Cleaner, Faster Crafting Rules

[Stalker0]

When I compared my times to 3.5 crafting times, I assumed an initiate would have a +5 craft and a decent expert a +15.

As far as guides to crafting times, people post all the time about how long full plate took, or how many bows a guy can make in a week..you just have to look for htem.

 

[Beholder Bob]

I've been considering setting a DC to construct items based on shape/size - assuming a base material. If you wish to use more valuable materials, you may do so (a gold ring instead of tin) - but the additional value of the gold is separate from the construction time and cost. That is to say, you pay the normal rate for gold used for the construction - 100% the value, as little as 50% if purchased in bulk. So a jeweler, who purchases raw gold gets it at 50% off, for example. So..

Item..............DC....Material.....Craft $.....Time
Ring, plain.......12.....tin/copper...1 sp.......1 day
Ring, Fancy.....16.....tin/copper...5 sp.......2 day
Ring, Exquisite..20.....tin/copper...5 gp......5 day

Tin/Copper to Silver conversion: x10
Tin/Copper to Gold conversion: x100
Tin/Copper to Platinum conversion: x1000

So a jeweler can make an exquisite ring of platinum for 5000 gp, the DC does not change, nor does the crafting time - but, it costs 1/3*5 gp + 1/2*4995 to craft the 5000, or 4996 gp, 6 sp, 7 cp.

Some materials could have additional modifiers: working with mithral may always double the time, while gold drops it 10% (soft material), adamantine triples it, etc.

So making a gold plate does not take longer to make then a tin one.

This drops the profit margin for the crafter, as I'm assuming no better then a 50% purchase price vs 33%. The raw materials can not be sold for more then 50% of value, probably less - buying raw gold vs coin, the raw gold is worth less. Selling raw materials gets you 30-50% of the value it could equal if it were worked. You could use the same exchange for melting materials down - melting a 5000 gp silver statue of Kord results in 1500-2500 gp worth of raw silver.

Note: I just randomly chose numbers to provide an example for the concept, these are not hard fact/grounded in years of study with really smart kobalds.

BB

 

[genshou]

When I compared my times to 3.5 crafting times, I assumed an initiate would have a +5 craft and a decent expert a +15.

As far as guides to crafting times, people post all the time about how long full plate took, or how many bows a guy can make in a week..you just have to look for htem.

I've never actually seen those things posted, but then again I'm not the most attentive of all the ENWorlders here

I was always under the impression, however, that field plate took a very long time to craft... months of time. A sword, on the other hand, could be crafted more quickly. There's a lot less work involved in making a longsword, as field plate is after all so many lbs. of metal, all designed to fit together over a specific person, and the armor usually has designs and whatnot.

As for crafting field plate in 50 days... hell, why not? It's D&D, not the real world! 4-6 months is such a "long time" in some of the campaigns I've played in, the 2nd- or 3rd-level Fighter who commissions its crafting might end up getting it faster from the party mage when he rises high enough in level to cast high-level creation spells!

 

[Stalker0]

Bump.

I was just looking at my old craft rules for some work I was doing, and decided in a shameless pursuit of glory to bump them up and see if anyone likes them

 

[genshou]

You shameless attention whore you.

Of course you have to realize I'm kidding. I'm guilty of the same thing on numerous occasions, though I try to disguise is as an "update" bump.

 

[Spatzimaus]

However the gold ring is more valuable, and by the craft rules as written, would take longer to make. This should not be the case. Many items have values that are largely tied up in the value of the materials, not the value of the labor.

IMC, we long ago added an "exotic material" system, that did basically what you suggest: each material had a Cost Multiplier and a DC Modifier. In most cases the two went up at about the same rate, but there were several exceptions for precious metals (silver) or hard-to-work-with common materials (cold iron).

One nice aspect of this is that it allowed me to toss out the "Masterwork" concept altogether. If you want the equivalent, just use "Fine Steel" instead of the default Steel: +3 DC, x10 cost, IIRC, and it gives what you currently think of as the masterwork bonus (+1 to hit, or -1 ACP). So, tied into a reworking of the Craft system (I forget the equation we used, I'll try to find it tonight), we ended up with something our crafters were happy with.

 

[Uder]

Bump.

I was just looking at my old craft rules for some work I was doing, and decided in a shameless pursuit of glory to bump them up and see if anyone likes them

Thanks for the bump - I saw them and will be giving them a try.

 

[Kerrick]

IMC, we long ago added an "exotic material" system, that did basically what you suggest: each material had a Cost Multiplier and a DC Modifier. In most cases the two went up at about the same rate, but there were several exceptions for precious metals (silver) or hard-to-work-with common materials (cold iron).

I did something much the same - I did ten levels of mastercrafting (masterwork) with each level applying a Craft modifier and a bonus (I thought it was really cool that it got adapted for Iron Heroes by one of their writers). We also have tons of variant materials, which (obviously) apply DC modifiers and cost multipliers. And finally, I rewrote the crafting system to take into account the size and relative complexity of the item being made - smaller, simpler items (rings, e.g.) are easy and quick to make, but huge, more complex items (a suit of Huge ornate plate mail) are harder and take longer.

 

[Spatzimaus]

We also have tons of variant materials, which (obviously) apply DC modifiers and cost multipliers.

In my system, each material has:
> Categorized in three ways:
CLASS: Hard/Flexible/Soft, which limits what sorts of armors and weapons it can be used for. You can't make leather armor from steel, no matter how hard you try.
TYPE: Metal/Crystal/Plating/Wood/Bone/Leather/Cloth, which affects the cost multiplier and DC both.
SOURCE: Mundane/Alchemic/Planar, which effects availability (and therefore cost) without adjusting DC
> Cost multiplier, which among other things replaces the flat masterwork cost. It's expressed in gp/lb of raw material.
> DC modifier, which also doubles as a "Max Enchantment" stat; if a material is DC +7, it can't hold a total enchantment larger than +7. (That's "total" meaning pricewise, so +4 keen icy burst would be at the +7 cap). Several materials explicitly raise or lower this cap. Since DC modifiers go up to +20ish, the cap doesn't really affect much beyond the lowest levels.
(We did this so that people wouldn't just keep enchanting the cheap stuff; powerful magic items should be made from rare materials by default.)
> Hardness, which directly translates to HP (1 Hardness = 2 HP per inch of thickness)
> General Material bonuses, that apply to any item made from this material. Typically, these are weight multipliers (Mithral weighs less than steel) or HP multipliers (silver's less durable than its hardness would indicate). A few materials get bonuses to resist dispels.
> Weapon Material bonuses, which stack with any magical bonus.
> Weapon cost reductions: a list of enchantments. If any one of these is on the item, its total enchantment cost is as if it were 1 less. You can only get this once, even if you put multiple enchantments on the list on the item. For example, there's one crystal that gives flaming and flaming burst. So, you can either get flaming for free, or have flaming burst cost +1 instead of +2, but not both.
> Armor Material bonuses, which stack with any magical bonus.
> Armor cost reductions: just like the weapon one.

We did this for 44 materials. Everything from Bone and Bronze to Dragonscale, Adamantine (not to be confused with Adamantium), and Orichalcum (not the bronzeish alloy).

Between the material bonuses and cost reductions, armor and weapons become substantially stronger than before, but the only class really hurt by this was the Monk, and we had totally reworked them anyway.

And finally, I rewrote the crafting system to take into account the size and relative complexity of the item being made - smaller, simpler items (rings, e.g.) are easy and quick to make, but huge, more complex items (a suit of Huge ornate plate mail) are harder and take longer.

The 3.5E Craft system already does this, to some extent. The DC of a suit of armor is (10+AC), and simple/martial/exotic weapons are 12/15/18. For non-military items, Simple items are DC 5, Typical items are DC 10, High-quality items are DC 15, and Complex items are DC 20.

This is already a good baseline, I've just tweaked it a bit in my system, with weapons ranging 10-20 depending on complexity, size, etc., but honestly this wasn't really needed.

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Forgot to add, in regards to the original post:
We also redid the Craft equation, since we felt DC was on the wrong side of the equation. If two items had the same cost but differing DCs, the harder one would take LESS time, so it fell to the DM to make sure cost scaled up faster than DC.

The logic we used:
> Take the cost, in gp, for the BASE item (that is, the PHB cost, not counting rare materials or masterwork-style modifiers).
> Multiply by (DC-10, minimum 1). Exotic materials modify this one.
> Each day, make a Craft check. Assuming you make the check, the check result (NOT the margin) is the number of gp progress made that day. Assistants and/or masterwork tools provide the usual +2, and you can Take 10.

So, examples:
Iron Longsword (DC 15) = 15 * (15-10) = 75. For a low-level crafter with a +5 Craft bonus, he can finish in 5 days by Taking 10.
Cinnabryl Falchion (DC 20, since Cinnabryl is +5) = 75 * (20-10) = 750. A mid-level crafter with masterwork tools could finish this in a month; while both falchions and longswords are martial weapons, a falchion takes a lot more material, and so takes longer.
Adamantium Dwarven Waraxe (DC 27, since it's exotic and Adamantium is DC+9) = 30 * (27-10) = 510. While it's a tougher material and it's an exotic weapon, it's just a smaller weapon, and so any craftsman that can hit DC of 27 could finish in ~3 weeks.
Orichalcum Two-Bladed Sword (DC 38, since Orichalcum is DC+20) = 100 * (38-10) = 2800. If you're not epic-level with magical assistance, a team of helpers, and two or three months to spare, don't bother.