be more and more of a dissapointment. As for Profession Cook.. again, do you have a reference where is says they can make food? I would love it if it was so, because my cook skill is higher than life science.. but all I can find for professional skills is that you can get paid for it, crafting rules require other skills according to what I've read. I agree that it would make SENSE.. but there are lots of other things in the game that don't make sense.
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I'm referencing replicators in that it's one universal component used to create anything.
Literally anything.
You use the same thing to make guns, armour, batteries, flashlights, tents, food, everything.
Specifically, the skill used for crafting food and drink is Life Science.
I've just done a search in the core rule book and the word Replicator doesn't appear. Please remember, I'm a player. It's not my universe and I don't get to make up things. I have to rely on what the rules say to understand what I can do... which it looks like I can make 1 common meal every 2 hours at a cost of 3 udp (provided I can find materials, like, by killing a bunch of animals on a planet or harvesting plants). If I spend all my UDP, that would let me create some 100 common meals in around 200 hours of work.. which is not enough.
Survival would let me make 3 meals per day, but I'd be eating one of them.
I was really hoping that there was something I was missing. Instead, I'll have to throw myself on the mercy of the GM and hope that he waves his hands to make up new rules.
Boojum
You can craft with a relevant profession skill. Profession cook would definitely be the relevant skill for making food.HMMmmmm.. Ok, where do you see that?
At a GM’s discretion, an appropriate Profession skill can be used for a narrower range of items. For example, a character with Profession (weaponsmith) might be able to make technological, hybrid, and magic weapons and weapon fusions, but no other items.
Source Starfinder Core Rulebook pg. 235
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At a GM’s discretion, an appropriate Profession skill can be used for a narrower range of items. For example, a character with Profession (weaponsmith) might be able to make technological, hybrid, and magic weapons and weapon fusions, but no other items.
Source Starfinder Core Rulebook pg. 235
Ah ha! There it is! I knew I must be missing something because it didn't make much sense that you couldn't use cooking to make food. Thank you! That will increase my food creation to 1 meal every hour.
Boojum
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No, we turn the cow into UPBs and then you turn the UPBs into hamburgers...
... that explains a lot actually...
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Food Replicators are in Armoury.
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Ok, guys.. we are in a star system with no stores. No food replicators. No place to buy UPB's for 1 credit per UPB. Our ship needs food and water before we can begin thawing out the 1600 colonists aboard. Sadly, it seems there is no way to turn stuff on a planet into food. Instead, you have to create it from UPBs, since that seems to be what the crafting rules say. If I spend all my time turning UPB's into food it will still take a VERY long time to create enough food for everyone.
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Sadly, it seems there is no way to turn stuff on a planet into food.
Survival checks, profession farmer checks. Yes the crafting rules are a little wonky, but common sense is still a thing.
Ok, guys.. we are in a star system with no stores. No food replicators. No place to buy UPB's for 1 credit per UPB. Our ship needs food and water before we can begin thawing out the 1600 colonists aboard. Sadly, it seems there is no way to turn stuff on a planet into food. Instead, you have to create it from UPBs, since that seems to be what the crafting rules say. If I spend all my time turning UPB's into food it will still take a VERY long time to create enough food for everyone.
This is one of those times where you shouldn't be looking at the rules to find out what you're allowed to do or not do.
You can also go on a beer run to absalom station in a total of 6d6 days of travel to pick up a cargo hold or two full of field rations.
Our ship needs food and water before we can begin thawing out the 1600 colonists aboard
Well, you could always thaw 1.500 colonists and say the other 100 suffered an accident... plenty of raw materials left.
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Back to the topic, you are asking for solutions for a game which does not have all the available options in the core game. So, going for a fluffier answer instead: land on some planet and hunt down wild alien animals; collect water straight from a lake.
Also: cannibalize your expansion bays and collect shrubbery from the same planet to start setting up Hydroponic Gardens.
Explore the ship until you find a Portable Grinder, start melting stuff to make Culinary Synthesizers (this one is a bit of a stretch).
Earn a Living
You can use Profession to earn money. A single check generally represents a week of work, and you earn a number of credits equal to double your Profession skill check result.
You can't earn credits out in your frozen colony ship - ask the GM to house rule Earn a Living to allow you to exchange the credits for field rations instead (great credit to usefulness ratio). It sounds like you're in a huge ship, there's probably stuff to forage growing somewhere.
And: thaw some NPCs, teach them how to cook while you focus on collecting raw materials through adventuring.
Ok, guys.. we are in a star system with no stores. No food replicators. No place to buy UPB's for 1 credit per UPB. Our ship needs food and water before we can begin thawing out the 1600 colonists aboard. Sadly, it seems there is no way to turn stuff on a planet into food. Instead, you have to create it from UPBs, since that seems to be what the crafting rules say. If I spend all my time turning UPB's into food it will still take a VERY long time to create enough food for everyone.
It looks like the campaign you are playing is one that uses themes that are not well supported by the official rules.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't a society game. Could be wrong...
So yeah, get together with your gaming group and come up with some house rules to support what you are wanting to do. I have seen a couple of good ones in the recent posts here.
But I don't think we are going to be able to 'answer' this as a rules question.
This sort of thing is why i dislike how ultimate intrigue (and it looks like 2e) handles skills.
Skills need to be open ended to cover a wide variety of situations because the skills that are there cover just about any mundane thing a person can do.
Don't worry about the crafting section. You're a chef, you can turn food into meals. That's what it does. You have survival you can turn shot (hopefully not sentient) wildlife into food.
However, giving skills that much grey area also means there will always be situations where something like a rules forum won't have answers because it's ultimately up to GM discretion, which is... Exactly where we currently are on this.
Is anyone actually arguing that someone with profession chef can't turn a bunch of tomatoes some dough and some cheese into a pizza?
I don't think you have legitimate table variation here i think you have paranoia about potential table variation.
Is anyone actually arguing that someone with profession chef can't turn a bunch of tomatoes some dough and some cheese into a pizza?
I don't think you have legitimate table variation here i think you have paranoia about potential table variation.
They can do that for sure.
The question would be is the pizza any good can they make a living at it?
At the very least even the worst skilled chef: skill rank 1 with +0 Int, Wis, Cha can still get a result of 11 on his Prof Chef roll, heck even with enough time and ingredients and many ruined pizzas later he can get a 21.
Is that a good pizza that one can make money on or not have the starship crew mutiny over?
This also tells me that there are a lot of people making pizza out there with 0 ranks in profession chef as there is a lot of bad pizza out there. :)
I feel like this is another one of those "Your problem is being caused by trying to use the rules to do things they were not intended to do" situations. If your GM is sufficiently bad that they insist that you cannot craft the equivalent of rations unless you have UPBs and a replicator, than you have a Bad GM problem, not a rules problem.
Out of curiosity why is this a bad GM situation?
Here is a possible situation.
The PCs crash their ship on the equivalent of our moon and it blows up destroying the food and water stowed on board.
They escape with their lives and space suits but with no food or water.
The rescue ship will be here in a week.
How would they then create food and water?
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Those with 10 wisdom take 10 on survival to take care of themselves, those with 14 wisdom take 10 on survival to take care of themselves plus 1 teammate who has less than 10 wisdom.
Though if it's the equivalent of our moon, they should be prepared to die, as it's not possible to live of the land there.
Should they however have some UPB they could craft field rations (1 week worth per UPB) if they have life science or a relevant profession.
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In a full UPB driven civilization, people probably don't even know how to peel an orange: they just "print" one already peeled.
How would they then create food and water?
For water you make an engineering check to...recycle.
For food you won't die in a week without it.
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Ok, guys.. we are in a star system with no stores. No food replicators. No place to buy UPB's for 1 credit per UPB. Our ship needs food and water before we can begin thawing out the 1600 colonists aboard. Sadly, it seems there is no way to turn stuff on a planet into food. Instead, you have to create it from UPBs, since that seems to be what the crafting rules say. If I spend all my time turning UPB's into food it will still take a VERY long time to create enough food for everyone.
The game rules weren't designed for this scenario.
They don't work well for it.
Your GM and you will need to work together to modify the rules to have a functional "survival" game, because Starfinder just assumes your past that.
Food pretty much has to be level 1, otherwise people wouldn't be able to buy food.
No, all food has to be at least level 4. Evil Grin
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Out of curiosity why is this a bad GM situation?
Here is a possible situation.
The PCs crash their ship on the equivalent of our moon and it blows up destroying the food and water stowed on board.
They escape with their lives and space suits but with no food or water.The rescue ship will be here in a week.
How would they then create food and water?
To be blunt, this is a strawman, and not the scenario initially described. There is a vast, *vast* space between "does not have UPBs and replicators" and "has no equipment at all and is on an airless lifeless resourceless moon".
Anyway, it is Bad GMing, because it is placing the players in a situation, wherein they should logically be able to do any number of useful things, and then arbitrarily forbidding them to do so based on a rather ridiculous misunderstanding of the rules. Not everything that can be done, is described in the rules, because vast sweeps of possible actions are either "Not relevant for an adventuring party" or "Entirely subject to the details of the scenario". The GM exists to create, and adjudicate, the scenarios that they run. This includes dealing with those actions and events which are not covered by the rules, because they are a result of the specific scenario.
Upon further review.....was not my intent to straw man there....my bad.
Looking back at the initial scenario I agree 100% that is Bad GMing in extreme.