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Well, someone who has gone in heavily on crafting can end up with minor monetary gains over a crafter, but the more relevant answer is in your question.
assuming that you could by it for the listed price?
This assumption doesn't hold up for every campaign in every location. Crafting has more value when it doesn't.
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Yes. What HammerJack said.
Also, it is for building characters that have crafting things as part of the lore and backstory of the character. The mechanical gains are small, but they are still there. Which, for this type of character is a nice added bonus.
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Well, someone who has gone in heavily on crafting can end up with minor monetary gains over a crafter, but the more relevant answer is in your question.
assuming that you could by it for the listed price?This assumption doesn't hold up for every campaign in every location. Crafting has more value when it doesn't.Going heavily into crafting can end up with a monetary gain over a crafter? What does that even mean? My point is that you can make more working a Lore skill over crafting an item. Granted that you can possibly use a craft skill in the limited circumstances that you don't have access to the desired item from some sort of store. But that raises the question, where did you get the formula? You can't even use the Invention feat to make a formula for an uncommon item.
But back to my point, you actually can find higher level jobs to work; therefore, making even more money than what you can save by crafting your own gear. I would think that master craftsmen would be able to make things so cheaply that it wouldn't make any sense to buy it at all.
Mostly it means I mistyped. Was supposed to be over earning income.
Being able to find higher level tasks can possibly change that. It's also not a given. There are a lot of "depends on your campaign" things here. What is consistent is that crafting was never intended to repeat the mistakes of the past and be a large multiplier of wealth.
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@Elsra - I actually started an answer to show it is circumstantial - until I made the Maths for a specific example and crafting turned out superior.
I take a level 10 Wizard - crafting a batch of 4 level 3 scrolls. He is expert crafter and expert Akademia Lore. I therefore give him a +19 skill for either
Average income as crafter: 5.6 gp per day
Average income for akademia Lore: 3.6 gp per day. So why do I earn more as crafter compared to a dayjob?
The reason is the DC. I used level 3 scrolls as it seems they can be done in a decent time and still be useful.
A level 3 scroll is a level 5 item - so the DC is actually a low DC18 - leading do a high chance of crit success and zero chance of crit failure.
This means I earn at level 10 but I have to do a check vs level 5.
Here is the Maths in detail:
Sorry that this forum isn't table friendly and I don't want to spend half an hour to render it nicely
+19 skill, DC18 - scroll level 3
Outcome|Chance|Income|Days total|Days Paid|per day|Chance*Income
Fail|5%|0|4|0|0|0
Success|40%|5|24|20|4.17|1.67
Crit Success|55%|10|14|10|7.14|3.9
Sum of last column 5.6 gp
+19 skill, DC27
Crit Fail|5%|0|0
Fail|30%|0.7|0.21
Success|50%|5|2.5
Crit Success|15%|6|0.9
Sum of last column 3.6 gp
Edit: The last columns are income per day weighted by chance to allow summing them up as crafting is across different number of days.
I haven't optimized it yet for what level crafting at which level of play yields the best income. Also of note - I could write some scrolls while stuck in a small village for 2 weeks waiting for good weather to get across a moutain - good luck to use Academia Lore in such a place.
BUT - it is a lot of investment, you actually need to be able to use the items you craft to get a benefit and your GM might just handwave the need to find a realistic dayjob - no matter where you are.
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- If the character has crafting ( with magical crafting for example ), he'll be able to craft up to lvl 11 items, meaning his earnings per day will be ( assuming a master crafter ) 8gp per day on a success or 10gp on a critical success, reducing the cost of the item the crafter wants to craft by this specific amount of golds for every day spent to work past the initial 4.
That level 11 formula costs you 70 gp. The first 4 days of crafting don't give you any gold. So you already have to craft for at least 11 days (with a critical success) before you can even start to gain any money. The level 7 Earn Income from your example makes 22 to 27,5 gp in that time. If the lore check was a crit, you'd need to craft for at least 15 days to start making more money then with Earn Income even on a Crafting crit (which is far less likely than the Earn Income crit).
Without a Crafting crit, it takes like 19 days to start making any money. I can easily count on one hand how often I had more than 2 weeks of downtime in the last 3 years of playing PF2 (including Playtest). Sure. I can take a break, do some adventuring and continue to save money at a later time but I might be 2 levels higher then, which might means the crafted item is beyond its prime by the time I finish it and no longer really worth the investment.
It's only worth it if you have A LOT of downtime and preferably the formula for an item you'd want multiple copies of. If you use the formula more often, aquiring it becomes more efficiently. But not really since crafting multiple times also multiplies the 4 "dead" days.
I'm not saying Crafting is useless or a bad way to make money. But just saying "crafting gives you 10 gp per day, Earn Income only 2,5" is wrong.
Ah this again
- Because cities are only level 7 and even large metropolises like Katapesh are level 13, so items can be hard to find easily. And if you end up in a level 4 town while you want to craft a higher level item... well
- Even though you can leverage your reputation and ask the GM for items, this is not guaranteed and could take more time and subject the party to risks
- Transferring runes is very, very useful
- Reverse engineering formulae for uncommon and rare items that you cannot guarantee the ability to buy is VERY useful
- If you are crafting lower level (than you) consumables you can save a lot of money over time. (As you will crit succeed the roll and usually only need one extra day to half the price of all four items)
- Crafting doesn't have to be in consecutive days, have a day off make some progress, have another day off make some more
As for earn an income comparisons:
- Earn an income is limited to the tasks available in a settlement and is always subject to GM approval and RP (crafting isn't)
- Craft can be used for earning an income as a skill... sooo
In my current campaign the party is level 16 and wanted to get some backfire mantles greater. They were in a level 4 settlement and the closest nearby settlement was level 7. To put in an order it would have taken a month to the nearest big city; to invent and craft two it took a fraction of that time.
And of course, you can take it because you want to RP as a crafter because, well, roleplaying game.
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My whole point is that there is no mechanical advantage to crafting whatsoever, […]
Which is exactly as it should be, in my opinion. Being able to "buy" an endless amount of equipment for the whole group for half price by one character taking a single feat was one of the greatest faults of PF1.
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- Earn an income is limited to the tasks available in a settlement and is always subject to GM approval and RP (crafting isn't)
I strongly disagree with this. Crafting is subject to GM approval just like Earn Income. A GM can always say you can't find a formula for what you want to craft. Inventor makes getting common formulas possible, but even then a GM can always say it's simply impossible to invent some formulas. And even if you can use inventor, that's still a level 7 feat, so unavailable for about a third of the game. Not to mention that inventing Formulas costs additional time and money.
Then there's materials. By RAW, you need materials to craft stuff. If you want to create a 1000 GP item and the GM tells you you need to spend 100 gp worth of Mithral for this, you still can't just craft it in any level 4 town unless you happen to carry Mithral on you.
Reverse engineering formulae for uncommon and rare items that you cannot guarantee the ability to buy is VERY useful
If you can reverse engeneer an item, you already have it. Doing so to get the Formula and re-crafting it is pointless unless you have plenty of resources (time and money) AND need more "copies" of the same item.
Crafting is all about availability of items and downtime activities. If both are readily available, then it's pointless. Otherwise, it may be useful. In some campaigns (survival type ones) it is central.
As an example, in PFS, crafters make roughly twice more money than non crafters.
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My whole point is that there is no mechanical advantage to crafting whatsoever, outside of some rare edge cases. Its actually mechanically disadvantage to craft your own stuff.Yes. What HammerJack said.
Also, it is for building characters that have crafting things as part of the lore and backstory of the character. The mechanical gains are small, but they are still there. Which, for this type of character is a nice added bonus.
My point is that it is the same mechanical benefit as Bargain Hunter or Earn Income. At the end of the downtime (assuming it is only a week or so), you will end up with the same amount of money and the same item. Assuming all else is equal. Because it uses the same Earn Income table.
So a level 6 character in a level 6 settlement trying to get a level 6 item working for 7 days and succeeds at the skill check will get the same amount of money from the Earn Income table - whether that is the discount on crafting the item, the discount from buying the item at a lower price, or the money gained from employment that is then spent buying the item at full price.
The mechanical differences are minor and have to do with cases where all of these things are not equal. The biggest mechanical benefit that crafting gives over the other options is that you ignore the settlement level when crafting - using your character level instead. So you can craft things even when you are out in the wilderness and not in a settlement at all.
So again, it becomes a flavor choice more than anything else. If your character is supposed to be a master craftsman or someone that lives off the land and only goes into tiny settlements when absolutely necessary, crafting can give you the same benefits that any other character that lives in the city can get.
But not more benefit. Like Zaister said, if you are expecting the same broken crafting mechanics of previous editions, then it is no wonder you are disappointed.
Really? Not been the case as far as I have been able to see. You might want to review how it is handled in PFSCrafting is all about availability of items and downtime activities. If both are readily available, then it's pointless. Otherwise, it may be useful. In some campaigns (survival type ones) it is central.
As an example, in PFS, crafters make roughly twice more money than non crafters.
My Alchemist crafts since day one and she gain wonderful amounts of money, sometimes getting as high as 20% extra money when I crit succeed.
So, yes, twice is when you don't try to optimize it.
WOuld you care to share since I have never seen it and I used to play PFS2 quite a bit. I assume you are referring to the PFS2 since this is the PF2 boards. Especially interested in seeing your getting the double money since day one (crit succeeding on a your level task is quite a feat). Especially since you have to sell your items you craft for 1/2 priceReally? Not been the case as far as I have been able to see. You might want to review how it is handled in PFSCrafting is all about availability of items and downtime activities. If both are readily available, then it's pointless. Otherwise, it may be useful. In some campaigns (survival type ones) it is central.
As an example, in PFS, crafters make roughly twice more money than non crafters.
My Alchemist crafts since day one and she gain wonderful amounts of money, sometimes getting as high as 20% extra money when I crit succeed.
So, yes, twice is when you don't try to optimize it.
Ho no, you misunderstood me, I craft items for myself, so I don't sell them.
Ahh - you get the massive wealth equivalent items in common alchemical items that you stash (after you spend the time/money to get the formulas). Of course, there are common boons which allow you to do earn income at your level or so and thus you get the same amount but in cash. Easy way to do that especially since a large number of people take the extra lore skill feat for that purpose
Well, even if they are not that rare, they are not common. And even with such a boon, the crafter can gain more. The thing to realize is that you gain the equivalent of a task of your level but you roll for the difficulty of the item you are making. So, if like me you produce a lot of alchemical items to complement your daily allocation, and choose lower level items, you roll low difficulty and earn at your level. So lots of critical successes.
Another interesting thing with crafting is when you Craft big items. You only need one success (or better, one critical success) for the whole duration. If you craft an item for an entire level (which is the case for my soon to be Inventor and her Composite Longbow), you only need one success and you're set for 30 days of gain. Unlike Earn Income where you roll every 8 days and if you roll high you only get 8 days of work out of it and have to roll again afterwards.Another advantage of the Alchemist is that Formulas are basically free, because I need them in my Formula Book anyway.
Also, because crafters gain more, going Commissioned Agent is a good idea. But overall, you gain more with Crafting, if you make it properly.
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I disagree emphatically with your first counter but there is nothing to go on since you went with the "gm can adjust anything" argument. The difference is that crafting is pretty heavily codified mechanically, where earn an income is left up to the GM and roleplay scenarios by design.
If GM is asking for rare or uncommon crafting materials and the item doesn't mention those materials, or they are restricting access beyond what the book suggests. That is their prerogative to a point, but it isn't what should be considered the standard with a conversation of merits like this is simply pointless.
Saying "a gm can say you can't invent a common formula" is even worse and incredibly bad faith
If you can reverse engeneer an item, you already have it. Doing so to get the Formula and re-crafting it is pointless unless you have plenty of resources (time and money) AND need more "copies" of the same item.
It doesn't take that long to reverse engineer an item, and yes that is for getting multiples of items... that you would otherwise not be able to get, pretty simple stuff.
That is the point, someone finds a greater quick runner's shirt being able to increase it to 2-3 for the party is great.
Someone is playing in Age of Ashes and finds the dragons scale amulet, that is a HUGE boon, now sure a GM might ask for said dragon scale material to make it. But as written reverse engineering and crafting the item multiple times is a benefit of crafters.
Yes, I see that if all you ever want is to craft a bunch of low level alchemical items for your stash and your play style uses these items all the time, you can gain a nominally higher "value." Of course if you do not want to spend all of your earn income on those low level alchemical items (maybe you want to get a low level magic item) then you are actually worse off given the 4 days of prep work...
Once again, you're wrong. You consider that you succeed at all your checks which is not the case.
As an example, let's say you have 1 chance on 3 to fail and for the sake of simplicity you have 24 days of downtime. On average, you'll earn roughly 17 days of donwtime (8 days of a failed check gives the equivalent of one successful day). So you can still earn more with Crafting as you only need to succeed at one check to perform the full item.And that's without counting that you can have a reduced DC (but the more you reduce the DC and the more you reduce the duration, so it kind of balance itself out).
As a side note, 24 days is not a lot to craft an item, you are very often above that.
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My whole point is that crafting doesn't keep up with the other means of downtime income. Blave has already made my point better than I have, so I redirect you to the posts they have already made.
You are level 15 and are in a level 7 city.
Earn an income has you go out and find a job, then you have to commit to work a certain period unless it is a day to day drop in job... but let's waive the job seeking.
You work 7 days, you crit because it should be easy to do and you are legendary so you get a total of 21gp.
The crafter who is making a level 8 backfire mantle, the crafter will almost certainly crit and saves a total of 120gp over the three extra days spent crafting.
And the crafter can break that crafting up over multiple weeks if they need to, the earn an income job, well that is up to the employer.
Earn an income has its place, bargain hunter is great for sidestepping the seeking of a job. But crafting isn't tied to settlement level and is flexible in what it provides.
If your GM dumps level 20 cities around, a group plays with automatic bonus progression, there is no downtime, and or the GM is just super handwaivy; then yeah, there is little value. Oh or if you are in a group that is forever low level I guess.
But overall crafting works quite well in PF2e and doesn't actually break anything whilst still offering unique rewards to the crafter.
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The other bit that I don't see being discussed, is that an invested crafter would likely have Impeccable Crafting, such that all their successes (in their speciality) are crits, which makes the chance of crits, extremely high.
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There's really too many variables to say what the optimal way to make/save money during downtime is. Crafting low level items (not necessarily consumables, either, as plenty of items retain usage past their initial level) will generally be better deal. The day lead time IS annoying though, and grounds for house ruling.
The other thing though is that while the Craft activity isn't as useful, the Crafting skill is stronger than ever. For one, you can use it Earn Income the same as any Lore skill. Likely better-- Lores won't be useful in every settlement, but repairing and building stuff always is.
More importantly, enough skills have been rolled into it to where it is actually useful for adventuring, not just downtime. So investing in the skill is likely to pay off, even if making your own sword doesn't.
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Do people actually play the game like this - where downtime activity is even a marginal segment of the total accumulation of wealth that the character has?
Because that seems to be the basis for all of the anti-crafting viewpoints on here. That since they see crafting as being slightly less lucrative than other downtime activities (whether or not that is actually accurate or not), that the crafting process and rules are outright bad.
Which just seems silly.
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Do people actually play the game like this - where downtime activity is even a marginal segment of the total accumulation of wealth that the character has?
Because that seems to be the basis for all of the anti-crafting viewpoints on here. That since they see crafting as being slightly less lucrative than other downtime activities (whether or not that is actually accurate or not), that the crafting process and rules are outright bad.
Which just seems silly.
Honestly, I can't really get my players to engage with Earn Income even when they have downtime. They would rather work on side quests, projects, or roleplay. They staged a performance once... But otherwise haven't really touched it.
There are a few different downtime AP specific subsystems we have dabbled with, but they tend to be too fiddly for their own good.
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It's been a long while since I've seen people get seriously engaged with downtime. But Crafting as an uptime adventuring skill has come up often enough. Evaluating the quality or authenticity of items, jury-rigging a bridge, repairing a thingy, identifying a construct - it's plenty useful.
And of course it's like Treat Wounds for shields, but doesn't need half a dozen feats to work.
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There's really too many variables to say what the optimal way to make/save money during downtime is.
People always say that but it's not really true. It all fits on one Excel sheet. For any set of assumptions, an answer exists.
In PFS, Crafting is on par with Earn Income at Level-2. It's probably borderline unbalanced with Field Commissioned, Impeccable Crafter, and the EA boon.
Outside of PFS, there's larger variability in the assumptions, but I'd also just point to non-PFS Downtime being such a small fraction of non-PFS wealth that it doesn't matter.
What is clear is that it's roughly balanced - there's no universal reason for every character to craft, and there's no universal reason to avoid Crafting. Paizo did a pretty good job in balancing it on a system-level; if GMs are making Level 15 jobs in Level 13 cities easy to find, or handing out Rare materials willy nilly, they're the ones wrecking the system, not Paizo.
Note, I never said that the skill Crafting was bad, but that crafting system doesn't compare favorably with the income system. Both are downtime activities.
The way that the rules are written, I spend half of the cost to craft something, then work for 4 days, then make a check vs the item's DC, then if you succeed you reduce the additional cost as if you earned the value by working. Why would I ever chose that over just working a given number of days equal the time it takes to earn half the gold required for the item I want to craft? I mean, every time that I do the latter I save 4 days which I could work and earn even more towards more gear.
Yes. As a level 15 character, (assuming you have a level 15 job lined up) you can get an extra 4 days of employment salary over someone who decided to craft an item. So what are you spending your extra 40 GP on? You can almost afford a Potion of Retaliation (moderate), though you may have to instead settle for 3 of the Potion of Retaliation (lesser). Or you could buy a +1 potency rune for a backup weapon. You can't afford the first striking rune though. Both would be excellent choices for a level 15 character, I'm sure.
And this is assuming that the downtime is less than 8 days and that the crafting character doesn't have expert proficiency (needed for crafting magical items BTW). Because if the crafter has expert proficiency and you don't have expert in your Lore skill (why would a min-max'er do that anyway), then at 8 days the increased value per day of 4 days of extra crafting equals the income earned by 8 days of trained labor.
My point is that it is the same mechanical benefit as Bargain Hunter or Earn Income. At the end of the downtime (assuming it is only a week or so), you will end up with the same amount of money and the same item. Assuming all else is equal. Because it uses the same Earn Income table.
Perhaps the better wording would be that Earn Income, Bargain Hunter, and Crafting all have nearly equivalent monetary benefits. Similar enough that the difference is inconsequential.
There's really too many variables to say what the optimal way to make/save money during downtime is.People always say that but it's not really true. It all fits on one Excel sheet. For any set of assumptions, an answer exists.
In PFS, Crafting is on par with Earn Income at Level-2. It's probably borderline unbalanced with Field Commissioned, Impeccable Crafter, and the EA boon.
Outside of PFS, there's larger variability in the assumptions, but I'd also just point to non-PFS Downtime being such a small fraction of non-PFS wealth that it doesn't matter.
What is clear is that it's roughly balanced - there's no universal reason for every character to craft, and there's no universal reason to avoid Crafting. Paizo did a pretty good job in balancing it on a system-level; if GMs are making Level 15 jobs in Level 13 cities easy to find, or handing out Rare materials willy nilly, they're the ones wrecking the system, not Paizo.
We don't actually disagree-- I meant that there wasn't an optimal downtime method for every situation. For a specific situation, one method is bound to be better, yes.
Sorry, Captain, I assumed you were saying it was too complicated to calculate. I've faced a lot of that in the past and made a bad assumption. Apologies!
And yes, I was talking about Crafter's Fortune. It's a super good boon, so, naturally, all my Crafters have selected other factions, lol.
Personally, I'd rather they did away with mandated Downtime altogether for and made Downtime purchasable with AcP. It would make Crafting more fun if you could save up a bunch of AcP and then spend 50 days between levels 7 and 8 forging your own flaming sword. Right now it just feels like a mathematical loophole that I'm exploiting because I spent the time making an Excel sheet.
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No real advantage to mechanical crafting if your DM allows buying what you want when you want to or allows you to earn income at an equal level as needed.
But crafting can be nice if the DM is following the rules for maximum level for tasks or items in a given town as crafting allows you to exceed these levels.
It is also fairly good for low level crafting as you can easily roll a critical success for low level items and produce them quickly for half the price.
If all you're doing is making a magic sword every once in a while, crafting not worth it. If you want to cheaply produce scrolls or wands for additional spell uses, it can be a worthwhile investment.
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I'm currently in a game where there's a very strong reason to craft: lack of item availability.
Currently level 12 with a max settlement level of 7 right now. There have been hints that we're going somewhere bigger soon, but in the mean time magical crafting + the inventor feat + assurance means I can spend 8 days and a bit of coin for a formula (or 4 days if I already have the formula) and make any common level 11 or lower magic item for the party, including runes. If we didn't have a crafter we'd be a little behind on damage, + to hit, and defense for several levels. It doesn't make the game impossible or anything, but it's definitely worth the "wasted" downtime.
Definitely situation, but a lot of skills are situational.
Critical success provides for 1/2 price? I thought a critical success only means you craft at level +1 in terms of income dayrate?No real advantage to mechanical crafting if your DM allows buying what you want when you want to or allows you to earn income at an equal level as needed.
But crafting can be nice if the DM is following the rules for maximum level for tasks or items in a given town as crafting allows you to exceed these levels.
It is also fairly good for low level crafting as you can easily roll a critical success for low level items and produce them quickly for half the price.
If all you're doing is making a magic sword every once in a while, crafting not worth it. If you want to cheaply produce scrolls or wands for additional spell uses, it can be a worthwhile investment.
No. It is just an automatic success for the highest possible reduction in cost, so you can produce items faster and save half the cost doing so. If you're a lvl 17 crafter getting an auto success to count as crafting at lvl 18 for cost and producing lvl 8 items or something, you can make them real fast for half cost. Or half real cost since every day spent crafting after the initial amount reduces the amount the item costs by that days equivalent earnings roll which would be like earning income for a lvl 18 skill.