Crafting - Will they ever get it right?

[Crazy Jerome]

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.

In the early design talk of an MMO that never went anywhere, one of the concepts heavily discussed was crafting. What I wanted that they were considering was that crafting at home, in your shop, was generally easy. But to do the really good things, you didn't collect ingredients and then go home. You had to do some crafting on them while they were still dangerous. So for a "dragon scale" to be used in armor, the crafting process had to start while the scales were still on the dragon. Then you'd take the scales home and finish the armor.

Of course, not everything has to be that extreme. The reason the example of looking for herbs around camp works for me is that the reward and risk are in line. You get some modest herbalism crafting options for the chance that the orcs that might be sneaking up on the camp will have a better chance at ambushing the poor herbalist.

 

[scruffygrognard]

I'd make skills like crafting, profession and play: instrument background skills that may be chosen in addition to adventuring skills.

All characters would have, by virtue of their upbringing, access to a few background skills. Similarly all characters would have access to adventuring skills by virtue of their chosen character class.

 

[RangerWickett]

Do you want some sort of Minecraft-esque mini-game?

You killed a catoblepas and got a piece of fur. Mix it with the dragon gizzard from last week, and two rubies, and you've got a potion of fire breathing!

 

[Wormwood]

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

The more I think about what I want/don't want to see in 5e, the more I'm convinced just about everything should be an optional module.

 

[Kannik]

With the modularity idea of Next, at least Crafting would be able to be added if so desired to the system, and left off for those who don't feel the need for it.

For myself, what I'd like to see are skills split into two broad categories: adventuring skills, and non-adventuring skills. The former would be pretty specific in scope and effect: perception, athletics, thievery, etc. The latter are more broad, dealing with social, environmental, world, trade, profession and etc type areas of knowledge, including crafting. This lets the broader skills be more character defining (ie, who is your character in the world at large, what did they do before taking up adventuring, or what do they do during their downtime) and opens up more RP opportunities during an adventure. It's what I've done for my own crafting rules supplement for 4e and it's worked out great.

The adventuring and non-adventuring skills would be picked from different pools, so one wouldn't compete with the other.

One possible way to do it in Next could be to actually have two different "classes" each character could pick -- encounter role (ie, weapon user, spell slinger, nature user, etc) and world role (clergy, soldier, artisan, bard, etc). Thus you could combine the two to get many interesting combinations -- an archer with a wilderness survivor would be one type of "Ranger", while an archer with a soldier background would be a military archer, while an archer with rogue trappings could be a sniper for hire.

peace,

Kannik

 

[mach1.9pants]

^This we need a BECMI level basic set (less than?) and LOADSA modules.

As to crafting Fantasy Craft does it very well with it's down time system. In fact FC's modularity is a good starting point for 5E though it's core is no where near basic enough IMO

 

[DonTadow]

The more I think about what I want/don't want to see in 5e, the more I'm convinced just about everything should be an optional module.

Optional does sound best. But will that be taking away one of the red cows. Up until this one, i didnt allow crafting in my games.

 

[RHGreen]

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.

A solution to the thumb twiddling problem would be to allow (and be a result of insistance from other players/DM) that crafting be done out of game time (or perhaps end session), along with spell research etc. Unless, of course, continuation of plot requires crafting to be done mid-game. But I think that wouldn't crop up too often to be a problem.

If it was designed with that in mind it keep players tuned into the game while not actually playing it. If that can be applied to more stuff as well perhaps it could keep players eager between sessions, or it could just aggavate burn-out. Who knows?

 

[nnms]

I think it needs to be so optional in D&D Next. As optional as it gets.

Crafting really is a slow process. I can't make a castle in a day like I can in Minecraft. Nor smelt, refine and cast a ton or ore into perfect ingots in an afternoon.

Which leaves you with a few options:

1. Crafting times that are so short, they are silly, so you don't bore people
2. Bore people with play about making baskets in a game where you should be fighting monsters and going on quests
3. Consolidate it into off time between adventures and time you can wave by instantly during adventures

I'm of the opinion that the last option is the way to go. And have it be optional. Very optional.

 

[JamesonCourage]

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.

I'd caution that this is going to vary wildly. I based my RPG on the SRD (3.X), and I completely tore out how crafting works and introduced my own system. It's "complex" in that it'll take a moment to figure out the cost of things, and the time it takes to make it (though it is flexible enough to craft pretty much anything, and calculate consistent prices of objects of any size; opinions on realism are going to vary, obviously).

Out of my current group, one of my players invested nearly all of his points into crafting (it's a point-buy game), and he was hit die 11 (out of 20). He was immensely good at it (nearly supernaturally so), and he greatly enjoyed using the "complex" crafting system. Oftentimes it took about 60 seconds to calculate what he was making, but the satisfaction from making mastercraft* objects even better than usual** in the time it'd take to make normal objects*** and for the same price**** was so great that he kept boosting the ability, and very much bragged about what he was able to accomplish.

*(nonmagical objects with 3 bonuses to be assigned)
**(4 bonuses on his things, rather than 3)
***(instead of at least 20 times as long as normal objects, usually much higher)
****(instead of 20 times as much as normal objects, usually much higher)

That is, even though there was a minute's calculation for each object, the fact that he was so skilled more than made up for the "complexity" of the skill. And, I think you'll find that this is true for many aspects of the game. Some people love mechanically complex combat, others love mechanically complex social encounters, and others love mechanically complex crafting (for example, my crafting system takes up two pages).

While there should definitely be simplified ways to craft objects, I think there should be more complex options (yes, options) for those who are satisfied by such things. Just my thoughts, though. As always, play what you like