D&D 4E Crafting... can anyone make anything in 4E?

[Scribble]

Other have probably mentioend it, but if someone wants to make something, I'll just have them roll a stat check vrs a DC that's appropriate.

I'm considering lettting everyone have an extra "background skill" they can be trained in if they really care... (such as blacksmithing) but so far, none of my players have really cared.

 

[mlund]

Flint Fireforge of Dragonlance fame was a smith.

He never did have any game-related stats to back it up. In fact, he never really forged anything except in the Pre-Chronicles background books.

Forging your own weapon is generally a plot-device, not an Encounter. Don't insist on shoe-horning it into general 4E D&D mechanics, which are based around a group of players handling an interactive Encounter as a team. An individual character's training / crafting / romancing montages aren't the kind of thing the game mechanics really care about because they generally don't represent entertaining group challenges.

Even in literature, crafting weapons and armor isn't typically a protagonist's job unless it involves a Plot Device Item that's really just symbolic for refining some aspect of the heroic character's personality. None of the Fellowship were involved in crafting and Elrond (NPC crafter) reforged Narsil at the Speed of Plot (TM).

If you just want a guideline on a pseudo-realistic timeline for mundane item creation, I'm sure Google or Wikipedia could direct you to some examples from history.

Personally, if you want to focus on crafting something in particular, I'd focus the party's attention on obtaining the required materials and services necessary. Forging is only a small part of the time and work involved in making a sword. Testing the metal, grinding the blade, hilting it properly, and then making a sheath for it (medieval blades are not uniform at all) represent a much larger amount of time than simply striking it - and few craftsmen mastered all of those skills themselves.

- Marty Lund

 

[Grantor]

Crafting skills in 1st edition?

There were no skills in 1st edition D&D, non-weapon proficiencies in 2nd edition and skill points in 3rd edition.

Apparently the designers thought that using skill points to finely tune the abilities of your character was a bit too much in complexities. It's also not really class-based (although the classes did limit what skills you got full value for).

Back in the old days there were no crafting rules, but we managed to use our character backgrounds to make stuff.


There is a different point to codifying crafting skills (or any other non-adventuring skill). In what way does failing a craft skill check add to the campaign? Does it cost the player resources that they commited to the crafting? Does it take extra time to make the item?

If it costs the loss of some or all of the materials, then you just made some of the player's hard earned cash vanish. This adversely affects the balance of character wealth vs level expectations.

If it just takes extra time, then it takes extra time. Unless there is a dramatic race to get this completed by a deadline or else something adverse to the characters' situation happens, it doesn't matter if more time is spent: eventually they will succeed. So why roll?

What if there is a dramatic resolution that requires crafting skills...?
Well, it's been shown that skill challenges are already hard enough. When you start adding more skills into the list you decrease the chances that someone in the party will have training in a key skill needed for the challenge. This is okay as long as the DM is keeping tabs on everyone's trained skills and building skill challenges that work around these skills. But if you use a pre-made scenario, you can be sure that every Skill Training feat spent on house-made skills is a feat that won't help in completing that module.

 

[Tony Vargas]

4e is intentionally focused more on the details of adventuring than on the background of the world and the characters. Crafting would presumably work much like making a magic item. Your character pays the full cost of the item, and says "I made this" instead of "I bought this."

 

[Scribble]

4e is intentionally focused more on the details of adventuring than on the background of the world and the characters. Crafting would presumably work much like making a magic item. Your character pays the full cost of the item, and says "I made this" instead of "I bought this."

Yep.

Only time I;d make them roll is if it effected gameplay in some way.

OMG WE NEED TO GET THESE SWORDS READY SO THE PEASENTS STAND A CHANCE AGAINST THE ORC HORDE, BUT WE NEED TO DO IT LIKE YESTERDAY!!!!!

roll an intelligence check, dc 20.

 

[FourthBear]

If the answer is simply to "RP it", I have no idea how long a long sword takes to craft, or anything else for that matter.

I have to admit, this kind of surprised me. If you've been using the Craft rules very extensively in your campaign, it seems to me that you should have a very good idea how long it takes to craft things. Just use those expectations to guide your decisions.

 

[mattdm]

I'd rather not House Rule, or if I do, do so with as little changes to the actual rules as possible.

Two things which may make you feel better:

A) There's really two sorts of house rules: 1) changes to things the DM or group don't like in the rules, like altering the half-elf to have a floating ability modifier, and 2) making up things to cover situations which the general game doesn't concern itself with. This may be armorsmithing, and it may be dealing with what happens if the players fall through a hole in time and end up having an adventure in a sci-fi setting. I understand your reluctance to mess with the first, but the second is a lot of what makes individual games fun.

B) The crafting rules in 3/3.5E are ridiculously arbitrary, and any random thing you come up with has good odds of being more realistic.

 

[Saeviomagy]

If the party is attacked by a monster, such as a giant centipede, the monster doesn't have loot... the monster is the loot.
The hard shell of the creature can be used to make armor, shields, or any number of items. The pincers could be made into weapons from daggers to spears, etc, or perhaps tools. The meat inside is cooked and eaten, poisons are extracted, and it might hold strange properties like its bile acting as a dye, or other unique traits.
Weird I know, but my group loves it .

Does making your players roll dice to use their loot actually help this system?

Do you pre-determine what loot is creatable from a creature, or do your players contribute to that?

In either case, you just need a list of preparation times for various categories of finished product and your game will carry on as it does now.

Either the PCs tell you what they want to make, and you tell them how long it takes (and what additional ingredients are required from creatures they haven't killed yet), or you tell the PCs what they can make and how long it will take.

The only difference will be that your players
a) Haven't spent resources on being the party arms supplier
b) Can all contribute because their lack of an appropriate skill doesn't lock them out of the role.

 

[balard]

In your game, just get some sort of time table for each item a PC can make. When the got the necessary parts, they can spend the time and get the shiny new item.

Now, or by using the skill you mentioned, or by adding background skills, or by making simple attribute checks, a PC can try to speed up the process, or even make a special item. If they fail, they lose the material.

For example, a centipede pincer can be made craft in a axe in 3 days. They can make a Nature check to cut the crafting time in a half, or to double the value of the material. Both ways if they fail and and with nothing.

 

[Otterscrubber]

Ok.. so, what kind of check is it? How fast does it take to craft something? How much does it cost? If a character wants to get better at crafting, what can he do about it?

If the answer is simply to "RP it", I have no idea how long a long sword takes to craft, or anything else for that matter.
At least a vague attempt by WotC at some sort of way to handle this would have been helpful.

I think this is covered in another game called Wood-crafting or Wool-knitting, abbreviated WoW. I hear it mentioned a lot on these forums.....