Crafting is very, VERY tedious...

[Deriven Firelion]

Zapp wrote:

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

Cities, even big ones, only take you so far. Again we come back to "it is only as bad as people say as long as the GM ignores settlement guidelines and has unrestricted magic item shops". A common houserule does not make a reasonable judgement platform.

And even then people can have multiple reasons in a campaign to not be making month long trips (or longer) every time they want to buy an item.

As for what is fun for the party, you are making assumptions and ignoring the reality that groups tend to decide on actions together. A crafter is unlikely holding a party back but rather more likely to be crafting for the group.

Again, yes crafting is worthless if you have no downtime and have magic shops equal to level everywhere. That is not the default system assumption and should not be taken into consideration when evaluating crafting's value on a whole.

Just one example: in Extinction Curse, a player character can use a ring of Stoneshifting to teleport into Absalom and out again the next day after a full day of shopping. This effectively gives access to a level 20 settlement throughout the Swardlands.

But we're missing the point.

The crafting system would have been MUCH BETTER if it did support campaigns with little downtime as well as campaigns with a lot of downtime. It would have been MUCH BETTER if it did support campaigns with magic shoppes as well as campaigns without.

Just saying "that is not the default system assumption" is incredibly dismissive. Why, exactly, should such a large portion of campaigns "not be taken into consideration"?

Why are you trying to defend the system on technicalities?

Why not simply acknowledge that circumstances led Paizo down a rabbit hole where the whole Crafting system ended up as maybe the least intuitive and certainly very complicated system in all of D&D-dom?

Yes, arguments can be made to discuss each subcomponent of the system. Yes, in many instances it is possible to make the current system work,...

I thought Absalom was a lvl 13 settlement. Where did you find it was lvl 20?

[shroudb]

Draco18s wrote:

Or you could spend the 4 days traveling back to town...

Because seriously, if you're in the middle of nowhere crafting for 4+ days...

What is the rest of the party doing?

so every adventure is at 2 days travel from absalom?

because 2 days to go and 2 days to return seems again extremely white room./

or are you suggesting spending a month where 4 players each earn nothing "because this way we are all equal" (i.e. ALL now are losing money, yay!)

No matter how you spin it, spenindg vast amounts of time trveling back and forth from a settlement to where you need to go "just so that everyone LOSES equally" is a bad idea for the group.

[Staffan Johansson]

I had some ideas about how one could enhance crafting within the current system by having special components serve as a large amount of raw materials for particular things, in a reminder of The Olden Days of AD&D when high-level casters acquiring components would often serve as adventure seeds in and of themselves.

But then I thought better of it. Back then, high-level advancement was slow, so you would often fit numerous adventures in between each leveling up. These days, going off to find the sinews of a dragon to wrap around a wand of dragon form would probably get you enough XP to gain a level or two, thus bringing the wand closer to being obsolete.

[Exocist]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I thought Absalom was a lvl13 settlement

It’s not statted. Katapesh, the second largest settlement, is level 12, whereas Shraen (a settlement in the middle of nowhere in the black desert) is level 15. Even port peril is level 11. Absalom is probably level 17ish with level 20 being like the City of Brass.

[Deriven Firelion]

Exocist wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I thought Absalom was a lvl13 settlement

It’s not statted. Katapesh, the second largest settlement, is level 12, whereas Shraen (a settlement in the middle of nowhere in the black desert) is level 15. Even port peril is level 11. Absalom is probably level 17ish with level 20 being like the City of Brass.

Thanks for the info. I knew Katapesh was lvl 12, which doesn't make much sense to me given how immense it is and how the leaders are all lvl 17 or higher. I guess it's another one of those things that doesn't make much sense in PF2.