I have been advised to make a new thread for this, as it was derailing another thread.
So let's say the consumable item in question costs 10gp.
To make four in a complete batch, you would need half of 40gp, or 20gp with which to start.
A successful check after one or two days gets you the first half. Every day after that begins reducing the second half by an amount determined by the your level and your check result.
Except that since you're batch crafting the amount is now 5x4=20gp, not simply 5gp.
Because there is more resource costs, the whole four-piece batch takes longer to craft than a single item does!
So, aside from the initial day or two, are you really saving time by crafting in batches? If not, then what exactly is the point of batch crafting? You're not saving much of anything.
Or should we treat it like a single item, trying to earn up to 5gp (at which point all four items will be completed at half cost)?
It specifically states that at the start It makes no mention of having to pay for the second half for all four items, just at the start. Should we take that mean we're crafting towards 5gp rather than 20gp in the above example? If so, that makes crafting a little bit better, at least regarding consumables.
In short, are the four items really being crafted simultaneously, or are they actually crafted sequentially?
Just trying to wrap my head around it in light of the Remaster.
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First, crafting items has never been a replacement for Earn Income. If you want to Earn Income with crafting use the 'crafting for the market' option to just use crafting to Earn Income.
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Maybe some concrete examples so that we can better understand what we are talking about here. And how about some consistency between the examples, and picking levels to make the math easier. I don't expect that there are going to be big jumps in the general trend from one level to another.
So for the examples I am looking at: a single non-consumable item, a non-batch of one consumable item, and a batch of 4 consumable items. Level 5 items and character is expert in crafting and succeeds (but not crits) the crafting check. This gives a nice easy 1 gp per additional day of downtime. How about also having the permanent item be 40 gp and the consumable item be 10 gp. Because that was the example given initially and it makes the math easy.
So a non-consumable item is going to take 2 days of setup time, it will cost 20 gp up front, and it will take another 20 days to get it for the full 50% price. So 22 days and 20 gp. Or 2 days and 40 gp.
A single consumable item is going to take 2 days of setup time, it will cost 5 gp up front, and it will take another 5 days of downtime to get it for 50% cost. So 7 days and 5 gp. Or 2 days and 10 gp.
A batch of 4 of these consumable items is going to take 2 days of setup time, it will cost 20 gp up front, and it will take another 20 days to get it for the full 50% price. So 22 days and 20 gp. Or 2 days and 40 gp.
If for some reason you wanted to craft 4 of the consumables but without batching them, crafting it at 50% cost by spending a lot of time on it would need 28 days and 20 gp. Or paying full price to get them as fast as possible would be 8 days and 40 gp.
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Conclusions: Crafting a full batch of consumables is equivalent in time and money cost to crafting a permanent item. Crafting a partial batch of consumables will take less time than a full batch or a permanent item, but is less efficient. Crafting consumables individually takes longer than crafting them in a batch.
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With the proposed ruling of having additional days of downtime applied to all of the items in the batch together, then we would have:
Crafting a batch of 4 consumable items would cost 2 days of setup time and cost 20 gp up front. Each day of downtime would pay 1 gp for each of the 4 items. Each item still has 5 gp of cost left unpaid, so after 5 days of downtime they would be completed. So 7 days and 20 gp. Or 2 days and 40 gp.
This is clearly not balanced against the crafting mechanics of crafting permanent items. You shouldn't be getting 4x the value of additional days of downtime spent crafting consumables.
"You can Craft items with the consumable trait in batches, making up to four of the same item at once with a single check. This requires you to include the raw materials for all the items in the batch at the start, and you must complete the batch all at once. "
Four invidiual items crafted simultaneously with a single roll applying to each; so progress is also multiplied and language here makes it clear it is still 4 items at all points of the crafting process.
At least this is it RAW, RAI it could be an oversight. But I doubt it.
As for the earn an income vs crafting debate. I feel compelled to mention that earning an income does require people actually find a job, commit to a work period and does not necessarily let them just get a job at whatever level they wish or the skill they want at said level.
So even if you are in a busy level 20 city, you aren't necessarily just walking into a job the same day you ask and being able to do a maximum level job with your chosen skill every time you have one or two days free because an ally is waiting for drained to wear off or a disease to end.
Crafting however is always available if you have the workshop and money.
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I am inclined to make the roll for additional days crafting to reduce the price of each item without increasing the time unless I see clear language indicating otherwise. It seems to me batch crafting in this abstract crafting system would be pretty lame if you didn't get to apply the benefits to each item in the batch spending extra time.
Maybe some concrete examples so that we can better understand what we are talking about here. And how about some consistency between the examples, and picking levels to make the math easier. I don't expect that there are going to be big jumps in the general trend from one level to another.
Though we may not agree, you present some fine examples that demonstrate the different interpretations quite accurately.
I find it most interesting that one camp sees the opposing interpretation as too good to be true, while the other camp sees the opposing interpretation as too bad to be true. I wonder if there is a middle ground in there somewhere.
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A batch of 4 of these consumable items is going to take 2 days of setup time, it will cost 20 gp up front, and it will take another 20 days to get it for the full 50% price. So 22 days and 20 gp. Or 2 days and 40 gp.
If for some reason you wanted to craft 4 of the consumables but without batching them, crafting it at 50% cost by spending a lot of time on it would need 28 days and 20 gp. Or paying full price to get them as fast as possible would be 8 days and 40 gp.
That six-day difference is the real benefit to batching. You can monetize it by finding work (of whatever sort) of higher level than the consumable. (If it's not higher level you may as well just make more of the consumable.)
To quote myself in the previous thread, "time is money."
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I find it most interesting that one camp sees the opposing interpretation as too good to be true, while the other camp sees the opposing interpretation as too bad to be true. I wonder if there is a middle ground in there somewhere.
I'm justifying the Too Good to be True by pointing out that earning 20 gp of value in items with 5 days of work is way outside the boundaries of a level 5 downtime task.
How do you justify not allowing that as being Too Bad to be True?
It's definitely a single batch.
As you noticed the primary reason to make a batch of 4 is so that the waste prep time is done once, leaving more time to reduce the cost.
The other reason is that you can only reduce the cost by at most 1/2, and by making a 4x batch, upping the 4x cost means you can spend more time reducing the price without hitting that limit.
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Do bear in mind the rules around complex crafting.
If you rush the finishing, you can double the Earn an Income discount for each day of crafting, and if you are crafting a low LvL item, you can get an Assurance crit success, giving you 2x the reduction at your LvL + 1.
If you are an Alchemist making some permanent spares like Cat's Eye Elixirs, this is actually appealing enough to be worth the hassle to craft, IMO.
2x the price reduction really helps justify that, and in a campaign w/ a tight downtime schedule, you really cannot afford to waste days on the prep side of things.
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Basically, if the end goal is to get some 1/2 price consumables, yes the batch crafting is a good idea.
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To reiterate the initial question/answer, if you choose to craft a batch, that is 100% a single craft and not 4 simultaneous crafts.
I totally get that in general, crafting seems too bad to be true, and for a lot of players it certainly is.
If you can carry your alch lab / other tools in a BoH, are not in a town that can sell them, ect, ect, having the ability to make items can come in clutch. IMO, Magical Crafting is a super important Feat even for Alchemists willing to engage w/ the crafting system, as that list (which doesn't need special tools as far as I know?) is perfect for any "round 2" kind of "batman prep."
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The complex crafting rules allow for the monetary benefit to be there even when all the other niche "crafting's valid" circumstances are not in effect.
Without the complex rules, the setup time means that making your own can never be better than an on-LvL Earn an Income, and that's assuming that no adventuring side quests are available, which will be a huge $$$ boost in comparison.
I find it most interesting that one camp sees the opposing interpretation as too good to be true, while the other camp sees the opposing interpretation as too bad to be true. I wonder if there is a middle ground in there somewhere.I'm justifying the Too Good to be True by pointing out that earning 20 gp of value in items with 5 days of work is way outside the boundaries of a level 5 downtime task.
How do you justify not allowing that as being Too Bad to be True?
What is the point of taking advantage of a 4x production rate if it still takes ~80% of time - and the same amount of money - to craft something at full discount as it would to make each item individually (again at full discount)?
To be OK with this, you would have to be comfortable saying that the main use-case of batch-crafting is to make it 20% faster to craft consumables. That is pretty bad. And it's counter-intuitive. No one hears "4x" and thinks "1.2x"
You might argue that I'm undervaluing other use-cases - that you can still make 4 things in same number of days as it takes to make 1 other thing if you're willing to pay full price. This is true, but if I wanted to pay full price I would have just gone to the Magic Store and saved myself a bunch of time and Skill Points. Even if I had to spend an entire day scouring the land for such a Store, it would still be a much better use of character-building resources.
Under the notion that you can't work at 4x the discounted-rate, the only use case where Crafting consumables in batches makes any sense is when those items are not otherwise available, but you still have a) the downtown required to craft and b) access to the materials and workshops required to craft. This only happens in very specific cases - low Alch/Magic worlds, narratives focused on camp-building, and/or when the rarity of the consumable matters. Incentivizing in-general batch-crafting only to these cases seems To Bad To Be True.
- Jee
EDIT: In terms of gameplay effects a permanent Item is worth way, WAY more than 4 Consumables. I don't see a problem letting the latter have some love on the cost ratio here.
>So, aside from the initial day or two
Oh, shure, if we ignore where the time savings are I guess there aren't any savings. Waow! So deep
Seriously
And I love how everyone who wants to dunk on crafting conveniently forgets Impeccable Crafting exists
It's a hard sell that does not do as much as it might seem.
"Prerequisites master in Crafting, Specialty Crafting
You craft flawless creations with great efficiency. Whenever you roll a success at a Crafting check to make an item of the type you chose with Specialty Crafting, you get a critical success instead."
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Firstly, there's a prerequisite Feat that only grants a +1/2 to that subtype of crafting.
Alchemists in particular do not need help making alch items. Higher LvL ones will be made w/ daily budget due to high cost, and low L items are auto-crit via Assurance.
Other crafters also will only make on-L items very, very rarely, and are stuck declaring only a small niche of items the Feats even function with.
Back to Impeccable, I don't know how many GMs would allow for Assurance to be compatible w/ it. Impeccable does not help with nat 1s, nor any form of crafting failure. It only turns success into crit success.
This function does next to nothing to help the process, only providing the LvL + 1 discount on gp saved for extra craft time (which many players cannot or choose not to extend the craft time to benefit from).
The other benefit is to double the HP restored on Repair. Which is a 10 min downtime activity w/ no cooldown nor downside.
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Yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to take Impeccable Crafting. On any character.
It's like 3 or 4 Feats down even on a crafting-focused character.
Getting access to Magical, Alchemical, Snare, Tattoo crafting is much more impactful, and even the prerequisite +1/2 is actually better, IMO.
And there's Quick Repair for anyone that wants to Repair in combat
Craft Anything is also something I would absolutely take before Impeccable. The explicit text saying to ignore spell requirements to craft magic stuff is absolutely nutty, and gives and Trick Magic Item user the ability to create nearly any spell scroll (or wand!) they could want to use.
That's a huge potential benefit worthy of the L15 requirement.
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Completely bizarre that out of all the crafting Feats to bring up, you picked arguably the worst one to wave as an exemplar of "crafting good"
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What is the point of taking advantage of a 4x production rate if it still takes ~80% of time - and the same amount of money - to craft something at full discount as it would to make each item individually (again at full discount)?To be OK with this, you would have to be comfortable saying that the main use-case of batch-crafting is to make it 20% faster to craft consumables. That is pretty bad. And it's counter-intuitive. No one hears "4x" and thinks "1.2x"
You might argue that I'm undervaluing other use-cases - that you can still make 4 things in same number of days as it takes to make 1 other thing if you're willing to pay full price. This is true, but if I wanted to pay full price I would have just gone to the Magic Store and saved myself a bunch of time and Skill Points. Even if I had to spend an entire day scouring the land for such a Store, it would still be a much better use of character-building resources.
Under the notion that you can't work at 4x the discounted-rate, the only use case where Crafting consumables in batches makes any sense is when those items are not otherwise available, but you still have a) the downtown required to craft and b) access to the materials and workshops required to craft. This only happens in very specific cases - low Alch/Magic worlds, narratives focused on camp-building, and/or when the rarity of the consumable matters. Incentivizing in-general batch-crafting only to these cases seems To Bad To Be True.
I agree that it's normally not worth the hassle, but the issue is that the text is pretty dang straightforward.
After a craft's setup time, you spend additional time reducing the cost. That time one may spend crafting is an abstraction of the gp you can save each day. It's the labor value, and unrelated to the item(s) being made.
There's really no way to interpret the tiny bit on batch crafting to claim that you are somehow quadrupling your crafting efficacy by basically juggling 4 simultaneous crafts in parallel. While there's plenty of room for homebrew, it's pretty clearly not the rules.
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Especially as the Complex Crafting variant offer the "Rush the Finishing" to double that gp save, which narratively fits with described activity of increasing the difficulty to boost the reward.
It also would be rather nuts to have that 2x multiply with the proposed 4x from consumable batches, more clearly dispelling that tortured interpretation of the crafting rules.
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I'm justifying the Too Good to be True by pointing out that earning 20 gp of value in items with 5 days of work is way outside the boundaries of a level 5 downtime task.
How do you justify not allowing that as being Too Bad to be True?
The forum ate a rather lengthy response it seems, so I'm trying this again a few hours later than I would have liked.
I justify it by Crafting and Earn Income activities being TBtBT in general.
Regardless of which interpretation you follow, you earn so little wealth or savings that it has little to no impact on anything.
I for one thus prefer to follow the interpretation that makes it a little bit more worthwhile and fun for the players.
I also think that's what is intended, though I admit to being a bit biased towards fun.
There's really no way to interpret...
Take care not to speak in such absolute terms. It will pretty much always make you wrong in some fashion.
There's plenty of different ways to interpret most anything at all, regardless of your belief to the contrary.
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I'm justifying the Too Good to be True by pointing out that earning 20 gp of value in items with 5 days of work is way outside the boundaries of a level 5 downtime task.
How do you justify not allowing that as being Too Bad to be True?
The forum ate a rather lengthy response it seems, so I'm trying this again a few hours later than I would have liked.
I justify it by Crafting and Earn Income activities being TBtBT in general.
Regardless of which interpretation you follow, you earn so little wealth or savings that it has little to no impact on anything.
Then you are wanting to houserule Crafting and Earn Income in general.
That reasoning doesn't justify having crafting of consumables having a 4x increase of wealth over crafting individual items or any other options of Earn Income.
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The point of batch crafting is to save you time in providing enough of a consumable to cover a normal four level party if you can’t buy it. It’s not to make saving money via crafting faster or more productive just because you were working on consumables instead of a permanent item during long term downtime that makes the upfront mission related time savings for consumables superfluous.
I find it most interesting that one camp sees the opposing interpretation as too good to be true, while the other camp sees the opposing interpretation as too bad to be true. I wonder if there is a middle ground in there somewhere.I'm justifying the Too Good to be True by pointing out that earning 20 gp of value in items with 5 days of work is way outside the boundaries of a level 5 downtime task.
How do you justify not allowing that as being Too Bad to be True?
What is the point of taking advantage of a 4x production rate if it still takes ~80% of time - and the same amount of money - to craft something at full discount as it would to make each item individually (again at full discount)?
The only point of the 4x production rate is to get the stuff in your hands faster when you have to craft and can’t buy it. The system doesn’t care at all about giving you special economic benefits or whether you ever reduce the cost at all.
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So, my only experience with using Crafting is through PFS. In PFS it's fairly simple: you get 8 days of Downtime per Scenario completed. You can use any Downtime activity through this time. Should you need longer, you can use multiple blocks should the activity allow that.
Most folks Earn Income. You can always find a Task of your Level -2.
So, I tend to Craft consumables that I want on hand but don't want to spend Infused Reagents on (my guy's an Alchemist.)
The exact rules have changed a bit, but here's an example converted to the new PFS rules and the new Crafting rules in the Remaster.
At 10th level, I decided I wanted some Greater Revealing Mists on hand.
So, that would be 1 day of setup time (he has the formula for the Mists), and 7 days to reduce the price. My guy is a Master at Crafting, has Specialized Crafting (Alchemical Items), Impeccable Crafting (Alchemical Items) and a Crafter's Eyepiece.
So, at L10, he can save 8 gp per day, to a maximum of 120gp. (Impeccable means no such thing as a success when making Alchemical Items.) He saves 56 gp.
Not that impressive, but better than the alternative: with Earn Income he could do, at best, 32 gp for the 8 days (level 8 task, Master, Crit Success.) So that's 24 gp extra in my pocket, and I have the Mists I wanted.
If I did the batch individually, I'd spend 4 days of setup as opposed to 1 day, and thus save only 32gp instead of 56.
I think I like doing batches better.
I'm justifying the Too Good to be True by pointing out that earning 20 gp of value in items with 5 days of work is way outside the boundaries of a level 5 downtime task.
How do you justify not allowing that as being Too Bad to be True?
The forum ate a rather lengthy response it seems, so I'm trying this again a few hours later than I would have liked.
I justify it by Crafting and Earn Income activities being TBtBT in general.
Regardless of which interpretation you follow, you earn so little wealth or savings that it has little to no impact on anything.
I for one thus prefer to follow the interpretation that makes it a little bit more worthwhile and fun for the players.
I also think that's what is intended, though I admit to being a bit biased towards fun.
There's really no way to interpret...Take care not to speak in such absolute terms. It will pretty much always make you wrong in some fashion.
There's plenty of different ways to interpret most anything at all, regardless of your belief to the contrary.
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IMO there's some odd bias against homebrewing, even a really simple one line change, such as this batch thing.
I do not understand why what could be GM resolved in a single back-forth exchange of "I think ___ is RaW, but do you approve of ____?" is instead channeled into many threads that often boil down to some RaW that someone doesn't like as "tBtbT," and seemingly bargaining into the void of the net instead of genuinely trying to figure out the RaW. (I'm not at all saying that's the case here, I can't know what's in someone's head)
I'd really like for small homebrew tweaks to loose the apparent stigma that seems to cling to them, but I guess that's off topic.
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I agree that speaking with certainty needs to be done with caution, but the reverse side is that any one's "certainty" is an expression of personal confidence.
I do regret not quoting that blurb though, it's short and rock-solid.
You can Craft items with the consumable trait in batches, making up to four of the same item at once with a single check. This requires you to include the raw materials for all the items in the batch at the start, and you must complete the batch all at once. You also Craft non-magical ammunition in batches, using the quantity listed in the Ranged Weapons table (typically 10).
There's a lot of redundancy to indicate such a batch craft is done as a single crafting activity. That the player has the option to make a "single craft" of multiple items. Not just 4, but possibly 10 without any other considerations.
Any attempt to interpret the cost reduction bit as multiplied by the # in the singular batch instantly breaks w/ the batch blurb.
If done, that batch is treated as the singular item craft for all other bits of text, like a straight plug-substitution of "the item" into "the batch."
It's not valid to do that substitution only sometimes when it suits the desired outcome.
That's like changing the value of what var x = halfway through a math equation.
There's not an interpretation of language in this instance, only a consistent application, and as such I feel confident enough to speak w/ certainty here.
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On top of that, you've got the cost reduction being based on the character's labor, not the crafted item, the laboratory/tools, ect.
The additional "rush the finish" rule variant also contributes context for the RaI.
IMO, the RaI is rock solid. Even actively when attempting to reach your stated outcome, I cannot find the text to justify it anywhere.
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If your attempt to create the item is successful, you expend the raw materials you supplied. You can pay the remaining portion of the item's Price in materials to complete the item immediately, or you can spend additional downtime days working on it. For each additional day you spend, reduce the value of the materials you need to expend to complete the item. This amount is determined using Table 4–2: Income Earned, based on your proficiency rank in Crafting and using your own level instead of a task level.
The only point of the 4x production rate is to get the stuff in your hands faster when you have to craft and can’t buy it. The system doesn’t care at all about giving you special economic benefits or whether you ever reduce the cost at all.
If that were true, there wouldn't even be rules for getting special economic benefits or reducing the cost. So the system does seem to care - at least enough to mention it in the Core and then take up a half a page expanding upon it the Vault.
I agree that it's normally not worth the hassle, but the issue is that the text is pretty dang straightforward.
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There's really no way to interpret the tiny bit on batch crafting to claim that you are somehow quadrupling your crafting efficacy by basically juggling 4 simultaneous crafts in parallel. While there's plenty of room for homebrew, it's pretty clearly not the rules.
Hard disagree on the asserted clarity.
For each additional day you spend, reduce the value of the materials you need to expend to complete the item.
Is a Batch an Item? Or is it 4 Items?
"Follow the Crafting Rules for 1 Item, but do it 4 times simultaneously"
seems like just as a reasonable an interpretation as
"A Batch of Items is an Item unto itself".
- Jee
EDIT: It sounds like you're pretty confident that a Batch is intended to be a single "Item" for the purposes of work-related discounts. I remain unconvinced. The "limited labor per day" issue could just as easily be covered by the fact that you can prepare 4 at once, so why can't you labor upon completing 4 at once?
The only point of the 4x production rate is to get the stuff in your hands faster when you have to craft and can’t buy it. The system doesn’t care at all about giving you special economic benefits or whether you ever reduce the cost at all.If that were true, there wouldn't even be rules for getting special economic benefits or reducing the cost. So the system does seem to care - at least enough to mention it in the Core and then take up a half a page expanding upon it the Vault.
I agree that it's normally not worth the hassle, but the issue is that the text is pretty dang straightforward.
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There's really no way to interpret the tiny bit on batch crafting to claim that you are somehow quadrupling your crafting efficacy by basically juggling 4 simultaneous crafts in parallel. While there's plenty of room for homebrew, it's pretty clearly not the rules.
Hard disagree on the asserted clarity.
For each additional day you spend, reduce the value of the materials you need to expend to complete the item.
Is a Batch an Item? Or is it 4 Items?
"Follow the Crafting Rules for 1 Item, but do it 4 times simultaneously"
seems like just as a reasonable an interpretation as
"A Batch of Items is an Item unto itself".
- Jee
EDIT: It sounds like you're pretty confident that a Batch is intended to be a single "Item" for the purposes of work-related discounts. I remain unconvinced. The "limited labor per day" issue could just as easily be covered by the fact that you can prepare 4 at once, so why can't you labor upon completing 4 at once?
You are laboring to complete 4 at once. The issue is that there is no textual way to interpret that batch blurb to magically multiply the value of your labor by 4x. It is not there.
The crafter's labor is worth the same gp regardless of the project. If the crafter "rushes the finishing" they can increase the risk to then get more value from that finishing process.
That batch blurb tells you how to apply the batch option for the rest of the crafting rules, by treating the batch as the singular "crafted work" done all together. Choosing to invoke that option is binary, either you swap it in, or you do not. When done, there is still nothing about a gp reduction multiplier.
A great bit of text to bring in that also invokes the batch rules is the Alchemist Feat: Efficient Alchemy
Thanks to the time you’ve spent studying and experimenting, you know how to scale your formulas into larger batches that don’t require any additional attention.
When spending downtime to Craft alchemical items, you can produce twice as many alchemical items in a single batch without spending additional preparatory time. For instance, if you are creating elixirs of life, you can craft up to eight elixirs in a single batch using downtime, rather than four.
This does not reduce the amount of alchemical reagents required or other ingredients needed to craft each item, nor does it increase your rate of progress for days past the base downtime spent. This also does not change the number of items you can create in a batch using advanced alchemy.
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In order to add a new rule that batches get a gold multiplier, you must add that rule wholesale. Via homebrew.
The reason I mentioned that ammo is crafted in batches of 10 is to further highlight the absurdity of that "interpretation," as a 10x multiplier simply for being a batch is clearly out of line and arbitrary.
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RaW, a crafter can already get 100, or 200% economic efficacy via the finishing process.
Yes, the provided gp per day seems low in most campaign settings, and IMO that income chart should directly discuss what timeline is the assumed default, suggesting GMs modify it for their own table.
The issue lies not in those rules, but in the APs and various campaigns that presume very little downtime between adventuring days.
Regardless, the rules around crafting batches is honestly as crystal clear as they could be.
For certain items, one has the option to craft a batch of items instead of doing them one at a time. Every mechanical change of that concept is found within that one rule blurb, or must be later mentioned explicitly and modified, such as in Efficient Alchemy.
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If making a batch modified the finishing gp reduction, it would be mentioned in the batch rules.
Therefore, I can affirmatively state that making a batch does not affect the finishing gp reduction.
This kind of negative, ~rule by exclusion thing, where the absence of a rule means that a statement of it's opposite is true, is mandatory for a game system like pf2e to function.
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I find it most interesting that one camp sees the opposing interpretation as too good to be true, while the other camp sees the opposing interpretation as too bad to be true. I wonder if there is a middle ground in there somewhere.I'm justifying the Too Good to be True by pointing out that earning 20 gp of value in items with 5 days of work is way outside the boundaries of a level 5 downtime task.
How do you justify not allowing that as being Too Bad to be True?
What is the point of taking advantage of a 4x production rate if it still takes ~80% of time - and the same amount of money - to craft something at full discount as it would to make each item individually (again at full discount)?
To be OK with this, you would have to be comfortable saying that the main use-case of batch-crafting is to make it 20% faster to craft consumables. That is pretty bad. And it's counter-intuitive. No one hears "4x" and thinks "1.2x"
x.8 (it's a reduction in resource cost, not a gain, so that .2 should be subtracted rather than added) with no cost at all in resources or feats or anything? That's objectively good. It's a free 20%.
To be too bad to be true it would have to be worse than the alternative. You just proved that it's better.(Also that number will vary significantly with item level, item value, and crafter level.)
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The crafter's labor is worth the same gp regardless of the project. If the crafter "rushes the finishing" they can increase the risk to then get more value from that finishing process.
This is the decisive point, for me. A crafter who is looking to make money from crafting a) should not be able to quadruple their income by crafting batches instead of single items, but more critically b) should not be required to craft batches instead of more interesting permanent items to min-max their profits.
Creates bad incentives all around.
You also could get Horizon Hunters boon and Earn Income at your level. It's quite popular (in some small circles).Not that impressive, but better than the alternative: with Earn Income he could do, at best, 32 gp for the 8 days (level 8 task, Master, Crit Success.) So that's 24 gp extra in my pocket, and I have the Mists I wanted.
It's an option, but not a great one for me. For RP reasons, my guy went Grand Archive. I did moonlight for the Vigilant Seal for a few Scenarios so I could get their gear boon (Alignment Ampoules & Metalmist Spheres are so good.)
Spending multiple Scenarios to get Liked by the Horizon Hunters doesn't appeal to me. Especially as my #2001 is 11th level now, and 7-12s don't grow on trees.
To Bad To Be True
he game doesn't mention "To Bad To Be True", only mentioning too good to be true.
"Ambiguous Rules
Sometimes a rule could be interpreted multiple ways. If one version is too good to be true, it probably is. If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed."
Too Bad to be True is a shorthand reference to this:
If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed.
So while it doesn't say Too Bad to be True literally in the rules, the concept is certainly there.
Too Bad to be True is a shorthand reference to this:
If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed.So while it doesn't say Too Bad to be True literally in the rules, the concept is certainly there.
Those aren't the same thing though: there there things in the game i think are too bad to be true and are unambiguous RAW. That and people read comments like that and think it's actually stated in the game someplace. I also find "Too Bad to be True" an odd shorthand for 'Ambiguous and problematic' as it's not that much shorter and isn't really accurate.
While the title of the rule may be the Ambiguous Rules rule, that second sentence also covers unambiguous cases that have problems.
Such as being unable to swing a +1 Ghost Touch greatsword at a ghost.
Or being unable to use the Escape action while in a polymorph battle form. (which was given errata)
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While the title of the rule may be the Ambiguous Rules rule, that second sentence also covers unambiguous cases that have problems.
Such as being unable to swing a +1 Ghost Touch greatsword at a ghost.
Or being unable to use the Escape action while in a polymorph battle form. (which was given errata)
My point is that a rule can be too bad to be true and unambiguous, or ambiguous but not problematic. Hence, me thinking that using 'too bad to be true' as shorthand for 'use the ambiguous rules' as a mistake.
As to "that second sentence", I don't think it does apply to non-ambiguous rules: IE, it means 'if a rules is ambiguous because the wording has problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended...' IMO, it's pointing you to the houserule section: "House Rules
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 29
You and your players will inevitably come across a rule you disagree with, or that runs counter to the theme of your game. You might even decide to add a specific rule to an area not covered by the written rules. Collectively, these rulings, changes, and additions are known as house rules."
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If it doesn't break my game and it isn't clear one way or the other, I'm going with the interpretation that makes crafting more fun given Crafting is designed in a balanced fashion in line with earn income. It should have a few advantages like batch crafting and crafting at level rather than settlement level.
Is this method breaking someone's game? What are the game breaking aspects of a more favorable interpretation of batch crafting?
Magic is already balanced using several limiters. Scrolls already have an action tax for use. It doesn't seem like crafting a batch of scrolls for half cost faster using crafting than earned income is a game breaking exploit.
If Crafting is balanced against Earn Income, the end result is that it becomes unbalanced. If Crafting can only ever get in the ballpark of Earn Income, then your character is made objectively worse by investing in the Crafting skill and in Crafting feats and abilities. (Why waste time and character resources on something that only gets you to the level of other options that don't require time or character resources?)
For Crafting to be truly balanced, that resource investment needs to have some sort of practical benefit that is balanced against not Earn Income, but against other feats and abilities.
Yeah. IIRC that was one of the points of this crafting system, to not be as disruptive to the game economy...
Just wanted to point out that, all else being the same, simul-crafting four objects is in no way disruptive to the game.
The returns are just too low to have any real impact on anything.
Is this method breaking someone's game? What are the game breaking aspects of a more favorable interpretation of batch crafting?
Nope. There aren't any.
Magic is already balanced using several limiters. Scrolls already have an action tax for use. It doesn't seem like crafting a batch of scrolls for half cost faster using crafting than earned income is a game breaking exploit.
Indeed, it doesn't.
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Just wanted to point out that, all else being the same, simul-crafting four objects is in no way disruptive to the game.
The returns are just too low to have any real impact on anything.
A 4x to Earn Income is absolutely getting toward disruptive on its own. Downtime is shared by the party. One player getting 4x due to crafting batches is always going to be disruptive. Crafting is already the only Earn Income that's based on the character, and not the settlement (which will very quickly fall behind the party's level).
Moreover, you keep ignoring the 10x via ammo, and there's also the 8x of Alchemical items via the Feat. Why would you ever take that Feat when you can make more money crafting arrows, then buy the Alchemical items later? Do you understand why this "interpretation" would completely disrupt crafting?
If Crafting is balanced against Earn Income, the end result is that it becomes unbalanced. If Crafting can only ever get in the ballpark of Earn Income, then your character is made objectively worse by investing in the Crafting skill and in Crafting feats and abilities. (Why waste time and character resources on something that only gets you to the level of other options that don't require time or character resources?)
With the complex crafting rules, rushing the finish DOES allow for crafting to become a straight monetary upgrade to earning gp anyways, giving crafters an always max task, 2x multiplier. That's plenty.
This has been answered a hundred times. The designed goal of crafting was clearly NOT about earning gold, but actually ya know, CRAFTING. The new rush the finish is clearly Paizo's answer to the countless players that complain their adventurers cannot sit still and make gp appear. I get it, I play Alchemists, and I'm going to maximize what I can. I even have a GM willing to give me free 1/2 downtime days via the Ring of Sustenance. Even I can say that there's 0 textual reason to go with the magic batch multiplier.
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Just because you don't like the "why crafting?" answers of item availability, always max Earn Income, ect, does not erase nor invalidate them.
That is why the cost savings was tied to labor and Earn an Income, and completely severed from the job at hand. IMO it was a super smart way to design it.
If you want to homebrew, I suggest you stop trying to twist the RaW into knots for some "totally real rule". Just outright buff the Earn an Income for crafting.
IMO, don't do the batch multiplier thing, as was mentioned it's arbitrary and would create perverse incentives. Like 10x ammo crafting 24/7.
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For Crafting to be truly balanced, that resource investment needs to have some sort of practical benefit that is balanced against not Earn Income, but against other feats and abilities.
For get about being balanced against Earn Income, what about balanced against itself?
Because the argument here is that one type of crafting should be four times more lucrative than another type of crafting, pretty much just arbitrarily.
I'm surprised this is even a discussion there's no RAW or RAI here and it doesn't make sense that you'd inexplicably make more money just because you're crafting a different kind of item.
For Crafting to be truly balanced, that resource investment needs to have some sort of practical benefit that is balanced against not Earn Income, but against other feats and abilities.For get about being balanced against Earn Income, what about balanced against itself?
Because the argument here is that one type of crafting should be four times more lucrative than another type of crafting, pretty much just arbitrarily.
If this was about the money than you might have had a point. Again, with either interpretation, the financial gains are so miniscule as to have no practical impact on game balance as a whole throughout the vast majority of the game. Even if the gains weren't so small, as Deriven Firelion pointe out, there are numerous other balancing mechanics in effect in other areas of the game (such as item level, item slots, encumbrance, action costs, limited bonus types, etc.).
Until you can show me that the x4 gains is disruptive to gameplay, I simply can't take your interpretation as something the developers intended very seriously.
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If this was about the money than you might have had a point. Again, with either interpretation, the financial gains are so miniscule as to have no practical impact on game balance as a whole throughout the vast majority of the game.
Remind me why you want (and want it a lot) the more lucrative interpretation when it's not going to have any practical impact? Or does it somehow manage to have an impact in general but not on balance?
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There are two remarkably astonishing things about this thread and the arguments in it.
One is that the title is about time savings. The thread itself seems to be more about income earning. Why didn't you just ask if batch crafting earns 4x the amount of income?
Two is that this torturous logic to try and get a marginal and mediocre gain on one particular category of gaining wealth via downtime seems inherently misguided. If you want to increase the benefits of downtime Earn Income, just multiply the values on that table by 4 (or by 10 because that is an easier multiplication and would have a more noticeable improvement). That way it is fair to all of the players whether they are doing crafting, batch crafting, or any other form of Earn Income.
But instead we have people arguing until they are blue in the face that somehow, someway, by interpreting the wording of the batch crafting rules just right that they are going to convince their GM and the other players at the table into actually believing that batch crafting alone should get a 4x increase in value of Earn Income.
Are people really that morally opposed to houserules? And somehow are not morally opposed to terrible logic?
After learning a bit more about PFS from being on these forums, I do have to wonder what role PFS plays in this "can't be homebrew, must be RaW at all costs" bias.
GMs are all still people who will interpret rules, with player input affecting them (especially if they can say "the official forums said so").
The context of official PFS play in a gameshop wont prevent that human nature.
Yet, PFS play "must follow the rules."
Hence, a serious potential RaW-twisting, anti-homebrew incentive that seems completely alien to someone like me, but keeps showing up over and over again.
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I do want to quickly restate that the Earn an Income rules, by the nature of being static, must presume some "normal" amount of downtime in comparison to adventuring days.
This assumption will next to never be an exact match for an AP, let alone a home game. That's why I'm serious about there being a GM blurb instructing all GMs to adjust /change it.
And hearing that PFS play does 8 downtime per 1 session/mini-adventure just makes me shake my head at what seems normal for APs. My Alchemist would LOVE to have HALF that much downtime.
It's not about wanting anything. I believe that's what the rules mean and intend.
I'm not trying to convince anyone my interpretation is correct. I'm merely describing my own views on the matter, though I do admit that I find it annoying when people speak in absolutes with things like "there can be no other possible interpretation" or "there is no support whatsoever for your views." Talking about equity in a vacuum is pretty close too. If you're not looking at the bigger picture, then whole point of whatever argument you're trying to make quickly becomes moot.
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For Crafting to be truly balanced, that resource investment needs to have some sort of practical benefit that is balanced against not Earn Income, but against other feats and abilities.For get about being balanced against Earn Income, what about balanced against itself?
Because the argument here is that one type of crafting should be four times more lucrative than another type of crafting, pretty much just arbitrarily.
If this was about the money than you might have had a point. Again, with either interpretation, the financial gains are so miniscule as to have no practical impact on game balance as a whole throughout the vast majority of the game. Even if the gains weren't so small, as Deriven Firelion pointe out, there are numerous other balancing mechanics in effect in other areas of the game (such as item level, item slots, encumbrance, action costs, limited bonus types, etc.).
Until you can show me that the x4 gains is disruptive to gameplay, I simply can't take your interpretation as something the developers intended very seriously.
Doing some quick maths, from level 5 to 6 you should gain ~180 gp. A successful Earn Income check will be giving you 1 gp/day if it's a 5th-level task. If we define a change that could be noticeable as 50% more income, the 90 days would mean you'd need ~13 weeks of downtime during level 5 to reach that disruptive point. At 4x the rate, the same 90 gp would only take 22.5 days - a little over 3 weeks. I'd suspect the proportion of campaigns that have 3 weeks of downtime in a level are much larger than those with 13 weeks, but both are still likely to be in the vast, vast minority of total campaigns.
All that being said, I have to say the same thing as previous posters - with the difference being relatively minimal, and the rules being clear, your insistence that somehow the rules say something different is very odd to me.
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It's not about wanting anything. I believe that's what the rules mean and intend.
I'm not trying to convince anyone my interpretation is correct. I'm merely describing my own views on the matter, though I do admit that I find it annoying when people speak in absolutes with things like "there can be no other possible interpretation" or "there is no support whatsoever for your views." Talking about equity in a vacuum is pretty close too. If you're not looking at the bigger picture, then whole point of whatever argument you're trying to make quickly becomes moot.
On the assumption you're being genuine.
The batch blurb is an insert bit of text. It's an optional variant.
The entire crafting rules and that cost reduction finishing, are written without that batch possibility, only discussing the single-item craft.
If you then read that blurb, and choose to invoke said batch rules, you do as they instruct.
All references to the single item craft are instead substituted for the batch.
I still have no concept of how you can re-interpret "For each additional day you spend, reduce the value of the materials you need to expend to complete the item [the batch]." It's not even tied to the item(s) at all, it is per day. There is literally no connection to even break language around the batch substitution to link the item # into the cost reduction.
There really is no way to invoke that batch blurb, and somehow get to a 4x multiplier.
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Batch crafting is like throwing 4x the ingredients into your flasks and boilers. The cost of crafting like that is 4x, but when you finish, you can pour the completed elixir into 4 dose vials instead of just one. It's not that consumable items are super quick to make, it's that consumable items can scale in volume in ways that making a bit of magic equipment cannot.
There is no change in the crafter's labor power via batch crafting.
But the RL concept of batch crafting like that is real and desirable enough for it to make it into the pf2e crafting system.
But the RL concept of batch crafting like that is real and desirable enough for it to make it into the pf2e crafting system.
Probably just because players, knowing batching to work IRL, would loudly complain about it being Too Bad to Be True otherwise.
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If this was about the money than you might have had a point.
Huh? Money is literally the only thing this is about. Your entire question is about the rate at which craft checks create wealth while batch crafting.
If this was about the money than you might have had a point.Huh? Money is literally the only thing this is about. Your entire question is about the rate at which craft checks create wealth while batch crafting.
I was asking about time and rules interpretations. It was others who kept shifting the focus of the conversation to the peanuts.
But the RL concept of batch crafting like that is real and desirable enough for it to make it into the pf2e crafting system.Probably just because players, knowing batching to work IRL, would loudly complain about it being Too Bad to Be True otherwise.
A bit, for sure. It's also a nice way to acknowledge / compensate for the idea that a permanent item can be used forever, while consumables are often horded and nearly never spent due to the "use it and loose it".
Batch crafting both compensates for the disposability of said crafts, while sneakily helping players use that 1/4 instead of waiting for the perfect moment to use that 1/1.
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I was asking about time and rules interpretations. It was others who kept shifting the focus of the conversation to the peanuts.If this was about the money than you might have had a point.Huh? Money is literally the only thing this is about. Your entire question is about the rate at which craft checks create wealth while batch crafting.
You were asking about the time... it takes to earn a certain amount of gold value.
If it's "not about money" then the answer is simple. You spend two days crafting and then you get all four of your items. That's it.