D&D 5E What do you want out of crafting rules?

[The Green Hermit]

I have a lot of thoughts about crafting.

First and fore most, it should be a means of creating items that are better than stuff you can buy. It shouldn't be a way to save money. Instead, it should be a gold sink that creates unique things.

I would like crafting to be part of the storytelling. It should be a way to forge your legend and to work towards something. Ideally, it should lead to further adventures.

What it should not be, is months of downtime where your party waits for you to create this one thing. It makes practical sense, but it does not benefit play.

What it should also not be, is a pit you dump experience points into. It makes no sense that crafting an item makes you less experienced, plus having level inequallity between the party members is undesirable to me.

I have no problem with using crafting to save or make money, nor with characters being at different levels. Our party hasn't been all at the same level since the first death.

However, I do agree that you should be able (with connection to the adventure) be able to make cooler things than you can buy.

 

[The Green Hermit]

I'm a bit confused by this.

A PC in 5E cannot do that.

A PC in 5E has (typically) 4-5 Skills chosen at character creation, likely for their utility in adventuring or because they make RP sense. They cannot typically be changed and getting a new one is absolutely non-trivial (and simply not possible in some games). Getting a new Skill would be a far bigger achievement than obtaining a magic item in most cases. Tool proficiencies are a bit easier - they just need a lot of downtime. The chances of the stars aligning and any given PC having all the relevant skills for a magic item seem pretty low - with this example we have Arcana and Survival - unlikely to be found on the same PC, and even more unlikely that said PC is good at both.

We have a houserule that lets players learn new skills by studying/training with an expert.

 

[Xetheral]

A PC can take both Arcana and Survival as background skills, even Leatherworker's tools in place of a language. Backgrounds are completely customizable so you don't even need to touch class skills. Both Arcana and Survival are commonly taken skills IME, YMMV of course.

That is just silly to say. You gain proficiency bonus and ASIs when you level. By design, PCs are meant to boost their numbers.

I think there's a difference of perspective here. You seem to be saying that a player can design a character from level 1 to be able to make a particular item, and then wait until that character is high enough level to have a bonus large enough to have a sufficiently high chance of making that item. You're basically saying that the player can make a character who can eventually make a particular item with a high chance of success.

While true, that's not really a rebuttal to the objection. The perspective behind the objection to requiring ability checks is that a particular already-made character has an almost fixed chance of success at creating a particular item. There is little that character can do IC to increase the odds of personally crafting that item other than gathering sufficient duplicate ingredients to be able to make multiple attempts. (Or get someone else with better bonuses to do the actual crafting, but that doesn't help with personal crafting.) So, for a particular character, the "challenge" you're creating by requiring a check isn't to take IC actions to increase their odds of success on the difficult attempt (because 5e includes very few non-trivial options for doing so), but rather it's the challenge of crafting at sufficient scale to ensure you get at least one completely successful product with no limitations or drawbacks.

In other words, your goal of requiring a check seems to be to represent the difficult nature of the crafting process. But thanks to the 5e mechanics there isn't any way to personally get better at that process other than waiting to be higher level, so the difficulty you're adding doesn't come with a challenge to overcome that difficulty, because doing so is impossible. So you're effectively adding to the difficulty of gathering (sufficient quantities of) ingredients, rather than your goal of making the crafting process itself more difficult.

To make a modern analogy: you're confronting crafters with a low-yield production process, in a system that favors increasing the size of production runs rather than improving yield. That seems contrary to your goal.

Here's a possible solution: include optional additional steps in the construction process to decrease the DC of the checks. If those steps are disproportately costly or inefficient (in time, money, opportunity cost, etc.) they don't detract from the usual route of making the item, but do allow characters to take actions in the game world to address the challenge provided by the required checks.

 

[DND_Reborn]

There is little that character can do IC to increase the odds of personally crafting that item other than gathering sufficient duplicate ingredients to be able to make multiple attempts.

Then you have someone else do it if you can't do it yourself or won't be pleased with your success (if any).

Look, I wanted a new desk for my computer. I designed it in my CAD software, and spected out the materials, and my dad and I made a weekend project of it. Is it serviceable? Absolutely, but it is hardly great, and no where on par to be "enchanted". But that is what a PC is doing. If magic is super common in your game, then dismiss the checks (like everything in 5E, you don't have to use a rule...), but in my games magic items are rare, mysterious, and challenging to make more of. I don't want it to be easy or automatic. Period.

5E is geared for rapid advancement and questing. It is not a logistic game where you build an empire etc. by design--it is more fast paced. Now, it has some downtime rules, but many groups IME don't have much downtime anyway--they want to get to the next adventure. That's fine, but you can always allow a skill to be learned either via downtime or as a reward (right there in the DM, btw for people who missed it, pg. 231):

So, if a PC wants to make magic items (and assuming they want to actually do it themselves), there are ways to do it and acquire the skills needed.

Anyway, I've already shown the checks are not hard. Anyone with a base amount of ability and proficiency will succeed far more often than not. Throw in higher numbers and it becomes virtually academic to even bother checking.

Here's a possible solution: include optional additional steps in the construction process to decrease the DC of the checks. If those steps are disproportately costly or inefficient (in time, money, opportunity cost, etc.) they don't detract from the usual route of making the item, but do allow characters to take actions in the game world to address the challenge provided by the required checks.

It isn't a bad idea, but it's more work and an additional level of complexity that I don't want to develop or believe is even needed. If I finish the project and make it available to the public, DMs can always add more stuff on their own if they want (or remove the need for checks entirely ).

 

[Xetheral]

Look, I wanted a new desk for my computer. I designed it in my CAD software, and spected out the materials, and my dad and I made a weekend project of it. Is it serviceable? Absolutely, but it is hardly great, and no where on par to be "enchanted". But that is what a PC is doing. If magic is super common in your game, then dismiss the checks (like everything in 5E, you don't have to use a rule...), but in my games magic items are rare, mysterious, and challenging to make more of. I don't want it to be easy or automatic. Period.

Hmm, maybe we're defining "challenge" differently? In my mind, the challenging thing about an ability check is coming up with an approach that will maximize the character's odds of success. If the DC and the character's bonus are independent of the approach chosen, then it's just a die roll. Sure, a die roll has a chance of failure, but it's hardly a "challenge" as I would define it.

In some situations, requiring a check with a fixed DC can certainly affect a challenge. For example, if the characters have to pick a route to get to their destination, and the faster route is gated behind a fixed check (e.g. succeed or be forced to reroute to the slower path, taking even longer), the challenge becomes weighing the tradeoffs of the chance of failure against the potential gain of success.

By contrast, a crafter PC making an item from a recipe with fixed DCs doesn't involve any trade-offs or decision points. There's a fixed chance of failure, but nothing to overcome or surmount. How are you defining "challenge" such that requiring a check to make an item qualifies as a challenge?

For reference, I can see plenty of other reasons to require checks to avoid losing the ingredients when designing a crafting system, but they're things like imposing a soft level-gate on each recipe (e.g. driving up the drive for lower-level characters by requiring multiple attempts) or wanting to create a crafting system that favors large, specialist manufacturers (who can spread the cost of occasional failures over multiple customers) instead of individual crafters. But your stated reason to require the checks is to create a challenge, and I don't see how requiring checks does that.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Hmm, maybe we're defining "challenge" differently? In my mind, the challenging thing about an ability check is coming up with an approach that will maximize the character's odds of success. If the DC and the character's bonus are independent of the approach chosen, then it's just a die roll. Sure, a die roll has a chance of failure, but it's hardly a "challenge" as I would define it.

The challenge in crafting is about coming up with an "approach". The process is defined in the "recipe", just like baking or building something. It seems to me more you are thinking of another check (or role-play, etc.) to come up with the process that will maximize their chance of success.

Otherwise, a "challenge" is anything that has a consequence if you fail. The crafting process (summarized by the die roll) is an "easy" challenge (as determined by DC 10s) because there are consequences if you roll too low.

Anyway, to you the challenge is "how do we make such an item?" and "what might we need/ use to make it successful?" To me, that is the process of creating the recipe which is already outlined. Players can certainly use these as examples to create their own processes, which is more I think the challenge you are thinking of.

 

[Xetheral]

The challenge in crafting is about coming up with an "approach". The process is defined in the "recipe", just like baking or building something. It seems to me more you are thinking of another check (or role-play, etc.) to come up with the process that will maximize their chance of success.

Otherwise, a "challenge" is anything that has a consequence if you fail. The crafting process (summarized by the die roll) is an "easy" challenge (as determined by DC 10s) because there are consequences if you roll too low.

Definitely using different definitions of challenge then. A consequence for failure, by itself, isn't enough to qualify as a challenge from my perspective. For me, there also has to be some meaningful IC way to affect the chance of failure or its consequences. Otherwise it's just random chance.

But under your definition of challenge, I can definitely see why adding a roll increases the challenge. Thanks for clarifying!

Anyway, to you the challenge is "how do we make such an item?" and "what might we need/ use to make it successful?" To me, that is the process of creating the recipe which is already outlined. Players can certainly use these as examples to create their own processes, which is more I think the challenge you are thinking of.

Actually, I don't see crafting, in the abstract, as necessarily involving a challenge at all. That said, I can certainly see the appeal in writing crafting rules to make crafting a challenge for magic items or special mundane items. Indeed, I see your recipes as already involving a challenge: acquiring the necessary ingredients. So long as the ingredients are not commoditized, then there is a chance of failure to obtain them, and the characters' actions will affect that chance. (If the ingredients are commoditized, the challenge instead is deciding how best to allocate the characters' cash. There's no chance of outright failure to that challenge, but prioritizing creation of one item over another will still be impactful.)

But under my definition of challenge, adding a fixed-difficulty check that could ruin the ingredients doesn't add to the existing challenge or create a new one, instead it simply increases how many of the ingredients are required to ensure success.

 

[steeldragons]

I'd like to see rules for crafting consumables other than Potion of Healing. How is a Potion of Hill Giant Strength made, anyway?

You see, when a Hill Giant and another Hill Giant love each other very much...

 

[steeldragons]

I think simplicity is really first and foremost. One can get as granular as one wants, and delve into the "in world/in game" construct of a magic item "industry"...wanderer "Tinker-crafters" that make and sell minor utilitarian bobbles from village to village vs. Master dwarven Rune-smiths who forge the greatest weapons of the world in dragonfire with ancient titan rites vs. the neighborhood apothecary mixing up another brew of Flu-Naze for the sniffles raging through town vs. the "on the fly" Enchanter hastily tracing glowing glyphs across the warrior's shield as the wraith screeches towards them...She can only hope her protective enhancement remains intact, at least "long enough" if not indefinitely.

These really can't, and shouldn't, all be covered by the same set of rules.

Some of it is "tools/skills/proficiencies." Some of it is intense time and special [like, "more special" than normal magical] ingredients. Some of it could be theme/background stuff. Some of it could be direct class [or subclass or "prestige/bonus" class or...] features. Some by "spell." Some by "rite/ritual." Some by pure skill and/or properties of the ingredients. Some might require a combination of all.

For general "crafting" magic items, there needs to be a basic, SIMPLE, formula of time and expense. A LOT of the rest, from there, can be flavored one way or another.

Specific things, like, "potions that last longer" or "applying bonuses to weapons/armor in a single round" or applying a ritual, multiple times over time, to "layer" magical properties onto something (or some "where" or some "one"), e.g. "I want you to take my +1 longsword and make it +2 to hit and damage, flame on command, fly back to my hand when I throw it, and speak Ancient Dragarian," need to have added levels/steps of complexity -which should include, among whatever else, adjusting the base "time and expense."

 

[DND_Reborn]

But under your definition of challenge, I can definitely see why adding a roll increases the challenge. Thanks for clarifying!

You're welcome. Different perspectives and all.

Given your concept, the DM could rule that (using the cloak example) not having the powered horn would increase the DC (or make that the baseline and getting the powdered horn would decrease it...).

That said, I can certainly see the appeal in writing crafting rules to make crafting a challenge for magic items or special mundane items.

That is all it is. Ordinary mundane items do not require any check (or it is absurdly easy... like DC 5, so only set-backs are possible but not complete failure). "Mastercrafted" items would have checks, but failure would simply result in "ordinary work" instead of special work done.

Indeed, I see your recipes as already involving a challenge: acquiring the necessary ingredients. So long as the ingredients are not commoditized, then there is a chance of failure to obtain them, and the characters' actions will affect that chance. (If the ingredients are commoditized, the challenge instead is deciding how best to allocate the characters' cash. There's no chance of outright failure to that challenge, but prioritizing creation of one item over another will still be impactful.)

That is also a big part of it. The "quest" to get the recipe and items before the crafting begins. I would definitely not have 90+% of items commoditized, personally.

But under my definition of challenge, adding a fixed-difficulty check that could ruin the ingredients doesn't add to the existing challenge or create a new one, instead it simply increases how many of the ingredients are required to ensure success.

Which is fine, of course! Just for me, without those ingredients, success is not even an option... I don't care how well you roll.