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Thanks for this discussion. It is very disappointing. I was imagining a Goblin Champion with Junk Tinker creating junk shields for himself, junk infused armor, and junk...whatever as gifts for the poor villages he travels through. I'm not looking to break the system, though a small discount for investing in skill is reasonable.
Maybe I don't understand correctly, but if he wanted to make a shoddy wagon for some orphans to play with, it would take 4 days, and then at least a day to cover the rest of the cost.
A steel shield costs 2gp. TO craft it with Junk Tinker, he'd need to pay 5sp and craft for 4 days. Then he'd need to keep working until he paid off the other 15sp. At level 1, he is trained, so can make 2sp/day. So 8 more days for a total of 12 days to make a 2gp shield. Is this math wrong?
And all I want is for my Goblin to have a thematic shield. But he can buy a plain old shield at character creation easily enough.
Now, sure, this is a way to get things when there is no way to buy them. But you still need someone to sell you the materials. You still need some sort of facilities. How many towns will have steel you can buy, a forge you can rent, but no shield for sale?
I think being able to repair a shield in 1 action is worth being a legendary crafter.
But I'm glad crafting is not a big money maker.
I haven't seen anyone asking for it to be a big moneymaker. But it should be worth something before one gets to legendary, imo. As it is, it's not even flavorful, it's just stupid.I think being able to repair a shield in 1 action is worth being a legendary crafter.
But I'm glad crafting is not a big money maker.
I think the flavor is fine.
But I do agree that there is room for some creative non-downtime Crafting feats. Just not one that gives you more money.
Maybe something like
Unmaker: Your knowledge of how to make stuff helps you destroy it. When you damage an object, you ignore 2 hardness. 3 at Expert, 4 at Master, and 5 for Legendary.
How?
You craft stuff, it does exactly what it says on the label.
I don't think anyone is disputing that you can craft with the crafting system. Some of us are saying the system fails in some ways.
Now, I think crafting was broken in 1E, and I'm glad a Wizard can no longer make medium investments into crafting to save hundreds of thousands of gold. But I also don't like that the new system doesn't allow you to build a ladder in less than 4 days.
I was also disappointed to see Junk Tinker be largely worthless. You spend less money upfront, yes. But after 4 days you have to work to cover all the money you didn't spend. It is worse than bad.
Consider a crafter who can make 1gp worth of stuff per day, making a 10gp item. They work for 4 days, pay 5, and then work for 5 days. They save 10% off full price for working 9 days. At least that is a positive.
For the same item, crafting with the Junk Tinker Feat, you craft for 4 days, pay 2.5gp, then craft for another 7.5 days (which I assume is rounded to 8). So you actually get 1.5-2gp You ut in 12 days of work, which would normally earn you 12gp, to get a SHODDY 10gp item made of junk.
Yes, Junk Tinker is a tangential. But I don't like how crafting works on the low end in general.
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Or maybe a quick barricade or the like?
(not quite the cartoonish pounding multiple boards over a door in a few seconds but in that area basically)
Creating Difficult terrain and Hazards seems like a pretty good use.
And cartoonish = legendary.
Cloud Step lets you use an action to run off a cliff, an action to look down, and an action interact to hold up an "Uh-Oh" sign, then you fall.
But I also don't like that the new system doesn't allow you to build a ladder in less than 4 days.
I agree. That 4 day rule is not that great. You should be able to build a makeshift ladder in an hour.
Just not a ladder you can sell. Probably falling apart at the end of the day. Maybe takes some acrobatics to not collapse under you.
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I agree. That 4 day rule is not that great. You should be able to build a makeshift ladder in an hour.
Just not a ladder you can sell. Probably falling apart at the end of the day. Maybe takes some acrobatics to not collapse under you.
A new ladder costs 3 cp. Surely a trained woodworker should be able to buy lumber for 2 cp, craft for a few hours, and have a full, solid ladder.
I would hope that a typical GM would not have you go through the crafting process to create a makeshift ladder. Hopefully that would just be a single crafting (or something else negotiated at the table) roll.
PF2 crafting is a downtime activity which is balanced against other downtime moneymaking activities with the only difference being that you can get an item instead of the money. So if the tiem you want is for sale, any downtime money making activity is exactly the same as crafting.
If crafting were more economical than money making and shopping, that would create an exploitable asymmetry, which the designers explicitly do not want.
Alas, this does not fit well with what I will call 'heroic crafting', making special things such as your personal sword or the potions and scrolls you use. These things often feel like they are part of your character, rather than part of some economy and are defined by their use value, rather than by their exchange value.
So my advice for house ruling: allow faster crafting for such 'personal items' under the agreement that such items cannot be sold. The cost, however should not drop below the price minus the general income that could have been made while crafting.
So make an earn income crafting check, reduce the cost by the earned amount and rule the item crafted in the time spent.
Here is what I am thinking. Giving explorer time frame bonuses.
Improvise Construction (Trained only).
By adding extra nails and a wooden board to a door, chipping away some hand holds into a cliff, or greasing a wheel, or you sew in some extra cloth to make the fighter look like a fat noble. Spend 1 hour with an object and choose either to increase or decrease the DC of Balance, Climb, Deception, or Disarm Device using that object. At the GM's discretion, you may apply this to other checks as well, or she may rule that certain objects are immune to this, or that you don't have the right tools on hand.
Make a Crafting check against the chosen DC.
Critical Success, You give +2 circumstance bonus or penalty to the DC.
Success, You give +1 circumstance bonus or penalty to the DC.
Failure, no change.
Critical Failure, if you where trying to give a bonus, you instead give a penalty of 1. If you where trying to give a penalty, you instead give a bonus of 1.
Regardless of the result, the object is immune to you doing further tinkering unless something significant changes.
If you are expert, it takes you 30 minutes. 10 minutes for master, and 1 minute for legendary.
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A Basic Crafter's Book contains all the common formulas from the equipment chapter. Other formulas you have to find somehow. See pages 245 287, and 293.
The description of the book (page 287) says it contains "the formulas for crafting the common items in this chapter". Apparently that includes weapons, armor and shields, since they're all in the Equipment chapter.
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Keep in mind that you are not supposed to use the crafting activity to make money - instead you use the earn an income activity with your craft skill.
The craft activity is for if you want to make something for your own use or for a member of the party, and is not intended to compete with earn an income for making money.
On whether it is worth it to craft something over buying it, this is where availability comes into play.
You are unlikely to be able to find a gnomish flickmace for sale in a human village, but if you happen to have the formula, (say, if you are a gnomish smith) you can craft one for the party fighter using the local smithy.
This gets even more pronounced if you apply some realism to places like villages and small towns and make it so that they only have one or two weapons for sale and the local smiths only know how to make nails and tools and horseshoes - in this case, you can replace the gnomish flickmace in my example with a basic longsword, as the weapons available in a village smithy will probably be a spear and a couple of daggers (that they bought of a traveling merchant or inherited) as a sword is traditionally a weapon for nobility.
As a GM I think the crafting chassis in PF2e is a huge improvement. Sure, there are some nuances involved that means a player would have to trust the GM to make crafting worthwhile. It’s true a lot of GMs may hand wave item availability or downtime income in ways that would make crafting utterly useless, but that kind of table variance isn’t the fault of the crafting rules themselves.
My only gripe is that crafting is still keyed entirely off of Int. They really should have taken the opportunity to break that stranglehold. If they keyed different aspects of crafting to different attributes (like Dex for progress per hour or day and Con for hours per day), and rolled in some Dynamic crafting rules (I thought those were cool) and some complexity DC adjustments, crafting could have been perfect.
Truthfully, I don’t really expect them to make crafting compelling. For now I’m just satisfied PF2e is not horribly broken like PF1 is.
My problem with crafting is that basic cost to make requires materials equal to list price... for players as standard they will sell at half price..
If that's the cost of crafting.. i cant see it being economic for anyone..
Why would smith bother setting up in business.. has to pay for smithy, somewhere to live support family pay city or town taxes, (often not profit based) then spend time making zero profit over material cost.
Just looks like all the crafters in Golarion are going bust quickly.
In fact its not a question of where players make stuff out of reach of towns. Its why ANYONE would make anything for someone else.
Or do you think spending sufficient extra time would bring the cost down enough for a profit.. doesn't seem it from analysis above.
I am a GM this breaks my "suspension of disbelief" It just shouts WRONG.. nearly as bad as "red matter"
My problem with crafting ---snip---
E]An adventurer should never be able to out craft a same level dedicated NPC.
----snip----I can’t remember which youtube it was, but I recall Paizo staff discussing that PF2 NPC design allows them to have NPC bakers who are effectively level 1 in combat, but level 8 in baking competitions.
Thats a reasonable answer.. and maybe works for mundane items.. however still has a problem for me with magical Items.. Anything made by a wizard or other spellcaster.. Although perhaps there is a subculture of mage casters who never really go out cant cast on the fly but spend All their time and feats learning to make stuff not be an adventuring mage a runecrafter.
kinda like a Magus in Ars Magica..mostly spending years in a lab researching and making stuff.
Joe Supplier gets most of his business selling to Weyland Smith. That sets the price at which he sells his products. Tim Adventurer comes along and wants to buy a relatively small amount of product. If that sale is not going to affect Joe’s dealings with Weyland, do you really think he would gouge Tim? Even if it did put a small temporary dent in his dealings with Weyland, Joe is unlikely to charge more than a small premium to Tim.
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I think there's room for a house rule where component on hand subtract from the gp cost. For example, if the PCs come across 30gp worth of lumber it seems fair to subtract 30gp from the cost of crafting wooden items,as the lumber is 'consumed', rather than turning around and selling that lumber later.
How much crafting is "worth it" depends on the way your GM handles other downtime activities, in particular the "earn income" activity. If he just hand waves to let the PCs pick a task at their level to earn income, it doesn't really change the result whether you spend your time crafting or earning. The money saved by crafting an item of some level yourself is pretty much the same as the money earned doing an earn income task at the same level.
However, if he restricts the availablity of higher-level earn income tasks (I can't find the quote right now, but seem to recall a limit based on the settlement's level, e.g.), crafting a level 10 item as a level 10 character can be very much worth it compared to doing a level 5 earn income task (because in the small village you're at that's the best work to be had...) instead using the same amount of time..
Similarly, Society play lets you earn income at your level-2, but craft at your level in general.
I think there's room for a house rule where component on hand subtract from the gp cost. For example, if the PCs come across 30gp worth of lumber it seems fair to subtract 30gp from the cost of crafting wooden items,as the lumber is 'consumed', rather than turning around and selling that lumber later.
This is an official rule, more or less - in the published adventures there is a situation or two where the party finds a stock of raw materials that can be used to pay the cost of crafting certain items, like herbs that can be made into Antitoxin.
I wouldn't consider it unreasonable for a level 4 character to reach a town, a level 6 character to reach a city and a level 10 character to find a metropolis. So in general, I would say these restrictions aren't as harsh as they first appear, at least not until level 10. That is, I would think it reasonable for a character willing and able to move, to be able to find a task of his or her own level.
For comparison, looking at the Age of Ashes adventure path, the biggest settlement in Part 3 is level 7 (with PCs expected to be level 9-12), while the only settlement in part 4 is level 5 (with PCs expected to be level 12-15). For the settlements in parts 1 and 2, no levels are given, but I wouldn't expect them to be much higher.
Sure, the PCs could travel to some metropolis, but getting there takes time as well, which you could otherwise spend crafting. Again, how your GM handles this has a major impact. If he just chooses to let you travel instantly for free, crafting is going to be worth less by comparison. But if you have to make the choice between crafting level 10 items for 28 days or spending 14 days on the road to do 14 days of level 10 earn income, it might be looking more attractive.
I'd probably decide on how to handle it based on player preferences: if a player wants to play a character invested in crafting, I'll make sure to follow the rules more closely (and not give the non-crafters all those freebies, like getting optimum-level jobs immediately whenever they want them) in order to ensure that he get's some advantage out of his feat-investments. However, if noone cares for crafting I'd be much more open to do more hand-waving.
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If characters are always able to take on tasks at their level with no effort or time investments, what is the purpose of having task levels in the first place? Why should a character be able to choose a level 1-10 task regardless of where they are?
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Well, the level-2 rule is not my house rule, but an official rule for society play. Organized play needs to simplify and codify these aspects a lot more, to provide for a similar level of income across all different tables independently of individual GM-decisions. And of course, these higher level tasks are available only because there are higher-level people looking for them - who are in turn better qualified and would be hired preferentially for these tasks :).
The CRB has a soft limit for available tasks at the settlement level. Exceptions are possible, but not the norm, so players should not always easily be able to find higher-level earn income tasks. And level 10 is already the upper limit of settlement levels given for all but the largest cities in the world (level 8-10 is "metropolis or capital").
But like I said, if a GM decides to routinely offer better earn income possibilities than the available settlement levels, that's his decision. But by doing that, he's deliberately devaluing the crafting that would be able to compete well if he were to mostly stick to the given limits.
Personally, as a GM, I try not to punish my players for choosing some playstyle over another. If someone wants to invest into crafting feat-wise, I'm happy to give him a reasonable treatment. Other players may choose different feats instead and get their advantages in a different aspect of the game.
For a low-level character in a decent size town, there might be better tasks available, but keep in mind that not everyone who's looking for an employee for a high-level tasks wants to hire some newbie. If you're the guy in charge of hiring the artist to perform in front of the king, you might lose your head if you get a mere level 3-bard.
While those level 10 tasks might be available in the capital, they might not neccessarily be available for everyone...
The way I'd run it at my table (haven't gotten a chance to do much downtime so far, so I might change my mind) is having the character investigate the settlement they're in with a skill check and by spending some time. If they have connections in the city, that could offer additional opportunities or help them out with the check.
Depending on the skill check, they'll get a list of job opportunities to pick from. A success or critical success may even offer jobs not normally found in the settlement or jobs that pay above their level, whereas a critical failure may turn up only one or two low-level opportunities or even extremely risky jobs.
Guess you are overthinking about the whole stuff.
Using a Lore skill or a profession in order to earn an income is meant simply to give extra cash to the players during downtimes.
Above lvl 10 there could be quests linked to their adventure, or even tasks from higher lvl figures.
Imagine a lvl 15 fighter which asks a lvl 11 mage to craft him a magic item. That's it.
If you want to put flavor before sempicity, or maybe limit players earnings, you could simply forbid tasks depends the situation you are into.
Yes, but this thread is about how crafting as a downtime activity compares to earn income as a downtime activity. If noone wants to do crafting, you can hand out as much gold as you like to everyone.
But if you're looking to balance the chances of a player who has invested into crafting feat-wise with other players just doing regular earn income checks, it makes sense to look at the available task levels. And in general, there are some feats that you only benefit from if crafting an item is better than spending the same amount of time earning an income.
Now, there are those who think crafting sucks anyway and who don't think it's worth the effort. But if you look at the rules given for the various earn income tasks and actually apply them, crafting can make a profit (while non-crafting will be more efficient elsewhere, so balance...). But not if a GM just hand-waves the rules and limitations away.
I was thinking specifically of feats like craft magical item, craft snare and craft alchemy. If you invest in those, you should be able to craft the corresponding gear better than if you just buy it for the money you earned during earn income.
Of your 4 possibilities, 1 and 4 are independent of investing in these feats, they are just applications of the craft skill. 2 and 3 technically are true, but are still essentially pointless if for the purposes of earn income, it's super easy to reach a metropolis, anyway, as Gaterie has argued above.
I think the way it's handled in society play gives a good indication of how the balance is meant to be: if you craft something, on average the amount of value gained should be somewhat higher than if you merely earned money. However, since crafting something only makes sense if you or someone in your party can actually use it, as selling a crafted item for half-price is never a good deal, you are still limited, if in a different way.
I do think that having a small mechanical advantage that you can craft in would be cool. Maybe in a later book?