Craft RAW Sucks... Are There Other Systems?

[Insight]

Upon reading through the rules for the Craft skill, I realized how poorly these rules replicate anything remotely like the real world. Are there alternate rules out there somewhere that make more sense / allow people to actually MAKE things in less than a month?

 

[Edheldur]

Well, there's Magesmithing 101 presenting a different mechanic for using the Craft skills for normal items based on "craft units" rather than price. Makes more sense, IMO.

 

[sirwmholder]

UA has a crafting point system in which it takes far less time to complete an item... though the checks required get higher the less time you want to spend on the item... it has been balanced in our games so far... check it out here.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/craftPoints.htm

Hope this helps,
William Holder

 

[Vrecknidj]

Just have the DM guess at the time, subtract some coins, and move along. That's what I do. I can't see wasting precious play time rolling dice for every day or week and worrying about the details.

Dave

 

[Li Shenron]

Upon reading through the rules for the Craft skill, I realized how poorly these rules replicate anything remotely like the real world. Are there alternate rules out there somewhere that make more sense / allow people to actually MAKE things in less than a month?

The Craft skills are actually OVER-realistic

I think they are much more complicated than they need to be... ONE check should be enough in a game that is rarely concerned with the details of crafting (particularly crafting mere mundane objects, crafting magic items is automatic!). One check per week is just terribly boring!

The crafting times seem to be realistic for a dark-ages or early-medieval period technology.

For example, think of a full plate armor: 1500gp. A good armorsmith (for example a 4th level commoner or expert, full ranks and only a +1 Int, for a total +8, which certainly isn't a legendary armorsmith) will take slightly less than a year to make such armor.

Consider however that this is practically the most expensive core piece of equipment, hence the longest to make... In a dark-ages setting it's not unreasonable that the best possible armor would take a whole year to make. It's anyway the sort of armor that only adventurers (not including beginner adventurers) can afford. It would also make perfect sense for an adventurer who makes the armor by himself to take a year before completing it.

Furthermore the times are long to avoid making too much money this way, compared to how much you can make by using the same Craft skill in "make a living mode".

However, most of the groups don't care about crafting equipment, but they want it immediately, and it makes sense that these rules bother players...

I say that if you just don't bother crafting, but you still want your PCs to be able to say "I made this!", simply cut the times to 1/10. Or better, just do this little change: apply normal Craft rules to GP value of the item instead of SP value. This automatically results in average time cut to 1/10 and requiring 1/10 of the normal checks.

 

[Li Shenron]

UA has a crafting point system in which it takes far less time to complete an item... though the checks required get higher the less time you want to spend on the item... it has been balanced in our games so far... check it out here.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/craftPoints.htm

Hope this helps,
William Holder

However, that variant is outrageously unrealistic, starting with the fact that basically you have a limit to the amount of items you could craft that is based on level rather than time

Practically with that variant no one can be a blacksmith for long, unless he goes kill some goblin every now and then.

 

[Kerrick]

Upon reading through the rules for the Craft skill, I realized how poorly these rules replicate anything remotely like the real world. Are there alternate rules out there somewhere that make more sense / allow people to actually MAKE things in less than a month?

I came to the same conclusion you did a few months ago, so I sat down and rewrote the crafting system. I tried to strike a balance between realism (plate armor taking a year to make) and practicality (not tying down a PC crafter for several months or a year to make a single nonmagical item). I also wanted to get rid of that silly rule that ALL masterwork items are DC 20, regardless of size or type, and incorporate the variant materials we had, so I made a scaling system - a base DC for the item, then modifiers can be added to it for masterwork, variant materials, or whatever else the PC wanted to do. It worked out so well that I also adapted it for [http://shtar.pbwiki.com/Artificing]making magic items[/url]. Check out the attachment.

 

[frankthedm]

One check per week is just terribly boring!

Take 10

I personlly like the crafting rules. Especially on exotic materials like Mithral and Adamantine. Those materials have a fine tradition of chiefly being made by long lived races.

A human craftsman dying of old age before finishing mithral full plate is a feature of the material, not a bug in the system IMHO.

 

[Li Shenron]

Take 10

Of course that should be done ALL the time... unless you want to craft something that has a higher DC than your Craft score

 

[DMH]

The best I have read are in ST Cooley's Enchiridion of Treasure and Objects D'Art (it is a pdf sold via enworld's store).