Craft skill...

[Umbran]

Fact is, it's infeasible and, well, just plain no fun to have to spend weeks and weeks crafting an item, while other PCs can do equivalent things using magic in a day or less. Crafting times are plain ridiculous for an adventuring PC.

Nobody every said that D&D was designed to make all things you could imagine in a fantasy world viable game choices for the PC. Yes, there's a little bit of alchemy around, but nobody claimed it was ever intended to compare well to arcane magic.

Btw, in that half-week, the alchemist makes a profit equal to 100 days wages for a common laborer. He should be darned happy!

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Re: Re: Re: Craft skill...

PS readers of the excellent Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander will remember the wonderful book Taran Wanderer in which our hero considers turning aside a path of glory for a path of a blacksmith, weaver, or potter. None of the crafstfolk had what could be called a high standard of living.

however, we will also recall that Taran spent about as much time learning to make a decent sword and creating a superior one FROM SCRATCH (with many mistakes) as a reasonably competent crafter could make a masterwork weapon after paying the materials cost (which one would hope included a preforged iron bar).

The craft rules are very general and just don't work in many cases. In some the time is excessive, in others the materials cost is. -- It should be obvious that there will be some crafts where the materials will be only slightly less exensive than the finished product and bulk materials are nessaccary to turn a profit (jewler) while in other trades the raw materials are practically free, and the entire value of the finished item is imparted by the hard work of the crafter (wood carving).

The game is not designed to be about crafts. However, the fantasy archetypes include amature craftsmen, from the archer who fletches arrows every night to the mage who brews up a headache cure to ingratiate herself with the innkeepers wife.

I think a pdf suplement with expanded crafting rules is called for... (kahuna adds it to the end of a very long list.)

Kahuna Burger

 

[alsih2o]

i find it curious thta people seem shocked that magic can do things faster and cheaper than handworking.

and as for wood being free or cheap, carving wood takes years to dry properly and can be quite expensive.

crafting anything well takes much longer than ,most people realize i think.

i am frequently amazed at how much people underestimate the time and expense put into a well crafted item

 

[Arravis]

Yeah I beleive that would be called for

In the campaign that this is/was for, most of the Craft skills involve making items out of the carcasses of animals, etc... there shouldn't much cost, if any at all. And the time... ugh.
If a character wants to make a spear, it takes him a while according to the rules. I have seen flint spears made very quickly (including the time taken to find a stone). Anyway, my hope was that someone had already come up with some sort of rule supplement... since not, it'll go on my "to do" list as well, hehe.

 

[diaglo]

Re: Re: Craft skill...

My elven character... it will take him 22 weeks to complete this bow.

wake up and play your character.

22 weeks too long.

c'mon

what's 22 weeks to an elf.

 

[thalmin]

Re: crafting items

for some stuff the times work for others they do not. example my lasher had a roll of 16 leatherworking. making a mighty +4 masterwork whip. would take a couple of weeks. (400 gp + 300 gp) in reality any competent leatherworker would do it in hours or at most a couple of days. afterall its mostly just braiding the leather and keeping it tight then adding a couple of rings and a tip.

Not quite true. For masterwork, you are going to have to carefully choose the right leather, carefully hand cut the strips so they are properly tapered. Then carefully do the braiding. Probably just braiding the handle end alone would take a day or so.
Full hand-crafting takes time. Quality takes more.

 

[Zogg]

Disagreement to follow.....

If ANYthing, the craft skills are too user-friendly. Magic weapons, armor, wands, rods, etc. etc. do NOT grow on trees. In reality they take a LOT of energy, money and time to create - and they should. Some craftsmen are a) lucky to make even 1 magic item in their lifetime and b) lucky their 'life force' isn't consumed in the dangerous process.

Granted, adventurers are meant to be uber-humanoids, capable of feats that the common craftsman is not capable of. And granted the really good magic items are going to take a lot of money, time and XP. But I would really rather have fewer PCs sitting in a town for a month (which regrettably happened in our last session so the wiz could craft something) than everyone taking the craft skill so they could make their custom items. *yawn* Aren't we supposed to be adventuring?

 

[Arravis]

In one of my game worlds, there are no magical items (well, pretty much none). No one can make them and at most, there are a handful of casters known, period. So it's not a "Masterwork takes a long time" issue, I'm talking about normal stone-age era crafted items.

Most of the "loot" in this game comes in the form of killing some animal and making goods out of it's body. After the party killed a Howler, they felt they hit the jackpot. Those spines could be used for all kinds of items. The large shoulder blades were made into an axe and a pole arm, etc...
You get the picture.

These sort of items shouldn't take weeks and weeks. As you can imagine, I just change it on the fly depending on what they have and how hard I think it would be to do. But I'd love to see actual rules on this.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

) than everyone taking the craft skill so they could make their custom items. *yawn* Aren't we supposed to be adventuring?

no, actually, we're supposed to be telling a story. The story is usally about some form of adventure, but for many people its also a story about their characters and how they overcome all sorts of challanges, personal and otherwise. If someone wants to include a craftsman in their story, they can do that. In theory the rules allow this by having a craft skill, but in practice the craft skill isn't very well designed and it would be easily just to say "you have to buy everything..."

Kahuna Burger

 

[Arravis]

Thank Kahuna, I thought the very same thing .

Go with what makes an interesting story and an interesting character.