Crafty Thief
Fun fact: It’s actually been six months since we introduced the Thief/Wizard relationship back in Intra-Party Romance. Happy Anniversary, guys!
Less fun fact: this scenario happened to me. It was a bromance rather than a romance, but my barbarian wanted to make a gesture to his pal the bard. This barbarian had been kicked out of his tribe for being a dirty half-orc, and the poor lug had nowhere to go. Happily, a silver-tongued outlander met him on the road. This kindhearted thespian dusted him off, cheered him up, and taught him what money was. The two became fast friends, and set off together for the land of adventure.
So there’s a goblin attack. A noble quest. A few levels go by and we get some treasure. All the while I’ve been sinking skill ranks into Craft (weapons), secretly working on a masterwork net for my pal the bard. Crafting is hard, and so I failed most of the checks. I stuck with it though, knowing that it would all be worthwhile on that distant day when I could surprise my best friend with this gift.
I mentioned we came into some treasure, right? Well the first time we hit a big city, my bard buddy announces that he’s going to do some shopping. Imagine my dismay when he comes back having purchased a masterwork net from some nameless shop. Suffice it to say that barbarians are creatures of powerful emotion.
This was, of course, a Pathfinder game. And for those of you not familiar with the system’s crafting rules, allow me to give you an example. In order to create a suit of masterwork plate armor the old fashioned way, you do a little math, pay a little money, and spend a lot of time. Assuming you’ve got a +9 in Craft (armor) and elect to take 10 on your weekly roll, you can clank away in a brand new suit of plate mail after 46 weeks of work. Now that’s surprisingly accurate from an historical perspective, but what kind of adventurer has that much free time? More importantly, what kind of adventurer will take that option when someone like Wizard can just cast fabricate and masterwork transformation instead?
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Aah, yes, crafting rules… No matter how skilled you are, there’s simply no way to mass produce crafted goods… Whether it’s a +15 or a +50, you still have to take the same amount of time to make something.
Never did agree with this. It’s always a good thing Pathfinder offers alternative rules and various feats for those who are more in a hurry to get back on the move.
My group has a few craftsmen in it, (mostly magical) myself included, so there’s no end to the stall that is crafting rolls. At least magic items don’t take nearly as long as a mythril full plate to craft…
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p71k?How-fast-can-you-craft-a-Mithral-Full-Plate (Took me a while to find this again…)
Oh man…I was looking for that exact thread last night. Wound up doing the math myself for that 46 week full plate estimate. Bleh. Damn you and your superior Google-fu!
“Whether it’s a +15 or a +50, you still have to take the same amount of time to make something.”
This isn’t actually true in Pathfinder. You determine how much progress you make on crafting by multiplying your check result by the DC of the item being crafted. So if you have a +15 and you take ten while crafting a DC 25 item, you’re multiplying 25×25, for a result of 625. If you have a +50, though, that’s 25×60, or 1,500, more than twice as fast. In addition, you can voluntarily increase the DC to work faster, so you could choose to increase the DC to 60, still take 10, and get a result of 3,600. That’s enough to craft any item of up to 360 gold (a masterwork version of most weapons, for example) in only one week. And there are options to perform craft checks by the day instead of by the week, so that result would be enough to craft anything of up to 51 gold (plus a few silver) in only one day.
It’s still slower than the pace of most adventures allows, of course, but there definitely is an increase in speed as you increase your skill.
I feel as though a lawful good rules lawyer has come among us. Honor to the technically correct one!
Crafting time based on price is quite flawed, honestly… Absolutely no consistency or care for how simple, or comples an item is.
And that’s where these rules come in!
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/craft/alternative-craft-rules-3pp
While I’ve seen another alternate rule set out there for item crafting, I THINK my DM is using this one.
Paizo’s Unchained Crafting rules are far and away the best alternative crafting rules available, especially if combined with the Unchained Skill Unlocks for the Craft skill, as you can speedily chug along and pop out any number of items with great efficiency.
It’ll be interesting to see which way they go with 2e.
I imagine that they were trying to avoid a ‘let’s bankroll our rebellion by mass-producing cheap lace’ scenario.
Awww poor Thief. We all know Wizard would appreciate the gift just for the sentiment. Really. That sentiment is probably worth a crate full of rubies to the poor guy.
Then again, she’s Thief, not Gifty McGifterson. In a way it would be sort of wrong for her to give instead of take.
Wait a minute… Doesn’t Thief get 8 + Int skill ranks per level? Craft is a class skill for her too. How can she possibly be that bad at hat making? Oh, right…
One way to mitigate the crafting time is to use gold value instead of silver when computing time.
Sure it’s less accurate, but epic times call for epic measures right?
Also there is a set of magic crafting tools on the PFSRD (Amazing Tools of Manufacture) that are EXPENSIVE, but craft at 2000g in one hours work. Though you can only craft for one hour a day… But who cares at that point…
Sorry, this is on my phone so I don’t know how to imbed links …
You seem a learned fellow, so you probably already know. However, I really liked this feat as a model for a solution: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/master-alchemist
For all of my characters, I have only 2 that can craft. One is a 3rd party Fighter archetype called Swordsmith. I never got around to finishing her though. The other is my Kitsune Warpriest. I was making a leveled sheet as a backup and gave him the Create Wondrous Items feat at level 13. It fits him pretty well since he grew up in a forest and had to take care of himself. It also meant that I could get all his equipment at half price so I was able to fully outfit him. And I still have 100k left if I want to add some weapon properties to his bow. Although those will have to be full price as he doesn’t have Create Magic Weapons and Armor.
How many of your characters have seen actual play?
The Hunter, Bard, Inquisitor, and Druid. The Druid needs a re-build though. I just like making characters. Figuring out classes and feats to get a concept going is fun.