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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scurvy_Platypus" data-source="post: 5541933" data-attributes="member: 43283">Standardized rules?Sort of.You can look at "Craft Points" in the d20 online SRD; they're a variant set of rules from WotC's Unearthed Arcana. You can find them here:<a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/craftPoints.htm" target="_blank">Craft Points :: d20srd.org</a>The rules for crafting are here:<a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm" target="_blank">Craft :: d20srd.org</a>Crafting in 3.x in general seems to be a problem, allowing characters to significantly increase their capabilities in an end-run around a number of system assumptions. The gold and XP costs are an attempt by the system to keep characters under control, while still allowing them to make items. I don't know of a system that's overhauled the entire crafting system, I'm only familiar with the Artificer's Handbook which specifically tries to address magic item crafting.The craft points approach provides a way of handling a resource cost, without it necesssarily requiring an "in-game" resource cost. Money can still function as part of the Crafting check in terms of how long or whatever.Another thing to keep in mind is that there's a difference between crafting an item for continual use or use by other people, versus an item created in desperation.As an example, a knotted bedsheet isn't a rope but it can get the job done.Overall, I find personally that an excessive amount of attention is paid to the whole topic of crafting. Unless your game is explicitly _about_ being a crafter, I personally advocate sticking with a simple and established system and not worrying overly much about it.And if your game _is_ about being a crafter... *shrug*... well, other than leveraging the Craft Points idea and maybe picking up the Artificer's Handbook, I don't know what to suggest. Like I said, I don't know of any system that's actually re-worked the 3.x crafting so it doesn't break.And of course, part of the problem is that systems (spell creation, magic item creation, etc) which are created to provide more accurate and consistent result, wind up showing that the "base" items/spells/whatever provided in the game are outside performance expectations; for example, Magic Missle is a pretty darn good spell for 1st level.So you then have to deal with having a system that works and is consistent, but when a player tries to duplicate an existing whatever, they suddenly find they've got an "inflated" cost. This discrepancy is a problem for some folks and not a problem for others.As Umbran pointed out, you don't get something for nothing. The "real world" mostly works that way and D&D as a game works that way too; D&D explicitly requires players to manage resources (hit points, spells, gold, xp, items) as both a metagame and an "in-game" thing.You can have resource-less crafting, but D&D as a game isn't natively set up to handle it and most D&D players don't have a mindset that will work with resource-less crafting and won't also shift the balance of the game's assumptions.Edit: So basically what I'm saying is, don't confuse the rules of the game with being the rules of life even in the game world. The rules don't contain anything about using the bathroom for example, so does that mean nobody in D&D has ever had to use a toilet? Of course not. The rules attempt to provide a consistent interface for people to operate within the Invisible Barbie world of D&D and as such they make abstractions that, carried to their "logical conclusion" has very illogical results. Or at least results that don't match "reality" regardless of how logical you consider it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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