Crafting Craft Rules (DC 105?!?)

The Sigil said:
KEY POINTS OF SYSTEM IN THE ENCHIRIDION OF TREASURES AND OBJECTS D'ART:
That was a very interesting read. I'm going to think about buying the PDF to look at the whole thing, since this is a topic from the RAW that badly needs fixing if your campaign does anything involving crafting. I did something in the same vein myself some time back for my own group, because I also think the crafting rules in the RAW are utterly crack-brained, although my house rule seems a bit simpler than yours - I didn't split labor and materials cost here. At the time I was more worried about crafting time than market price anyway.

(Acutally, back in 2nd Ed. AD&D, I did redo the castle building rules in the Castle Guide to split out labor cost from materials cost, but that's a different subject, and I think the old 2nd Ed. castle rules are mostly better than the 3rd Ed. Stronghold Builders Guidebook.)

  • I kept the book rule that the base cost to make is half the market price of the standard item.
  • I completely threw out the fixed +300gp price for masterwork, and made the cost of making a masterwork item double the cost of making a standard item, and the end market price is whatever the market will bear (i.e. whatever the crafter can get a customer to pay). There is no fixed masterwork market price modifier because it depends on the reputation of the crafter.
  • If the item is to be a work of art as well as a utility item (decorated, etched, engraved, etc.), then add another 50% to the cost to make (Says nothing of market price, of course)
  • I calculate the time to make in man-hours as a function of the weight of the item, the DC to make the item, the hardness of the primary material the item is made of, and an Art Factor (1 for a basic item and 1.5 for a work of art). Masterwork items simply add +10 to the DC of the regular item no matter what the regular item is.

I disagree about one thing you said, that "...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 included the hardness of the matierial because I think how difficult a material is to work with should be taken into account. The game's hardness rating may not be a perfect measure of relative difficulty to work, but I think it's a reasonable approximation at least.
 

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I almost hate to respond, because I admire anyone who gets published and you've obviously put alot of work into the system but at least for my purposes that's a critical fumble. You are clearly more internally consistant than the base system, but not so much so that that you would represent alot less work for me.

1) The chair. A 23 in a craft skill check represents a fairly skilled Craft (Joiner) check. Assuming a 10 was thrown on average, that's +2 for Int 14, +2 for skill focus (Craft (Joiner)), +2 for having access to masterwork tools, and 7 ranks in the skill - incating a 4th level character (expert or commoner). This is an extremely skilled individual. And yet he spends 5 weeks total in the manufacture of the chair. Even if we are assuming that he starts with raw wood this is too long. Perhaps a stone age craftsman with stone tools maybe, but not for a craftsman of the assumed (psuedo-medieval) period. A good joiner could turn out a simple chair (or chest) from planks every 2 days or so. We know this partly because modern heritage craftsman can do about that, and because we know that a peasants had these furnishings (at least in small numbers).

Assuming a gold peice standard for wages - which is unhistorical but true to 3rd Ed. D&D - a simple chair should probably not cost more than 4 or 5 days wages for an unskilled worker and two days labor for the craftsman that produced it. In otherwords, the answer I'm looking for is less than a week of work (2-6 days) and about twice number of days in coinage as a final selling price (4-12 gp). If a simple chair costs about two months wages for an unskilled craftsman, no one could ever afford one. On the good side, your ratio is pretty good (35 days to 60 coins selling price) but the scale is way off IMO.

To a certain extent, I would hope that you realize that the price on the chair is too high. I mean really, do you want players carting off simple wooden chairs as treasure because thier appraisal indicates that a 12 lb wooden chair is worth about 6 lbs of gold?

2) The tiara. In this case, the problem is the opposite. The tiara is an example of a raw good whose fixed value is known by definition. So everything in the difference of the final price and the tiara price has to be added value. Even if we factor in some charcoal to the cost of raw materials, we are still going to be left with something around 10 gp worth of goods. Yet the final value you come up with of 7 days labor and 210 g.p. value suggests that the value of the labor of the goldsmith is about 29 g.p. per day. This answer is just too high. While its true that goldsmiths were very wealthy men, mostly this is true because they were money lenders and served as proto-banks. Thier labor probably wasn't worth more than a couple of times more than an average skilled laborer - lets say 6-10 g.p. per day. That yields us a final value of around 50-80 gp. Again, your answer is not close enough to expectation.

3) The plate: Your answer is more reasonable with respect to time and cost, but on the far end of the low side of reasonable on cost. Plate armor could be worth even undecorated 1200 or more days wages. The 1500 gp in the book is actually one of the few prices in the price list I consider reasonable (probably because armor is one of the few things that is easy to obtain historic prices on). I think you are probably underestimating either the value of the labor of an armorsmith, or the value of steel, or the difficulty of working with steel using feudal techniques or something.

The system is evidently simple enough to use, but doesn't provide numbers close enough to what I'm looking for. Believe it or not, inconsistancies in the pricing in D&D is not merely a matter of petty adherance to realism for me. I've already been in one campaign where Gygax's mixture of realistic (simulationist) wages for labor and unrealistic (gamist) prices for PC goods (and rewards) seriously distorted the campaign when wealthy PC's began to realize that they could leverage enormous ammounts of labor quite cheaply. Since that time, I've often wondered to myself whether the safest approach to something like the Tomb of Horrors (the original) was to bring in a few hundred laborers and painstakingly tear the thing apart. Because Ascerak in the orginal is not a responsive villian, unless the game master metagamed to stop it, such a plan would likely result in much of Ascerak's tomb be carted away for resale. This leads to heroes more in the mold of Belloq than Indiana Jones. So for games that move beyond hack and slash, this is to me not a trivial issue and a really good answer would be of great value to me.

As for the gemstones, its kinda wierd because Gygax clearly knew alot about medieval enconomies, but his prices for gemstones clearly indicate that he thought of them as gamist awards because using a silver peice standard of wages, they are probably 50 times higher than they should be. That doesn't present a real problem (I can easily just adjust prices or raw materials), but if the system itself is producing big inconsistancies elsewhere.

Ultimately, I don't blame you so much. D&D economies have been messed up since the beginning when Gygax decided (for expressly gamist reasons) to assume that the prices in the price guide represented (and would represent whereever the PC's went) the sort of hyperinflated prices encountered in the Klondike during the gold rush rather than ordinary prices. This is all well and good if you assume that PC's are walking money banks and towns are temporary rest stops between dungeon crawling, but when you try to move beyond those assumptions the original price lists (and everything that has happened since then) kicks you in the butt hard.
 

Celebrim said:
I almost hate to respond, because I admire anyone who gets published and you've obviously put alot of work into the system but at least for my purposes that's a critical fumble. You are clearly more internally consistant than the base system, but not so much so that that you would represent alot less work for me.
*chuckles* Don't feel bad about responding. Just because I "got published" (yeah, in a self-published PDF, big deal ;)) doesn't mean I'm perfect.

Rather than respond to the points you outlined (I agree with some of them, in fact, but when I wrote my book I didn't want to deviate too far from the "RAW" - I tried to base costs for stuff roughly on the RAW, so as to not force everyone to throw out their item pricing charts, so right there I knew I'd run into "realism" problems), I will make one point...

Part of the thing I kept in the back of my mind as I worked on this book was the fact that magic in the 3/3.5e system has a VERY unbalancing effect on skills... any fourth-level expert (a joiner, in the case you mentioned) would of course have masterwork tools, but another part of the problem is that magic items that give a competence bonus to skill are CHEAP. The average 4th-level character has what, about 5,400 gp at his disposal? Masterwork tools (+2 to craft roll) are a couple of hundred gp... leaving the character easily able to afford a "smock of Joining" that goes in the vest "slot" which gives him a +7 bonus to all Craft (Joining) rolls (4,900 gp). As you mentioned, he probably has skill focus and max ranks (7 ranks + 3 from skill focus) and a 14 Int (+2) isn't unreasonable.

In other words, the 23 isn't "average" for a fourth level joiner when taking 10... I would expect a 4th-level joiner to have an "average" of around 31 (10 + 2 for tools +7 for magic item) + 7 (ranks) +3 (skill focus) + 2 Int or 31. However, no matter how skilled you are, there's a certain amount of time that has to go into each item (you have to wait for the wood to dry out when you moisten it to bend it, or wait for metal to cool, etc.) - so I couldn't have these "superskilled" craftsmen popping stuff off left and right.

Because of this (the effect of skill-boosting magic items), I had to be careful how I built the system and assume that Craftspeople were taking advantage of the magic available to them. An eighth-levle craftsman (probably in the employ of the king) should be able to pull a +16 skill bonus item with little difficulty; he's probably put all his ability increases into Int, giving him an average roll of 10 + 16 (item) + 2 (tools) + 3 (focus) + 11 (ranks) + 3 (Int) for a total of 45.

To say nothing of the wise craftsman who keeps on hand (or is himself) a low-level bard with the "Inspire Competence" ability... that's another +2 there.

In other words, craftsmens' skill (the DC they can hit) does *not* increase at the same rate that level increases; it increases 2-3 times as fast (because they leverage their money into skill-boosting items). Adventurers won't want these skill boost items, by and large - they'll spend their money on weapons and armor - but craftsmen will. And I had to play it with intelligent craftsmen as well. ;)

Not saying you're wrong, just pointing out that it's something to think about... that in D&D, you can quickly attain DCs with the aid of magic that "historical" craftsmen (without magic) might not be able to hit in a lifetime.

--The Sigil
 
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Well, I'm not saying that you are wrong, and I am well aware that you have to tailor your book for the general audience rather than one crotchety old grognard's particular concerns, but that explanation still means that your economic system is based on specific assumptions which aren't generally applicable.

Not ever campaign world is going to be a high magic world were magical items are available to everyone even if they could theoretically afford it. I would much prefer myself that the book assumes magic is not available, and then includes a page or two discussing what economic changes you would expect in a society were magic was more or less pervasive. It's perfectly fine if the system notes that in a high magic society, the costs of production might well be lowered, and hense that manufactured goods would decrease in value, and therefore everyone's standard of living could conceivably be improved. An overview of things like the effects of druidic magic on food production, healing and disease curing on disease levels, skill enhancing magic on the cost of production, and the potential to magically automation of production. Certain items - like bags of holding, decanters of endless water, lyres of building, mattocks of the titans, spades of colossal excavation, permenant circles of teleportation - are notorious in their ability to alter economies and might could be mentioned. Such things would I think enhance the quality of the product. But there is a big difference between something like Eberron and a gritty low magic campaign.

As an aside, I run a skill intensive campaign, and its my opinion that potent magical skill enhancing items are far too cheap. I think that the prices used are due more to the fact that D&D has typically been skill light in play (1st edition of course didn't even have skills initially), and the designers just didn't really think that skill enhancement was of much value, than the actual benifit that you can get out of them. I tend to be very conservative with anything that could make having a high skill in something much less relative, and being able to easily increase your skill through magic is one of those things.

Back on topic, even if we assume that skill enhancing magic items are widely available, the fact of the matter is that I'm skeptical of whether they are even as presented cheap enough to make a big impact in realistic economies. Consider the case of the simple wooden chair again. Suppose every other master joiner invests in a +7 skill enhancing item. How much is that actually going to lower thier cost of production under your system compared to thier non-magical competitors? Supposing that it lowers thier cost of production by 25%, how many chairs would they have to sell before they recovered the cost of the item? Well, 25% of 59 g.p. is about 15 g.p. extra profit per chair. At 4900 g.p., the joiner has to sell 326 chairs over the course of his career to get back his investment. How long would that take. Well, at 4 weeks a chair, that's 27 years. That's a really long term investment which could very well be stolen, be destroyed in a fire, or simply not hold up to decades of continual use before physically wearing out. Heck, a joiner might not even attain 4th level (and thense to accummulate enough cash to buy the thing) until his mid-thirties, so he may be ready to retire by the time the bloody thing starts paying off. Meanwhile, his competition across the street enjoys 27 years of more comfortable living with his 4900 g.p. invested in better food, servants, a better house, and so forth before he ever has to worry about a price war starting up. Investing all your excess income into mobile magical property might seem like a great idea for an upwardly mobile intinerant sellsword, but it may seem less of a good idea for a settled craftsman.

The same economics apply to things like keeping Bards in your employ. For most campaign assumptions, magic seems to me more useful for producing extremely high quality goods where price is no option than lower the cost of production of ordinary goods. Some campaign worlds like Eberron (and to a lesser extent Forgotten Realms) might have a different take, but that's more new school D&D than old school D&D.

It seems to me that it is easier to add the effects of magic into a system that assumes magic, than it is to take out it out of a system that assumes it.

On the positive side, I love your idea of 'enherent properties' of items for making low level magical effects. I may have to buy the product just to get the full list.
 

Not to sidetrack your discussion with Celebrim, Sigil, but I had a question about your system (looks interesting, even if I am generally allergic to spreadsheets) - how does it handle ephemeral or unspecified materials? I'm thinking of crafting alchemical items here, a big part of my setting.
 

Kelleris said:
Not to sidetrack your discussion with Celebrim, Sigil, but I had a question about your system (looks interesting, even if I am generally allergic to spreadsheets) - how does it handle ephemeral or unspecified materials? I'm thinking of crafting alchemical items here, a big part of my setting.
The spreadsheets are REAL simple, hopefully they won't make you too allergic; they basically just "do the math" presented for you.

As to alchemy, have a cut & paste... from the book...
Alchemy should use the same Progress Rules as for Craft (detailed below). However, alchemical items differ in the method by which one determines the total drops of work needed to create an alchemical item (in this context, “alchemical item” refers to a single dose of an item where appropriate, such as with alchemist’s fire). The gold piece cost to create an alchemical item is equal to one-third of the market value of the item. The labor cost (in drops) is the value (in gold pieces) of the alchemical item times the DC required to create it divided by two. For example, alchemist’s fire has a value of 20 gp and has a Craft DC of 20. One vial of alchemist’s fire therefore requires 6.67 gp and 400 drops of labor to
create. This applies only to alchemical items that do incorporate little to no magic in their creation – alchemical items that require a spellcaster (either outright in the requirements or by requiring a Feat whose prerequisites include spells known or spellcaster level) should
be treated as magic items and handled under the usual rules for creating such items.

I won't claim to have the "perfect" economic system for 3e (I doubt such a thing exists), but I at least tried to address some of the most obvious problems in the core rules. If someone thinks things should take longer/shorter or be worth more/less, all they have to do is tweak some of the constants I use (adjust pay per day downward, divide labor time in half, etc.) and hopefully that should help. I'm not an economist, and don't claim to be - I just play one on TV. Creating a system that REALLY modelled economies would be so complex as to be unusable.

Thanks, BTW, Celebrim, for noting the "minor magical effects" - that's the part of the book I enjoyed writing the most... and that has the least amount of "yucky math" in it. ;)

--The Sigil
 

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