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Why there's crafting in WOW and not in D&D
- Thread starter Staffan
- Start date
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
Well, accepting this thinking is easier for me (and apparently, for my group) then running into the real "math" problems every session, or going through all the minutia of NPC/monster design before the session. I needed to make this mental "re-education" once, but the rest I had to face each and every session and every time I want to create an adventure.
I was able to "grog" hit points at one point of my life, too. If I had starting my role-playing experience with D&D instead of Shadowrun, I would possibly never have had any problems with the concept.
GnomeWorks
Adventurer
Never said they'd be good at it, but they should be able to try.
Have fun with your game, then.
jmucchiello said:
Not all crafting rules have to work like that, surprisingly enough.
cangrejoide
First Post
cangrejoide
First Post
Anyways, back to the OP post:
The way I plan to do it in my game is to make the crafting process into a skill challenge.
Using manyh of the players skills as well as attribute rolls.
With a success being the item and a failure a lower quality item or wasted materials. Actually I will use this same process for making magical Items.
The way I plan to do it in my game is to make the crafting process into a skill challenge.
Using manyh of the players skills as well as attribute rolls.
With a success being the item and a failure a lower quality item or wasted materials. Actually I will use this same process for making magical Items.
Boarstorm, awesome post...heh.
For the game I play in, the GM is allowing each player to have ONE basic crafting or whatever skill. Up until the last game, my character was the only one who was implementing her "domestic" skill through cleaning, cooking, washing, and more cleaning...which was explained in her character background write up. Boo to all the other players who didn't write up "useless" skills in their backgrounds!
For my game I run as GM, I am quite cruel and took a lesson from the other gaming group. Characters may ONLY have crafting and other profession skills IF they wrote it up in their character backgrounds...of which, only one player turned in a background (and got a free magic item at character creation!) but unfortunately his entire background was filled with the awesomeness of his combat prowess.
Now almost every player in the gmae I run WANTS a profession...from the female half-elf flirting with the baker, to the dragonborn warrior intimidating the local tanner and blacksmith to teach him a trade...it's hilarious. It's also a farcry from 3.5e....where this gaming group was almost the "merchants and traders", foregoing aventuring to business craft, and making money through running an inn, and conning old fat rich men of their wealth (once again, the female half-elf at work...who just LOVES her charsima based skills).
Fox
For the game I play in, the GM is allowing each player to have ONE basic crafting or whatever skill. Up until the last game, my character was the only one who was implementing her "domestic" skill through cleaning, cooking, washing, and more cleaning...which was explained in her character background write up. Boo to all the other players who didn't write up "useless" skills in their backgrounds!
For my game I run as GM, I am quite cruel and took a lesson from the other gaming group. Characters may ONLY have crafting and other profession skills IF they wrote it up in their character backgrounds...of which, only one player turned in a background (and got a free magic item at character creation!) but unfortunately his entire background was filled with the awesomeness of his combat prowess.
Now almost every player in the gmae I run WANTS a profession...from the female half-elf flirting with the baker, to the dragonborn warrior intimidating the local tanner and blacksmith to teach him a trade...it's hilarious. It's also a farcry from 3.5e....where this gaming group was almost the "merchants and traders", foregoing aventuring to business craft, and making money through running an inn, and conning old fat rich men of their wealth (once again, the female half-elf at work...who just LOVES her charsima based skills).
Fox
Hussar
Legend
While I'm sure that this has happened, I'm not sure that it's happened often enough that we need rules support for it.
Actually, there are several very good reasons a system can't support any style of play. Given the huge number of games out there, it's probably better to find the one that fits, rather than bang your head on the one that doesn't.
And, this has been D&D since soft cover booklets. D&D has never rewarded you for anything other than killing stuff and taking its treasure previously. It's worked pretty well so far.
The biggest problem with skills was they were a zero sum game. 3 of the 4 base classes got 2 skill points per level. There was very good reasons NOT to spend ranks on Craft:Cheesmaking. I can always buy cheese from someone, but, if I flub that ride check, my horse dies and then I die. Or, if I don't make that swim check, I drown. With so few ranks to spread around, it's pretty darn difficult to justify anything thant isn't absolutely essential to survival.
At the end of the day though, crafting is a solo exercise. It would be very difficult to get four players to agree on a single craft so that it wasn't a solo experience. Gaming is all about the group. So, crafting gets the boot. It's not actually about the hack or dungeon crawling, its that everything that takes away from acting together got ejected.
And, at the end of the day, it's not exactly exciting to watch someone make cheese.
Jumping into a slightly discontinued discussion (I'm sorry, but you have to start somewhere, right?):
I think people are sorely mistaken if they think the game is about killing the monsters and taking their treasure. Nor is the game about crafting or cheesemaking or whatnot.
D&D is an RPG. You play a role. You play in a story. D&D is about living through a hopefully interesting story. Things like killing monsters, taking treasure or making cheese are merely means to an end. In the end, you want to "win" (and by that I mean that you want to play out the story without...well, dying...or having the world destroyed or whatever the objective of the campaign is).
Those who say combat is always required for this should probably not GM too much, unless it's a hack and slash party.
D&D is, imho, a balance between many things. Combat and skill usage is just part of that.
I honestly think that WotC dropped the ball on leaving out Craft and Profession. Skill diversity, especially those that accentuate the RPG side of play (Craft and Profession), is very important in a game that can have a lot of diversity, such as D&D.
In computer games, it is understandable that not everything can be diverse. The game is limited by many things normal tabletops are not limited by. Unfortunately, I see a lot of that in 4e. The game is limited.
Its balanced, extremely so. But somehow something got lost in the process of balancing the game out, generalizing rules and rolls, and making everything easier to learn.
Craft and Profession are two skills that fill crucial roles when it comes to actually backing up your background, for building a character.
I can understand that many a character needs different skills and doesn't have enough skill points left to invest in Craft or Profession.
Its too bad that craft and profession don't get a more prominent role in the game, and that goes for 3.x as well. Skills shouldn't be made just to be useful, but thought should go into making it more useful, and craft and profession miss that slightly.
I play NarutoD20, a fan-made system combining D20 Modern with the anime universe of Naruto, with additions from many other anime. The system contains some craft skills, craft skills which are useful.
A puppeteer class, who builds or buys puppets and controls them in battle. the Craft(Engineering) skill from Modern is crucial in both building such things and in maintaining/repairing them. The skill has use.
Craft(Chemical) is useful for both poisons (though I can see not many using that for DnD), but it's also used to craft items that have medicinal purposes, something that adds to the survivability of a group if the healer (although most parties dont have a healer, since healing is very limited) should go down or is incapacitated.
Craft (Calligraphy), a skill seemingly useless aside from backstory purposes. However, it's used to craft seals and some other items, of which some are basic items of use (exploding tags) and others are useful because they are used in the performing of techniques both less and more powerful.
Now, understandably the system is different, but the reason craft skills were never really used a lot was because they weren't really useful. Items could better be bought. It's affordable and saves a lot of effort.
And now the skills are gone. I find it sad.
WotC should place some effort in including skills that diversify character backgrounds. Make them at least somewhat useful aside from having the very respectable role of granting characters flavor.
Having no skill but saying that the character is "a competent blacksmith" is both unclear and sort of a cheat. Because he could basically create most mundane battle items without ever having spent any effort into being able to, except writing a line in the character bio/background.
Being a merchant with diplomacy etc is logical, yes. But profession(merchant) would provide insight into market workings, it could give you great advantages when dealing with other merchants or other people. Heroes don't make it a habit to delve into the workings of the world of commerce, so merchants could sell them some items for a very high price if the heroes can be convinced this item is very wanted and stocks are low, resulting in a high price.
"Sense Motive" could reveal lies, and that would perhaps stop you from paying ludicrous prices. But as a GM I would not allow the use of Diplomacy to get discounts at stores, except in some special cases. If you really want a good price, you'd have to use knowledge of market working and professional terms and skills, which would fall under teh profession skill.
Of course, you can make your own houserules and add it in. But since when has that ever been a proper argument for omitting anything from rules?
Craft and Profession were powerful tools for players who like the RP aspects a bit more than the "Diablo element". A player doesn't have to be singularly focused on the RP aspects to want to use skills or character traits to make an interesting character.
Imho, if the most proper description of a character is "A dwarven fighter who specialises in the use of hammers", you might as well go out and play WoW or something. Tabletops should offer you more than an MMO, it should offer possibilities, ways of making characters interesting and different, both by having players make a background, but also by offering character options that might not always be a storehouse of power or wealth, but do offer some basic functionality and ways of making a character different.
Unfortunately, I don't see cheesemaking every becoming truly useful, but certainly there should be plenty Profession and Craft skills that do provide some use and are fun to have.
(I don't entirely disagree with the opinion that it might not be a bad idea to offer a small amount of skill points to drop into "RP" skills such as Craft and Profession. It removes the sting of losing useful skill points to less useful ends unless you like RP. A choice between either RP or a useful character is something that shouldn't happen.)
</rant>
I think people are sorely mistaken if they think the game is about killing the monsters and taking their treasure. Nor is the game about crafting or cheesemaking or whatnot.
D&D is an RPG. You play a role. You play in a story. D&D is about living through a hopefully interesting story. Things like killing monsters, taking treasure or making cheese are merely means to an end. In the end, you want to "win" (and by that I mean that you want to play out the story without...well, dying...or having the world destroyed or whatever the objective of the campaign is).
Those who say combat is always required for this should probably not GM too much, unless it's a hack and slash party.
D&D is, imho, a balance between many things. Combat and skill usage is just part of that.
I honestly think that WotC dropped the ball on leaving out Craft and Profession. Skill diversity, especially those that accentuate the RPG side of play (Craft and Profession), is very important in a game that can have a lot of diversity, such as D&D.
In computer games, it is understandable that not everything can be diverse. The game is limited by many things normal tabletops are not limited by. Unfortunately, I see a lot of that in 4e. The game is limited.
Its balanced, extremely so. But somehow something got lost in the process of balancing the game out, generalizing rules and rolls, and making everything easier to learn.
Craft and Profession are two skills that fill crucial roles when it comes to actually backing up your background, for building a character.
I can understand that many a character needs different skills and doesn't have enough skill points left to invest in Craft or Profession.
Its too bad that craft and profession don't get a more prominent role in the game, and that goes for 3.x as well. Skills shouldn't be made just to be useful, but thought should go into making it more useful, and craft and profession miss that slightly.
I play NarutoD20, a fan-made system combining D20 Modern with the anime universe of Naruto, with additions from many other anime. The system contains some craft skills, craft skills which are useful.
A puppeteer class, who builds or buys puppets and controls them in battle. the Craft(Engineering) skill from Modern is crucial in both building such things and in maintaining/repairing them. The skill has use.
Craft(Chemical) is useful for both poisons (though I can see not many using that for DnD), but it's also used to craft items that have medicinal purposes, something that adds to the survivability of a group if the healer (although most parties dont have a healer, since healing is very limited) should go down or is incapacitated.
Craft (Calligraphy), a skill seemingly useless aside from backstory purposes. However, it's used to craft seals and some other items, of which some are basic items of use (exploding tags) and others are useful because they are used in the performing of techniques both less and more powerful.
Now, understandably the system is different, but the reason craft skills were never really used a lot was because they weren't really useful. Items could better be bought. It's affordable and saves a lot of effort.
And now the skills are gone. I find it sad.
WotC should place some effort in including skills that diversify character backgrounds. Make them at least somewhat useful aside from having the very respectable role of granting characters flavor.
Having no skill but saying that the character is "a competent blacksmith" is both unclear and sort of a cheat. Because he could basically create most mundane battle items without ever having spent any effort into being able to, except writing a line in the character bio/background.
Being a merchant with diplomacy etc is logical, yes. But profession(merchant) would provide insight into market workings, it could give you great advantages when dealing with other merchants or other people. Heroes don't make it a habit to delve into the workings of the world of commerce, so merchants could sell them some items for a very high price if the heroes can be convinced this item is very wanted and stocks are low, resulting in a high price.
"Sense Motive" could reveal lies, and that would perhaps stop you from paying ludicrous prices. But as a GM I would not allow the use of Diplomacy to get discounts at stores, except in some special cases. If you really want a good price, you'd have to use knowledge of market working and professional terms and skills, which would fall under teh profession skill.
Of course, you can make your own houserules and add it in. But since when has that ever been a proper argument for omitting anything from rules?
Craft and Profession were powerful tools for players who like the RP aspects a bit more than the "Diablo element". A player doesn't have to be singularly focused on the RP aspects to want to use skills or character traits to make an interesting character.
Imho, if the most proper description of a character is "A dwarven fighter who specialises in the use of hammers", you might as well go out and play WoW or something. Tabletops should offer you more than an MMO, it should offer possibilities, ways of making characters interesting and different, both by having players make a background, but also by offering character options that might not always be a storehouse of power or wealth, but do offer some basic functionality and ways of making a character different.
Unfortunately, I don't see cheesemaking every becoming truly useful, but certainly there should be plenty Profession and Craft skills that do provide some use and are fun to have.
(I don't entirely disagree with the opinion that it might not be a bad idea to offer a small amount of skill points to drop into "RP" skills such as Craft and Profession. It removes the sting of losing useful skill points to less useful ends unless you like RP. A choice between either RP or a useful character is something that shouldn't happen.)
</rant>
Carnivorous_Bean
First Post
Honestly, I would love to see an edition of D&D which gave equal space to combat, 'social combat,' and crafting/profession rules.
The arguments against crafting on the basis of grinding for materials are invalid, IMO. We are not trying to duplicate an MMO here. We're trying to take a good idea -- a group of different crafts, all of which create different but useful items -- and figure out how to include it in D&D. In reality, blacksmiths did not -- and do not -- go and mine their own materials. Nor do potters necessarily dig up their own clay, woodcarvers cut down trees, etc.
What I would like to see is a system where the process involves a few rolls, like a skill challenge with time between the rolls. And the mundane materials are bought, while the exotic materials all require quests. It would make questing more interesting if you did it for some other reason, sometimes, other than killing stuff and taking its loot. Even if you're doing that, you're taking the loot for a purpose, which makes it more interesting.
For example, let's say you need three items to make a Zeenger's Orb of Psychopompic Sneezing. One of them is earth from the temple of a good-aligned god in a remote valley, requiring a journey through beast-filled wilderness and then several tests at the temple to prove worthiness, etc. The next is a jewel from the crown of a king who has been slain three times (a divination is needed to discover who this is, which requires a quest, then there's a quest to get the jewel from the mummy lord's crown). And the last is powder from a hunting-horn blown within a thousand heartbeats of the fall of its prey, a specific demon who has been haunting the hills near such-and-such.
(Oh, yes, and you need some mundane glass and a brass stand, bought from a glassblower and a latoner for a total of 5 gold.)
You couldn't go into this much detail in the description, of course, but you could describe how many rare items are needed for a variety of items, level-appropriate stuff, etc. etc.
Herbalism and alchemy, in WoW terms, would be really great for an RPG, because the search for rare herbs is obviously an adventure in itself.
As for lessening the number of skill points -- well, just have separate set of crafting skill points. They've already separated combat and non-combat abilities for balance -- why is it so hard to do this for adventuring and crafting skills? If there are players who don't want to craft, they can spend their skill points on various types of performance, gambling, whatever.
It's also odd that there's so much overt hostility to the idea of adding crafting, even as its own skill system. Seems almost like an attitude of, "If WotC didn't see fit to include it, then you're dumb for wanting it."
The arguments against crafting on the basis of grinding for materials are invalid, IMO. We are not trying to duplicate an MMO here. We're trying to take a good idea -- a group of different crafts, all of which create different but useful items -- and figure out how to include it in D&D. In reality, blacksmiths did not -- and do not -- go and mine their own materials. Nor do potters necessarily dig up their own clay, woodcarvers cut down trees, etc.
What I would like to see is a system where the process involves a few rolls, like a skill challenge with time between the rolls. And the mundane materials are bought, while the exotic materials all require quests. It would make questing more interesting if you did it for some other reason, sometimes, other than killing stuff and taking its loot. Even if you're doing that, you're taking the loot for a purpose, which makes it more interesting.
For example, let's say you need three items to make a Zeenger's Orb of Psychopompic Sneezing. One of them is earth from the temple of a good-aligned god in a remote valley, requiring a journey through beast-filled wilderness and then several tests at the temple to prove worthiness, etc. The next is a jewel from the crown of a king who has been slain three times (a divination is needed to discover who this is, which requires a quest, then there's a quest to get the jewel from the mummy lord's crown). And the last is powder from a hunting-horn blown within a thousand heartbeats of the fall of its prey, a specific demon who has been haunting the hills near such-and-such.
(Oh, yes, and you need some mundane glass and a brass stand, bought from a glassblower and a latoner for a total of 5 gold.)
You couldn't go into this much detail in the description, of course, but you could describe how many rare items are needed for a variety of items, level-appropriate stuff, etc. etc.
Herbalism and alchemy, in WoW terms, would be really great for an RPG, because the search for rare herbs is obviously an adventure in itself.
As for lessening the number of skill points -- well, just have separate set of crafting skill points. They've already separated combat and non-combat abilities for balance -- why is it so hard to do this for adventuring and crafting skills? If there are players who don't want to craft, they can spend their skill points on various types of performance, gambling, whatever.
It's also odd that there's so much overt hostility to the idea of adding crafting, even as its own skill system. Seems almost like an attitude of, "If WotC didn't see fit to include it, then you're dumb for wanting it."
