Crafting Art

[LokiDR]

A character with the caft(jade carving) skill is going to have some downtime while the wizards are busy creating "wonder widgets". He decides to create a jade statue.

What specific rules would you use to cover this situation? Final item cost, DCs, and reasoning please.

 

[AuraSeer]

[Bwoop! Bwoop! House rule alert!]

For creating art, I'd use the normal Craft rules, but backward. I'd let the value of the piece be decided by the PC's effort and time.

I'd let the player set his own DC, based on the level of art he was shooting for. If he wants to make a simple, cute figurine to to give his latest girlfriend, maybe call it DC 20. If he's trying to create a masterpiece suitable for display in an emperor's throne room, DC 40 is closer to the mark.

Let the PC decide how much to spend on raw materials. Then have him start making Craft checks. Each check would contribute to the final market value of the piece, as usual. The difference is that he could stop at any time, and call the piece finished.

However, an unskilled artist will never make a Venus de Milo, no matter how long he works at it. So I'd cap the value of the piece, at a set multiple of the raw material value. That multiple would be determined by the DC the player chose at the beginning. The actual multipliers would have to be tested and tweaked, but they'd get much bigger at high DCs. (At DC 10, the cap might be 2x. At DC 50, the cap might be 10x or higher.)

Like a normal Craft check, a failure by more than 5 would mean ruining half the raw materials. Since the value of the art is capped at a multiple of the raw material value, this would halve the final value of the piece. ("Nice work on the figurine, but it has that big ugly gouge right there...")

Benefits of this system:

• A low-skill craftsman can still create art. It'll be crude and not very valuable, which means this is what ordinary townsfolk buy.
• A high-skill craftsman has a choice. He can work hard (high DC) and create very valuable pieces. Or he can play it safe (low DC), but the piece will be less valuable because he's not making his best effort.
• On a given piece, you can work as much or as little as you want. A master artisan can make a decent painting with just a few brushstrokes (one day of work), or he can flesh it out and turn it into a masterpiece (weeks of work).
• Even a newbie can make a truly great artwork, once in a blue moon. (He picks a high DC, and manages to roll several consecutive 20s on his checks, without failing.)

Comments?

 

[LokiDR]

AuraSeer, I like your system.

However, the change in multipler of matierals to final cost from x3 to an unknown quantity can be problematic, I think. At low DCs, you suggest x2, it would be better to create basic items. Do you have a list of good multipliers and DCs?

Is there anything offical, or do I have to go with house rules? Perhaps in ravenloft or other setting.

 

[AuraSeer]

However, the change in multipler of matierals to final cost from x3 to an unknown quantity can be problematic, I think. At low DCs, you suggest x2, it would be better to create basic items. Do you have a list of good multipliers and DCs?

No I don't. I've never actually had a player create art in a game, so I'm not quite sure what multipliers would be balanced. (I did intend for a low-DC art object to be equivalent to a basic craft item. I just typed a 2 where there should have been a 3.)

I don't know of any official rules for crafting art, which is why I thought this one up. Maybe there's one in a third-party d20 book someplace, but not any of the ones I've read.

 

[Conaill]

Sounds like a reasonable system.

For some comparisons of art objects, keep in mind that there's a table of Art Objects with prices in the Treasure section of the DMG (or SRD). (And yes, a lot of the value seems to come from sepcial materials and precious gems...)