My spreadsheets for Crafting, and some comments

[Alchemist]

A while back my players decided that buying stuff was for chumps and that they wanted to be legitimate businesspeople. They hired an alchemist, set him up with a lab in the basement of their home and put him to work cranking out alchemical goodies for their use and for resale. To simplify the weekly "How many tanglefoot bags did he make?" question, I made a spreadsheet to automatically calculate such things. You can also do comparisons between crafters of different skill levels and different goods. I prettied it up, added poisonmaking (from the A&EG) and general crafting sheets and now I'm putting it up for your appraisal. Hope you find it useful, and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free!

As an aside, I don't know if somebody already did this. I don't know if I'm putting this in the wrong forum. Also, it again illustrates the weaknesses of the crafting/economic system of D&D. Hiring a high level crafter (sans helpers) to do a custom job always costs you more than the item is "worth", unless you're in the business of making poisons.

I remember a number of threads devoted to fixing crafting. Would one of you kind search empowered people be able to dredge them up for me? Thanks!

Edit: Fixed an error in the general and alchemy tables that that made you fail if you met the target DC.

 

[Alchemist]

Bump for the evening crowd and our overseas friends.

 

[Azure Trance]

I appreciate your work, part. since one of my characters is an armorer who I can send this file to.

 

[Zappo]

Hiring a high level crafter (sans helpers) to do a custom job always costs you more than the item is "worth"

Hm... actually, I think this is pretty reasonable. You want a top pro to do a custom work for you, you have to pay a lot. Mass-produced stuff is cheap.

 

[Buttercup]

This is pretty interesting. I'm going to have fun playing with it. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Alchemist]

Hm... actually, I think this is pretty reasonable. You want a top pro to do a custom work for you, you have to pay a lot. Mass-produced stuff is cheap.

Fair enough. I should have probably refined that statement further by saying that alchemy is a money pit if you hire a high level alchemist. The high cost of maintenance (1gp/day/level) very quickly overruns the value of any product they make. The only time they are profitable is if their skill is maxed out for their level (duh) and if their skill and modifiers is no more than 5 points above the item you want to make. Any more than that, and they are too high in level and cost too much, and if they don't have enough skill points to do it while taking 10, you start having to play with the dice, and adding randomness to your business venture may not be in your business model. So you need to essentially hire alchemists for specific tasks. That was unexpected, although not entirely surprising on reflection.

More later. Must go write final.

 

[Alchemist]

There was an error in 2 of the sheets that caused a failure in a calculation if your check equalled the target DC. It has been fixed now.