I'm deeply troubled by the PF2e economy; I want my game worlds to make sense! So I'm considering the following two homebrew changes to the game.
1) Crafting items never costs more than half of the normal price; extra days in Downtime reduces that price.
Characters crafting things in Downtime must make a down-payment of half of the price, as usual. They roll after 4 days to make the item, but if they are satisfied, they make the item for that half-price, not another half-price. Every Downtime day that they work past the four-day minimum essentially substitutes labor for the cost of components, and brings down the final cost of the item. Thus someone can spend a month scrounging for bits & pieces, and end up getting to keep most or all of the down-payment they originally made. Someone who stops after 4 days may well have included hired hands in the price they pay.
RATIONALE: The RAW economy is broken. Shop-owners likely will want to take a 100% mark-up for their time & skills in selling the item, not to mention the over-head of maintaining a shop. Therefore, they will rarely pay more than half-value for crafted items. The crafters supplying them must be able to make money themselves, which they can do by spending more than the 4 days.
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2) PCs in exploration mode may spend a week rather than 4 days making the roll to craft an item. And they may not then spend more time. They must of course have field tools, and the DC on the crafting check is one level higher.
So field-crafting something always costs half the normal price.
RATIONALE: There really is a lot of unadventurous time over the course of an exploration day. Spending it crafting something makes a lot of sense. Especially for consumables!
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My BIG QUESTION is the probable impact on the game!
Is there a lot of difference in what characters can make per day of Downtime with this rule, compared to what they can make by the generic rules? (Assuming they're selling to a shop for half-price. Of course, if they can do research and identify a shopper with a strong need for the product, and then use Diplomacy to get better than half-price -- I'd welcome that.)
And will both these changes to the PC economy lead to insanely powerful PCs? Let me break the impact into three parts --
a) What will this likely do to the power level up to 6th level?
b) How about 7th to 14th?
b) What about 15th & beyond?
Please note that I'm posting in a separate thread a different change to the economy: cutting the price of consumables in half. So with this change here you'd make them for one-quarter RAW price in 4 days of Downtime, or a week in exploration mode.
I appreciate your input a great deal. Thank you!
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Well, offering a PC having and using crafting an option that amounts to basically a 50% discount on things, is effectively creating an option to double their end personal wealth, if they leverage it for everything they buy.
Looking at the Character Wealth table 10-10 (using lump sum) you can see at levels 1-6 the ratio of wealth from one level to the next is pretty close to 2x the prior level. That means that simply allowing it to mean a 50% discount so a substantial portion of their wealth in items could mean their equipment could likely be on average about 1 level higher than usual for themselves. (if they craft for other party members, this might expand to their wealth as well).
My guess, 1 level difference might make things a little easier, especially against the boss encounters, but might ruin anyone's experience unless they really like it gritty and dangerous.
Note that from 9th to 17th the ratio between 2 level is very close to 2:1 so during that range of play your equipment might be 2 levels higher than anticipated. I think that sort of situation would likely be far more noticeable and affect how encounters play out more.
So if you agree that 1 level shift in equipment is probably fine, then until lets say 8th level a 50% discount probably would not be a giant impact. However, at higher levels, that seems like it might start changing, and if you want to curb that trend, you might need to reduce the discount. (either across the board, or make the discount for Master level items less, and like-wise drop it for Legendary)
The other thing you need to be wary of, especially with any large discount such as 50%. If you cave to the players attempt to argue they should be able to sell products they choose, at the time/frequency they choose, for the price they choose (100% market). you change the rule from a discount that can effectively double their expected wealth by level, to a rule that allows the character to start multiplying their capital, which can blow the top off their expected wealth.
People generally don't have the ability to define all three aspects of a sale. They can define what items and what prices their willing to sell them at, but then they have no-little control over when they sell, if ever. They can set the item for sale, and the timeframe (basically an auction) but basically lose control of how much the item will well for (whatever people are willing to pay at the moment).
How show owners get to sell at 100% (in general) is that they have such a large supply, they aren't really defining the when, or what (they are open throughout the day, most days, and they offer a wide array of the items which they stock. So they aren't really defining when they sell, nor what they sell... they are just generally sticking to the 100% bit to insure they make a profit. Yes, a professional vendor may occasionally CHOOSE to unload particular set of items, (choosing the particular items they want sold) and in response offer them for a lower price, making bigger specifics on what, causes the specifics and preference on price go down (but also increasing the likelihood or frequency of the sales of it).
So, if game story has room for them to sell a certain number of some consumables, or even other items, the players can encounter them by making contact with sources. Some might be locked behind skill checks to find. Others might involve simply meeting other, or doing favors for people who unlock meeting people with needs. But Commissioned sales opportunities at full price sales are in my opinion Story/Earned opportunities, and not/should not be seen as the general, and widely expected. market opportunities for the adventurers. Again, if you allow easy access to 100% sale of items, you create a situation where the bigger the discount, the bigger the capital/wealth compoundable multiplier you have created. At 50%, I'd say it likely is a relatively big risk. At 10% it could still be an issue but would take several iterations to even get to 50% increase you start at with 50%. If you allow compounding multiplication via easy access to 100% sales it may be more important to limit the max GP value of an item you can make, or insure the higher/more expensive items take much longer to push the time frame for a multiplication cycle.
If someone wants to build an actual retail shop. In my opinion it would be creating a sort of social minion/organization subsystem where you could invest relevant items into it as capital, and have it build up capital and reputation and build up 'levels' as a shop. Such levels offer it the ability to make income that build up cash reserves which can be used to reinvest in the capital, or might be able to be pulled out and profit for the owner/founder. Then the shop technically becomes something other than the player, and it would operate in the economy in a manner as a different subsystem from the player. But there would be options for the player to interact with their shop... potentially siphoning off their cash reserves, taking them as prophet, but doing too much could risk endangering the health of the shop making it potentially lose some of it base/capital value.
Again, with your specific mention of being able to make consumables for 1/4 price. If you let them sell them at 100% price that would be even bigger issue with income or discount. However, if max sale even for commissioned sale was 50% (because that is the new market price) well then that doesn't change any of the above, you've just adjusted the base market price of the consumables.
So I'd be wary of doing a 50% discount, myself personally, but the 10% or 20% discounts several people have suggested seem pretty easily within reach with minimal impact. As long as you control how easy it is to convert time to this discount, and keep the instances of 100% sales to a reasonable level to keep capital multiplication becoming a recurring thing, I think you'd probably be fine. You might be able to get away with 50% discount on Trained and Expert level items, and drop it to 25% discount on Master level items and 10% on Legendary items, if you want to avoid the issue of causing wealth potentially jumping track more than one level at the higher tiers.
Actually, Bargain hunter, which is a Skill Feat has sort of the reverse ability of sell for more than the 50%. It instead allows your to either buy items at (time as if income) discount by spending your time looking for a deal. Or it can be used to simply generate raw income with the flavor of buying things for cheap and selling them quickly for a bit of a profit. It isn't hard to imagine a mechanic that could be used to raise the sale price of an item over the normal base 50% up until max the normal 100% market price, by spending the time to find a particularly good buyer. In a way, some of the things Bargain Hunter grants I might have just considered a normal use of diplomacy myself. But it gives you a framework of what you might be able to use as a skill feat to give you. I would guess it is a skill feat since it enables you to use Diplomacy as a Lore/Craft/Profession type skill to earn money, which they didn't see as a given for Diplomacy as the raw skill.
You could have a skill feat that is Retailer which can be attached to Diplomacy, Crafting, or a Lore skill, allowing you to use that skill to Earn a living roles, to increase the sale prices of items relevant to a items the individual can make with crafting, or whose Lore skill covers making or using as a tool, from the normal 50% to 50% + income rolled (up to max of 100% of market price). Honestly, I thought there was another skill feat something like it but I can't seem to find it with searches at the moment, so imagine it was only something I'd thought of, or misread as being part of Bargain Hunter.
Noting that Bargain Hunter gives a starting character an extra 2gp. Which amounts to about an extra 13% in starting gold wealth for the character for the cost of a skill feat. Granted that is really only starting funds, but it gives a little bit of an indication that shifting wealth by 10% via some method is probably not something they would think would have a big impact on game balance one way or the other.
Anyway, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. But I hope the above gives you plenty to think about as you decide on where you want the various economic sliders to land in your campaign's economy.