I wasn't sure where to post but since I was revising my crafting rules I thought maybe it could be helpful to someone else. A few months ago while running icewind dale I came into the rules from Kibbles about blacksmithing and even thought I felt they were a bit too complicated/involved they inspired me into my own system. I did scrounge the internet in general to try to find any idea for power, etc.
So to explain a bit where I was coming from as a DM. I was following up on the items giving out by the adventure (mostly not a lot of it) and I was slightly increasing that amount using my own tables. I was trying to fix problems like those:
-What to do with old items that are not good anymore/optimal anymore.
-I didn't like the idea of spending gold to buy items in shop in the icewind dale campaign (I was more ok with that in other campaigns like humblewood).
-Giving players more control in where they want to go with their items without me having to survey them in advance and basically having those items 'randomly' drop at some other time.
So the main idea that came with it was the idea of smelting and disenchanting where you destroy items into ingots and magical essences. Each time you smelt/disenchant your best case scenario is getting 75%(or less) of the original ingots/essence. So 3 uncommon item could be destroyed and enchanted into a rare item using time and gold. There are rules to upgrade items, going from +1 sword to a +2 sword so that gear that players like can be upgraded and follow them during the campaign while other parts of their gear is what was available to them. I didn't want every monsters to become the source of potential items so basically by default there are no requirements for any items. Dragon scales and similar typical ingredients could be used as you expand the list of what can be used.
I also had ideas to combine blacksmith and enchanting in a way to make creating higher quality base items worthwhile (same with Artisan Crafting). For example you can create an adamantium sword which function as a +1 sword but it's not technically 'magical'. You can enchant it as an uncommon magic weapon +1 which would give you a total of a +2 uncommon weapon. This can lead with work on the parts of the player to more powerful items that grows with them as the campaign progress. I'm also not saying everything is perfectly balanced, etc, but as a DM you figure out if it's ok or not as usual.
docs.google.com
Hopefully it's useful to someone, those rules are as always a work in progress and any feedbacks would be appreciated.
Thanks!
So to explain a bit where I was coming from as a DM. I was following up on the items giving out by the adventure (mostly not a lot of it) and I was slightly increasing that amount using my own tables. I was trying to fix problems like those:
-What to do with old items that are not good anymore/optimal anymore.
-I didn't like the idea of spending gold to buy items in shop in the icewind dale campaign (I was more ok with that in other campaigns like humblewood).
-Giving players more control in where they want to go with their items without me having to survey them in advance and basically having those items 'randomly' drop at some other time.
So the main idea that came with it was the idea of smelting and disenchanting where you destroy items into ingots and magical essences. Each time you smelt/disenchant your best case scenario is getting 75%(or less) of the original ingots/essence. So 3 uncommon item could be destroyed and enchanted into a rare item using time and gold. There are rules to upgrade items, going from +1 sword to a +2 sword so that gear that players like can be upgraded and follow them during the campaign while other parts of their gear is what was available to them. I didn't want every monsters to become the source of potential items so basically by default there are no requirements for any items. Dragon scales and similar typical ingredients could be used as you expand the list of what can be used.
I also had ideas to combine blacksmith and enchanting in a way to make creating higher quality base items worthwhile (same with Artisan Crafting). For example you can create an adamantium sword which function as a +1 sword but it's not technically 'magical'. You can enchant it as an uncommon magic weapon +1 which would give you a total of a +2 uncommon weapon. This can lead with work on the parts of the player to more powerful items that grows with them as the campaign progress. I'm also not saying everything is perfectly balanced, etc, but as a DM you figure out if it's ok or not as usual.
5e Crafting
docs.google.com
Hopefully it's useful to someone, those rules are as always a work in progress and any feedbacks would be appreciated.
Thanks!
