Craft (poison) or "It takes HOW long???"

[Tzarevitch]

Honestly, the Craft rules are pretty bad. For some reason (I guess for reasons of simplicity) they chose to base the time it takes to create an item on its cost rather than actual complexity of manufacture. This generates odities such as it taking longer to make a golden sphere than it would to make an intricate high-quality lock simply because the gold ball has a higher value.

Oddly enough, in 3e, using a craft skill is also one of the worst ways to make money. The return on your time invested is horrible.

Tzarevitch

 

[Umbran]

It takes a master weaponsmith (skill+bonuses=14) more than 21 weeks to make one masterworked longsword. However if the smith has a skill+bonuses of 29 he can pull this epic feat off in just 10 weeks.Then it takes a wizard two days to enhance it to magic +1. Seems odd. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm correcting you. The guy with skill+bonuses=14 can make a masterworked longsword in about 6.67 weeks.

The longsowrd itself takes less than half a week:
DC15, total sale value 15 gp (150sp)
With skill+bonuses = 14, average die roll will be about 24.
Die roll x DC = value in sp created. 24x15=360, more than double the value of the sword.

The masterwork component takes about 6 weeks:
DC 20, total value 300gp (3000 sp)
With Skill+bonuses =14, average die roll is about 24.
Die roll x DC = 24x20=480 sp per week in value.
3000sp/480 sp per week = 6.25 weeks.

The guy with skill+bonuses = 29 can create the same sword in 4.1 weeks or so.

 

[Balgus]

Originally posted by Frostmarrow:
It takes a master weaponsmith (skill+bonuses=14) more than 21 weeks to make one masterworked longsword. However if the smith has a skill+bonuses of 29 he can pull this epic feat off in just 10 weeks.Then it takes a wizard two days to enhance it to magic +1. Seems odd. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Another thing would be the weaponsmith is actually CRAFTING the weapon. He makes it out of scrap metal- pounding and shaping it. The mage enchanting it just takes a weapon already made and embues magic onto it.

 

[Skaros]

Honestly, the Craft rules are pretty bad. For some reason (I guess for reasons of simplicity) they chose to base the time it takes to create an item on its cost rather than actual complexity of manufacture. This generates odities such as it taking longer to make a golden sphere than it would to make an intricate high-quality lock simply because the gold ball has a higher value.

Oddly enough, in 3e, using a craft skill is also one of the worst ways to make money. The return on your time invested is horrible.

Tzarevitch

Maybe for adventurers, who have gold pieces coming out of their ears, but what about for average NPCs?

Is a year and a half really a bad time investment to earn around 750 gold pieces or more?

Can anyone quote the average earnings of people of various levels in fantasy? Adventurers don't really count, as they tend to be really stinking rich.

-Skaros

 

[Conaill]

Honestly, the Craft rules are pretty bad. For some reason (I guess for reasons of simplicity) they chose to base the time it takes to create an item on its cost rather than actual complexity of manufacture. This generates odities such as it taking longer to make a golden sphere than it would to make an intricate high-quality lock simply because the gold ball has a higher value.

Actually, you would just pay extra for the material costs of the golden sphere. Yes, crafting a plain sphere should take less time than crafting an intricate high-quality lock.

The Craft rules are designed such that the price of an object is proportional to the DC to craft and the time it takes to craft it. From that principle, they "reverse engineered" a formula to determine how much progress you make per week.

 

[Balgus]

Skaros:
Can anyone quote the average earnings of people of various levels in fantasy? Adventurers don't really count, as they tend to be really stinking rich

IIRC- i think it's like 10 SP/ day for commoners...

 

[The Sigil]

IIRC- i think it's like 10 SP/ day for commoners...

It's 1 sp/day for "common laborers."
It's 1 gp (10 sp)/day for the typical Level 1 craftsman (all average abilities, 4 ranks in a skill at Exp1, no Skill Focus).
It's somewhere in the middle for others.

--The Sigil

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Consider that a dose of poison and a potion of cure light are vastly different items. The potion heals relatively minor damage. The poison can kill you, even at high levels.

No, it really can't. Not the poison we're talking about. Greenblood oil can do 3 points of temporary Constitution damage, tops. 100 gp. I don't think it's unreasonable to compare that to a low-level potion.

For a poison that can actually kill you, we're talking wyvern poison. But that's 3,000 gp, which at DC 25 would take about a year given the Craft rules. In the same price range, I would roughly compare that to, say, a bead of force (2,000 gp) which is a one-shot magic item that will at least remove you from a fight. A character with wall of force and Craft Wondrous Item (which is comparable to the level you'd have to be to concoct the wyvern poison reliably) can make one of those in 2 days.

Note, however, that if we're using the Craft (poisonmaking) skill and these DC's at all, we're using the Song and Silence rules, which also specify that progress when crafting poisons is measured in gp per week, not sp. So the wyvern poison would actually take only 5 weeks to concoct, while you could whip out several doses of greenblood oil a week.

 

[mearls]

CTD pretty much nails the issue. It all comes down to game balance. In 3e, unlike 1e and 2e, money is a bit more of an abstract representation of flexibility and power. It's much easier now to buy magic weapons, armor, potions, and so on. It's now assumed that a character of level X has Y gold pieces worth of equipment. Any ability that allows you to get around that limitation, such as item creation feats and the craft skill, must have some sort of balance in place. For the Craft skill, the balancing factor is time. If you invest the time to craft a bunch of items, you can theoretically end up much better equipped than the average character of your level.

Table 5-1 in the DMG is really critical to understanding alot of issues involving money in 3e, especially magical item prices. I've had an essay boiling in the back of my head about it for a while that I really need to get around to writing.

As for altering the Craft rules, I'd either create a feat that allows faster poison creation, use the higher DCs for rushed work as someone else pointed out, or allow a character to pay more in raw materials in order to create a poison faster.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Actually, the first thing I would do if I were to tweak the poison crafting rules would be to give a bonus to characters who had the Poison Use ability. Being able to handle poison without risk of dosing yourself ought to make the process more efficient.

Also, if you're going to deal in the really high-value poisons (or any other high-price items) as an Expert crafter, you'd be well advised to invest in Use Magic Device as a class skill, so you can use fabricate from scrolls. Doing the work of many weeks in a round or so could do wonders for your profit margin, even after the cost of the scrolls.