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I simply disagree once I got to the point where you want to discuss profit. That breaks systems and personally I don't want to see it in pf2e
Edit: friend told me I missed something at read again.
Earn income is a separate activity entirely, what you are asking is to combine the two, crafting an item and earned income.
I still say this is not needed. Crafting in this game carries quite a bit more than just making something also.
Crafting, is still broken in one regard, even with the treasure vault. You are still working for no compensation for "x" number of days (4 in the core rulebook). The standard argument is that 4 days is the cost of access to the item but this argument has a flaw. The formula and material cost is the cost of access to the item. Time should be paid for every day you work on crafting an item at your established earned income rate. So if you are crafting 4 3rd level scrolls and finish them in 4 days, your cost should be 120gp each minus 4 days of your earned income. This is a minor tweak and will not harm game balance but it does allow a crafter to earn income equal to someone working at another job and not give their first 4 days away for free.
Crafting is not a way to get rich. In fact, right now it earns less than any other side job because you are giving some amount of days away for free (4 in the core rulebook and 1-6 under the alt rules). In a correctly balanced system, crafting should be the most profitable of the possible "professions" because it costs you feats and skill increases that either mostly or completely are income generators. As it is, if you are crafting magical items, for example, you have at least one feat used up for magical crafting and you are earning less per day than anyone doing anything else.
Bottom line is that investments in crafting are a losing proposition. Maybe in a campaign with no access to appropriate leveled gear it is a necessary evil, but it is an evil nevertheless.
The 4 days is the cost of making the item from scratch, and not just purchasing it from Ye Olde Magicke Shoppe.
Crafting is also represented as putting your tools of the trade to work at an establishment that is willing to commission you for your services, i.e. downtime earning income. You don't just spend 4 days straight making something and selling it, treating the income as your profit, the rules for selling items from PCs is clear on that.
I see no reason you can't use Crafting for "Earn an Income" anyway, since that would represent "doing commissions for other people" not "making whatever you want to make." The crafter choosing what to make should always be less lucrative assuming you can always find someone who needs you to do the work they request.
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In two days I will buy the PDF of the Pathfinder Treasure Vault and read the variant crafting rules to be able to fully participate in this discussion.
In October 2019 I began an Ironfang Invasion adventure path, converted to PF2 rules. The first module, Trail of the Hunted, began with the party and several villagers fleeing to the Fangwood Forest to hide from the invaders. They would have no way of reaching an unconquered town to buy supplies.
I worried that the two archers might run out of arrows. Thus, I immediately made a houserule to drop the preliminary 4 days for crafting arrows, so that they could make their own arrows in the forest. This houserule proved unnecessary for two reasons. First, they looted enough arrows off of defeated Ironfang patrols that they never ran out. Second, the urgency of the invasion discourages downtime for crafting. The party is now at 17th level and in all those levels has spent only about four days of downtime in which their crafting was moving runes from looted weapons to their favorite weapons. Only four months have passed in game.
What my campaign could have used were rules for crafting at the campfire for two hours at the end of the day to make simple objects such as arrows. For that matter, the ranger in the party learned Cooking Lore to be able to extend the food supply for the refugees by cooking at the campfire, because cooking definitely does not fall under Craft. Four days to cook a meal would be ridiculous. But such rules would better fit a rulebook named Pathfinder Wilderness Exploration rather than Pathfinder Treasure Vault.
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Crafting is not a way to get rich. In fact, right now it earns less than any other side job because you are giving some amount of days away for free.
That is mostly correct. And intended.
What is not quite correct is that this only holds for as long as all proficiencies are equal. If you increase your crafting proficiency and not your Lore proficiency then you can craft for more income than you can Earn Income with.
In a correctly balanced system, crafting should be the most profitable of the possible "professions" because it costs you feats and skill increases that either mostly or completely are income generators.
That is an unfounded opinion. I see no reason that Crafting should be a more profitable method of earning party wealth than any Lore Earn Income activity.
Also, there are ways to increase your Earn Income through proficiency increases and skill feats such as Experienced Professional.
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And finally, the additional facet of this that I promised to get to later.
You can use Crafting as an Earn Income activity. You don't need to spend 4 days for free in this case.
Skill Uses
[Crafting] Earn Income by crafting goods for the market.
[Lore] Earn Income by using your knowledge to practice a trade.
[Performance] Earn Income by staging a performance.
So if you just want to earn money along with your friends using your Crafting skill, just use Earn Income the same way that they are.
You only need to use the Craft an Item rules if you are actually wanting to craft an item.
So...crafting doesn't require much investment as your initial premise states.
You invest skill training (and possibly skill increases) into training and that will let you craft all sorts of things, if you have the formula.
The exceptions I see are:
tattoos
magical items
alchemical items
And probably you don't need all 3. So spending a couple of skill feats to craft what you want, isn't a big deal. Although depending on your build, you may have trouble supplying the required things (like spells).
My suggestion, if you really have trouble, is get rid of the skill feats that gate crafting an item behind them so that there is no additional investment required. Now you can craft to earn income and keep up with anyone else of an equal training level (TEML) or you can craft because you/your party needs something.
You have more options than someone who has lore or performance because they can't produce anything, and require people to be interested in what trade they have or in seeing their performance. Whereas you can always craft, even if you wouldn't make as much money you can do it when they can't.
And if you're in a situation where you can buy an item rather than produce it yourself, I suggest that you and your GM simply agree that mechanically you'll Earn Income but from a RP level you'll say you made it.
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Crafting is expensive too.
You have to pay for the formulas for items, skill it up, then buy feats for magical crafting, then spend a ton of time crafting to gain any advantage for reducing the cost.
Crafting should be more interesting and advantageous. I don't want it broken like PF1 where people were getting crazy with the crafting, but it is currently a really complex skill with real advantage other than to spend a lot of coin for nearly nothing.
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Oh, I am aware of what you are complaining about. It has been brought up on these forums before. I just don't agree that it is a problem.
you could have bought the items in town and got paid for those (otherwise lost) days by the blacksmith.
So do that instead. What's the problem?
The game should encourage crafting
Why?
Why should Crafting be the best possible option for earning income during downtime?
Especially - why should crafting an item be a more lucrative option for gaining money during downtime than engaging in something with Earn Income directly?
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Oh, I am aware of what you are complaining about. It has been brought up on these forums before. I just don't agree that it is a problem.
you could have bought the items in town and got paid for those (otherwise lost) days by the blacksmith.So do that instead. What's the problem?
The game should encourage craftingWhy?
Why should Crafting be the best possible option for earning income during downtime?
Especially - why should crafting an item be a more lucrative option for gaining money during downtime than engaging in something with Earn Income directly?
Because crafting a magic item is more difficult and costly than crafting horseshoes or just about anything else. It doesn't matter if you're a house painter or a craft of magical rings, you make the same amount of coin. It doesn't feel right.
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A success at a level 5 Earn Income task earns 1gp per day, or 2gp on a critical success, for 7 or 14gp over 7 days. If I am crafting a permanent item that is level 6 or less, I have 4 days of prep time, and then do 4gp of work every day after that (6gp on a critical success). That gets a discount of 12 or 18gp for the 3 days of work remaining, unless I rush it. If I rush, then I get a discount of 24 or 36gp (32 was a typo) over those 3 days. I don't even have to make a flat check at the end to determine if the item has a quirk or not, since the DC of the flat check is 1 or lower.
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Please show me a skill that let's you create something tangible and earn income at the same time.
Earn income is separate activity from crafting an item. They should not be combined.
If you want to earn an income, do that
I'd you want to build something, build it
It would be like complaining that the learn a spell activity doesn't make you money
The point is your 4 days (core rules) are not compensated, that is a problem because the rest of the party is earning income and you are not because you are the one with the crafting skill. If you are producing items for yourself, your party or for sale, your time should be valued the same.
I know what your point is, but it's incongruent, and by proxy, irrelevant.
You're not spending 4 days working on other projects for a business, which is why you're being paid 4 days of downtime. You're spending 4 days crafting an item from scratch that you probably otherwise couldn't acquire anywhere else, for either yourself or your party, which means you're not doing work for a business, which means you don't get paid 4 days of downtime for it.
Now, does it suck that the other party members can probably earn income in that time, and by proxy be richer than you, even if minimally? Sure, but they also can't craft the items you can craft, or perhaps acquire the items you can craft from the settlement they are in. You're paying for the opportunity to be able to have anything you want at any moment in exchange for downtime pay.
I'm tired of arguing in circles about this.
If a character wants to craft items, they can - using the published item crafting rules.
If a character wants to earn income, they can - using the Earn Income rules, including using Crafting to use it.
If no one in the party wants to craft items because of the 4 day penalty that it has, then they shouldn't need to - they can all buy their items instead.
We don't need to buff item crafting rules to match Earn Income amounts. That is a conflating of purposes that is just not necessary.
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Especially - why should crafting an item be a more lucrative option for gaining money during downtime than engaging in something with Earn Income directly?
Well, investment is one. If you're using valuable skill increases and skill feats and investing money into your craft, it's not that weird to want it to be slightly better, or at least just as good, as the option that only requires one skill feat.
Now the counterpoint is that you don't need a settlement level to craft, which is a valid point. But the counter-counterpoint to that is that you're still restricted by formula access and potentially raw materials depending on how your GM is feeling, so you don't have as much freedom as the original point would suggest.
I think that makes it more complicated than you're framing it to be.
My Witch is a crafter, and is currently level 9 in a level 5 settlement. Why would I spend a week of downtime to make 7 or 14 GP with Earn Income when instead I could Craft something at a discount of 24-32gp?
How long does that take you? And how much downtime does it require?
I mean, there's absolutely the verisimilitude argument for "if you make what the customer asks for instead of making what you want and hoping someone buys it in a timely manner, you make more money" and "if you make something, and give it away to your friends you don't make any money."
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I mean, there's absolutely the verisimilitude argument
If we're considering that angle, where does "Making the item yourself from raw materials saves 0 money" fit in? I'm not sure that's a particularly high versimilitude mechanic.
"if you make what the customer asks for instead of making what you want and hoping someone buys it in a timely manner, you make more money"
I don't think this is correct either. PCs sell items for half market value, but you craft for full market value. Making an item and selling it in a timely manner loses you money.
Especially - why should crafting an item be a more lucrative option for gaining money during downtime than engaging in something with Earn Income directly?Well, investment is one. If you're using valuable skill increases and skill feats and investing money into your craft, it's not that weird to want it to be slightly better, or at least just as good, as the option that only requires one skill feat.
For which one - earning money, or crafting an item?
Because this argument seems to be valuing those investment feats only for their use in earning money. But those feats aren't necessary when all you are using crafting for is earning money.
Pretty sure this is supposed to be covered by the "earn income using crafting" option."if you make what the customer asks for instead of making what you want and hoping someone buys it in a timely manner, you make more money"I don't think this is correct either. PCs sell items for half market value, but you craft for full market value. Making an item and selling it in a timely manner loses you money.
With the 4 day setup to make anything, I always looked at rolling income for Craft as being an improved skilled hireling as being able to craft an item in a day and sell it but making something for yourself taking much longer doesn't make a lot of sense.
My Bomber, whom I wanted to Craft things, is Field Commissioned in PFS. This gives him an extra four days of Downtime per Scenario (12 instead of 8).
I usually use this time to Craft some Consumables that are useful to have on hand without dedicating Infused Reagents to every day
My guy has Specialty Crafting (Alchemical Items) and Impeccable Crafting as well. So, the nice thing is, I usually save money at Level + 1 per day, where the maximum task I can get is Level - 2.
I consistently save more money on my new Consumables over 8 days then I could make at Earn Income over 12. It's nice.
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A success at a level 5 Earn Income task earns 1gp per day, or 2gp on a critical success, for 7 or 14gp over 7 days. If I am crafting a permanent item that is level 6 or less, I have 4 days of prep time, and then do 4gp of work every day after that (6gp on a critical success). That gets a discount of 12 or 18gp for the 3 days of work remaining, unless I rush it. If I rush, then I get a discount of 24 or 36gp (32 was a typo) over those 3 days. I don't even have to make a flat check at the end to determine if the item has a quirk or not, since the DC of the flat check is 1 or lower.Are you going to be crafting permanent items 3 levels lower (I think you said you were level 9) for your party or would the items you craft for your own use highest you could craft? In comparison, wouldn't you be level 9 on earned income and not 5?
Earn income levels are set by the location, not the character. If your down time is out in the woods, you might have no earn income options at all. Most APs cap villages and small settlements well below character level. Characters tend to level up so fast that even a decent level settlement one week, might be 2 or 3 levels behind after the party does a week or two of adventuring.
To mathmuse’s point, a house rule I use is to divide days up into 3 sections. Players must rest 1 out of those 3 or start getting tired. Players can be in exploration mode or encounter mode for 1 section of the day just fine, but if they push that into a second section of the day, the are fatigued. Players can thus explore/adventure for about 8 hours a day, rest about 8 hours a day, and then pursue a downtime activity for about 8 hours of the day. ( I let this be split up, I don’t require consecutive hours for anything but resting). When players are out exploring, things like walking cauldrons, portable labs and spells that create temporary structures can be very useful for letting players craft as they travel. Sometimes I will allow earn income activities in the wilderness (making maps to sell in town, or foraging resources, etc., but ysually at a lower level than any surrounding settlement. My players have really liked this rule as it encourages them to think through useful things to do with down time and encourages crafting, researching, and retraining. It also means they can focus in on downtime activities and get 2 days out of 1 if they are doing nothing else.
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I don't know why this is confusing?Because a "discount" is the same thing as "earning that amount of money".
You're trying to gain both the value of the item and the value of 'the discount' during the same time period.
He's really not: he's complaining about the 4 days before you actually start to roll for a discount. What he wants is to start rolling for a discount on day 1 instead of day 5. So, I'm not seeing where the free item is coming from as it's not about rolling for the item AND rolling for income, just an argument on when you start rolling for the item discount. I personally don't see any compelling reason a 4 day delay is inherently better than any other time frame or is particularly needed/required for craft to work correctly and in a balanced manner. It's one of the biggest complaints about crafting.
it's not about rolling for the item AND rolling for income, just an argument on when you start rolling for the item discount. I personally don't see any compelling reason a 4 day delay is inherently better than any other time frame or is particularly needed/required for craft to work correctly and in a balanced manner. It's one of the biggest complaints about crafting.Isn't that the same 4 day minimum that's required with Earn Income?
What minimum for Earn income? It's per day. The only time you spend more time before a roll is if you do Extra Preparation to lower the DC.
My Witch is a crafter, and is currently level 9 in a level 5 settlement. Why would I spend a week of downtime to make 7 or 14 GP with Earn Income when instead I could Craft something at a discount of 24-32gp?I don't see how your example is possible. If you can give me a specific example, it would be helpful.
Correct me if I am wrong but if you are spending a week crafting something for yourself or your party, the first 4 days you work for free. The next 3 days you get your earned income rate as a discount. Alternatively, if you were just working for 7 days, you would have 7 days of income at your earned income rate.
The thing your ignoring is being in a settlement that has jobs available at the level your character would be seeking them.
Your legendary lore character in a backwater hamlet isn't going to find a high level job to do. Whereas you can craft anywhere you have tools and can make a suitable place to work.
So the answer is you only craft to make things at times when others couldn't use Earn an Income (at their highest task level) and when everyone can Earn Income at party level then you do the same.
A success at a level 5 Earn Income task earns 1gp per day, or 2gp on a critical success, for 7 or 14gp over 7 days. If I am crafting a permanent item that is level 6 or less, I have 4 days of prep time, and then do 4gp of work every day after that (6gp on a critical success). That gets a discount of 12 or 18gp for the 3 days of work remaining, unless I rush it. If I rush, then I get a discount of 24 or 36gp (32 was a typo) over those 3 days. I don't even have to make a flat check at the end to determine if the item has a quirk or not, since the DC of the flat check is 1 or lower.Are you going to be crafting permanent items 3 levels lower (I think you said you were level 9) for your party or would the items you craft for your own use highest you could craft? In comparison, wouldn't you be level 9 on earned income and not 5?Earn income levels are set by the location, not the character. If your down time is out in the woods, you might have no earn income options at all. Most APs cap villages and small settlements well below character level. Characters tend to level up so fast that even a decent level settlement one week, might be 2 or 3 levels behind after the party does a week or two of adventuring.
To mathmuse’s point, a house rule I use is to divide days up into 3 sections. Players must rest 1 out of those 3 or start getting tired. Players can be in exploration mode or encounter mode for 1 section of the day just fine, but if they push that into a second section of the day, the are fatigued. Players can thus explore/adventure for about 8 hours a day, rest about 8 hours a day, and then pursue a downtime activity for about 8 hours of the day. ( I let this be split up, I don’t require consecutive hours for anything but resting). When players are out exploring, things like walking cauldrons, portable labs and spells that create temporary structures can be very useful for letting players craft as they travel. Sometimes I will allow earn income...
This is the way! It includes what I was trying to point out, and actually takes into account how "real life should play out".