CRAFTING~! (aka everyone's favorite dead horse)

[thaelis]

I'd like to suggest if we're reinventing the crafting system, could we just keep it simple and make it like Pnp please? No DC 30 to craft a simple item.

Full plate DC 18, masterwork items DC 20, done. If you want to craft faster you add +10 to the DC (i.e. reduce craft fatigue cost by half).

The main reason DC's are so high is because (Fox cunning + Greater heroism + Bardic inspiration) = +10 with no ranks. Removing temporary modifiers would fix that. The Pnp DC's are a lot more difficult once you remove those.

Thanks

[Kitsunestume]

Full-plate is DC 11 armorsmithing to craft. no "simple" item has a DC higher than that. Admitedly, this is using a D10 roll instead of a D20, to make skill have a bit more of an impact, but it's fairly doable without much effort.
anthing with a DC greater is either of a special material, or a high level enchanting.
Case in point: Admantine Fullplate is DC23, and mithril fullplate is DC31 (For the catagorically best mundane armor in the game)

If you would like, I can work on making a table of all current craftable things and their DCS, for comparison.

[Farmboy2003]

I think a table of attainable crafting DCs would be very constructive in regards to make more people start crafting without making dedicated crafters, and help with the discussion. if you can invest in just a single skill and not max it and still have pretendy fun time it would greatly improve stuff!

[Kitsunestume]

All right. I will do a pull some time this week and work on getting a Google doc available, with whatever comments I can locate from my stash.

[thaelis]

Admantine Fullplate is DC23, and mithril fullplate is DC31

Well, there you have it. Both of these are DC 18 to Craft in Pnp. That increases to DC 20 if you want them to be masterwork, which why wouldn't you?

I just think lowering the bar a bit might encourage more people to invest in Craft skills, and also reduce the tedium of requiring a three person team to make a suit of armor. Master crafters would still be better, as they'd be able to craft at 1/2 the fatigue cost, allowing them to make a business out of it.

[Kitsunestume]

Foreword: I have realized that much of this content is actually looking (mistakenly) at the "Making Crafting Work (Alternate Crafting Rules)" section which is not Paizo. It is being corrected in a following post. I will not remove this one because the concept is relevant, but I disagree with using third party in the argument.

You are correct that the base DC is not as high as implied, but you are incorrect that special materials do not cost more than others: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/Craf...cial_Materials

Per the table provided by the link, a Masterwork Fullplate is DC 10, + 8 (AC bonus of Fullplate) + 4 (from Masterwork as Mithril is always masterwork), + 4 (from Mithril), for a total of DC 26.
Adamantiune is +6 from material, and would be a DC 28. However, we are also aware that Mithril armors are superior to Adamantine in NWN2, and the DCs should be reasonable reversed for armor.

They also take 100% longer to craft than a basic item of the same type (+50% from Masterwork, and +50% from material), so a master artisan taking +10 DC to rush the job is against DC 36 to make the armor, to make an item that already takes longer than usual (because crafting time is based on cost, normal fullplate costs 15,000 SP, and mithril fullplate costs 105,000 SP (7 times the cost). So it would take 14 times longer than a standard suit of fullplate, down to a mere 7x at the DC36. *
For reference, Iron fullplate on Sundren is 5 fatigue, Adamantium is 15 fatigue, and Mithril is 25.

Those are P&P DCs, which are made over a week of work, and therefore rule out the ability to use temporary buffs like Heroism, or Foxes Cunning, but could benefit from either Int items or a bard sitting in your workshop for months.

*: Of Note - this is strictly DC calculation, in reality, the time to completion is based on the item price, the roll, and the DC, so more complicated items (or artificailly increasing tghe DC by 10), necessarily completes a higher value in the same timespan.
Assuming the highest DC is exactly matched, we assume a crafter always rolls a 36.
This means that:
Mundane fullplate: 18x36 = 648 SP/wk, cost 15000 SP, total 24 weeks work.
Masterwork Fullplate: 24x36= 864 SP/wk, cost 16500 SP, total 20 weeks work.
Fast fullplate: 28x36 = 1,008 SP/wk, cost 15000 SP, total 16 weeks work.
Mithril Fullplate: 26x36 = 936 SP/wk, cost 105,000 SP, total 113 weeks work.
Fast Mithril Fullplate: 36x36 = 1296SP/wk, cost 105,000 SP, total 81 weeks work.

[Kitsunestume]

On extensive review of the rules, I can conclude that you are correct that base 3.5/Pathfinder offers no increase in DC in regards to material, but it does increase the item cost.
Secondly, per the stated block, Masterwork items are crafted as a separate component with a DC of 20, and a cost of 150 for armor. so you need to make two items, one with DC 18, and a second with DC 20. and failing on the Masterwork portion is just as bad as on the normal one.

The interesting knock on effect of this is just how much longer it takes to make them.
using the same crafter capable of a miraculous 36 roll every single time, we get the following for craft duration
Mundane Fullplate: 18x36 = 648 SP/wk, cost 15000 SP, total 24 weeks work. [6 months work]
Fast Fullplate: 28x36 = 1,008 SP/wk, cost 15000 SP, total 16 weeks work. [4 months work]
Mithril Fullplate: 18x36 = 648 SP/wk, cost 105,000 SP, total 163 weeks work. (+ Masterwork Component) [This is over 3 years]
Fast Mithril Fullplate: 28x36 = 1,008 SP/wk, cost 105,000 SP, total 105 weeks work. (+ Masterwork Component) [This is over 2 years]

For the masterwork component:
Masterwork: 20x36 = 720 SP/wk, cost 1500 SP, total 3 weeks work.
Fast Masterwork: 30x36 = 1080 SP/wk, cost 1500 SP, total 2 weeks work.

Further regarding DCs, while P&P pretty much prevents non-permanent buffs, the ingame system does permit it, and is further improved by a variety of items that craft Craft boosts (from Gloves of Gond, to the Fletcher's Belt, and so on). These could be removed, but doing so would likely run counter to the intent of making crafting more available to characters with no ranks or few ranks.

[thaelis]

On extensive review of the rules, I can conclude that you are correct that base 3.5/Pathfinder offers no increase in DC in regards to material, but it does increase the item cost.
Secondly, per the stated block, Masterwork items are crafted as a separate component with a DC of 20, and a cost of 150 for armor. so you need to make two items, one with DC 18, and a second with DC 20. and failing on the Masterwork portion is just as bad as on the normal one.

The interesting knock on effect of this is just how much longer it takes to make them.
using the same crafter capable of a miraculous 36 roll every single time, we get the following for craft duration
Mundane Fullplate: 18x36 = 648 SP/wk, cost 15000 SP, total 24 weeks work. [6 months work]
Fast Fullplate: 28x36 = 1,008 SP/wk, cost 15000 SP, total 16 weeks work. [4 months work]
Mithril Fullplate: 18x36 = 648 SP/wk, cost 105,000 SP, total 163 weeks work. (+ Masterwork Component) [This is over 3 years]
Fast Mithril Fullplate: 28x36 = 1,008 SP/wk, cost 105,000 SP, total 105 weeks work. (+ Masterwork Component) [This is over 2 years]

For the masterwork component:
Masterwork: 20x36 = 720 SP/wk, cost 1500 SP, total 3 weeks work.
Fast Masterwork: 30x36 = 1080 SP/wk, cost 1500 SP, total 2 weeks work.

Further regarding DCs, while P&P pretty much prevents non-permanent buffs, the ingame system does permit it, and is further improved by a variety of items that craft Craft boosts (from Gloves of Gond, to the Fletcher's Belt, and so on). These could be removed, but doing so would likely run counter to the intent of making crafting more available to characters with no ranks or few ranks.

Nah because it doesn't state anywhere that special materials increase the crafting time. You can interpret it however you like; you can choose to read it as 3 years to craft mithral full plate or 6 months, same as regular full plate. I obviously choose the latter.

[Kitsunestume]

The material does not increase craft time.
per the rules:

The DC, your check result, and the price of the item determine how long it takes to make a particular item. The item’s finished price also determines the cost of raw materials.

Materials increase cost.
DC * Roll = work done.
Cost/work determines craft time


Craft time is (Item value in SP) / (SP/wk of work done)
Those calculations are shown.

[thaelis]

Price of item. It doesn't say whether that's base price or base price + additional costs. Would any sane DM really make players spend 3 years crafting a suit of full plate?

[Kitsunestume]

yes, a DM would? it's called downtime, or narrative time on campaigns. and generally speaking most of the system assumes that 'other people' (usually NPCs dedicated to downtime work) make the stuff, and it is disincentivised for adventurers as being generally less productive than murder.
Also regarding time, keep in mind that the system encourages enchanting over mundane items particularly for PCs: you get 1000gp/day (defined as 8 hours work) in magical crafting (or 1 potion, regardless of cost), but sp/wk for mundane (at the same 8 hours/day). it can take ages to make basic items, but less than a week to make it enchanted to the gills - so basically you want to either find or loot the mundane things.

And the price of the item is the base cost plus modifyers, IE: the "Finished price".

Using the Mithril Chain Shirt as a concrete example:
Chain shirt: 100 GP
Mithril shirt: 1100 GP. (100 base Chain shirt + 1000 modified by Mithral light armor)

the price of the item is 1100, so crafting it would require going through all that time, but per your rules if you wanted to manually craft a semantically different Chain Shirt from Mithral the finished price is 100 + an extra thousand later. Given that the item card exists, with a price of 1100, it is supported that the item price is after material modifiers.