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The idea is this. Lets say we are using core rules crafting and you are making a batch of lvl 3 scrolls. that 4 scrolls, 120gp and 4 days. What I am saying is that the cost should be 120gp less whatever your daily earned income rate is for 4 days. So you should get a discount for your time of 4 days income. If you are paying the same 120gp you would if you bought them at the shop, your 4 days time is worth nothing. Earning money would be a totally separate thing and is only referenced as a comparison because when you are working for someone you are paid for every day you work. I am not suggesting doing both at the same time (getting items and getting paid income both). I am saying the discount on what you make should be 4 days of your level of income. I don't know why this is confusing?
I don't entirely know why creating an item takes 4 days. But it very clearly was written that way.
What I do know is that crafting an item is not balanced against Earn Income. That wasn't the intent. Crafting an item is balanced against buying an item.
Crafting an item takes 4 days, still costs full price compared to buying the item, and you gain nothing but the item for it. That was all very deliberate choices made by the people who wrote the game rules. I believe that the intent is to make crafting a bit less desirable of an option compared to just buying the item from the market. Perhaps the point is that the opportunity cost of going back to town and then going back to the location of the adventure will be two days back to town and two days back to the dungeon. If you want to just craft the item, it takes 4 days but no travel time.
As a separate process, after you spend the 4 days crafting an item, you can use Earn Income to gain money using the normal rules for Earn Income. Alternatively, if you don't actually want to have an item at the end, you can use Earn Income with your Crafting skill from the start.
I am not seeing anything imbalanced or unclear in the rules here. The 4 days it takes to create an item is a bit steep IMHO, but that was what was decided on from the beginning in the first version of the CRB.
If you don't personally like something about this, you can try to houserule it for your table. But arguing that it is somehow wrong or a mistake that needs fixed doesn't make a lot of sense.
Overall, it is really up to the GM to decide how useful any downtime activities are going to be be in their game.
There is no secret down time win formula to down time anymore. I see many GMs mostly trivialize or minimize down time in APs because they have planted some seed in their PC’s heads that makes the character feel like there is some THING that needs doing sooner than later and the expectations of adventuring come to override any other connections the characters might have to NPCs, settlements or the world.
I think this often happens with the in medias res introductions that many APs have that start right out in an encounter. If the players haven’t taken a session 0 to really situate their characters in the world, they will quickly let the current story beat become the only thing their characters really feel connected to. This is not bad. Paizo APs draw players in very well. But it can sometimes result in players having no interest in down time for their characters beyond moving to the next adventuring plot point. Again this isn’t inherently bad, but it tends to make downtime a block to the action of the game rather than an additional fun part. If my players seem to be of this mindset, I might offer no downtime at all and just keep things moving with treasure rewards to keep the party’s wealth by level at or above the curve, and have pretty limitless magic shops.
But with my house rule, I find players get pretty into developing relationships with NPCs, crafting, building organizations and buildings that give bonuses to different kinds of activities, etc. one additional trick to that is to make sure it moves quickly. If a round of down time takes as long as an encounter, many players seem to tune it out. Some players just want their character to lift crates down at the docks for a couple of days. That down time session can take 5 minutes. Throw in one little NPC or setting detail or rumor they happen to learn while doing so (something not too important, that is what gathering information is for) and it can be a decently colorful narrative moment without requiring a whole lot of time.
Crafting specifically is a useful down time activity only in campaigns where the GM uses it to let the party build up resources that the GM wants the party to get by crafting. Players can’t really force it over the game like they could in PF1. If the GM lets you earn income at your level anywhere there is down time, and have access to at level magic items from shops, they are telling you that crafting is not a valuable activity to focus on in this campaign outside of classes and equipment that require it in encounters.
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The whole economy in this game is, for Balance's sake, completely implausible and distorted; it's just utterly ridiculous. The unpaid apprenticeship issue with Crafting is just a minor consequence of this.
I do understand the necessity for this in organised play, at least theoretically; but myself, I rather took the effort to overhaul it and balance character wealth otherwise.
Well, at least one need not invest XP.
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Couldn't you just flavor it as you are working 4 days crafting scrolls as a job for a scroll-shop. Therefore you get paid for 4 days work.
Then you buy the scrolls from the shop at regular price.
Overall you end up with a "discount" of your income on the full price of the scrolls.
Maybe it's because I'm new to PF2 but it seems that the big benefit of crafting is to get items that you can't otherwise acquire due to location, location level or other thing. It's very, very clear that crafting to not meant to be a business but an option to acquire things you otherwise can't.
Ding ding ding! We have winner!
That's absolutely right, and how you should look at it.
Crafting should only be done (to get an item) when you can't obtain that item in other ways. Does that suck? Kind of, but it doesn't break anything.
If you have the craft skill, you can use it to Earn Income with the same sort of stipulations everyone else has, and make just as much money as them. Occasionally when the need arises you can craft an item that is otherwise unavailable to the party due to location (and the items available there).
I like the previous poster's suggestion that you flavor your activity when earning an income as working for a shop that sells the item you want, and purchasing your completed work when it's done (that gets you the same mechanical benefit as anyone else).
And then you also have the benefit that when you're in the wilderness and no one else can Earn Income with their lore, that you can craft an item while everyone else can do nothing.
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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?
This is 7 days of work, either with Earn Income or Crafting. It's worth noting that the downtime spent Crafting does not need to be consecutive. As long as you succeed on the initial check, you can put the project down and come back to it later without needing to make another check.
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?
The items I Craft are dependent on what the party needs and what we can afford. It's pretty rare that I have the gold necessary to make anything that is on level, let alone buy it.
And no, as has been stated, the levels of Earn Income tasks are generally limited to the level of the settlement you are working in. Crafting progress however, is set by your Crafting proficiency and level, regardless of the level of the settlement or item being crafted.
Folks are correct that you are limited by the formulas you can find or buy, though this is why I also have the Inventor feat.
One other thing: There's definitely an opportunity cost, since I'm obviously not making any money myself while I'm Crafting stuff, but that's not really a problem to me. I like making stuff for the rest of the party, especially if it makes us more effective. One of the first things I did after getting Magical Crafting was make hats of disguise for everybody. Optimal? No, probably not, but for me it was a fun project.
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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.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?
That isn't how it works though.
1. What am Earn Income job entails scales based on the level of the task. From the CRB:
Sample Earn Income Tasks
These examples use Alcohol Lore to work in a bar or Legal Lore to perform legal work.
Trained bartend, do legal research
Expert curate drink selection, present minor court cases
Master run a large brewery, present important court cases
Legendary run an international brewing franchise, present a case in Hell’s courts
So the equivalent for Crafting to Earn Income would be something like:
Trained make horseshoes, paint houses
Expert make magic weapons for visiting nobility
Master design fortifications or public buildings for a major city, or magic rings for a king.
Legendary contribute to making a chariot for a god or their heralds.
2. As those examples illustrate, making money is not solely a function at being skilled at a thing. It is a function of how well you can market the thing, whether you have the connections to find a buyer, and whether you can avoid getting swindled.
3. Task level access is largely left up to GM's discretion, but it would be entirely reasonable for a GM to gate those on feats in much the same way Craft is. For example, if making magic ring for the king is most plausible level 10 task, your GM might require you to have the magical crafting feat. (Another example could be requiring feats like Connections to find higher level tasks.)
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Maybe it's because I'm new to PF2 but it seems that the big benefit of crafting is to get items that you can't otherwise acquire due to location, location level or other thing. It's very, very clear that crafting to not meant to be a business but an option to acquire things you otherwise can't.Ding ding ding! We have winner!
That's absolutely right, and how you should look at it.
Crafting should only be done (to get an item) when you can't obtain that item in other ways. Does that suck? Kind of, but it doesn't break anything.
Why does everyone believe you can craft out in the wilds?
Unless you learned or purchased the appropriate formula(s) prior to leaving the settlement, or are willing to spend even more downtime on something like the Inventor skill feat, you really can't.
If the item is unavailable, then the formula likely is too. And if the item is unavailable, but the formula is not, then that is solely from the good graces of a GM' fiat ruling.
Either way, crafting is still extraordinarily broken in regards to doing anything remotely realistic.
You can craft out in the wilds, though it still has some challenges.
But you know what you can do? Be a busking bard to a non-existent audience in the woods. Or use your lore alcohol to tend bar at the non-existent bar.
Sure you need the formula and you're going to have to make preparations for a work space.
But you're still not worse off than someone using lore, because you can use craft in the same way.
It's just that it chafes that using it to earn income isn't the idea that most people have for their fantasy. But when you can craft runes for the party and the local village only had 1, your party members will be happy you could help them outfit themselves on the way to the next dungeon.
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Why does everyone believe you can craft out in the wilds?
Well, it really depends on "craft what". Like you're probably not carrying a forge with you when you're out in the wilderness, but do you have access to an Alchemist's Lab? If you're an Alchemist you might want to pack one for your trip, even if you leave it at the campsite.
You can probably also inscribe scrolls, make talismans, knit, sew, fletch, and inscribe runes too.
My Bomber has an Alchemist's Lab in his Bag of Holding.
Also, the Inventor feat is a thing (and not just for Inventors.) Give my guy 8 days (4 for the formula, 4 for the item), the raw materials and the right gear (which he plans to purchase) and he could make Anklets of Alacrity in the middle of nowhere.
Private Workshops can also be a thing. I really want one, but there's no access in PFS to them...
This morning I purchased the PDF of Pathfinder Treasure Vault and rushed over to page 156, the Secrets of Crafting chapter. "The Crafting Alternate Rules section presents complex crafting rules, which
can make crafting more complicated but also more nuanced."
As I said Monday in comment #8 my main desire for different crafting rules was to allow crafting arrows in the forest without taking a full day of downtime. By the alternative crafting rules, a Master in Crafting could reduce the setup time for crafting by 2 days by increasing the DC by 10. Okay, increasing DC is a nice balance. Furthermore, TABLE 5–1: DAYS OF SETUP TIME says that for a consumable 3 levels or more below the level of the character would require only 2 days of setup time. However, setup time never goes below 4 hours.
Too bad that that works only for characters of 7 or more levels, because that is the minimum level for Master proficiency. Seventh-level characters are rare on Golarion. By the time the characters in my Pathfinder game had reached 7th level, they had already opened the armory in Fort Nunder and claimed so many arrows that they were still using the cold iron arrows from the armory against blighted fey at 17th level.
The book also offers a Quick Setup feat:
Quick Setup feat 7
Rare, General, Skill
Prerequisites master in Crafting
You have learned to setup simple crafting jobs with ease. Your setup time for consumables that are at least 6 levels lower than you is 1 day, and your setup time for permanent items 6 levels lower than you is 3 days.
If you rush the setup and reduce the setup time for consumables at least 6 levels lower than you to less than 1 day, you can instead set them up in just 2 hours (allowing you to do so during an adventuring day if you have access to your tools and materials). If you rush the setup of a permanent item at least 6 levels lower than you and reduce the setup time to less than 1 day, you can perform the setup in 4 hours.
Once again, this option is available only to masters in crafting.
However, the line, "... you can instead set them up in just 2 hours (allowing you to do so during an adventuring day if you have access to your tools and materials)," hints at the evening crafting period that Unicore described in comment #45. Alas, as far as I know, Pathfinder 2nd Edition does not have defined rules about the length of a workday or an adventuring day, so I don't know how the PCs can fit evening tasks into their adventuring schedules. At the beginning of their adventuring day, they have daily preparations. I assume that at the end of an adventuring day they need time to set up camp and cook dinner, leaving little time for downtime projects. But Quick Setup suggests that that little time can be up to 2 hours.
A section called Critical Crafting begins on page 161. When I discussed homebrew crafting rules with my players years ago, they said that faster crafting for a critical success did not interest them. If their characters had already scheduled weeks of downtime for crafting, then having shorter downtime due to a lucky roll was no real benefit to the character. Alternative benefits would keep my players happier. Unfortunately, one player had pointed out to me the world-building drawback of creating better items from a critical success in crafting: an NPC craftsman would roll a natural 20 occasional and make some of those better items. Why don't the regular shops have a few of those better items for sale?
Converting Magic Items, beginning on page 162, relates to the current plot of my campaign. They have looted the Spiteful Scimitar off of Queen Arlantia, but the scimitar has a reputation for corrupting its wielder. They left it with an NPC to be destroyed, but they discussed transferring the runes off of it before destruction. More significantly, after they rescued Gendowyn, Lady of Fangwood, she converted an immovable magic item into a unique Staff of Gendowyn's Return with similar abilities for her own temporary use for a few hours, and then she exchanged that staff for the Staff of Dryad's Song that the party had restored. The sorcerer Honey who had been using Dryad's Song would have returned Dryad's Song willingly, but Honey's players said that an exchange felt more fair. The Staff of Gendowyn's Return was constructed in 4 hours at the speed of plot, but it helped verisimilitude that Gendowyn is a goddess and that she converted an item instead of making the staff from scratch.
Nature Crafting, which is growing crafted wooden items rather than manufacturing them from harvested wood, will be appropriate for the Crystalhurst druid's enclave if my party ever visits that location in the Fangwood. I don't see my players ever using it, but sometimes sourcebooks are about flavor for a setting rather than mechanics for the PCs.
The introduction to the chapter points out that Story-Based Crafting is best for a sandbox world and I play adventure paths instead. However, I remember that my wife once said that she is seldom excited by finding or buying high-level items because they don't feel like part of her character. She does feel better about items that her character crafted. Both questing and crafting for an item might make her feel even better about relying on that item.
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 rolls 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.
Discussions about the 4-day setup on Craft began back during the 2018 playtest, so I have had years to think about the game-balance reason for it. The alternative crafting rules in Pathfinder Treasure Vault are consistent with the theory I developed. The reason behind the 4-day setup is to avoid fishing for critical successes.
Suppose a homebrew Craft had no setup time. Imagine a 3rd-level expert magical crafter player character making a wand of 1st-level Heal, a 3rd-level item that costs 60 gp. The crafter pays 30 gp up front for raw materials and then rolls the DC 18 Crafting check. The crafter has Crafting +11, so that is a 5% chance of critical failure on a natural 1, 25% chance of failure on 2 to 6, 50% chance of success on 7 to 16, and 20% chance of success on 17 to 20.
20% Critical Success The crafter progresses at 0.8 gp per day, so will require 37 and a half days to finish.
50% Success The crafter progresses at 0.5 gp per day, so will require 60 days to finish.
25% Failure The crafter must start over but still has all the raw materials ready.
5% Critical Failure The crafter ruins 3 gp (10%) of raw materials, salvages the rest, and starts over.
To provide some round numbers, assume that the party decided that they could take 30 days of downtime for crafting and odd jobs. Thus, on a success the crafter the crafter would craft 15 gp toward the wand and have to pay the remaining 15 gp in cash for a quick finish. On a critical success the crafter would craft 24 gp toward the wand and have to pay 6 gp in cash for a quick finish. A critical success saves 9 gp.
And that savings can lead to fishing for a critical success. If the crafter rolls a failure or critical failure, of course he will start again. But if he rolls a success, he is not saving 9 gp. That 9 gp is enough for him to declare a success a failure too and start over.
The Craft activity does not mention starting over on a success, but if a failure leaves all the raw materials available, so would restarting a success, right?
Setting up state diagram for this, each reroll has a 5% chance of costing 3 gp in a critical failure and a 20% chance of ending the rerolls in critical success. The expected cost of a rerolling until a critical success is (0.05)(3 gp)(1 + 0.8 + 0.8^2 + 0.8^3 + ...) = (0.05)(3 gp)(5) = 0.75 gp. That is less that 1 gp to save 9 gp. Fishing for a critical success is definitely profitable.
Let's go over the same crafting with the rules in the Core Rulebook. First, the crafter would get only 26 days of crafting due to the 4-day setup. Actually, I should set up the state diagram for that, due to the chance of failure requiring another 4-day setup. If the 3rd-level expert magical crafter player character making a wand of 1st-level Heal rolls until he gets a success or critical success, the expected replacement material cost is (0.05)(3 gp)(1 + 0.3 + 0.3^2 + ...) = 0.21 gp and the expected setup time is (4 days)(1 + 0.3 + 1.03^2 + ...) = 5.71 days. That leaves 24.29 days for crafting, and I don't round the fractional part because it represents possible outcomes rather than partial days. If the end of the restarts is a success, then the crafter on average crafts 12.15 gp and has to pay 17.85 gp at the end to finish the wand. If the end of the restarts is a critical success, then the crafter on average crafts 19.43 gp and has to pay 10.57 gp to finish the wand. A lucky critical success saves 7.28 gp, but on average he crafts 14.48 gp and has to pay 15.52 gp to finish and has to pay 0.21 gp to replace raw materials.
Suppose that the crafter decides to roll repeatedly for a critical success and if he reaches the 7th roll (28 days) he has to live with the result and might have sell the raw materials and buy the wand at full price. I had to phrase it that way because in 30 days he has time for only 7 rolls and I don't want to deal with the case of never finishing. The expected replaced raw materials cost is (0.05)(3 gp)(1 + 0.8 + 0.8^2 + 0.8^3 +0.8^4 + 0.8^5 + 0.8^6) = 0.59 gp. The expected setup time is (4 days)(1 + 0.8 + 0.8^2 + 0.8^3 +0.8^4 + 0.8^5 + 0.8^6) = 15.81 days. The final odds are 7.9% chance of a failure after 28 days of setup, 13.1% chance of regular success with 28 days of setup, and 79.0% chance of critical success with an average setup time of 15.81 days. Thus, if the crafter does get a critical success, he on average crafts 11.35 gp and has to pay 18.65 gp to finish and an extra 0.59 gp to replace raw materials. Averaging in the other two cases, the crafter on average crafts 9.10 gp and has to pay 20.90 gp to finish and an extra 0.59 gp to replace raw materials. This strategy fails badly.
But is a full 4 days necessary? The break even point would be when the crafter crafts about 15 gp on the wand, which is (15 gp)/(0.8 gp/day) = 18.75 days of productive critical-success crafting. We need (X days setup)(5 restart attempts) = 18.75 days, so X days = 3.75 days. Rounding that to full days gives 4 days. Which is the number that Paizo used.
Okay, I calculated the number for a 60-gp item crafted by a 3rd-level expert. What if the expert was making a cheaper item, such as a 3rd-level 12-gp Lesser Healing Potion. Let me shorten the math by comparing the iconic cases rather than by averaging all cases together. Half price on the potion is 6 gp, which would take 12 days to craft a regular success and 7.5 days to craft on a critical success, not counting the preliminary 4 days. We save 4.5 days. We still have Crafting DC 18, so we expect an average of five restart attempts. (4.5 days)(5 restarts) = 0.9 setup days. That rounds up to 1 day.
PF2 does not offer a 1-day setup for consumables. Instead, it lets the crafter batch together four consumables. That means that the cost goes up from 12 gp for one potion to 48 gp for four potions. That pushes the numbers to closer to crafting a 60-gp item.
What about changing the DC? The prices for 0th-level and 1st-level items are unusually cheap compared to how prices typically grow for treasure, but the 0th-level 12-gp Dueling Pistol fits the curve. The Craft DC of a 0th-level mundane item is 14, and I will ignore that firearms might have a higher DC. That means that the 3rd-level expert magical crafter with Crafting +11 has a 5% chance of critical failure, 5% chance of regular failure, 50% chance of success, and 40% chance of a critical success. The average number of attempts required to roll a critical success is 1 + 0.6 + 0.6^2 + 0.6^2 + ... = 2.5. I used the same prices as a previous example, in which I determined that a critical success saves 4,5 days. The break-even point for setup time to prevent fishing for critical successes is (4.5 days)(2.5 attempts) = 1.8 days per attempt. That rounds to 2 days. The lower DC has less effect than the lower cost, so the necessary setup time is lower. This explains why setup times in TABLE 5–1: DAYS OF SETUP TIME in the Pathfinder Treasure Vault[/url] go down with level, but the table sets the setup times much longer than necessary.
Unfortunately, the setup time made one humongous mathematical misinterpretation. Preventing fishing for critical successes requires only time delays between separate attempts to gain a critical success. A time delay before the first attempt does nothing to prevent more attempts because every crafter needs at least one attempt. That four days of no progress before the [i]first Crafting check that Ricksnest complains about serves no purpose.
Instead of calling the time delay "Setup Time," PF2 could have called it "Salvage Time," and said that that time is required to salvage the raw materials from a failed crafting attempt. Then we would have no time delay before the first Crafting skill check.