craft skill expansion and tweaking...

[Kahuna Burger]

So there's a bit of discussion of the craft skill on the main board, and I thought it might be worth having a more nuts and bolts conversation here. NOTE : this is not a thread for people who want to tell us why the craft skill is already perfect, or as good as it needs to be or not important enough to be expanded. Do that over on the other thread.

the main problem with the craft skill (IMHO) is that there is a set formula for how much time and materials any item takes based on its price and DC. For some crafts, the materials cost becomes foolish (unless you DM is reasonable enough to let you make another knowlege or proffession check to gather raw materials) in others its the time to craft that seems excessive.

What I would recomend would be a system whch used the basic mechanic of the craft skill but in which each craft was rated by its raw material needs, time needs and skill needs. That is to say, some items are primarily valuable because of the materials they need (a golden box encrusted with jewels) some for the time invested in them (a hand knotted hammock) and other for the skill that you know you could not recreate, even with the time and materials (artistic objects).

Anyone already have a house rule to contribute or know of a fleshed out system out there?

Kahuna Burger

 

[Arravis]

I suspect that it'll have to be a basic materials x time formula, but broken down per craft itself. The formulas for wood carving and the formulas for armor smithing would have to look different. The quality levels need to probably be Shoddy, Standard and Masterwork (I forget which book had the rules for Shoddy items). Since I'm at work, I can't really do alot right now, but I'll try to post this weekend some and see what ideas we can come up with .

 

[Centaur]

I too belive the that the craft system is fundamentaly flawed. A solution I was thinking was to use a cumulative total for the crafting of items.

What I was thinking was to have a combination of ratings for each item. First there would be a basic DC for making the item, then a "Work Goal" or such and then a materials value. There should be some way of calculating the WG total + the materials value = something close to the retail value.

When a craftsman makes an item, everytime his roll meets or excedes the DC, add the value of the D20+Skill roll to a "Work Done" value. When the WD rating meets or exceddes the WG rating, the task is finished.

I think the rolls should represent a days worth of work and if it is possible to make more than one of these items per day, this should be specified as part of the WG rating. An example could be 100/1 wich would meen you need to accumulate 100 points of WD to complete the building of 1 unit. However a rating of 10/5 would mean that it takes 10 points of WD to complete 1 unit and that you can make up to 5 in a day by accumulating 50 points of WD total.

Of course, this means that each item in the inventory that someone may want to make neads to have a DC, WG and Materials Rating assigned to it. To start with, you could probably assign values based on catagories of items and then refine from there.