Taking 10; and the crafting of Masterwork/Special Mat.

[Lord Ravinous]

One of my players asking if he could take his Craft(armorsmith) into account for buying his gear, and I personally have no problem with this. The only problem I do have is that

A) he's wanting to take 10 on the rolls - and i don't know/can't find the ruling on this
B) the item he's wanting to craft is a Mithril Shirt - and i'm not sure how to bust up the "item costs, or if you even do since its a special material (ex. with a normal item, you seperate the base item cost from the masterwork, and craft the two seperatly). So do you do the same to Special material items?

Any help here would be great, because I've poured over my DMG and can't find much help, I've not really ran a game since 3.0 and can't find crap in the "new" DMG.

 

[hong]

Nothing wrong with taking 10 on Craft, regardless of what it is you're crafting.

No idea on the mithral cost. Play Iron Heroes, people!

 

[irdeggman]

Nothing in the craft skill forbids taking 10.

Many people confuse taking 10 and taking 20.



From the SRD

Taking 10: When your character is not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 10. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 10. For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful. Distractions or threats (such as combat) make it impossible for a character to take 10. In most cases, taking 10 is purely a safety measure —you know (or expect) that an average roll will succeed but fear that a poor roll might fail, so you elect to settle for the average roll (a 10). Taking 10 is especially useful in situations where a particularly high roll wouldn’t help.


Taking 20:When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, eventually you will get a 20 on 1d20 if you roll enough times. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.

Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes twenty times as long as making a single check would take.

Since taking 20 assumes that the character will fail many times before succeeding, if you did attempt to take 20 on a skill that carries penalties for failure, your character would automatically incur those penalties before he or she could complete the task. Common “take 20” skills include Escape Artist, Open Lock, and Search.

Basically taking 10 is being careful while taking 20 is repepeadedly attempting the check sith the assumption tha one of the attempts will yield a "20". Hence that is why taking 20 takes 20 times as long while taking 10 takes no longer than normal.

 

[Kieperr]

The masterwork cost is included in the cost modifier of the mithral so you make the masterwork craft rolls in conjunction with the extra cost of the mithral. Since mithral makes the item masterwork and mithral light armor has a cost modifier of +1000 gp, which includes the masterwork cost, you would make your masterwork craft rolls for the 1000 gp.

 

[Kalshane]

One of my players asking if he could take his Craft(armorsmith) into account for buying his gear, and I personally have no problem with this. The only problem I do have is that

A) he's wanting to take 10 on the rolls - and i don't know/can't find the ruling on this

As others have said, you can take 10 on the roll. Otherwise a blacksmith would ruin 1 out of every 20 horseshoes he made. (Well, at least until his Craft score was high enough even a 1 succeeded, anyway.)

In my games, I only allow the PCs to pre-craft starting equipment they can make by taking 10 on. Character generation takes long enough without me standing over their shoulder while they make Craft skill checks. Once the game starts they can roll as normal for Craft checks.

 

[Lord Ravinous]

alright, thanks guys.

 

[frankthedm]

Before you say OK, don't forget the progress for crafting is measured in silver peices a week. Since he likely wants to use his full skill bonus, let him have the raw material on hand at the campaign start.

 

[nittanytbone]

For gear manufactured prior to game start I generally apply the following rules:

*Any starting GP limit still applies (example, if a character can't own anything of greater than 1000 GP value, no full plate mail)
*Price is 2/3, not 1/3; Rationale is that crafting takes a significant time and thus you have to pay many expenses (inn room, forge to work at, hirelings to help or to run your affairs while you slave away at the smithy, etc). This also removes any and all temptation to make a bunch of stuff and then sell it. You could sit down and figure out how long it took to make and apply charges for inn rooms, meals, etc -- or you could just wing it like this.

Any crafting that place during the campaign should be noted down as incremental progress as time goes by.