Crafting Craft Rules (DC 105?!?)

[Kemrain]

Craft points are an option. I'm actualyl reading a about to review a book that makes use of them.

The craft skill as written does work, it just has some problems with really cheap and really expensive items. Instead of being a product of the worth of the item, each should have a number amount goal that the crafter needs to reach based on the size and complexity of the item. THe DC should not be multiplied by the skill check, instead the DC should just be that and the final number should be based on combining lots of skill checks like the option of Arcana Unearthed does. If I were to rewrite the craft rules, that is what I would do.

That's a good starting place.. I'll see how far this gets me.

- Kemrain the Grateful.

 

[Jdvn1]

I tried reading that variant in UA, but I couldn't wrap my head around it. I thought it was for crafting Magic Weapons, though, not general craft skill use.

- Kemrain the Crafty, Still.

LEW uses it for making anything.

 

[Arnwyn]

I need to buy 3 different books to get all the craft rules?

Hell, yeah. Why people think that every single possible permutation of a particular situation should be in the (limited size) core rulebooks is beyond me. The core rulebooks cover the basics - kill things with your characters and take their stuff - and complicated things like constructing entire buildings sure as heck ain't it.

they must be making the rules up as they go along. I can do that too, can't I?

Problem solved.

 

[Crothian]

That's a good starting place.. I'll see how far this gets me.

- Kemrain the Grateful.

write something up, post over in house rules, and you are good to go

 

[The Sigil]

I'd be thrilled to hear it!

- Kemrain the Hoping Sigil Reads the Thread.

And... your hope is not in vain.

KEY POINTS OF SYSTEM IN THE ENCHIRIDION OF TREASURES AND OBJECTS D'ART:

1 - Item market price is a function of raw material cost and labor cost (not labor cost is a function of item market price, as in Core Rules)
2 - Labor cost is a function of Craft DC required to "shape" the item desired and the amount of raw material that must be "shaped"
3 - Labor completed (i.e., progress toward finishing the item) is not a function of raw material cost nor of Craft DC; it is instead a function of skill (in the form of check result) alone
4 - Materials used can, by their nature, make the labor easier or harder (based on how easy they are to work with); this is accounted for by applying modifiers to the Craft DC and or the skill check when computing progress
5 - It can be used, and scales well with (IMO), the "by the book" economy but a new economic system is presented to solve the billion chicken problem (I figured as long as I was looking at micro-economies of single items, I might as well look at macro-economies as well)

THE "WHY" (AND NOTES ON "WHAT ELSE IS IN THERE, ANYWAY?"):

Here's a stripped-down version of how the rules I created came to be... I tossed out the "Craft DC * Successful Check = sp of progress made in crafting" rule in the SRD because it made no sense.

Assume, for a moment that gold and silver are equally hard/easy to work with. You want to simply melt down the metal and make it into a sphere, say 3 inches in diameter. Because gold is worth ten times what silver is, it will cost 10 times as much. Let's say the silver sphere costs 50 gp and the gold sphere costs 500. The Craft DC is 10 and you get a check of 20 when you "take 10" (which you can, and should do, in Crafting). You'll make 200 sp or 20 gp (DC 10* check of 20 = 200 sp) of progress each week... meaning that the silver sphere takes you 2.5 weeks... and the gold sphere takes 25 weeks! (It should be here noted that gold is EASIER to work with than silver, so it should take even LESS time).

So the first thing I did was to break up the "cost" of an item into two components... a "parts" component and a "labor" component... on the theory that it should take about the same time to craft the sphere whether it's of gold or silver. That means the difference in value is due solely to the materials, but it takes the same amount of time to craft.

I made the amount of "work" needed to craft any given item a function of mass (i.e., the amount of material you have to shape, mold, sculpt, or otherwise deal with - it takes longer to make a five-foot long wrought iron fence than a one-foot long wrought iron fence) and complexity (in the form of the DC - making an ingot of silver, for instance, should have a considerably lower DC than making a silver filigreed tiara, even if they're the same size).

The second thing I did was to toss out the "progress = DC times Check" rule. Why? Because it's stupid. Let's go back to an example; suppose a tiara has a DC of 20 to craft and an ingot has a DC of 10... and you can get a 20 taking 10 with your skill check. According to the "old rules" you make progress *faster* on the tiara with a check of 20 (which BARELY cuts the mustard) than you do on the ingot (where the 20 EASILY passes)... you make 400 sp of work (DC 20 * check 20) on the tiara but just 200 sp of work on the ingot (DC 10 * check 20). What this means is that you can make stuff that's just barely at your level of competence much faster than stuff that's easy. It should be the other way around; you should be able to zip through ingots much faster than you make a tiara.

So the amount of work you need to finish an item is no longer compared to bare market price... it instead becomes a function of DC and item size. Market price, then, becomes a function of DC and item size (Labor) and Cost of Raw Materials.

Well, that's great, but how do you measure your progress against the amount of work needed to finish? I made the work you accomplish independent of the DC... except in that your check still has to beat the DC. Your progress is simply the skill check squared... to go back to ingots, this means that a guy who needs 100 "units of work" and gets a 10 on his skill check can finish one per week (10 squared is 100). A guy who can get a 20 on his skill check (20 squared is 400) can finish four per week. In other words, as you get better at something, you can start whipping through simple stuff really quickly. Or, to go back to our spheres example, if the spheres are the same size and presumably the same DC (I mean, a sphere is a sphere), it takes you the same amount time to make them, regardless of what they're made of (well, not quite, see the next paragraph).

Now, because some materials weigh more/less than others of the same shape (i.e., I don't want to use just mass because while a gold sword is much heavier than, say, a titanium one, the amount of skill needed to shape both is, in theory, roughly the same, because you're making them into the same shape), and because some materials are easier/harder to work with than others (again, gold is easier to work with than, titanium) I then needed to make an "index" to handle the effects of this on your crafting. Long story short, I created a huge appendix of materials, and every material gives you a "weight factor" (based on steel for metals), a "DC modifier" (reflecting how much skill it takes to work the material) and a "progress modifier" (reflecting how easy the material is to work). To keep this section from getting boring, I also added little "twists" to make it fun to use these materials by adding a section on "ensorcelling" - giving items unique little abilities based on what they're made of. A 13-page "Demo" showing you what material look like is here (this is the "A" section of materials): http://www.cooleys.org/publishing/docs/Ench2-Preview.pdf - now a sphere made of an "easy to work with" material takes a little less time than a "hard to work with one" because it will give you a bonus when you check your progress; while you might have rolled a 20, working with, say, aluminum (see demo) would give you a +4 on your check. Instead of finishing 400 units of progress (20 squared) you instead finish 576 units per week... on something that needs 2000 units of progress, you'll finish a week faster using aluminum than steel because it's easier to work with.

To add a little more fun to the crafting rules, I introduced "power crafting" - think "Power Attack" for Craft where you take a "penalty" to your check when you try to beat the DC in exchange for a "bonus" to your check when you see how much progress you're making. To use the ingots example, if you know ingots backwards and forwards (DC 10 when you can get a skill check of 20), you can choose to take a penalty to your skill check (in this case, let's say -10, which still results in a roll of 10, enough to beat the DC of 10) and get a bonus when checking your progress (in this case, you get a +10 to your skill check of 20, so you get 30 when checking your progess, giving you 30^2 or 900 units of work). Using the ingots example, you could speed up your work and knock out 9 ingots per week.

I also took the time to work up an alternate economic system (though still pretty simple), and a few other little doo-dads, but you didn't ask about those. I did include also a simple Excel Spreadsheet you can use to help you figure out the cost of an item, how long it takes to craft, etc.; plug in the weight, details on the material, Craft DC, etc. and it will tell you the value and how long a craftsman of check X will take to make it.

END OF THE "WHY" PART:

Long, involved, but hope you find it intriguing enough to check out purchasing the book. If you are, here's the link: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=651&src=EnWorld

If you have other questions, let me know, and I'll see what I can do to answer them. Hope that made sense, even if it was a little long.

--The Sigil

 

[RandomUsernamehmimo71]

The thing I dislike about 3.x craft, is that it seems to be a system designed to let players make the equipment they need to adventure.
That's fine, if that's all your doing, but the system doesn't seem to work well with creating other things.. Artisan's craft rolls would have to be very high to make any money at all.. Low power things aren't so much of an option..

For instance, I think a craft mechanic should, for one, be completly isolated from the GP cost. The D&D economics are just redicously wacked, and, IMO, unsalvagable without just rewriting the entire economy/price system.

So we should have ranks tie into that. Another reason it should be seperate is that you can, for instance, do Very finely made soap carvings.. Perhaps best in the land. Have 50 ranks.. You're still not going to make the sort of money that someone would if they were crafting gold and gemstone jewlery.. There's a far higher markup on Jewlery, than there is on Soap carvings

It's not that I'm looking for a system that is designed for EVERY occasion (although that would be optimal..), but I don't feel that craft works very well at all with NPCs who want to craft things in sufficient numbers to keep the world moving, while still being balanced against letting every PC pump out their own MW equip.

 

[Kemrain]

write something up, post over in house rules, and you are good to go

I might just do that.. But, thing is, I'd need to start another thread to explain the need for the change, and to explain the changes that are going into the changes in the craft system... It's a lot of writing up.. I'll finish it on my wiki before I post it all here in one big flood of Kemrain Braindumps.

But I'm still open to and looking for more Crafting ideas, so if anyone has other alternatives, please, share!

- Kemrain the Wikificator.

 

[The Sigil]

All of a sudden the thread got quiet... did I make everyone's head hurt?

--The Sigil

 

[Jdvn1]

That's a lot of post to take in.

 

[The Sigil]

Hey, I'm not "Mister 3000" for nothin'

--The Sigil