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Pathfinder 1E I just found a new stupid rule!

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️
Besides, why craft a masterwork sword, for instance, when you can just buy a normal one and have a wizard turn it into a masterwork weapon permanently with a common second level spell?

Don't assume everyone plays the same way. Some games unfold at a more leisurely pace than Zero to Hero in 1 year. I like Pendragon's wintering phase and encourage my players to do something similar in D&D - stay home in the bad weather months. Great time to craft stuff.

Plus, it's a lot cooler to say, "This is the sword I made!" Compared to "This is the sword I bought off the rack and my buddy spent a few minutes improving." Just ask a cosplayer which is more satisfying, being complimented for an outfit they bought or one they made.
 

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N'raac

First Post
My first 3.0 character spent 60% of his skill points on Crafts (armor, weapons and blacksmith). I agree it's not common, but I also agree that many GM's contribute to it being "not common" by refusal to allow the PC's any time in which they could actually use these abilities.
 

SolitonMan

Explorer
My first 3.0 character spent 60% of his skill points on Crafts (armor, weapons and blacksmith). I agree it's not common, but I also agree that many GM's contribute to it being "not common" by refusal to allow the PC's any time in which they could actually use these abilities.

It's definitely impacted by playstyle. I played in a group and my character had the Leadership feat. Once I'd figured out who my followers were and what skills they had, I did some spreadsheets to figure out how much crafting they could do over a given period of time. I estimated materials costs for production and wanted to establish a schedule for what could be produced. My long term goal was to set up a nice little merchant enterprise that could generate some gold as well as provide a hook for future adventures, but ultimately the DM was like "meh". So that never really went anywhere, but I had some small amount of fun imagining where it could go. Like many things, you get out of the game what you put into it.
 

brvheart

Explorer
I try and allow my players downtime to craft items and let them set the schedule of how long they are going to take. On average as I recall they spend about 6 weeks a year crafting at a time, maybe more if they do it twice. It mostly depends on their level and how much gold they have. In several campaigns they have set up labs, smiths, etc just for crafting or inherited it from another group. In one of my current campaigns some of the players previous characters have spent 30,000 GP setting up a business to craft items for the group at book prices. This is an income for their old characters while they wait for the campaign to get to a level where they can play them again.
 

Tuft

First Post
Plus, it's a lot cooler to say, "This is the sword I made!" Compared to "This is the sword I bought off the rack and my buddy spent a few minutes improving." Just ask a cosplayer which is more satisfying, being complimented for an outfit they bought or one they made.

In our "Savage Tide" D&D 3.5 campaign, I had a fairy that liked to tinker with mechanical inventions. The group's ranger wanted a nice rifle, so I crafted one for him. Now, my DM ( [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION] ) house-rules "crits" on skill rolls in the same way as for attacks (reroll for confirm on a natural 20). Well, I happened to roll natural 20s on both the skill roll and the confirm.

So, my DM ruled that I had made a masterwork weapon on first try, even though I technically did not qualify. :D

I was *so* proud of that rifle, and took every opportunity to try to persuade that ranger to use *that* rifle over other weapons, and encouraging him to enchant it to the max...

Great fun!
 
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Don't assume everyone plays the same way. Some games unfold at a more leisurely pace than Zero to Hero in 1 year. I like Pendragon's wintering phase and encourage my players to do something similar in D&D - stay home in the bad weather months. Great time to craft stuff.

Plus, it's a lot cooler to say, "This is the sword I made!" Compared to "This is the sword I bought off the rack and my buddy spent a few minutes improving." Just ask a cosplayer which is more satisfying, being complimented for an outfit they bought or one they made.

I don't, and I'd said as much in a previous post... and I agree that there's an ego boost aspect. However, I don't think these rules really accomplish this. As I pointed out, there are core spells that pretty much render mundane crafting pointless. Also, that sword you made... unless you're using rules for your weapons to scale with you, you'll be hanging it on the wall never to be used again (or more likely, sold) because you have a better one. (And yes, I know not everyone's game is like this... but the core rules are, and that's what this thread was initially about.)

I don't think that Pathfinder's redesign of magical crafting for 3.x is much of an improvement. In 3.5, the crafter had to spend XP, which pretty much meant that they never crafted, or if they did, only certain select items for themselves.

I'm going to guess that Paizo wanted to encourage people to have a reason to take crafting feats, so they ditched the XP cost and replaced it with a spellcraft check that could create cursed items with a poor enough spellcraft roll.

The problem with that is that the spellcraft roll is, for the most part, trivial... and in cases where there's a significant chance of failure, most players won't take the chance because a) most players are risk averse when it comes to gold or XP, and b) the failure (barring a GM really investing something into it) isn't interesting. Remember, this is a world where Detect Magic is a level 0 at will, and you only need to make a spellcraft check to identify something. The crafter will immediately know it's a cursed item, and that's the end of that.

In Basic and 1st ed., cursed items were basically a trap... except that now, they're so easy to recognize as such that (assuming you're playing by the rules) there's not much reason for them to exist in game... when was the last time you placed a cursed weapon in treasure? When was the last time your players used a magic item before it had been identified?
 

brvheart

Explorer
You have to beat the DC on the spellcraft by 10 in order to figure out that it is cursed otherwise it appears as the item that it appears to be so yes cursed items can still work, but no I don't use them as much in pathfinder that is true.
 

Starfox

Hero
The problem with Craft skills is that it is a very simulationist* element in a game that gets increasingly heroic as you advance in levels. So while your 10th level character can slay dragons and create magic items that cause wonderment, they are not much better at crafts than any trained person.

*Not using "simulationist" in the Forge sense here, but in it's older sense of being a reality-emulating process with realistic as opposed to heroic results.
 

N'raac

First Post
I don't, and I'd said as much in a previous post... and I agree that there's an ego boost aspect. However, I don't think these rules really accomplish this. As I pointed out, there are core spells that pretty much render mundane crafting pointless.

If you purchase a Masterwork Longsword, you spend 315 gp. If you buy a standard longsword for 15 gp, the Masterwork Conversion spell costs 300 gp. If you Craft a masterwork longsword, you invest in materials costing 105 gp. If you fail a roll by 4 or less, you make no progress. If you fail by 5 or more, you need to invest another 1/6 of the item value.

So, a sword. Spend 5 gp, Take 10 for a 20 and finish it in about 3 days. Now we need to Masterwork it - that will take another 7.5 weeks of Taking Ten. What if you only have, say, +5 (you're first level with a +1 INT bonus and one rank in a class skill, working with standard tools)? You need to roll a 15 to succeed, and an 11 to avoid more cash in, so half your rolls will cost money - you're not skilled enough to make this process effective. So what? You have limited natural aptitude and limited training, so maybe you're not a master craftsman yet.

Once you can do this reliably (same INT bonus, 3 more ranks and masterwork tools, say), you can reliably craft masterwork items - it will take longer, but save 2/3 of the gold.

Also, that sword you made... unless you're using rules for your weapons to scale with you, you'll be hanging it on the wall never to be used again (or more likely, sold) because you have a better one. (And yes, I know not everyone's game is like this... but the core rules are, and that's what this thread was initially about.)

Based on the RAW, I can craft a Sword at 1st level, Craft it up to Masterwork (as a separate element) once I can reliably make that check, and then enchant it (or take Master Craftsman as a feat if I want to Craft magical items without being a spellcaster). So I can enhance that specific sword as I go along.

I don't think that Pathfinder's redesign of magical crafting for 3.x is much of an improvement. In 3.5, the crafter had to spend XP, which pretty much meant that they never crafted, or if they did, only certain select items for themselves.

So what result do we want? A system that no one uses is useless. The RAW, which you are appropriately using as a baseline, assumes a thriving market in magical items, as you are pretty much assumed to be able to buy whatever you want to enhance your abilities, not work with what you find. Crafting cannot, then, be all that difficult or risky, or that marketplace would not be there.

The problem with that is that the spellcraft roll is, for the most part, trivial... and in cases where there's a significant chance of failure, most players won't take the chance because a) most players are risk averse when it comes to gold or XP, and b) the failure (barring a GM really investing something into it) isn't interesting.

And this is different from other PC abilities how, exactly? They aren't going to craft items they don't have the skill to craft. Even failing 2 rolls by 5 still leaves them ahead on a cash basis, and a failure slows, but does not end, progress. Handle Animal can fail, but it doesn't kill the animal or make it untrainable - it just means it will take longer to train it.

Perhaps the better answer is that we should have a standard "item crafting" mechanism that provides, say, a 50% chance of success, a 25% chance of making no progress and a 25% chance of a very poor result (say, loss of investment or a cursed item, maybe the curse only has a 5% chance) for a level-appropriate item. This system would be automatically available to all spellcasters with no investment of character resources. But if you want to be skilled at crafting magic items, you take the appropriate Craft feat. This allows you to Take 10 on the roll, and perhaps bring the time down to the present level from a higher time investment under the "no feat" option.

Now crafting magic items would be more like crafting mundane items - pretty much anyone can try it, but you need to invest some character resources to be decent at it. Seems a lot like combat maneuvers - anyone can try them, but you won't likely be very happy with the results unless you take a Feat or two in order to be really good at any one maneuver.

If the ability to craft magical items is of limited utility, with a significant chance of failure, so there's a low incentive to even try, this implies two things. First, PC's are asked to spend character resources to move a task from "you can't do this" to "you suck at this" if we still require they take feats to be permitted access to this high risk option. Second, we need to rethink the ready availability of magic as a commodity - it's clearly not a safe or profitable endeavour, so there's not likely to be a thriving magic item manufacturing economy.

Remember, this is a world where Detect Magic is a level 0 at will, and you only need to make a spellcraft check to identify something. The crafter will immediately know it's a cursed item, and that's the end of that.

Why should there be a lot of cursed items? What are the chances of running across a mundane item which is so shoddily constructed that you take a penalty when using it? I'd rather see "cursed" items that have both benefits and drawbacks, so the players have to consider whether their use is actually worthwhile, perhaps the occasional specially crafted trap (I recall an old module with a false treasure room chock full of cursed items) and maybe the occasional uniquely cursed item.
 

N'raac

First Post
The problem with Craft skills is that it is a very simulationist* element in a game that gets increasingly heroic as you advance in levels. So while your 10th level character can slay dragons and create magic items that cause wonderment, they are not much better at crafts than any trained person.

How much better CAN you get? Once you can speed it up (Take 10) to make masterwork items (the best there is), the next viable step is the Master Craftsman feat to Craft magical items without any magical abilities (hello, Geppetto).
 

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