Craft skill...

[iwatt]

My problem with the Craft skills is that a crafter is more efficient producing higher quality items (high DC) than run of the mill items (lowish DC). This is due to the fatc that the a craft skill indicates how much sp is produced during the week. The formula i :

SPC =Craft DC x (d20+Craft Mod) (Silver Pieces Crafted)

So an artisan who takes 10 in his roll is producing proportionally less in a week if he decides to craft cheap items. I believe the amount produced each week should be an amount directly tied to the Crafters Skill. I haven't tested this, but maybe the formula should be:

SPC=(10+Craft Mod)x(d20+Craft Mod)

which still introduces some random production if he decides to roll. He can still take 10, which would give an artisan a constant production per week independent of the quality of the item.

This method would hasten crafting by a margin only for highly skilled artisans (who when taking 10 overshoot bya noticeable margin the equipment craft Dcs).

I also beleive that sp/week is a bit low, while gp/week is a bit high. Maybe electrum pieces per week is more appropriate.

maybe this should go in the House Rules forum. If so I apologize.

By the way, I do believe that adventuresr should have a lot of down time. Lately all my campaign run like the adventurers were medieval Jack Bauers (I stole this phrase from some poster I can't recall, sorry i don't quote). Usually everything has a time imits and wer'e rushing from one place to another, even during dungeon delving.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

but we are trying to apply our knowledge to show how it is pretty darned good (as a system). i for one would assume that soemone making a masterwork leather item wouldn't just be braiding but would want to cure the leather their way, not use the same crappy leather used to make your average peasants shoes.

the same goes for much of these problems, i think non-crafters are just trying not to pay attention to the fact that there is an incredible amount of work involved in crafting anything well.

maybe it would help if some people accepted that the people who "know something about crafting" accept the rules because they are pretty darned valid.

Except that again, if they are curing the leather "their way" why are they paying another huge upfront cost for masterwork materials?

I know enough about plenty of crafts to know that there are places where the rules break down. I know that there are crafts my freinds have pursued where the materials are incredibly expensive compared to the finished product but the work a lovely afternoon. There are several crafts I enjoy where the materials are of a completely negligable cost, but my abilty to sit and put in the time and patience impresses people. And there are "crafts" which are as much art that my brother has a talent in I envy and he can use materials of almost no cost and a day's work to make something I could not in a year.

So, no the rules are not "pretty darn valid" they are a rough working model for a system which presumes that adventurers will buy everything they need and take craft ranks for flavor or prereqs. And I am bemoaning the fact that the defenders of the system have not actually shown it works, merely nitpicked on others suggestions of why it doesn't. (oh yes, the fact that wood isn't free completely negates the difference in material cost for an equally valuable carved chair and golden statue.... )

In any case, this thread is getting too bogged down in obstructions so I hope anyone actually interested in discussing improvements to the crafting rules will come over to the house rules forum.

Kahuna burger

 

[alsih2o]

Except that again, if they are curing the leather "their way" why are they paying another huge upfront cost for masterwork materials?

the best hide as a base and tannign chemicals.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

The craft skill is very time consuming and is a one-man show. Sure, you can craft things for your friends, but they will basically have to kill several weeks if not months in the interim. And to me, that's a story killer.

well, in defense of crafters in stories, that is a result of the magic crafting rules in particular which require uninterupted work. Frankly, I think thats a foolish rule... I had a caster who created magical tattoos once and I always envisioned her working on the tattoos every evening gradually building the finished "material part" and then infusing them with the full XP in a day or two of ritual.

An archer who takes pride in being a master bow maker or arrow fletcher can craft by the fire each night, or at higher levels a wizard or metalsmith may carry a portable shop about through magic means (can you keep stuff in that instant fortress? ) Tweaking the rules to allow more fluid crafting would make characters like you are describing more viable, not less.

And yes I can certainly see the frustration that might lead one to say that as they stand PCs would be better off without craft ranks at all...

Kahuna burger

 

[Celebrim]

I personally believe that the silver peices per week rules are VERY good, but that the _prices_ of goods are often TOTALLY off base.

Remember, the _prices_ of goods are NOT based off historical research or anything but often as not simply what the designer felt would be _balanced_ during character creation. (Thus the cost of bucklers, for instance).

Take masterwork, for example. It adds a flat 300 g.p. penalty to the cost regardless of the item in question. Masterwork club, whip, sword, staff its all the same. In my campaign, masterwork weapons costs 10 times the cost of the weapon with a minimum of 10 g.p. Suddenly, masterwork versions of simple items start taking reasonable ammounts of time where as masterwork versions of complex items still take the appropriately long periods.

For the record, most prices in D&D are realistically 3 to 20 times too high. But some prices are actually pretty good based on historical comparisons. Medieval peasants really did earn about a silver coin a day. A sword in the medieval period really could take a week or a month to make. A suit of plate really could take a years labor from a master armorsmith and a team of assistants.

The craft skill is actually well thought out, but to get it to give good numbers you will have to rework D&D's broken prices and economics. For one thing, starting PC's should start with silver peices NOT gold peices. When you consider that a silver peice is supposed to be a days wages, you realize that a gold piece has the buying power of something like $1000 dollars and that the prices of many objects in the equipment list are utterly ridiculous.

Lastly to understand the very basis of this problem you have to go back to first edition. Gygax was I think in terms of his understanding of medieval economics still one of the best designers ever involved with D&D IMO, and the prices in D&D are still based of his original price lists to a large extent. Unfortunately, by his own admission, his original price list ASSUMED hyperinflation in the area in which the PC's were operating along the lines of the prices in Alaska in the Klondike gold rush. Well, that might be fine for balance in Gygax's original campaign and latter consensual fantasy with its copious loot, taking those prices as _base prices_ and not as some multiple of a true base price of an item has left D&D with a mixed bag of economic assumptions. Wages and services (as from the DMG) are based on a realistic silver peice economy, where as the prices of goods (especially weapons) other than food are based a fantasy gold peice economy. Latter designers never rectified this problem and it troubles D&D to this day.

 

[Umbran]

If my character had wood carving skill and I wanted to carve a practice sword, it shouldn't take me all day or longer (don't have the DMG in front of me to check).

Yes, but what's the gold piece value on a very basic practice sword? Consider that a full-fledged, weapon quality quarterstaff or club has no gp cost at all. A whole suit of peasant's clothing costs 1 sp.

So, 1 sp is probably the upper end on this practice sword, right?

A craftsman with a total +10 woodcarving bonus, taking 10, will generate 20 sp of work a week, right? That's about 3sp per day. Meaning that he can crank out one of these things in a couple of hours. What's the problem?

We should also perhaps remember that in a game with abstract combat, we'd also expect abstract crafting rules as well. Just because the mechanic is of the form of "erase the materials cost from your character sheet, and then roll the dice" does not mean that literally, perfect materials appear when you erase the GP and you start working on them.

Part of being a good craftsman is knowing matierals, and under more primitive conditions, one would assume that picking and choosing the right stuff would be an inportant part of the craft. Yes, today alsih2o can go online, and order sculpting clay, put down his money, and get exactly what he expects. His D&D counterpart doesn't have modern quality control methods, and he's going to have to spend time finding materials appropriate for a particular project - possibly up to and including going down to the riverbank and digging the stuff out himself. This takes time.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Take masterwork, for example. It adds a flat 300 g.p. penalty to the cost regardless of the item in question. Masterwork club, whip, sword, staff its all the same. In my campaign, masterwork weapons costs 10 times the cost of the weapon with a minimum of 10 g.p. Suddenly, masterwork versions of simple items start taking reasonable ammounts of time where as masterwork versions of complex items still take the appropriately long periods.

can I steal this over to the house rules thread, or would you mind posting your craft rules there? This is a very reasonable masterwork rule.

Kahuna Burger

 

[pawned79]

Zogg's Post:

Uh....I'm all about the storytelling aspect of the adventure.

But as for the 'story' that involves a craftsman....what's to tell?

"I, Melgor, am a craftsman from the trade district of Waterdeep. I've grown under the tutelage of Balgor my father, who learned the trade from his father before him. I make many great things, toiling long and hard every day...and I sweat all day as my strong
muscles flex and shape great armors by the nearby forge."

The other adventurers: Ok. Cool. Nice to meet you Melgor. So, uh, want to go with us to kill some bone dragons that are terrorizing the nearby village?

"I can't. I've got to finish this holy chainmail of speed +2. It's going to take me another 4 months."

The other adventurers: Oh. So I guess we could split up or just wait until you are done. WHAT FUN THAT WILL BE!

Hopefully you get the point.

********

This replay goes out to Zogg...

"I, Balak Dej'Urmon, apprentice under my uncle, Urth, the blacksmith of our village, Arim, in the Endless Desert. While working on a pendant celebrating my god, Bogo, the
head of our anvil cracked off. Our little village did not have the means to mend the anvil, and it was essential for my family. Uncle Urth, feeling I was old enough, told me to go to the walled city of Yatu northward along the river and have the anvil fixed in their forge. To protect myself, he told me to take my hunter sister Luula along for protection. We spent all day packing and preparing to leave. The next day we set out on our week long
trek to Yatu on foot while dragging a skiff with the anvil and numerous items for trade on it behind us. Various delicious beetles later, we made it to Yatu. The next two days were
spend outside the walls of Yatu bargaining and trading in the market place. Having made some hard currency, I sent Luula off to find a cart so that we could take our trade items into the city. After many hours of waiting, a tax collector, and a creepy old man trying to sell me antiques, I made my way into the city without her. I had a delivery to make to a house in town. I had gotten a really good deal on it too, I felt. While entering the city, I realized that you are taxed heavily. My deal ended up breaking even. Having finished business, I got myself a room in town and settled down for the night. Over the next few days, I spent time in town with the daughter of a local merchant. She showed me around
and helped me find the guild that I needed to find. Still, no Luula in sight. One night, my friend, asked me to go with her to see the gladiatorial events. Having never seen a gladiatorial event, I went out of curiosity. I have to say that my eyes were not really on the games as so much they were on my friend. Looking down into the arena, I found my long lost sister, Luula. Apparently, she had asked for directions from crooked guards in the middle of doing crooked things. They had chased her across the fields until she was finally caught unconscious in a cactus field. Luula’s hunting skills keep her alive for many days while my friend help me meet her and find out what was going on an figure a way to get her out. I was introduced to a man who might could help. It was that creepy old man that tried to sell me antiques the other week. He wanted to show me a malachite rod that he had collected. It was nice, but expensive, and I had no need of it. He was very weird. We started talking about ways to get Luula out, so we went inside his tent to talk in privacy. I woke up later that night enroute to somewhere; my head throbbing (Malachite is hard). It turned out, this creepy old man, Feyd, his name, was a servant of the great Bogo, and he had been blessed by mystical powers of the sun. In order to free Luula, it was my destiny
to be a servant of Bogo also. Over the next few weeks, he taught me the powers to give life and deal death, just like Bogo, the great sun. Having collected up a group of mercenary friends, we made our presents known, in hopes that Yatu would send out their hardened gladiators and guards to go take care of the problem. They did, and my sister Luula was one of the policing force. During combat, Luula and I were able to incite revolt
of most of the gladiators against their Yatuian captives. With my sister freed, we made our way into hiding with our new allies. Luula had been hardened into a skilled fighter, and I had been imbue with Bogo’s power. Our story continues down a long road that took us into clutches of a deadly Aratha, across an unforgiving desert, and back to our home that seemed grossly changed by Yatu. With our village enslaved by the tyrant Yatu, we worked on building an army to free our people and remove the dictator from the most influential city in all of the Endless Desert. Our quest would curse us with a skimming rogue who
was able to get us information we needed, and bless us with friends from home. My ear was destroyed and my face mutilated in an attempt to save my life from the desert’s smallest, and most deadly insect. We gathered arms from a mysterious, deadly, cursed land, and are now here in the trade oasis of Silver Springs. I will sit here working our arms and preparing my people for battle which will liberate our families and our homes. My
journey has not yet ended, but there isn’t a day that I don’t pray to Bogo to allow me to go home to a simpler life. This is the story of a blacksmiths apprentice.

Balak Dej’Urmon

 

[der_kluge]

Where's The Sigil?

His Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects D' Arte has an alternative Craft Skill formula. In his book (a .pdf) he also includes a well thought out discussion on why the Craft Skill formula is broken.

 

[Conaill]

alsih2o, I truly appreciate how much time and effort is involved to craft something that could be considered Masterwork in the real world. And you've made some very solid arguments along those lines.

The point is... none of that really matters for this discussion!

Let's go back to crafting magic items for a moment... There's plenty of precedent from literature that crafting magical items should take weeks, months, or even years. However, WotC decided to let PCs craft magical items at a rate of 1000 gp/day. Why? Simply because they wanted it to be feasible for an adventuring PC to craft his own items. So why didn't they do something similar for the same for crafting of mundane items?

Originally posted by Umbran
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.

And why NOT, damnit! I *want* to play and adventuring alchemist. A lot of other people *want* to play PCs who also occasionally craft some items for themselves. The crafting times WotC failry arbitrarily picked just plain such for PCs. I thought 3e was all about providing players with choices, no? I'm pretty sure the whole ad-hoc D&D economy wouldn't come crashing down if they had decided to speed up crafting by a factor of 7 (sp/day) or 10 (gp/week).

Yeah, it might have been a little unrealistic if you know what it takes to craft something in the real world. But no worse than a hundred other issues in D&D which have been abstracted and simplified for the sake of playability!