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I am running Skull and Shackles and the party wizard has craft wondrous item.
1. I have not adjusted wealth outside of what the AP lists as loot and opportunities to acquire plunder.
2. I have not increased monster stats, but this is strictly by player requests to run the AP as is.
3. This is where things have become MORE interesting because of the feat. Now the party is very interested in overland / overwater movement speed because it effects the benefit of traveling out of the way. This is maybe unique to the fact that they are on a ship, but a character with a ring of sustenance can find a similar amount of time to work on crafting.
4. I would consider the flavor it adds and the desires of the party. My table is powered to the max even without the benefits of Craft Wondrous, but they want the difficulty of the adventure unaltered. Perhaps your table wants to feel like they are creating their advantage by crafting their own equipment, that is a flavor of role playing that may be separate from the difficulty level they are going for.
1. Do you reduce the treasure by X% to keep the PCs from getting too powerful?
2. Do you increase the power of the monsters by X% or X CR?
3. Do you let the players just use the feats, accepting that the used feats slots and downtime are the price already paid for the ability?
4. A different solution
Just a general note for these.
1. No
2. Maybe
3. Yes
4. (Too complicated)
I think giving them these feats and then reducing their treasure would be like giving them Weapon Focus and then increasing the AC of every enemy by 1. If you don't want to include crafting feats in your game then tell the players to pick something else, don't have them waste a feat and then nerf them.
Likewise if they're investing a feat only to find they never have time to use it you're just nerfing that character unfairly. There should absolutely be times when when they don't have time to craft , but there should also be times when they can. Again, if you don't want them to use these feats (or if the adventure genuinely won't have time) just tell them to pick something else.
Increasing enemy difficulty is a bit different. It's usually no fun if there's no challenge, so increasing difficulty can be something that improves the game for everyone.
As an example, I wanted to take Craft Wondrous Items on my Occultist and my GM told me we wouldn't have much time to craft for the whole game. He suggested a Ring of Sustenance if I really wanted to, so that's what I did.
Having an out-of-character conversation is the best way to handle this. If you're not sure about it you could let them take a craft feat with the proviso that you may change your mind later if it's too unbalancing (and they'd get to retrain that feat).
I usually do not allow such feats.
If I allow them, I have a meta-game understanding with the players having them that they won't increase their wealth - as in cash and gear, not counting land owned for example - by more than 25% of what it would be without the feat.
In these 25%, I count items crafted for other members of the group.
Items not owned by the group anymore, because they've been sold away or depleted for example, are removed from the tally.
Example : A character has a wealth of 10k gp. She takes a Craft [magical gear] feat. She uses it to craft an item that would otherwise cost her 2k gp to purchase. It costs her 1k gp in components. Her total wealth is now 11k gp out of 12,5k gp, she has used 1k of the allotment granted to her by the feat.
- Two or more feats would push it to the hard limit of 50% -
Because some of the feats are, as you said, so much more useful than the others, I don't see a reason to keep them all separate. Craft (consumable) Magic Item and Craft (permanent) Magic Item or whatever. Still requires some investment to get into, but not a stupid amount.
The way I handle treasure and magic items is vastly different from anything in any book, so I don't know how much my insight is worth in that regard. But I've heard some people suggest that the Craft feats aren't there to allow players to increase their character wealth, but instead to help make a larger percentage of the same wealth into the exact kind of equipment they want. I think it's a fairly sound point.
The problem I can see is that it's all about a game's pacing, and there will never be much in the way of hard and fast rules for something like that. They're just too many variables.
Some games are non-stop, high-stakes, high-pressure stories that take place over a few days, and there's no way there will be any real amount of downtime. Others are sprawling, meandering narratives that cover large swaths of time or scenarios, and include lots of potential downtime.
I usually do not allow such feats.
If I allow them, I have a meta-game understanding with the players ...
I think this is the most important aspect of the discussion - make sure the GM and the players are on the same page. It doesn't really matter what page that is, but if everyone's reading it the same way nobody will be upset.
(Stretching the metaphor a bit, but you get it.)
Because of the "sell items for 50% of market price" (other than trade goods, etc.) rule, the Craft skill and item crafting feats normally have only a limited impact on total wealth by level in actual play. In effect, the item crafting feats exist to allow PCs to have level-appropriate gear that is actually useful to the character (i.e., not having the barbarian need carry around a +1 kama because that is the only magic weapon they found); no different than if the GM tailors the treasure awards to suit the PCs' specialties.
As to your questions:
1. Do you reduce the treasure by X% to keep the PCs from getting too powerful?
2. Do you increase the power of the monsters by X% or X CR?
3. Do you let the players just use the feats, accepting that the used feats slots and downtime are the price already paid for the ability?
4. A different solution
1. No, but see 4.
2. No, but see 4.3. Yes, but I reserve the right of approval/modification on any custom items. Some players will abuse or misinterpret the item pricing guidelines.
4. As a normal practice, you should be periodically checking the PCs' wealth against the expected WBL and "balanced" distribution guidelines to determine if you should increase or reduce the treasure amounts for the next few sessions. You don't need to have them exactly at the WBL in the table, but they should be reasonably close most of the time.
Well optimised characters, even with less than WBL may be "too strong" and need either upgraded or carefully selected enemies. If they're fully decked out with the best possible items at half price then the same but more so.
1. Absolutely not!
2. Oh yeah.
3. As a GM I hand-built an NPC specifically for crafting so the party didn't have to waste their feats or characters' time with it. I like them to have nice things. I like giving the enemy NPC's nice things too. Ooh, shiny.
4. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Burn the boats, don't look back. $#!+ is going to get wild.
The games are better with the proper toys in play... so is Pathfinder. Lol.