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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8102789" data-attributes="member: 12731">Thank you for not dismissing my criticism out of hand.Yes, the main critique is how many players that seems to think the activity/skill does things it most definitely does not. That is a sign of a too-complex ruleset if there ever was one.You yourself is unfortunately a great example that illustrates this.Read my lips: you can't make any money whatsoever from Crafting.In your example, you can't just say "plus another 80 gp to finish the item that you get from somewhere".All Crafting is, is that if you spend enough time for Earn Income to reach half the purchase price of the item, you may buy it at half price even with no Magic Shoppe in sight.There is literally no savings to be made. You could have earned exactly the same amount, and used that money towards just buying the item.All crafting amounts to is offering an Earn Income activity of your own level no matter where you are.This means that if you and your friends are stuck in a backwater hovel (settlement level 3) despite being level 13, you get to effectively make money as if you could find a level 13 Earn Income Task, while your friends are likely stuck with level 3 Earn Income Tasks (give or take; this is not regulated by the CRB).All you do is earn more money than your party allies.That is NOT the same thing as "earning more". There is no way in PF2 to actually "earn more", to come out "ahead of the curve".All Crafting does is ensure that you can avoid taking a hit to your downtime income while stuck in lower-levelled settlements.The big elephant in the room is:But why doesn't the party simply travel to a bigger settlement and take their months-long downtime there instead? Nowhere have I seen this question asked. Crafting only makes you feel you earn money when your friends suffer.If your friends get access to the same Earn Income level as you do, perhaps by taking a vacation in Absalom, the amount you earn is identical - down to the last copper piece - to what Bob the Barbarian earns.---Sure, Crafting has the very real benefit of being a magic shoppe even where no actual magic items are sold. That I am not contesting. It can be a real game changer. The ability to do field repairs on shields etc is also real.But you can't actually make money. And to gain the dubious benefit of making more money than your friends, you need lots and lots of downtime. I don't mean a week here and ten days there. I mean serious amounts of downtime.At level 15, you might make 28 gp a day. Let's be wildly generous and round that up to 50 gp. That still means it will take you sixty-five (65!) days to craft a level-appropriate item. (Half of 6,500 gp is 3250 gp and 3250/50=65) More than two months. And remember, this example is definitely better than it will be in practical play. That kind of downtime is rare in most APs where you're on a ticking clock to save the world in time...And if the AP has no intention of restricting magic item purchases, all Crafting does for you is provide Repairs.--- I stand by my assessment: Crafting is a great example of a severely overengineered rules subsystem, and that Pathfinder 2 would be an objectively better game if Crafting were considerably simplified and de-cluttered.</blockquote>

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