The Crazy Craft Skill

[Velenne]

I have an archer character who wanted to create a masterwork longbow. Looking at the Craft skill seriously for the first time, something jumped out at me:

It seems to me that the rules make crafting more difficult items take less time than easy ones. (Craft check result) * (DC of the item you're trying to create) = value in silver pieces of work you've done for the week. When this adds up to the total market price of the item, you're finished. So, given the same craft check result (let's say, 20), a more complicated item (with a higher DC)would be finished much faster.

I don't have the rules on me here at school, but I'm sure this has come up before. If it has, can someone point me to that discussion? If not, has any created house rules for the Craft skill? Or am I misunderstanding some key point? It seems a little strange to me.

 

[Archer]

More complicated items cost substantially more. A 300 gc item with a dc of 30 still takes longer than an item with a dc of 15 that costs 10 gc.

 

[Crothian]

Also, the more comples items have a higher DC so it's easier to fail a check.

 

[Conaill]

It seems to me that the rules make crafting more difficult items take less time than easy ones. (Craft check result) * (DC of the item you're trying to create) = value in silver pieces of work you've done for the week. When this adds up to the total market price of the item, you're finished. So, given the same craft check result (let's say, 20), a more complicated item (with a higher DC)would be finished much faster.

Yes, this has come up plenty of times before, and I have to admit it's a little confusing at first.

Essentially, you have to look at it the other way round: The price of an item is determined by the Difficulty Class and the amount of time needed to craft it.

So, in your example, if item 2 has a higher craft DC than item 1 but the same price, the reason it has the same price as the simpler item must be because it takes less time to craft. If item 2 had a higher craft DC than item 1, *and* it took longer to craft, its price would have to be significantly higher than item 1.

Price proportional to DC and time

=>

effort/week (price/time) proportional to DC

 

[Jeremy]

What about the time it takes to craft things?

With work measured in SILVER pieces per WEEK of effort, some of the times can get really outrageous. 5 years for 6 men working on one suit of armor for example...

Does it really take 100x as long to craft an item as it does to imbue it with magical power?

 

[Crothian]

What about the time it takes to craft things?

With work measured in SILVER pieces per WEEK of effort, some of the times can get really outrageous. 5 years for 6 men working on one suit of armor for example...

Does it really take 100x as long to craft an item as it does to imbue it with magical power?

What numbers are you using for a craftsman? I'd consider a good craftsman to have 8 ranks, +3 attribute, +2 MW tools, +2 skill focus or +15 total skill. We'll have him craft Breastplat, 200gp, DC 15. A roll of ten gives us a 25 on the skill roll. Times that by the DC of 15 we get 375. That takes us six weeks to make.

Now, buying a magic item that gives +10 to a skill is not that expensive, so a crafter could have something like that.

 

[Caliban]

I have an archer character who wanted to create a masterwork longbow. Looking at the Craft skill seriously for the first time, something jumped out at me:

It seems to me that the rules make crafting more difficult items take less time than easy ones. (Craft check result) * (DC of the item you're trying to create) = value in silver pieces of work you've done for the week. When this adds up to the total market price of the item, you're finished. So, given the same craft check result (let's say, 20), a more complicated item (with a higher DC)would be finished much faster.

I don't have the rules on me here at school, but I'm sure this has come up before. If it has, can someone point me to that discussion? If not, has any created house rules for the Craft skill? Or am I misunderstanding some key point? It seems a little strange to me.

I have a house rule: I allow you to increase the DC of the item by as much as you want. (This represents the difficulty in working faster and still maintaining an acceptable level of quality). This also represents the ability of skilled craftsmen to do the same amount of work in significantly less time.

Since you can take 10 on a craft check, skilled craftsmen generally set the DC to their Craft bonus + 10.

 

[Caliban]

.

 

[Jeremy]

Here's one that came up a while ago...

A PC wants to create a suit of mithral full plate armor for himself.

DC for crafting the suit is 10 + the AC bonus of 8. DC 18.

Cost is 1500 gp or 15,000 sp.

DC for it being mithral which is handled as a masterwork item with regard to creation time is flat DC 20.

Cost for the mithral/masterwork component is 9000 gp or 90,000 sp.

This is a 14th level PC I believe with an additional crew of 5 apprentices helping him. He has 17 ranks, a +3 intelligence modifier, +2 from masterwork tools, +10 from 5 apprentices aiding him, and he'll be taking 10 for simplicity's sake.

So 17+3+2+10+10= a craft check of 42. 42 x 18 = 756 sp of work done per week on the armor. 15,000/756 = 19 weeks or 1/3 of a year + 2 weeks.

42 x 20 = 840 sp work per week done on the "masterwork" mithral component. 90,000/840 = 107 weeks or 2.1 years.

So 107+19 = 126 weeks = about two and a half years on one suit of armor.

That's a hell of a lot of time for 6 men, one of which with super human skill to be working on one suit of armor. And here's the worst part, the PC is large size. So the price (and thus the time) is doubled.

If we use Caliban's house rule, we could up the DC by 24 and 22 respectively and have 1764 sp of work done per week towards our goal of 105000 bringing our time down to 59.5 weeks or 1.1 years. That's a little better, but it's still 2.2 years for that suit for Bocata.

Our current house rule, due to our lack of mathmatical skill coming up with improvements to formulae is DC x Skill Check = Progess in GP in a week.

Meaning it'd take 10 weeks for the "masterwork" mithral component and 2 more weeks for the actual armor for a superhuman mastersmith assisted by 5 other apprentices with masterwork tools.

Maybe ours is a little heavy handed, but we can't figure out a better way...

Anyways, those are some examples of the numbers I was referring to.

 

[bret]

Fastest way to craft something like this is a Wizard with the correct craft skill and the Fabricate spell. You can get it done really quick that way.

I figure that is the reason all the Wizards have Craft as a class skill. Allow them to manufacture their own wares, so that they know it is will be done right.