Hello all,
First time poster, definitely won't be the last. I relatively new to Pathfinder and TTRPGs in general but I have the understanding and imagination enough that I'm GMing a homebrew campaign with other newbies before we tackle a campaign book.
So like the title says, I have a player with the Artist background and on our adventures he likes to sketch things of interest while other players are in slight downtime. He asked if he could roll for it with his crafting skill to see how good the drawing is. I thought it was for the roleplaying so I had no problem with it. Now that we are back in town, he has asked if he could make some extra money by selling some of the better pictures (he wrote down what he was drawing and the result). Since there is no description on artwork we could find for giving players loot, I have no clue how to price his sketches.
This isn't downtime job working, this was literally 'group is waiting an hour to eat, regain focus points, do some light searching around, artist wants to art'.
Any advise for this? The best I could come up was He would earn copper based on his total result. Nat 20 could be an extra 50% on top. But that kinda takes away the 'if result - dc >= 10, counts as nat success' formula.
Maybe someone else has had a similar experience and could suggest what they did or if anyone has ideas. I'm open to all thought processes here.
Thanks!
Do downtime working rules anyway. maybe he just doesn't find a buyer without taking the normal amount of downtime to earn income. Maybe he rolls really high (crit success) on a diplomacy check and manages to find a buyer before they leave town.
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Whether you are using lore, crafting, perform, or some other skill, they would all use the same DC for earn income. I would advise you do have the player roll the normal earn income checks and either flavor it as them spending time trying to find buyers or otherwise working on or finishing the sketches they made while on the road.
I don't advise you treat each sketch as in individually priced art object. Art objects, gems, jewelry, precious metals and the like aren't really meant to be things that PCs produce and sell. They mostly exist to make treasure more interesting than "you find a pile of 40 gold coins".
Any balanced attempt to house rule a system for PCs to work on items to sell is just going to be a more complicated version of the existing downtime rules.
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Let him earn income by making an art lore roll ... This equates to him contacting the local art community and seeing if there is a buyer for his art. The more time he spends (ie downtime earning) the more he makes. I would make some secret rolls to see how well received each piece of art was with bonuses for particular high art roll pieces and determine the lvl and DC for his earn income for example:
In one city he trys to sell a piece that he made a "good" say a 20ish non natural roll to paint/draw. I secretly roll a d20 for reception and get a 3 (not a good reception) making the DC harder but the painting is fairly good so I let him decide to try at lvl or lvl +1 for income with his art roll I give a DC of hard for the given lvl.
Now same situation but he is selling one that he rolled a nat 20 on of some natural wonder that the party stumbled across in their adventures. I'd reduce the dc to easy for the lvl and allow him to go up to lvl +3 if he wanted to try for more money.
I would not allow him to just make paintings willy nilly each would take a whole adventure to complete wile on the road.
Also I would allow him to use sketches from his adventures to earn income by making art rolls depending on the lvl of the city he was in.
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He gets the equivalent of if he had rolled a job roll for each days worth of hours put into crafting it.
So just substitute crafting for lore (or other job rolls).
Also job rolls aren't limited to lore.
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He drew a water well with a result of 12, a house at 18, and a woodland landscape at 25.
So he spends a day and sells the first painting [use 12 for the earn roll]. He spends his next day selling the second [use 18 for the earn roll] and he spends another day selling the third [25 for the last]. Note, he could do the exact same thing drawing pictures during that time so he's not gaining anything, he just preemptively rolled the earn income checks but he still has to spend the downtime to earn it. [unless of course he's spent an entire day on each sketch, then he can just sell them without the extra time for the earned income roll]
Whether you are using lore, crafting, perform, or some other skill, they would all use the same DC for earn income. I would advise you do have the player roll the normal earn income checks and either flavor it as them spending time trying to find buyers or otherwise working on or finishing the sketches they made while on the road.
I don't advise you treat each sketch as in individually priced art object. Art objects, gems, jewelry, precious metals and the like aren't really meant to be things that PCs produce and sell. They mostly exist to make treasure more interesting than "you find a pile of 40 gold coins".
Any balanced attempt to house rule a system for PCs to work on items to sell is just going to be a more complicated version of the existing downtime rules.
Exactly this. The game isn't designed with the intent that you take a simulationist approach towards making money from any kind of crafting activity - the design intent is that you use the earn an income activity for anything of that kind.
Additionally.... and I say this as a visual artist - pricing and valuing art is very difficult. Generally, if you aren't well known, selling art is difficult (except to friends and family and people you know).
A common method that I have seen a lot of people use or suggest when trying to sell their art is time (I would go with slightly above minimum wage here if you aren't well known) + materials + 15%.
To get the prices you see sometimes where people are getting thousands (or tens of thousands) for an artwork, part of what is being paid there is for owning a unique work created by a specific (famous) artist. For those pieces, I don't think a calculation can really be made (which is why those works are often auctioned, as they are worth whatever people decide to pay for them). Some people spend their entire career being paid to essentially make educated guesses as to what those pieces are worth.
The other option is to (after a while of using Earn Income) to present them with commissions to use with their craft skill. Their patron explicitly wants x art piece at y value. You can then use the crafting rules to do this, where the more time your player takes the better return they get.
That tracks well with how art was created historically - generally a wealthy person hired an artist to paint a fresco or portrait, and the artist was often seen more like a contractor and was often not credited.