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SO, at the end of our pfs2 session this last weekend, I decided to take the time after everyone else got their chronicles to sit with the GM and work out the crafting mechanic, and how it is supposed to work - and if it is ever even worth doing. I had a 1st level alchemist with a +7 in Crafting, and Crafting was also my highest 'Earn Income' viable skill (well, it was equal to my two Lore skills at the time, so any of the three would be the same for earning).
I had decided that since my background had granted me Quick Repair, I should acquire a Repair Kit to make use of it. We decided I'd go forward with the crafting, and then compare it to the same dice results earning income and see what is actually better.
So, the Crafting process:
I declare that I'm crafting a Repair Kit. This is a level 0 common item that has a Price of 2gp. Referring to TABLE 10-5: DCS BY LEVEL, we find that a Level 0 task has a DC of 14. If it was not a COMMON item, we would check TABLE 10-6:DC ADJUSTMENTS and adjust the DC as necessary - but it is COMMON, so we'll move forward with the DC-14 task. I also (and this is a bit ambiguous for common items in the pfs rules) need a formula for the item I'm trying to make. A Basic Crafter's Book costs 1sp, so I purchase that and now have a formula for every Level 0 Common item in existence.. neat!
I spend 4 days of downtime and half the price (1gp) to start the crafting job. I then roll the check. 12 on the die gives a result of 19, so it's a SUCCESS. That means the job can continue, and "Each additional day spent Crafting reduces the materials needed to complete the item buy an amount based on your level and your proficiency rank." Consulting TABLE 4-2: INCOME EARNED shows that I would reduce the price at a rate of 2sp/day (Trained and MY LEVEL of 1), meaning 5 more days of downtime and it would be done. PFS downtime is spent in blocks of 4 days, however, so I'm spending 8 more to finish it up. As a Field Commissioned Agent of the pathfinder society, I have 12 days to work with after a scenario, so that's my entire downtime for this session. So, after downtime is done, I've got my shiny new Repair Kit, a book full of potentially useful crafting formulae, and am 1.1gp poorer.
So now, what about the alternative?
Had I instead simply earned income for that 12 day period, and made the same dice roll, I would have been attempting a Level 0 Task, Trained. The DC is still 14, so the 19 is still a SUCCESS. Level 0 Trained earns is 5cp/day, times 12 days of downtime is 6sp earned. I then purchase my Repair Kit for 2gp. So, if I spent my downtime earning to buy it, I would still have my shiny new Repair Kit, and be 1.4gp poorer, and don't have a crafting book.
In this particular case, crafting was obviously better (though it did take a bit more jumping around the rules and requires some more annotation on the chronicle sheet).
After getting home, I was realized that I had leveled up after that session, so I decided to see if it would still be better to craft at my new higher level. The complication here, is that this alchemist is a gnome with the Gnome Obsession feat, so my Lore skills are now at Expert, +10, while Crafting is now at Trained +8.. will this alone tip the balance? Lets see:
Still assuming a 12 on the die, Crafting would mean:
4 days setting up and spending 1gp. Crafting check of 20 vs DC-14 is still a SUCCESS - but now completion is done at the rate of Trained Level 2, which is 3sp/day, meaning the Repair Kit is completed in the next 4 days. I then have 4 days to 'Earn Income', at a Trained level 0 rate of 5cp/day, so I earn another 2sp. So, altogether, I've got the Repair Kit, Basic Crafter's Book, and spent 0.9gp.
Still assuming a 12 on the die, Earning Income would mean:
Lore check of 22 vs DC-14 is still a SUCCESS, so earn income at Expert Level 0 is still just 5cp/day, so still earning a total if 0.6gp for the 12 days. So, with this option, I've still got the buy the Repair Kit, so as before net expenditure of 1.4gp, so crafting is even better. The Lore modifier is higher, however, so there's a greater chance of a critical success - and if that was the case, it would earn at the Expert level 1 rate of 2sp/day times 12 days earning 2.4gp over the downtime, so purchasing the Repair Kit means actually coming out with the Repair Kit and earning 4sp.
What's the conclusion? No idea. Crits are big in the earn income game, which means they are also big in the Crafting game since they use the same table. I do know I'll probably stick to Crafting, if I can reasonably do it, just because it FEELS nicer to make the tools I use myself, instead of buying them from the market - but the differences are not so much that you HAVE to go that route, and the simpler Earn Income role is so much smoother to navigate if the group is trying to just get Chronicles thrown out and head home.
So there you have it. A bunch of rambling and sputtering about to come out with no real conclusive evidence that it was the right way to go... That sure sounds like Pathfinder Crafting at its core, right?
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Bellevue
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The only thing I can see is that in your crafting only example, I'm pretty sure that down time is spent in 8 day bricks, not 12. So you'd apply the 12 you rolled against the first 8 days and then having to roll again for the last 4, risking worse (or better) dice rolls.
Someone did point out to me after the endeavor, that Horizon Hunters have a Tier 2 Faction Boon that lets you Earn Income at your level, instead of Level-2. With this boon, earning income would ALWAYS be better than crafting, because it's done AT your level (same as crafting) but without the loss of 4 days.
I then found that Envoy's Alliance also has a downtime boon - and it just gets rid of the wasted 4 days of crafting - which means crafting is done with the DC of the item level, but the earning rate of your level - making it better than earning income..
Vigilant Seal's Downtime boon lets you essentially 'Craft' a single magic item, using Arcana, Nature, occultism, or Religion instead of Crafting. The 'wasted days' is only 2 here, but you've got to buy the 2 Fame boon for each item you want to craft in this way.
Verdant Wheel's Downtime boon is only Tier 1, so available earlier, and is similar to Vigilant Seal in that it is the ability to Craft up batches of alchemical items or potions, this time using Nature Survival or Herbalism Lore.
so yeah.. variables stacked on variables.
The only thing I can see is that in your crafting only example, I'm pretty sure that down time is spent in 8 day bricks, not 12. So you'd apply the 12 you rolled against the first 8 days and then having to roll again for the last 4, risking worse (or better) dice rolls.
Yeah, I simplified that, since I was trying to compare apples to apples and use the same dice roll, so in this exercise, it's functionally equivalent. Legitimately, they probably should change that rule to be 'one earn income roll per downtime session' since I'm pretty sure the point of the 8 day block was to make it just a single roll - but the field commission stuff sort of breaks that up in an odd way.
Venture-Captain, North Carolina—Central Region
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Couple of things that may affect your decision:
1) The 8-day blocks only applies to Earn Income, as far as I can tell. Assuming I'm not missing it somewhere, that would mean your first example could craft your Repair Kit and Earn Income for your remaining three days, cutting down your costs to only 0.95gp total.
2) The main reason for the 8-day blocks is to balance out the curve of characters who get a lot of Downtime at once. For example, a field commissioned agent playing a module gets 36 days of Downtime. A single critical (in either direction) would wildly swing that character's gained wealth. By splitting it into 4 8-day blocks and 1 4-day block, the rolls get balanced out over time to more closely resemble those of a non-field commissioned character playing scenarios.
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I think it pretty much works out to:
Crafting is a little better IF you can craft the things you want to buy AND Crafting uses one of your best skills. But the difference is sufficiently minor that it is far more a role playing thing than a game mechanical benefit.
A success at your level even with 12 days gets you something like 10% of what you make from killing people and taking their stuff. A crit something like 15%. A crit fail means you lose a fair bit of progress. Either you use Assurance for your guaranteed 10% or you roll dice and, even if you're good enough, you crit fail 1 time in 20. Which means that you can essentially only risk crafting cheapish items (for your level) or you WILL crit fail at some point.
Mathematically, you're almost certainly better off taking the free stuff that a non field agent gets than the extra crafting days.
But its all pretty minor one way or the other. GREAT roleplaying material, mind. In PF1 I've built entire characters around things like painting (and I've already got one in PF2 leaning in that direction).
Couple of things that may affect your decision:
1) The 8-day blocks only applies to Earn Income, as far as I can tell. Assuming I'm not missing it somewhere, that would mean your first example could craft your Repair Kit and Earn Income for your remaining three days, cutting down your costs to only 0.95gp total.
2) The main reason for the 8-day blocks is to balance out the curve of characters who get a lot of Downtime at once. For example, a field commissioned agent playing a module gets 36 days of Downtime. A single critical (in either direction) would wildly swing that character's gained wealth. By splitting it into 4 8-day blocks and 1 4-day block, the rolls get balanced out over time to more closely resemble those of a non-field commissioned character playing scenarios.
Yeah, that does look to be correct - I think I just saw the '4-day block' in the text and thought it was similar (actually, I think my GM said it had to be done in blocks like that, and I remembered the text and figured it to be the case, but yeah, after looking again, yeah, there's no 'block size' limitation on crafting.
So, the one question I do have, because I'm not sure it's clear, is after the roll is made, for the post-4-day craft check, there is no mention of any further rolls. Does this still apply for crafting jobs that extend well past a single downtime?
In the core rules, there does seem to be just the singular roll - and nothing in the downtime rules seems to counteract that - but the wording of the associated faction boons seem to contradict that:
When you acquire this boon choose an alchemical item or potion of your level or lower to which you have access. While you have this boon slotted, you can spend Downtime to search for rare herbs and ingredients in order to craft up to a full batch of this item (typically 4). This uses the same rules as you would to Craft the item, with the following exceptions. First, you must use Nature, Survival, or Herbalism Lore in place of Crafting (such as to determine the progress you make and the maximum item level you can work on). Second, your faction provides you the necessary tools and workspace to perform this operation. Third, you only need to spend 2 days of Downtime before attempting your first skill check and subsequently beginning to reduce the item’s effective cost. You must keep this boon slotted until you finish crafting the items.
In any case, since some crafting jobs may last quite a bit longer than a single chronicle, how is this best recorded? How about when you level up mid-job?
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It's just one roll when you Craft (assuming you're successful). After you level, you save more while crafting that item.
I had a 1st level character Craft a Composite Longbow, and over the course of the next several sessions she saved quite a bit more than she would have Earning Income.
It's *generally* more worthwhile to Craft, but I'm looking at a new Sorcerer with the Bargain Hunter feat, and I think I'll do better over time with that.
Good catch on the Faction Boons.
It's just one roll when you Craft (assuming you're successful). After you level, you save more while crafting that item.
I had a 1st level character Craft a Composite Longbow, and over the course of the next several sessions she saved quite a bit more than she would have Earning Income.
It's *generally* more worthwhile to Craft, but I'm looking at a new Sorcerer with the Bargain Hunter feat, and I think I'll do better over time with that.
Good catch on the Faction Boons.
And how would you record the partial progress on chronicle sheets for that long longbow job?
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And how would you record the partial progress on chronicle sheets for that long longbow job?It's just one roll when you Craft (assuming you're successful). After you level, you save more while crafting that item.
I had a 1st level character Craft a Composite Longbow, and over the course of the next several sessions she saved quite a bit more than she would have Earning Income.
It's *generally* more worthwhile to Craft, but I'm looking at a new Sorcerer with the Bargain Hunter feat, and I think I'll do better over time with that.
Good catch on the Faction Boons.
However you feel gets the message across.
(that's not my Longbow character, but it's a screenshot I had handy)
However you feel gets the message across.
(that's not my Longbow character, but it's a screenshot I had handy)
And I assume the first chronicle would show the crafting check result (Success, Critical Success, etc).
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I just feel the need to point out that this entire system (converting downtime into earned income or crafting) feels needlessly complicated for incredibly marginal benefits and I hate having to explain it to new players. I like downtime for things like retraining ... the rest feels unnecessary.
That's really more of an issue with the Core rules, then. Not Society. Right? Society just dictates how many days of Downtime you receive depending on the adventure completed.
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The handouts sometimes make things worse for the new players, because the word "level" is used two different ways - the character level, and the task level. Unless it's made really clear, you have people subtracting or adding levels because they don't realize it's already been taken into account.
I've GMed twice and have had to explain four or five times, "You take your character level, subtract two, floor it at zero, and then roll versus that task level DC. If you fail you get one value, if you succeed you get the other value, and if you critically succeed you get the success as if your task level were higher, which at level one ends up being the same as your character level, but at level two onwards ends up being character level minus one. And yes, the numerical result for a critical success and a regular success are the same at levels one and two, because the regular success values for task level zero and task level one are the same. Unless you're Horizon Hunters. Oh, and if you're field commissioned, let's do it again."
The more new players try to learn, the worse the situation becomes - some people will just blindly accept their GM saying, "it's 4 sp, trust me, I worked it out" and they actually do okay. Other people will pull out their copy of the Core Rulebook, and they end up being the worst off!
Once your character makes it to character level 2 and exits the Exception Zone, I agree it's straightforward. But as is, this is a system that hurts the most vulnerable - new players and new GMs - who are going to sit there at the end of a session trying to explain to each other why two people who are the same level and rolled the exact same thing get different rewards.
Earn Income is a nice bonus but it takes disproportionate work relative to its value.
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A player is only new once. Not saying there isn't a learning curve to any new hobby, but from reading your post it sounds like you're letting your own frustrations or misgivings wear off on your players.
I don't find two minutes of excitedly asking players what their characters want to do during Downtime to be a negative experience, and if they're brand brand new then you're going to be the one referencing the chart anyways.
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Two minutes sounds about right. And if everyone is paying attention, and nobody needs you to repeat it, and everyone has their copy of the CRB open to the right page or has a cheat sheet handy, it only takes two minutes total.
Otherwise, if you have to explain it multiple times, it's 2 minutes times the number of times you repeat it. Plus 5 minutes for walking people through, or undoing someone else's incorrect explanation ("Last time I played, my friend told me ..."). I'd say 10 minutes of everyone's time, plus the additional questions that you have to field from the people who stay to ask questions.
And using the cheat sheet only defers the problem. The first few times I played, the GM just wrote down a number, which I accepted - which just deferred my learning curve until the first time I had to calculate it myself.
I think most of you guys with multiple symbols before your names are forgetting how steep that learning curve is at the beginning. The first few games should be exclusively focused on "How do I play a TTRPG?" and "How do I play Pathfinder?"; and all the side excursions of "How do I get a PFS number?" and "What faction should my first character be?" and "Why is the task level the character level minus two?" be flattened by the Steamroller of Efficiency.
Rules such as "you can completely rebuild any level 1 character" are awesome. Convention organizers showing up with pre-printed, pre-registered PFS numbers and a box of pregens is awesome. Extra GMs having pre-prepped repeatable scenarios for ad hoc games is awesome. These make it possible for someone to walk in off the street and have fun.
In that vein, I advocate straight up removing Downtime for Level 1 characters. 75% of the Downtime problem is solved (including the "task level floors at 0" bit which is just lol), at the cost of <1% of the Downtime benefit.
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I have a litany of complaints about the extra rules/options that Organized Play layers on the base game. Been trying to get them into a format that is not a wall of text and offers concrete suggestions. Basically all my complaints boil down to “We’re trying to accommodate everything and offer unique options to experienced players but we can easily overwhelm new players.”
Many GMs aren’t very good at reading the mood of a new person and judging what is the right amount of information to impart. And even if they are there’s often another player eager to help fill in what the GM “forgot.”
The Starfinder Society Downtime Rules are SO much simpler to explain and understand.
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As for the original poster’s point: the problem with the downtime options (craft vs. earn income) is that you are essentially doing the same thing (increasing your wealth) in two different ways. Even if we don’t know how to put it into words most of us are thinking “am I better off crafting this item or just earning income until I save enough money to buy it?” (The economics term is “Opportunity Cost.”)
Other than the coolness of having a crossbow you crafted yourself instead of bought from a store the only difference is which way was cheaper. And on a gut level we feel like there should be a “right” answer but it’s not a simple problem.
That’s without taking any boons into account.
Venture-Captain, Maryland—Baltimore
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I guess I'm confused why you're explaining the chart to brand new players at all. My explanation at the end of players' first game is usually just along the lines of, "You have some Downtime before the next adventure. You could use it to craft items or retrain things, but those are more for higher level. For now, you probably just want to earn income. Give me a Performance, Crafting, or Lore check." They tell me their result, and look at the table to figure out how much money they make, write it on their chronicle, and hand it to them. If they ask for more information, I'll tell them there's a chart in the CRB based on their level. The only people who ask follow up questions at that point are past the "overwhelmed new player" phase. Realistically, if you do the math for them, "You got a 17? Here's 4 sp," is no more or less confusing than, "You got a 17? Here's 10gp," like we had in PF1.
And yes, the numerical result for a critical success and a regular success are the same at levels one and two, because the regular success values for task level zero and task level one are the same.
Where are you getting this from? A level 0 task is 5cp per day, and a level 1 task is 2sp per day.