Shades of Green
Explorer
As my next setting is going to be a Steampunk one, and as my girlfriend is going to play a science-inclined Wizard in that campaign, I was thinking about the use of Craft skills for the creation of more complex items (such as steampunk gadgets and the more complex black-powder explosives).
For example, IMC a simple black-powder bomb weights 1kg (900gr of this is the powder) and costs 18gp. Under the Craft Skill rules, making an item costs one third of its price in raw materials - 6gp in this case (5.5gp for the powder, 0.5gp for the casing and fuse) - this assumes that the character buys the black-powder. However, a character might want to make the ingredients - especially the powder - himself (especially when adventuring in a more backwards area). I'm thinking about three possible ways for handling the crafting complex items:
1) The easiest - assume that each craft skill (say, Craft (Explosives)) includes the knowledge nessecery to make an item (say, a bomb) from relatively simple components (say, a metal shell, a rope, some oil and the (al)chemical ingredients for black-powder). Making an item from simpler raw materials, however, is more difficult than making it from purchased components - so the DC will go up by +5 or +10.
2) The middle ground - make one roll, but require more than one skill (in our example, Alchemy and Craft (Explosives)); use the skill with the lowest total bonus, but allow for a synergy bonus of +2 if the other skill has 5 or more ranks. When using more than two skills, you could get the synergy bonus from more than one skill (assuming each has 5 or more ranks).
3) The complex approach - set several component items for each complex item; each component would have a market price and a craft DC. The total combined price of all nescery components should be one third of that of a complete item. If you buy the components ready-made, you essentially make a normal Craft skill check to make the complete item. However, you may choose to craft any of the components (or all of them) yourself, paying only 1/3 of the market cost of the component yourself (so you could make a complete item at 1/9 of its market price, but that requires alot of time and several Craft skill checks).
The third option should follow two "rules of a thumb" to keep it managable:
A) Each item should be composed of a small number of components (2-4 in most cases).
B) Each item should have only two "tiers" of crafting, except for rare occasions such as building complex steam-constructs (i.e. sophisticated automatons).
How would you handle this?
For example, IMC a simple black-powder bomb weights 1kg (900gr of this is the powder) and costs 18gp. Under the Craft Skill rules, making an item costs one third of its price in raw materials - 6gp in this case (5.5gp for the powder, 0.5gp for the casing and fuse) - this assumes that the character buys the black-powder. However, a character might want to make the ingredients - especially the powder - himself (especially when adventuring in a more backwards area). I'm thinking about three possible ways for handling the crafting complex items:
1) The easiest - assume that each craft skill (say, Craft (Explosives)) includes the knowledge nessecery to make an item (say, a bomb) from relatively simple components (say, a metal shell, a rope, some oil and the (al)chemical ingredients for black-powder). Making an item from simpler raw materials, however, is more difficult than making it from purchased components - so the DC will go up by +5 or +10.
2) The middle ground - make one roll, but require more than one skill (in our example, Alchemy and Craft (Explosives)); use the skill with the lowest total bonus, but allow for a synergy bonus of +2 if the other skill has 5 or more ranks. When using more than two skills, you could get the synergy bonus from more than one skill (assuming each has 5 or more ranks).
3) The complex approach - set several component items for each complex item; each component would have a market price and a craft DC. The total combined price of all nescery components should be one third of that of a complete item. If you buy the components ready-made, you essentially make a normal Craft skill check to make the complete item. However, you may choose to craft any of the components (or all of them) yourself, paying only 1/3 of the market cost of the component yourself (so you could make a complete item at 1/9 of its market price, but that requires alot of time and several Craft skill checks).
The third option should follow two "rules of a thumb" to keep it managable:
A) Each item should be composed of a small number of components (2-4 in most cases).
B) Each item should have only two "tiers" of crafting, except for rare occasions such as building complex steam-constructs (i.e. sophisticated automatons).
How would you handle this?
