Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 997197" data-attributes="member: 2013">Re: Re: Re: Re: Yes, it's whack!My pleasure...Here is how the Craft skill works when creating an item, as found in the SRD...For the sake of argument, let us say that crafting a sphere has a DC of 12 and that the craftsman can "take 10" and get a result of 18 (that's a 1st level craftsman with masterwork tools, 4 ranks in craft, and Skill Focus: craft and a 10 Int - surely not out of the ordinary).  There's step 1.Let us further assume that the 1" sphere of copper costs, say 100 gp (perhaps high, but just for sake of argument here - it could just as easily be a 10" sphere of copper).  Then the 1" sphere of platinum costs 100,000 gp (platinum being 1000 times as valuable as copper).The craftsman sits down and goes to work on the copper sphere.  He has to pay 1/3 cost of the copper sphere in materials - 33 gp.  We'll assume for the moment he has that much available.  That's step 2.Now, let's do step 3.  He works for one week and takes 10 for a result of 18.  Thus, the amount of work he completes that week is 12 (DC) times 18 (skill check) or 216.How much work does he have to do to create the copper sphere?  The market cost times 10 (100 gp times 10 is 1,000).So at 216 per week, he completes the sphere in just under 5 weeks.Now, platinum isn't really much harder to shape than copper (DC 12 again - just melting and pouring takes little work).  So our friend the craftsman sits down and pays the 33,333 gp needed for materials (ouch).He then goes to work on the sphere... and makes progress equal to 216.  However, this time, he needs (100,000 gp times 10 or) to get to a million, not a thousand, to finish.  Thus it will take him 4630 weeks to finish (right around 89 years) according to the Core Rules.-----The problem is that in the Core Rules, the amount of time it takes two equally skilled craftsmen to create items of equal DCs scales linearly with item value and does not account for the intrinsic value of the material that goes into the item.There should be (at least) two different "costs" associated with an item - the "material cost" of what goes into it (platinum vs. copper) and the "time cost" of the labor.My system works on that premise.  Creating an item takes an amount of time that is a function of item weight (the amount of material you have to shape), complexity (the DC), and the maker's skill to compute the "labor cost."  The "labor cost" is then added to the "materials cost" to get the final cost.Thus, if it takes 5 weeks to create a sphere (regardless of material), and the craftsman expects to receive 1 gp per day for his wages (per the core rules) and decides to charge double the cost of raw materials to recoup his material investiture, we get the value of a copper sphere as 33 gp times 2 (recouping materials) plus 5 gp (1 gp per week for five weeks of labor) or 71 gp.  The platinum sphere, by contrast, is 33,333 gp times 2 (recouping materials) plus 5 gp (labor)... or 66,671 gp... not the 71,000 that simply "transmuting copper to platinum" would lead you to guess.The main problem with the core rules as written is that even with an Epic-skilled Craftsman (take 10 check result of 100) it would take decades to craft valuable items - for example, a longsword made of diamond (DC 15 for a martial weapon, let's double that to 30 because diamond is so tough to work with - assume one diamond weighs the same as a coin - there are 50 coins to the pound times four pounds so 200 coins' worth of diamonds, each diamond is worth 5,000 gp so we have a value of 1,000,000 gp for the diamond longsword - so it requires 10,000,000 units of Craft labor - the epic craftsman only does 3,000 units of work per week - 100*30 - so it takes him a mere 3,333 weeks or 64 years to fashion a longsword of pure diamond).  Even more to the point, an artisan with a Craft check of 1,000 (beyond godlike) can't finish the task in less than 6.4 years.The core rules also have the silly side effect of the following:If two items have equal values, but one has a higher DC to craft than the other (i.e., is more complicated and harder to make), that actually leads to the item with the higher DC being finished FIRST!Example:Item A has a value of 300 gp and a DC to create of 10.Item B has a value of 300 gp and a DC to create of 20.Craftsman C can get a 30 on his Craft check.When working on Item A, he completes 30*10 = 300 units of work per week.  Because he needs to do 3,000 units of work total (item value of 300 gp times ten), he finishes in 10 weeks.When working on Item B, he completes 30*20 = 600 units of work per week.  Because he needs to do 3,000 units of work total (again, 300 gp times 10), he finishes in... five weeks?So an item that is *twice* as hard to make gets finished in... *half* the time?The Craft skill in 3.0 is a good idea until you look at how it really works.  Then it just looks silly.--The Sigil</blockquote>

Verification