craft as non-magic "ritual"

[ruleslawyer]

I'm not sure I want my PCs creating intelligent flaming longswords... but then I play a different gaming style from that.

The thing is: I really think that if one is going down the path of allowing such extensive crafting abilities, then one should really just stick them in a class. If you want your PC's shtick to be crafting powerful weapons, et cetera, I'd like that PC to be an Artificer.

As Irda Ranger noted, a big chunk of crafting or enhancing "fine" weapons and armor should just be having the default stuff in good working order. Doing something more involved is most likely manageable within the context of ritual resource cost (time and gp). I'm not sure I want players to have to trade off adventuring-related ability for crafting ability; I'd rather they have both within manageable limits.

 

[JohnSnow]

As Irda Ranger noted, a big chunk of crafting or enhancing "fine" weapons and armor should just be having the default stuff in good working order. Doing something more involved is most likely manageable within the context of ritual resource cost (time and gp). I'm not sure I want players to have to trade off adventuring-related ability for crafting ability; I'd rather they have both within manageable limits.

I agree completely. The thing that intrigues me about the notion of "rituals" is that, basically, you can have the assumption that most PCs are "handy" as a general rule. While unusual in modern society, it would be a pretty rare person in medieval times who didn't know how to maintain his own gear. The rare person like that would be a rich aristocrat, and even most of them usually knew how to do it, they just usually didn't.

"Rituals" are a good concept to model things that don't take resources other than time. I think for real crafting, it ought to be something like a task, that you can learn. There's obviously no limit to what tasks you can learn, other than their being some basic time required. If you've ever watched a Food Network show called Glutton for Punishment, or seen what actors do to prepare for movies, you know how quickly you can become reasonably accomplished at something, assuming you work hard at it.

Mike Mearls had a concept in Iron Heroes called "Wealth Feats" to represent things that are essentially purchasable. Wealth feats are just like ordinary feats in some ways, but instead of spending character feats on them, you buy them with your coin. Mansions, followers, influence, titles...all these things depend primarily on money.

It was a neat extra use for wealth. And if the designers didn't slip it into 4E, I might add it as a houserule.

 

[Celebrim]

"Rituals" are a good concept to model things that don't take resources other than time. I think for real crafting, it ought to be something like a task, that you can learn. There's obviously no limit to what tasks you can learn, other than their being some basic time required.

I think you'd have to be careful in defining these rituals if you didn't want to end up making the game more complicated than you needed to. A ritual like 'Craft Wooden Item' doesn't tell you much in and of itself about the difference between crafting a wooden toy, a chest of drawers, and a tall sailing ship. On the other hand, do you really want a system where you learn 'Craft Chair', but are unable to make tables till you learn 'Craft Table' and so forth. I've seen MMORPGs that work something like that, but they manage to get away with because of things like autumated tracking of what you know, limited in game options, and different expectations of play.

I'm not sure I want a character sheet that lists under known rituals, 'Fry Fish', 'Make Sandwich', 'Bake Bread', 'Bake Cake' and 'Make Curry'. I think I'd just be happy with 'Cook Food'.

On the other hand, how is the ritual 'Cook Food' different from having Craft(Cooking)?

Mike Mearls had a concept in Iron Heroes called "Wealth Feats" to represent things that are essentially purchasable. Wealth feats are just like ordinary feats in some ways, but instead of spending character feats on them, you buy them with your coin. Mansions, followers, influence, titles...all these things depend primarily on money.

It was a neat extra use for wealth. And if the designers didn't slip it into 4E, I might add it as a houserule.

I'm not familiar enough with the IH rules. How exactly is this different than just letting characters buy things?

 

[I'm A Banana]

This thread is pretty hot.

There just needs to be a way that you're "spending" something to gain these rituals. I'd be pretty content if it was GP or time or some other non-adventuerer-realated resource.

 

[JohnSnow]

This thread is pretty hot.

There just needs to be a way that you're "spending" something to gain these rituals. I'd be pretty content if it was GP or time or some other non-adventuerer-realated resource.

I believe it was said that to learn a ritual, you needed to: a) find someone who could teach it to you, and b) invest the necessary time.

A ritual like 'Craft Wooden Item' doesn't tell you much in and of itself about the difference between crafting a wooden toy, a chest of drawers, and a tall sailing ship. On the other hand, do you really want a system where you learn 'Craft Chair', but are unable to make tables till you learn 'Craft Table' and so forth. I've seen MMORPGs that work something like that, but they manage to get away with because of things like autumated tracking of what you know, limited in game options, and different expectations of play.

I'm not sure I want a character sheet that lists under known rituals, 'Fry Fish', 'Make Sandwich', 'Bake Bread', 'Bake Cake' and 'Make Curry'. I think I'd just be happy with 'Cook Food'.

Well, there's a few basic levels of "wooden item." For instance, I acknowledge that "craft table" is too specific, but what about "Craft Furniture." Because while the difference between a chair and a table isn't that great, there's a world of difference between being able to build furniture and being able to build a sailing ship. I'd be thinking of a series of tiered rituals. At the basic level are things like carpentry and blacksmithing, which are a prerequisite to learn the ones for "shipbuilding" or "weaponsmith." Make sense?

I'm not familiar enough with the IH rules. How exactly is this different than just letting characters buy things?

Well, you can just let characters buy things. But wealth feats are a way of codifying some of the more nebulous benefits with rules. There are feats for Cohorts and Followers, for instance, political connections, and even mansions. You create a "wealth pool" by converting your gold to wealth points on a 100:1 basis. Cashing them out, you get 50 gp for ever wealth point. Beyond that, I guess the best way to illustrate it is for me to post one...

MONEY BUYS INNOCENCE [WEALTH]
Your frequent bribes to the local magistrates ensure that in any legal case short of a killing spree, you need not worry about imprisonment.
Prerequisites: You must spend 10 wealth points as an initial bribe to judges, town guard commanders, and so forth. Each month afterward, you must spend an additional point from your wealth pool to maintain their protection. If you miss a payment, you must spend 5 wealth points within three months of the missed payment to retain this benefit. Otherwise, you must regain this feat as normal.
Benefit: If you’re charged with any crime short of murder or theft of more than 10,000 gp, the guard sets you free. In any case where you’re charged with murder or theft of more than 10,000 gp and the evidence consists of your word against another person’s testimony, you win an acquittal or pardon.
If you charge another person with a minor crime that results in imprisonment for a week or less, the defendant is always found guilty.
In a case where both the plaintiff and defendant have this feat, the two must secretly spend wealth points on a bribe. Whoever delivers the larger bribe wins the case if there is reasonably compelling evidence for a favorable result.
Special:This feat assumes that the local constabulary is open to bribery. The DM may rule that you can’t take the feat, or that you must pay more than the listed rates. It’s much more difficult to bribe officials in a city whose rulers actively campaign against corruption. Your DM may double, triple, or quadruple this feat’s costs depending on the situation at hand.

Does that explain the general concept?

Obviously, DM's who have less trouble "winging it" don't need these feats, but I thought they were pretty cool. On the other hand, I understand they're not for everyone.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I really like the ideas presented in this thread. Good stuff, people!

Crafting as non-magical rituals sounds like a lot of fun. The nice thing about it is that rituals have levels associated with them, so you could represent the difference between, say, the craft ritual for chainmail and the craft ritual for full plate.

Maybe you could have a system where every character gets a free "background" skillset, allowing level 1 rituals in a small set of skills (similar to 2nd Ed's background system). Then if players wished, they could spend feats on improving (and focusing) those skills, which would have the game effect of allowing access to higher and higher level rituals.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, there's a few basic levels of "wooden item." For instance, I acknowledge that "craft table" is too specific, but what about "Craft Furniture." Because while the difference between a chair and a table isn't that great, there's a world of difference between being able to build furniture and being able to build a sailing ship. I'd be thinking of a series of tiered rituals. At the basic level are things like carpentry and blacksmithing, which are a prerequisite to learn the ones for "shipbuilding" or "weaponsmith." Make sense?

To a certain extent. It does explain some of the problems with the 3E craft system wherein, you could get a skill like 'Craft(Shipwright)', Craft('Joiner'), or 'Craft(Weaponsmith)', and be unable to do 'Craft(Carpentry)' or 'Craft(Blacksmith)'.

I think that ultimately such a system would get fairly complex. For one thing, you seem to be moving toward a system with multiple sorts of experience points, either explicitly or implicitly.

Does that explain the general concept?

Yes. Thanks.

Obviously, DM's who have less trouble "winging it" don't need these feats, but I thought they were pretty cool. On the other hand, I understand they're not for everyone.

I'll say. The 'Special' clause is pretty telling AFAIC. If I had to rewrite the example feat you showed to make it where it wasn't just winging it in a different form, it would probably get up to several pages. It seems to say nothing about whether or not the offiicials like you (3 CHR, 30 CHR, doesn't make a difference). It says nothing about your relationship to the officials (it costs the same whether you are a half-orc mongrel or whether you happen to be the mayors nephew). It says nothing about whether or not you are working against the officials interests (it costs the same even if you are a political rival). It says nothing about who the crime was committed against. For example, apparantly one could spend 100 gp on bribes to repeatedly get the officials to overlook the fact you are stealing 9900 gp from them monthly. It also seems to treat the public officials as a faceless nameless undifferientiated block. It seems to me that most of the time some of the public officials are bribable, and others are not. So what happens if the mayor is a scoundrel, but the judge is a paladin? What happens if mayor is in your pocket, but you offend one of the city alderman by insulting his favorite wine and he decides to go public with your corruption scheme in retribution? In other words, it leaves so much up to fiat that I might as well just be using fiat.

Worse yet, it has the whiff of replacing role play with rote resolution. It looks like it could very easily be something you do instead of RP out the situation.

But if none of the above scenarios sound likely or fun to you, then I suppose its as good or as bad as any other social resolution system.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think you'd have to be careful in defining these rituals if you didn't want to end up making the game more complicated than you needed to. A ritual like 'Craft Wooden Item' doesn't tell you much in and of itself about the difference between crafting a wooden toy, a chest of drawers, and a tall sailing ship. On the other hand, do you really want a system where you learn 'Craft Chair', but are unable to make tables till you learn 'Craft Table' and so forth. I've seen MMORPGs that work something like that, but they manage to get away with because of things like autumated tracking of what you know, limited in game options, and different expectations of play.

I'm not sure I want a character sheet that lists under known rituals, 'Fry Fish', 'Make Sandwich', 'Bake Bread', 'Bake Cake' and 'Make Curry'. I think I'd just be happy with 'Cook Food'.

On the other hand, how is the ritual 'Cook Food' different from having Craft(Cooking)?



I'm not familiar enough with the IH rules. How exactly is this different than just letting characters buy things?

I guess the major difference beween a ritual "Cook Food" and "Craft (Cooking)" is the way you acquire the ability. In 3E (until the retraining rules in PHB 2 at least, and wizard spell book learning), there wasn't a real way to learn aynthing outside of levelling. A master craftsmen had to take a lot of levels in Expert, and get HD, BAB, and Save increases with it.

If you choose to model this stuff independent of character level, you make it possible to create a master craftsman without him advancing levels and getting all the "heroic" benefits.

It's also an example of silioing. With "Craft (Cooking)", a Rogue for example might have to decide between this skill or another - let's say, Spot. There can be no doubt that in most scenarioes, Spot is a lot more useful then the ability to cook, so this means you probably never get a "cook" Rogue. If instead Cooking is something outside of the adventuring/combat related stuff, you can actually have a cooking Rogue, or a Fighter smith.

Off course, you can probably overdo such a system, and there is a risk that at some point, you get in a conflict with the other rules and create unbalanced effects (once you go into the whole "rituals to craft magical items area, for example). And I am not sure if the designers intend to go this route, or concentrate on "real" rituals that create magical effects.
It's still a very interesting thought.

 

[Celebrim]

I guess the major difference beween a ritual "Cook Food" and "Craft (Cooking)" is the way you acquire the ability. In 3E (until the retraining rules in PHB 2 at least, and wizard spell book learning), there wasn't a real way to learn aynthing outside of levelling. A master craftsmen had to take a lot of levels in Expert, and get HD, BAB, and Save increases with it.

If you choose to model this stuff independent of character level, you make it possible to create a master craftsman without him advancing levels and getting all the "heroic" benefits.

I guess it depends on how much this bothers you. When you put it like that, I realize that I've been solving the same problem in a different way. I added to each of the NPC classes the ability to gain 'non-heroic experience' by doing mundane tasks (manual labor in the case of the commoner, for example) which could only be used to gain additional levels in that NPC class. It didn't really have any importance from the stand point of the players, but it systemize the creation of NPCs. Likewise, I had a advantage/disadvantage system for character creation, and some of the disadvantages (like 'Noncombatant') were mostly things that helped me create the NPC's I wanted. A civilized, noncombatant level 20 commoner was really only about CR3 (not that any civilized, noncombatant commoner could necessrily reach level 20).

But it never really bothered me that important named craftsman NPC's, or even just random lvl3 experts had some minimal and 'unexpected' resources in a fight. It fits stories, where the butler, the maid, the cook, the old-shopkeeper, and even the grandama all turn out to be able to give a good accounting of themselves defend thier domain against at least the minion sort of ruffain. If an expert 5 happened to have 18 hp, so what? He'd still probably be no real contest to even a level 1 or level 2 PC. So I never felt the need to just randomly assign skills to a low level NPC, not that I wouldn't have been willing to break the rules had I had the need.

It's also an example of silioing. With "Craft (Cooking)", a Rogue for example might have to decide between this skill or another - let's say, Spot. There can be no doubt that in most scenarioes, Spot is a lot more useful then the ability to cook, so this means you probably never get a "cook" Rogue. If instead Cooking is something outside of the adventuring/combat related stuff, you can actually have a cooking Rogue, or a Fighter smith.

Again, that doesn't bother me either. The cooks that said rogue or fighter are competing against cook 6-10 hours a day, every day, for 20 years. So of course they can't cook like an actual Cook. The cook can't fight like an actual Fighter. If the fighter decides to take some time off from fighter-training to spend time cooking, well then of course some other skill is going to slightly suffer compared to the fighter that does nothing but concentrate on his class training.

If the fact that I had no cooking rogue or fighter smith bothered me, I'd give free craft skill points at character creation to represent the characters background before they became an adventurer.

But I did as I noted feel the need to 'silo', in as much as I wanted to make sure that experience at fighting led to skill at fighting, and experience at cooking led to cooking skill. In fact, if I new of an elegant way to do it, I'd try to silo experience in a skill to that skill even more strongly. I still think the old Chaoism CoC rules for gaining skill are the most elegant of any system.

It's still a very interesting thought.

Yes. Anything that makes me question the way I'm doing things is interesting. I do like the idea that you could make skills more hierarchical.