Post by Aramaus on Aug 31, 2013 17:59:10 GMT
This is going to be a really long post, and there will be no TL;DR, so good luck.
Part 1. The Problem
The main problem with crafting in the current system is that it takes a very long time to make something of significant value, in my opinion too long to be worth the reward.
To craft a mundane item you first determine the value of the item in sp. For an example Full Plate costs 1,500 gp, which is 15,000 sp. Next you roll the check (which in our system is once per day and takes the full day) to find out how much progress towards the item you have made. The progress is calculated as dc*roll The dc for armor is 10+ the AC bonus of the item. In the case of Full Plate this is DC 19 lets say we roll a natural 20 and have a +20 to our craft armor. 19*40=760 15,000/760=19.7 days, you have to round up so it would take you 20 days of natural 20s to create 1 set of full plate. If you aren't rolling natural 20s or don't have +20 to your craft armor it will take even longer.
I have no doubt some one will mention that in real life full plate would take more than 20 days, and you are right about that, but the fact of the matter is this is a game, and not a particularly realist game at that. Further no one really wants to spend 20+ days doing basically nothing, it isn't fun and it isn't rewarding enough (In my opinion) to make the tedium worth it.
There are ways to speed the process, you can add +10 to the dc as many times are you want voluntarily which means you are multiplying by a higher number, thus speeding the process. So lets say you knew you were going to get that natural 20 and increased the dc to 39. 39*40=1560 in which case it would take 10 days at that role to get the project completed. You might think that 10 days isn't so bad for full plate and I agree, but keep in mind this is out of the most basic materials and isn't MWK (which in our system requires the use of higher tier materials) and also assumes a very high roll and a very high bonus (but not un achievable bonus). If you wanted to make it out of Mithril (the current lowest tier, least expensive option for MWK) you have to add an additional 90,000 sp to the process which suffice to say takes a while.
There is a spell called masterwork transformation that turns an item into a masterwork, and while that is lovely my goal is to make non-magical crafting work. Also it would be nice to be able to make mithril and superior arms and armor.
To summarize the crafting system as it is now only works for inexpensive items and present a massive inescapable time sink for anything of significant value.
There are plenty more examples of problems with this crafting system than I can go into if needed but I think full plate makes it pretty obvious.
Part 2. Solution A:
paizo.com/threads/rzs2khi2?Yet-another-Crafting-proposal#1
This system would assign crafters an individual value based on their crafting skill. The value would be your bonus to crafting squared, so to take our fellow from the example 202=400, so he would have a crafting value of 400.
When you craft an item in this system you have to have half the item's value in raw materials which would be provided for by our mines. You then roll to be the items dc if you succeed you add your crafting value in sp to the raw materials once the value of the raw materials equals that of the item you are done. The linked system has this as a weekly check I propose it as a daily check to speed things up.
In this system that would mean the same crafter with the same bonus to crafting would take 19 days to complete full plate. This can be sped up by increasing the dc to increase your crafter value by a multiple (+10 for *3 +20= *10)
To get back to our example, our fellow with +20 crafting would likely add +10 to the dc, making the dc 29 at which point he can just take 10 making his crafting value 1200 and would complete the full plate in a week. Which I think is a pretty reasonable time frame.
Some things that people might not like is that this system heavily favors characters built for crafting (which I think may be a positive). It also doesn't resolve the problem of higher end materials taking a significant time investment one possible solution to this would be playing around with the crafting value modifiers for high end materials, but I would love to hear any other ideas or suggestions.
Another possible change to the system would be to allow crafters to take 20 which would ensure a speedier process all around.
The advantages to this system are that it is much closer to RAW than my next solution is. It is also shorter than my other revision will be fitting in the space of a few paragraph where as the next system is about 3-4 pages long.
Part 3. Solution B:
Some of you may have seen Clout kicking this around a while ago but for those of you who have not seen this before it is essentially a total revision to the crafting system. It breaks items down into tiers, each tier having a dc modifier and crafting time associated with it. This system is very much a pass/fail type thing with getting significantly higher than the dc speeding the process up (+5 halves the creation time +10 halves it again, twice is the limit) you also speed the process by how many ranks you have in the relevant craft skill (5 halves the time, 10 halves the time again). Once you roll the check (or take 10) it takes you how ever long it takes you. Fail the check basically means you spent the time but failed to make the item. If you fail craft alchemy by 10+ it blows up in your face for 1d6 damage (dc 10 reflex save).
In this system full plate would be a dc 18 taking a base of 1 week. Our +20 to craft example would take 10 beating the dc by 12 and it would take him two days (I rounded to 4 on the first halving of the time).
The main disadvantages to this system that I see is it is possible this makes crafting too fast. It also makes alchemy slightly more dangerous (but I really find the concept more amusing than anything else.) It is also a total rewrite of the rules that likely takes more time to learn for new comers.
The advantages are it makes crafting way faster and provides an easy solution to the problem of superior materials.
Part 4. Miscellaneous stuff.
Keep in mind neither of these systems affect magical crafting in any form. I don't really feel there is a big enough problem with magic crafting to warrant a revision on this scale.
If you have any suggestions or concerns about any of this let me know. It would also be nice to get a feel for which system is preferred but I can always make a pole for that at a later date.
Part 1. The Problem
The main problem with crafting in the current system is that it takes a very long time to make something of significant value, in my opinion too long to be worth the reward.
To craft a mundane item you first determine the value of the item in sp. For an example Full Plate costs 1,500 gp, which is 15,000 sp. Next you roll the check (which in our system is once per day and takes the full day) to find out how much progress towards the item you have made. The progress is calculated as dc*roll The dc for armor is 10+ the AC bonus of the item. In the case of Full Plate this is DC 19 lets say we roll a natural 20 and have a +20 to our craft armor. 19*40=760 15,000/760=19.7 days, you have to round up so it would take you 20 days of natural 20s to create 1 set of full plate. If you aren't rolling natural 20s or don't have +20 to your craft armor it will take even longer.
I have no doubt some one will mention that in real life full plate would take more than 20 days, and you are right about that, but the fact of the matter is this is a game, and not a particularly realist game at that. Further no one really wants to spend 20+ days doing basically nothing, it isn't fun and it isn't rewarding enough (In my opinion) to make the tedium worth it.
There are ways to speed the process, you can add +10 to the dc as many times are you want voluntarily which means you are multiplying by a higher number, thus speeding the process. So lets say you knew you were going to get that natural 20 and increased the dc to 39. 39*40=1560 in which case it would take 10 days at that role to get the project completed. You might think that 10 days isn't so bad for full plate and I agree, but keep in mind this is out of the most basic materials and isn't MWK (which in our system requires the use of higher tier materials) and also assumes a very high roll and a very high bonus (but not un achievable bonus). If you wanted to make it out of Mithril (the current lowest tier, least expensive option for MWK) you have to add an additional 90,000 sp to the process which suffice to say takes a while.
There is a spell called masterwork transformation that turns an item into a masterwork, and while that is lovely my goal is to make non-magical crafting work. Also it would be nice to be able to make mithril and superior arms and armor.
To summarize the crafting system as it is now only works for inexpensive items and present a massive inescapable time sink for anything of significant value.
There are plenty more examples of problems with this crafting system than I can go into if needed but I think full plate makes it pretty obvious.
Part 2. Solution A:
paizo.com/threads/rzs2khi2?Yet-another-Crafting-proposal#1
This system would assign crafters an individual value based on their crafting skill. The value would be your bonus to crafting squared, so to take our fellow from the example 202=400, so he would have a crafting value of 400.
When you craft an item in this system you have to have half the item's value in raw materials which would be provided for by our mines. You then roll to be the items dc if you succeed you add your crafting value in sp to the raw materials once the value of the raw materials equals that of the item you are done. The linked system has this as a weekly check I propose it as a daily check to speed things up.
In this system that would mean the same crafter with the same bonus to crafting would take 19 days to complete full plate. This can be sped up by increasing the dc to increase your crafter value by a multiple (+10 for *3 +20= *10)
To get back to our example, our fellow with +20 crafting would likely add +10 to the dc, making the dc 29 at which point he can just take 10 making his crafting value 1200 and would complete the full plate in a week. Which I think is a pretty reasonable time frame.
Some things that people might not like is that this system heavily favors characters built for crafting (which I think may be a positive). It also doesn't resolve the problem of higher end materials taking a significant time investment one possible solution to this would be playing around with the crafting value modifiers for high end materials, but I would love to hear any other ideas or suggestions.
Another possible change to the system would be to allow crafters to take 20 which would ensure a speedier process all around.
The advantages to this system are that it is much closer to RAW than my next solution is. It is also shorter than my other revision will be fitting in the space of a few paragraph where as the next system is about 3-4 pages long.
Part 3. Solution B:
Some of you may have seen Clout kicking this around a while ago but for those of you who have not seen this before it is essentially a total revision to the crafting system. It breaks items down into tiers, each tier having a dc modifier and crafting time associated with it. This system is very much a pass/fail type thing with getting significantly higher than the dc speeding the process up (+5 halves the creation time +10 halves it again, twice is the limit) you also speed the process by how many ranks you have in the relevant craft skill (5 halves the time, 10 halves the time again). Once you roll the check (or take 10) it takes you how ever long it takes you. Fail the check basically means you spent the time but failed to make the item. If you fail craft alchemy by 10+ it blows up in your face for 1d6 damage (dc 10 reflex save).
In this system full plate would be a dc 18 taking a base of 1 week. Our +20 to craft example would take 10 beating the dc by 12 and it would take him two days (I rounded to 4 on the first halving of the time).
The main disadvantages to this system that I see is it is possible this makes crafting too fast. It also makes alchemy slightly more dangerous (but I really find the concept more amusing than anything else.) It is also a total rewrite of the rules that likely takes more time to learn for new comers.
The advantages are it makes crafting way faster and provides an easy solution to the problem of superior materials.
Part 4. Miscellaneous stuff.
Keep in mind neither of these systems affect magical crafting in any form. I don't really feel there is a big enough problem with magic crafting to warrant a revision on this scale.
If you have any suggestions or concerns about any of this let me know. It would also be nice to get a feel for which system is preferred but I can always make a pole for that at a later date.