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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 8208602" data-attributes="member: 6802765">For me, the most important elements of a D&D crafting system are that it (1) adds richness and depth to the setting, and (2) plays nicely with the lore of pre-existing D&D campaign worlds, both published and homebrew (other than worlds that have setting-specific lore regarding magic items).With regards to (1), it's important to me that the crafting system at a minimum makes sense from an economics standpoint. I'm fine with generalizations and abstraction, but I want to avoid immersion-wrecking issues such as crafting being so difficult or time-consuming that it's implausible that anyone would have bothered to make a particular item (e.g., the 5e DMG crafting rules that say that making one dose of Universal Solvent takes 27.5 person-years and 250,000 gp). Beyond that minimum for an acceptable crafting system, a good crafting system would make crafting a visible part of the game world, with (e.g.) the raw components available in a different part of the world from where production takes place, which is itself located away from where the items are in demand, thus leading to specialization in different phases of production and trade in ingredients and finished products. Such a system would add far more interactive elements to a setting than just one crafter becoming an effective hermit for weeks/months/years and needing only coinage (or universally available ingredients) as raw materials.For mundane items, a good crafting system should produce a result that looks like crafting in the real world, such as with distributed resource gathering feeding materials into denser settlements with specialist producers. For magical items, a crafting system with similar properties could involve gathering resources in unspoiled wilderness, but then taken to a place of power (perhaps natural, like a volcano or waterfall, or requiring significant investment, like a magical laboratory) for the actual enchanting. If the required ingredients can be used for multiple types of items, they can effectively become fantastical, high-value commodities (which can then be interesting loot!). To be more player-friendly, such a system might allow skipping the rare ingredients and magical locations at a steep cost in lost efficiency.For (2), many D&D players have preferred settings or persistent homebrew campaign worlds. To be a useful tool to the existing playerbase, any crafting system needs to be able to be dropped in to at least the most-generic of those settings without contradicting the lore. For example, 4e, by introducing crafting via residuum, did not play nice with 3e settings, and 5e, by originally only providing an outline of a crafting system and making magic items effectively not merchantable, did not play nice with 3e settings or 4e settings.</blockquote>

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