Crafting - Will they ever get it right?

[DonTadow]

I've pretty much thought that most crafting systems in any dnd iteration has been a failure.

The time it takes is too cumbersome and the formulas are always a bit too much to get through.

I craft in an MMO cause its fairly easy in most. I think FFIV had the right idea in making it a mini game. Still not too complex. I dont need to know a complex formula and wait a few weeks to do anything.

Again, I never want my tabletop to be an MMO, but, if you are going to include crafting in an RPG, it should both be easier on the user and still contain a great deal of the complexity.

So I'd be interested on ideas to fix this.

 

[DonTadow]

I encounterd a system on enworld that I thought was kind of cool, but only dealt with alchemy or potion making. (I don't remember the link).

But the premise was, that, everyday, the craft person received an amount of points based on Knowledge Nature Roll daily (this represented them gathering throughout the day or while on adventures (picking moth in caves or flora in the field). IF They had owned a specific crafting equipment (portables costed more but allowed for the roll away from the city) They would receive a certain amount of gold to spend on liquid items. They would then make a craft roll, which allowed for the complexity of the item. It was like basic, advanced, and expert. (He broke down every potion and assigned one of these 3 categories, primarily based on spells used to make them).

This gold, or these points could only be used for potions and only in the category or below that was suitable.

In a nutshell, there were two components. A knowledge roll to see how many points or gold you receive, and a craft roll to see the complexity.

 

[delericho]

I would suggest making Crafting, effectively, a ritual.

Indeed, I would introduce a whole set of "downtime rituals" - rituals where there are no rolls involved, or DM involvement beyond saying "sure, go ahead". Basically, provided your character has the required skills at the required ranks (or equivalent), they're just a matter of gathering the required components, waiting the right amount of in-game time, and it's done.

They're things that, frankly, probably all that interesting, but they're things that players may well want their characters to do, and that they may well expect the game to cater for. By eliminating the need to roll the dice, they become something you can handle away from the table, if desired, removing any need to detract from in-game time.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Depends on how you define getting crafting right. If you mean that they will roughly simulate the world via the crafting system and make it highly interesting, then I doubt it. A lot of what is simulated in such a system is inherently uninteresting, and thus has to be highly abstracted to even make it palatable to a lot of people, plus it conflicts with the rest of the assumptions of the game. This is why crafting in MMOs is seldom all that hot, either.

What I would like to see tried is bringing the fantastical firmly into the crafts, so that crafting get elevated to roughly the same level as other parts of adventuring. That is, make the things you typically roll for in crafting dangerous and rewarding. So in comparison, take a warrior who is also this fantasy blacksmith:

1. As a warrior, we don't roll to see him sharpening his sword or cleaning his armor. We don't play out every training/sparring session. We do roll to see if he kills the goblins before they kill him.

2. As a blacksmith, we don't roll to see him making some horseshoes or beating a dent out of his shield or day to day business when not adventuring. We do roll to see if he wrestles the minor fire elemental back into the forge when it gets loose.

Start with those kind of assumptions, and I think an interesting and playable form of crafting can be included.

Edit: I think delericho's suggestion is the correct mechanical choice to implement what I said above. Simply add some rituals with real risks and corresponding rewards to the mundane ones.

 

[Umbran]

Depends on how you define getting crafting right.

Indeed.

In the real world, crafting valuable objects by hand is an extremely time and skill intensive process. However, it isn't generally adventurous. It's kinda dull, from the view of an outsider.

On the other hand, I would not see "wrestling the minor fire elemental back into the fire" as the baseline for crafting either - that sort of thing makes some hefty assumptions about your setting.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Indeed.

In the real world, crafting valuable objects by hand is an extremely time and skill intensive process. However, it isn't generally adventurous. It's kinda dull, from the view of an outsider.

On the other hand, I would not see "wrestling the minor fire elemental back into the fire" as the baseline for crafting either - that sort of thing makes some hefty assumptions about your setting.

Exactly. I've been considering those assumptions for several years now (since I got ticked off with crafting in Asheron's Call, in fact ). But it has only been with all this discussion over the last year that I've thought it was possible to include those assumptions in the game without embedding them so tightly that people could not ignore them.

Basically, you'd have a crafting system which you can either use or not. Then if you use, you can either go strictly mundane, a sort of mundane that can nevertheless do some alchemy/enchanting (ala 3E), or gonzo (e.g. fire elementals in every forge). The last one makes the space dedicated to crafting palatable to those who find crafting necessary for immersion but also boring in implementation.

 

[DonTadow]

That's always been the problem realistic or useful. I'd prefer a useful take on it, if I am comparing it to other games. Essentially, if crafting is going to be in the game, it should be useful to the player.

For instance, i started looking for crafting rules because i had a player who wanted to play a herbalist and have the crafting ability be a vital part in the characters combat skill. Thus, she needed an active reason to make various alchemical products daily and have most of the process "off screen".

I'm not necessarily looking for a selling point of view but from a , how do we make this a vital parto f adventuring" point of view.

With the system i found, the user couldn't sell her wears (he wrote in how they were unstable) but could use them in combat. Thus, the player was able to add a facet to her character that made her more useful in various situations.

 

[keterys]

Crafting should definitely be an optional module for 5E, not a core part of the system, so folks can take it or leave it.

Personally, I think that crafting should be neither an advantage (you're crazy not to do this, it lets you pick your own treasure, and all you have to do is RP spending some time on it) nor disadvantage (congrats, you wasted your feats, skill ranks, xp, etc). Good luck on that score.

Best method for me is to just RP that you can craft stuff, go you, and work with your DM when appropriate. Otherwise just keep on playing the dungeons and dragons part and not the merchants and blacksmiths part.

 

[Dausuul]

In general, I don't want to follow the MMO crafting model where the whole thing is a minigame requiring in-game activity. First, I can't see how you can square that with realism, and second, it would lead to another version of the Scout Problem: The crafter is playing the crafting minigame while everybody else is sitting around the table twiddling their thumbs.

That said, I do like the idea of a crafting system where rare materials and ingredients allow you to make cooler items. Players are always wanting to make armor out of dragon scales and stuff like that, and often when a PC has some kind of craft-y skill like herbalism, they'll announce "I'm looking for medicinal herbs around our camp." This seems like a great place for an optional "crafting materials" subsystem. The trick is to figure out how to make it work without feeling like an MMO where you have to collect five grey wolf pelts and a chunk of iron ore to make whatever it is.

 

[Herschel]

As others have said, real-world crafting is a time-consuming, non-adventuring activity that's best left out of the game proper. Artisans aren't adventurers and vice verse for good reason. There's a big difference between patching your battle-damaged armor and creating a ceremonial suit of plate for the king's coronation.