Crafting - Will they ever get it right?

[Wormwood]

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.

I couldn't care less about the holy bovines. Just make the game work.

 

[howandwhy99]

I see crafting as more of an NPC ability anyways, beyond crafting magic items that is.

If someone said, "I want to be a potter" then that's their class. That's the focus of the game for them, and every Friday for 4 hours he going to pretend to make imaginary pots.

You know, that's their prerogative. But I don't see it as a core class.

 

[Stormonu]

The main issue I see with crafting is that in most games, there's not time for "downtime" in which this would make sense to occur.

I doubt that many campaigns have games where weeks, months or years might take place between adventures. I suspect in most games that adventures tend to take place one right after another - sometimes in the same game day's time.

Thus, I think that though there should be some crafting rules, they should be simple, optional and designed for those games that are willing to work with downtime. The length of time for crafting should be variable - quick (fantasy ritual creation), moderate (D&D standard) or long ("realistic" style) that fits the game being played - and perhaps some of the methods can be mixed together.

 

[Dausuul]

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.

Crafting is so not a sacred cow in D&D. It is at most a somewhat devout goat.

 

[Kaodi]

Devising rules for crafting is easy. Devising rules for supplying crafts is hard.

 

[Li Shenron]

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 agree.

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.

I think it should be much easier, but I don't see any need for complexity. Not in a core version of the crafting rules at least.

I actually often like playing characters who are capable of crafting their own equipment, mundane or magical, it's a good way to describe how your PC spends downtime. It would also be a good way for characters to get themselves interesting magic items, but this is usually unimportant given the widespread habit of unlimited magic shopping in a lot of gaming groups.

But IMXP most players are not interested in crafting, except as a way to get a discount or a custom min-maxed magic item.

I believe it is essential to get to what really is important in crafting. Is it really important to fine-tune the probability of success, the time spent, the money required? To me it's important mostly WHAT you can craft depending on who you are (i.e. the prerequisites for crafting each item). Then I really do not mind how long it takes or even whether the success is guaranteed (e.g. 3ed craft magic items feats) or not (e.g. 3ed craft skill).

Also I think crafting rules should only bother with items that the PCs will use in their adventures. If they want to craft stuff to make money, the rules should be even more simple, like "make one roll each week spent working instead of adventuring, and here's your money".

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

I wouldn't mind if "downtime" would become a more important part of the game system in general. It can cover crafting, training beyond "learning by doing", building your kingdom or whatever seems appropriate for a given campaign. (I am against forcing people to use downtime to improve adventuring skills or class levels. But I am not against using downtime to explain stuff like cross-classing, training skills that are not adventure-related, like languages, crafting, rituals. Even healing very serious injuries, diseases and the like)