D&D 5E Jeweler's Skill? Got a player increasing value of treasure..what?

[Stalker0]

I would say failure can delay the work but should not ruin the item.

The math is horrifically harsh if you do. If the player has just a 5% chance of failure, and you make him roll once a day on a 5 day piece of work...that is a 22.6% chance he will ruin it. No one would ever craft anything with those failure chances.

 

[Blue]

Character fleshed out with non-combat abilities - fantastic, wish there was more of that. Wants to actually use them to represent their character's background. Woo! Just like I'd like a character with perform make money if they wanted to play int he inn or put on a show, this is the exact same thing. and really, in 5e, when is a bit of extra gold ever OP?

Of course you can do that, just like using other skills and tools to gamble, make money, or pay your lifestyle.

 

[SmokeyCriminal]

I'm a fan of the countdown clock method for stuff like this.

All you do is draw a clock with 4/6 slices, and have him roll his jeweler tools to fill in the slices, and once they're filled in, the job is done. And just say it costs 1/3/5 days of downtime to make a roll on the clock.

A roll of 1-10 doesn't fill in anything. 10-15 1 slice gets filled. 15-20 2 slices get filled, ect ect.

Maybe you can have a 6 sided clock equal to 10% increase in value.

So say he says "I want to take 5 100gp gems and turn them into a crown" Then you can ask him "How much do you want to increase the value by?" and he says "50%" So then you just make 5 clocks that he has to fill in before the work is done and he can sell it. When its done its worth 750gp instead of just 500gp.

If he rolls really well he can finish 1 clock every 2 days, so 10 days.

I think the average is 2 slices per roll so you can use that as a measuring stick.

Also you can adjust the value of a clock maybe 10% is too low for you, then make it 25%. Maybe its too high, so make a clock 5%, or even 1%

If someone wants to "Help him" give him a +5 to the roll, so hes essentially getting 1 slice for the help. Or just give his roll Advantage.

Also, When he makes a roll on the clock, have him tell you what the progress looks like, "Today I set one of the gems on the crown." Even if he fails a roll and doesn't make any progress, have him tell you why that is "I sneezed and dropped it."

 

[Harzel]

I guess it depends how much extra work you are up for, since to make it sufficiently interesting and rewarding, I think you need to invent something beyond, "You work for 5 days. Congratulations, here is your 25 g.p." You have several variables to work with: the player's stated goal, dice rolls, the amount of time taken, the resultant quality/value. There are some good suggestions in the thread already. The main points that I would make:

• I would definitely include some dependency on dice to keep it from feeling perfunctory/automatic.
• I would keep disastrous failures rare; delays or perhaps additional material costs are a better common failure mode.
• I would keep the net effect approximately in line with the 5 g.p. / day standard, but allow some variability up or down depending on the dice. Also, it could go up a bit as the game progresses and he is acquiring better loot. However, working on fancier items might require upgrading his jeweler's kit.
• Be sure to think about how this will play out in terms of how much table time it will take. See http://theangrygm.com/crafting-herbcraft-part-1/ for a dissertation on some general principles of crafting system design.
• For the dice roll itself, I would probably make it d20 + DEX mod + proficiency bonus so that he has some avenues to get better over time. If it suits your fancy to make the DCs for working on various pieces widely different, you could additionally establish a skill bonus separate from the usual stats that he could work up slowly over time (preferably at the cost of some resources, but exactly how is up to you).

 

[schnee]

Call me a downer, but this is a slippery slope.

Druid does the math for how much Trade Goods a certain farm generates per year.

1 pound of wheat = 1 copper piece
1 bushel of wheat = 60 lbs of wheat
1 acre of wheat yields = ~50 bushels
1 mile diameter circle = 500 acres
500 acres x 50 bushels x 60 pounds = 1,400,000 pounds of wheat
1,400,000 pounds of wheat = 1,400,000 CP = 14,000 GP

So, one Plant Growth cast as 8-hour ritual generates almost 14,000 gold pieces.
Even assuming a 50% cut, that means the Druid can earn 7,000 GP per casting per year.

Do a few dozen of these, and you can command the economy. Not bad for an 8-hour workday. I've certainly done worse.

Why not? It's legit by the rules.

 

[Blue]

This sounds like someone who wants to exploit every possible edge.

Simple: the time to get good enough at that skill to increase their money by a significant margin will eat into their adventuring. Their work will look amateurish and crude next to a 100% dedicated pro, and they'll do far more damage to reduce the value on the ones they ruin than they will to increase the value on the ones they actually improve.

They're adventurers, not craftspeople. The skills in the book are for story or character depth, not mechanical loopholes to give more than the rules allow.

I find it the opposite - it's easy enough to pick a background that will give two adventuring skills. Yet no one calls that "wanting to exploit every possible edge". Here's someone who was a jeweler (from their background), something that doesn't help with adventuring so they are less powerful. Gold - not a powerful part of character advancement in 5e like it was in earlier editions - is cheap and a few extra percentage points won't make a big difference. Especially compared to if they picked a background that gave perception, or stealth, or what-have you active adventuring skill.

 

[Gilladian]

I am a hobby jewelry maker. Redesigning and improving a finished piece is pretty hard. Disassembling and using parts is much more likely. He would need a workshop to do that. He'd be reforging metal and doing lots of torch work, and hammering, filing, soldering, etc... However, if he wants to, say, set unfinished gems (not uncut raw, but unset cabochons or faceted gemstones) in wirework, he could do that with only hand tools (a set or two of pliers, cutters, a few pounds of spooled wire, a small hammer and bench block. Say abt 10 lbs of supplies in a kit. He could add 25-50% value to an average stone, with only very minor chance (1 in 1,000) of damage that he could not fix routinely ( the stone breaks, essentially). He could work up a single piece in 4-6 hours of continuous or intermittent labor.

 

[Wiseblood]

I am a hobby jewelry maker. Redesigning and improving a finished piece is pretty hard. Disassembling and using parts is much more likely. He would need a workshop to do that. He'd be reforging metal and doing lots of torch work, and hammering, filing, soldering, etc... However, if he wants to, say, set unfinished gems (not uncut raw, but unset cabochons or faceted gemstones) in wirework, he could do that with only hand tools (a set or two of pliers, cutters, a few pounds of spooled wire, a small hammer and bench block. Say abt 10 lbs of supplies in a kit. He could add 25-50% value to an average stone, with only very minor chance (1 in 1,000) of damage that he could not fix routinely ( the stone breaks, essentially). He could work up a single piece in 4-6 hours of continuous or intermittent labor.

This is the best info. Also the money made is for expert labor. Not inherent increase in value. In fact you have more potential buyers when the price is not outrageous.

 

[Blue]

Call me a downer, but this is a slippery slope.

Druid does the math for how much Trade Goods a certain farm generates per year.

1 pound of wheat = 1 copper piece
1 bushel of wheat = 60 lbs of wheat
1 acre of wheat yields = ~50 bushels
1 mile diameter circle = 500 acres
500 acres x 50 bushels x 60 pounds = 1,400,000 pounds of wheat
1,400,000 pounds of wheat = 1,400,000 CP = 14,000 GP

So, one Plant Growth cast as 8-hour ritual generates almost 14,000 gold pieces.
Even assuming a 50% cut, that means the Druid can earn 7,000 GP per casting per year.

Do a few dozen of these, and you can command the economy. Not bad for an 8-hour workday. I've certainly done worse.

Why not? It's legit by the rules.

You're assuming there is no cost to planting or harvesting and that there is sufficient farmland to cast multiple per day and enough farmworkers to bring it in. Enough teamsters to bring it to where it can be sold. And enough empty mouths to feed nearby that an extra 1.4mil lbs of wheat PER CASTING has a demand.

I think it's pretty clear that it's not 50% profit to plant and harvest a field, so while there is some profit per harvest, an extra harvest still only has some of that as profit. If any - if the glut pushes prices down it may not even cover the manpower needed. This has happened in the US even without Druids.

But yes, a high level druid passing through who thinks that spreading agriculture and civilization is the best way to protect nature can make a huge difference in the profitability of a farming community by providing additional harvests per growing season. If you assume a profitability of 10% after expenses for the normal harvest, say a second harvest could bring in 4-8% profit with the reduced prices and anything beyond that isn't even paying costs. So say 6% of 14,000GP for the second harvest, and the druid gets half of that, is about 420GP per casting. And those castings need to be far enough apart that there's a local demand for the food, and probably are only once a year per location.

Seems reasonable. A 5th level Druid to cast plant growth can probably make more than 420GP a day adventuring.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Call me a downer, but this is a slippery slope.

Druid does the math for how much Trade Goods a certain farm generates per year.

1 pound of wheat = 1 copper piece
1 bushel of wheat = 60 lbs of wheat
1 acre of wheat yields = ~50 bushels
1 mile diameter circle = 500 acres
500 acres x 50 bushels x 60 pounds = 1,400,000 pounds of wheat
1,400,000 pounds of wheat = 1,400,000 CP = 14,000 GP

So, one Plant Growth cast as 8-hour ritual generates almost 14,000 gold pieces.
Even assuming a 50% cut, that means the Druid can earn 7,000 GP per casting per year.

Do a few dozen of these, and you can command the economy. Not bad for an 8-hour workday. I've certainly done worse.

Why not? It's legit by the rules.

I think that's a great idea. If your players want to explore how magic affects the economy and vice versa, why not let them?