Thief + Wizard, Part 3/5
Wait a minute…. This was an engagement arc the whole time!? I wasn’t prepared for this! We’re going to have to book a caterer. Compile a guest list. Schedule cake tastings. Hire a cleric. Where are we going to find a cleric!?
While our lovebirds contemplate the practicalities, what do you say the rest of us spend a moment admiring that ring? It couldn’t have been easy to forge. I mean, if we’re talking 5e then tool proficiencies aren’t so easy to come by. Thief probably spent her starting tool proficiency on Thieves’ Tools (which might be a tautology). That means she must have rolled Stealth, snuck down to the local makerspace, and taken lessons with Celebrimbor between adventures. In other words, if we’re going by the “Training” section on page 187 on the Player’s Handbook, then she’s spent the past 250 days at a cost of 1 gp per day learning her way around a set of Jeweler’s Tools. And that’s not even taking into account the wasted effort she put into learning to sew the last time she sat on that log.
Crafting is a tough nut to crack. You’ve got to contend with issues of in-game economics, representing skill vs. available materials, item power level, and the fact that roll-die-get-item is a supremely unsatisfying mechanic. Sure you can take a note from the 5e artificer or the Pathfinder forgemaster and go the route of crafting-as-class-feature, but then you’re still left with uncomfortable verisimilitude questions. You’re telling me I’m the greatest inventor in all the land, but I can’t make a simple +1 arrow?
I’ve always liked the idea of background skills as a form of compromise. Gaining incremental improvements to your non-adventuring skills is a nice bonus, offering access to these sorts of “story moment” abilities without disrupting your power progression. You won’t be cranking out holy avengers or anything, but at least you can produce a decent gift around Yule.
What about the rest of you guys though? Have you ever gone in for the “crafty guy” type of PC? What’s your favorite system for the purpose, and what cool stuff did you wind up making? Tell us your tales of finely-wrought forgework down in the comments!
GEEKY GREETING CARDS For the holidays this year, Laurel just threw some brand-spanking new limited edition D&D X-mas cards onto her Etsy store. We’re also rocking our ever-popular d20 Class prints. We’re only missing “Monk” and at the moment, and I have it on good authority that Laurel will be working tirelessly to knock ’em out before New Year’s. So come one come all! Get your shopping done early and make a geek in your life happy.
ARE YOU A ROLL20 ADDICT? Are you tired of googling endlessly for the perfect tokens? Then have we got a Patreon tier for you! As a card-carrying Familiar, you’ll receive a weekly downloadable Roll20 Token to use in your own online games, as well as access to all of our previously posted Tokens. It’s like your own personal NPC codex!
My Android Alchemist has background skill ranks in Craft (painting), Craft (sculpture) and Profession (cooking).
It makes sense for her, as she is investigating her creative side.
It makes sense to me as she already has a buttload of skill ranks… ^^;
Speaking of expanding a skillset, my Goblin Abjurer had ranks in Diplomacy and Heal. Diplomacy because of a good tip in Goblins of Golarion; if you as a Goblin want to get along with longshanks, LEARN HOW TO DO SO.
Heal because he wanted to upgrade his homunculi.
As for today’s comic: Gosh. That is a remarkable gesture on Thief’s part. Wizard is being sweet, but grand gestures are well within her comfort zone. Thief reshaped WEALTH and is ready to GIVE IT AWAY in the name of love. Colour me impressed.
I’m sure she plans to recoup her expenses in the form of spellcasting services, prenuptial agreements, and noble titles.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/claiming-the-throne-part-5-5-heavy-lies-the-crown
Or at least, that’s what she’s tells members of the Guild who ask if she’s gone soft.
Oh? So there is a thieves’ guild in Handbook-World?
I can’t recall ever seeing it. Will they send a representative to the wedding celebration?
Naw. They’re too busy planning next year’s Con.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/con-con
Oh, wow. I completely forgot about that one. Sorry…
AAAAAAAA! RAAAAAA! YEEEEEEEES! IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING!
We’ve waited and workshopped SO LONG to bring you this moment. HYPE!
My current group has background skills. They’ve been very handy in making sure every Knowledge skill has at least one rank in it. My monk Tamarie has also dumped some ranks into Craft Needlework because she would help her mother make clothes in between her fighting lessons and regular chores at the temple.
I also mentioned another character last comic – my dwarf forgepriest. She is VERY craft oriented. She gets Craft Magic Arms & Armor as a bonus feat at level 3, then I’m taking Craft Wondrous Items at 5 and Forge Ring at 9. I can’t wait to play her and get her shop all set up. I’m thinking of calling it either The Blessed Hammer or Holy Works. (BTW, background skills are a godsend for her. Wis-based class that only get 2+Int ranks a level! And she needs Craft Armor, Craft Weapons, AND Spellcraft in order to make various magic items! And I threw in Craft Jewelry for the heck of it.)
How does that warpriest play? I haven’t had the opportunity to build one yet, and it seems to me like it could get a bit fiddly what with all the bonuses adding and subtracting and changing all the time.
You could always go all scriptural and opt for “Good Works.”
Haven’t had a chance to play her yet. But I’m going to very soon. The way my current group runs allows for players to have multiple characters. (We just can’t use more than one for a mission.) As soon as either my monk or my gun chemist level up, I can bring in a third character. And my gun chemist needs just one more adventure to do so. Then I can bring my forgepriest in.
I don’t think the warpriest gets any more bonuses than any other magic class. Just gotta keep track of what spells have been used. As for mine, she’s pretty straight forward.
LV1: Toughness (Racial bonus), Weapon Focus Warhammer (Class bonus), and Catch-Off Guard.
LV3: Craft Magic Arms & Armor (Class bonus), Shikigami Style
LV5: Craft Wondrous Items
LV7: Blessed Hammer
LV9: Forge Ring (Class bonus), Cunning
LV11: Step Up
LV12: Vital Strike (Class bonus)
LV13: Lunge
That’s as far as I went.
Oh, and my gun chemist is taking Brew Potion at level 9 because he owns a bar and I thought it would be fun to have him sell potions alongside booze. (GM was nice enough to houserule that alchemists who traded away Brew Potion can take it up again.)
I’m talking about the self-buffing with fervor + sacred weapon. I did something similar with a Occultist / VMC magus, and it turned out to be a lot of plate-spinning in practice.
Yes. But it’s still a matter of tracking what you have turned on. When I was playing my hunter on roll20, I had 8 different macros for the attacks. Flanking, non-flanking, AoOs, and flanking AoOs for both her and her boar.
For my gun chemist, I just wrote down the basic changes that would happen with different features. Basic TAB, penalty from Rapid Shot, penalty from using scatter, boost from Precise Shot, and extra damage from Alchemical Ordinance.
That’s the difference right there. Penciling this mess in on the wet erase mat is a lot less fun. At least for me.
Step 1 – roll a Lore Oracle, pick up the Focused Trance revelation (+20 to an Int skill check Cha mod time per day)
Step 2 – realize that Focused Trance places no limit on how long the skill check may take.
Step 3 – realize that Craft is an untrained skill.
Step 4 – retire at level 1, spend your life as a wealthy master craftsman/sculptor/painter (all at the same time), without ever spending a single skill rank.
Ya know, I just might have to rewrite my wall-focused “contractor wizard” as an oracle.
I do love background skills. Some years ago, back in 3.5e, I played with a house rule that gave every character an extra skill point per level to spend on what we termed “hobby skills”… the idea being for everyone to have a few ranks in non-class that would rarely be useful, but provided a bit of character depth.
In 5e, backgrounds proficiencies often provide the same effect, though the backgrounds are kind of hit and miss that way. Some align strongly with the core concept and don’t really add depth, but there are a few – especially those that give an arbitrary tool proficiency.
Wood-carving, for example, for a character who has a habit of creating small artworks while keeping watch at night. Or brewer’s tools, for the dwarven cleric who runs a still at the back of the temple. From memory, one of my newer characters has calligraphy, though I’ve not managed to do anything with it yet.
Are magic tattoos still a thing in 5e? Or runecrafting? You could use it for those in 3.5.
Tashas Cauldron introduced some magic tattoos, if i recall correctly
I had a lot of fun with the Inscribe Tattoo-feat in Pathfinder. My Wizard had it in Rise of the Runelords, and when the big windfalls started coming our way, I just tattooed every party member with whatever the heck they wanted – and Protection from evil.
By then, we were all pretty fed up with being charmed and/or dominated. I even took Iron will and Improved iron will!
Our Dwarven Barbarian especially asked for a tattoo of Featherfall; the party casters made a point of teaching him the Fly skill once we could reliably get him airborne every day, and he really took to it in the end.
This came as a somewhat painful surprise to our flying enemies. 😀
Yeah man. That’s exactly the sort of stuff I want out of my craft skills. I just wish it was a little easier to pick up new ones as the campaign progresses. Like, if my dwarven fighter just helped to save a brewery, you bet I’d want to take advantage of the brewing supply reward. It just tough to do that with DM fiat.
How do you mean, tough to do with DM fiat? I’d have thought that was the easiest answer, since there are certainly very few options to acquire new proficiencies through regular advancement rules…
In a consistent and systematic way. Inventing ad hoc rules (you gain 1/10th of a language every time you level up!) is easy, but making sure they’re balanced is not.
Ah crafting, my Achilles’ heel. After skipping 9 months in-game so that the players could use their downtime to craft something (that sadly wasn’t all that impressive) I luckily never had to deal with that mechanic again as a DM.
As a player however I had a fantastic DM who simply insisted on me delivering a specific substance (monster part, X guarded by a monster etc.) with a monster CR equivalent to the rarity and use of the item I wanted crafted. My bugbear cook then proceed to prepare a meal and/or scrape the leftovers into something wearable.
I suppose the DM was using the Sane Magical Prices list, as for a Potion of Speed (very rare, DMG price 50k) I had to catch a Quckling (CR1). For a pair of Eyes of the Eagle however (uncommon, DMG price 500) I had to figure out how to incapacitate a Chimera (CR6). All of this at level 3.
Well now I gotta ask. What were they crafting?
Well now I also gotta ask. How do you convert CR to rarity? That works well in Starfinder with its item level system, but I’m not seeing it in 5e.
According to the XGTE, the crafting of an item requires time, cost and monster material corresponding to its rarity (e.g. an Uncommon item takes 2 workweeks, 200 GP and a monster of CR4-8). The XGTE equates Common items with CR1-3, Rare with 9-12, Very Rare with CR13-18 and Legendary with CR19+.
The Sane Prices PDF takes into account that this system, when followed as written, means that you’d have to kill something with the power of an elephant to craft a Broom of Flying but somehow overpower the analogue of a demilich if you want to craft a Potion of Flying (which offers the same effect as the Broom but only to one person and for only one hour). It offers an alternative, sane pricing, by splitting up items into consumables, combat items, noncombat items, summoning items and gamechanging items.
As to the crafting of my group, they tried to enchant a statuette into becoming an Onyx Dog, succeed after I decreed that we will just skip the 300 or so days of them doing nothing but that (as the DMG prescribed) and in the end they didn’t use it once. Anticlimactic really.
I’ve never had much luck with the figurines. I don’t know if Drizzt made them uncool, or if it’s more about wanting your companion to be a part of your character concept from the beginning. They do just tend to sit in the bag though.
And there I was about to complain how every time we see Thief x Wizard, they argue.
I stand corrected.
And I’m VERY happy about it.
It’s almost as if there’s been some unspoken tension in their relationship lately.
(It might have something to do with the romantic entanglements that have been going on in the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comics as well.)
Daww, now to see if she says yes (or shows up for the wedding). A real question, as Wiz loves her dramatic tension and twists.
On a side note, the tent arrangement of the party is interesting. Are the ‘simple’ tents belonging to the henchmen (presumably one is only for Drow Priestess due to her stabby habits, unless there’s some dynamics with the other handbook) and the pavilion tent is for the PCs?
Or is the Pavilion for the RP-focused lovebird PCs privacy and the other two for the mechanics-focused munchkins?
I like to think the PCs have picked up progressively more elaborate digs since the early days:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-03
I mean, the tents are the exact same ones as from the first time this Wiz-Thief gift exchange happened (and boy, did the art improve from then). I do imagine they put out some cash for cozier, magical, bigger-on-the-inside tents if anything!
https://aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Expedition%20Pavilion
The wizarding world of Golarion, lol.
God I love crafting in games so much. I enjoyed a lot of playing a crafter in Pathfinder. Was a kingmaker game, so I (ab)used the rules for downtime buildings and owning businesses
Pretty much made my own magic school, with the sole purpose of providing me with cheaper magical item crafting goods. I took commissions and pretty much outfitted the entire party, while taking a modest percentage cut myself so that I could not only increase all my stats and skills to ludicrous levels (was also the parties skill monkey), but to also do fun little things, like make the parties beloved horse companion be able to talk and about intelligence 8. Made him a Duke
By the end of the game at level 20, most of my items had so many effects stacked on them at 50% extra cost, that they should probably count as artifacts. Imagine just being an adventurer and finding something like this:
Fashionable golden glasses with crystal set lenses. The lenses provide zero magnification
+6 to Wisdom
+20 Competence bonus to Knowledge: Arcana
+20 Competence bonus to Sense Motive
+5 Competence bonus to Knowledge: Nobility
+20 Competence bonus to Knowledge: Religion
+5 Competence bonus to Knowledge: Local
+20 Competence bonus to Knowledge: Planes
+20 Competence bonus to Knowledge: Engineering
+20 Competence bonus to Perception
+5 Competence bonus to Appraise
+5 Competence bonus to Craft: Alchemy
Constant Detect Evil Spell in effect
Constant See Invisibility Spell in effect
Constant Detect Illusion Spell in effect
Constant Detect Charm Spell in effect
Constant Deathwatch Spell in effect
Constant Comprehend Languages Spell in effect
Good at detecting falsified documents, granting their wearer a +5 bonus to Linguistics checks to identify forgeries and the ability make such checks untrained
Another favourite would be a Verditius in Ars Magica.. that has a really cool system for crafting magic items. My craftsman was obsessed with dragons and specialised in Earth magic (dirt/stone/metal). I created a stone tower that was all one contiguous block of stone, and then made a magic staff that could essentially telekinetically control and maintain it.. essentially made a flying tower. Was pretty neat
How did you price all this? What equations do you use?
Pathfinder has rules for magic item creation which just price them all up, pretty much. All pretty straightforward
The cheese bit was that downtime rules let you accumulate special magic build points, which can you use to essentially make magic items at half the price. And you already do make magic items at half the full cost. So.. suddenly they go to costing a quarter of the price, if you can generate enough of these build points
Hence building an entire magic school to facilitate it. Was fun
It’s possible that those lenses are worth more than the kingdom, lol.
You know the black tower from Runelords? I think it was called Jorgenfist or something. We turned that into a flying tower. Immigrant Song played every time we flew it anywhere.
Hah, probably not actually, I ended up in charge of a lot of the kingdom building bits.. I pretty much put that entire kingdom through an industrial revolution.. by the end of it we were starting to become a powerhouse
Towards the end might have been getting a bit laissez faire with the whole thing. Nobles in the noble quarter were complaining about my plans to set up an orphanage, that it would lower the district
Deliberately spent twice the money and pretty much made a gold plated, blinged out mansion, that I declared was the orphanage.. just to spite em
I see that Fighter’s talk really got through to her, just maybe not the way he intended.
Oh yeah… and I doubt Wizard is expecting this… hopefully Wizard’s Player can roll with this change of status.
I realized belatedly that there might be some repercussions in the vicinity of the Ivy Throne.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/claiming-the-throne-part-4-5-spotlight-moments
Called it! Hooray for them!
Ready an action to throw rice.
Hooraayyywait, what?
That doesn’t sound good.
–Readies action to throw dice – probably at Wizard, but definitely at Colin!–
Are you not familiar with this business?
https://www.brides.com/why-do-people-throw-rice-at-weddings-5073735#:~:text=What%20Is%20the%20Rice%20Toss,with%20help%20from%20an%20expert.
@Colin: Mis-read that (and I can’t apparently reply to your last post in this thread). Need to brush up on my spot checks. Rice is obviously not the same as dice, and is not usually thrown at people you’re mad at.
Please accept my apology for the whole dice-throwing thing.
I am eager to throw rice to help celebrate the impending nuptials!
I ready an action to throw rice at the first couple to come through the temple doors!
doors open
pelts ushers with grain
Hopefully Barb and Alchemist don’t apply their special stat modifiers to damage on that rice. Getting hit by a dozen 1d2+15 projectiles is no joke!
Yes!!!!
5e D&D is… frustrating at times when it comes to skills, languages, and took proficiencies. I hadn’t even known there was a way to get new ones besides feats or multiclassing or class features (maybe I should actually read through the books properly!) On the plus side, it prevents the absolute insanity of the skill checks etc from 3.5 and Pathfinder that make it so that if you haven’t maxed out those skills, you’re effectively shit out of luck.
I was running the party face in Out of the Abyss. Figuring out how to pick up Undercommon was freakin’ necessary.
Thief might not have as much trouble with the crafting as it seems, if one uses Pathfinder 1e rules. Let’s (over)analyze this a little!
For starters, the issue of funding is not a problem for her – we’ve seen her drool over piles of gold and afford house furniture. It’s likely that the ring was forged from the materials (diamonds and gold) gotten from her recent burglary/blackmail of Elf Princess/Lumberjack Explosion. It also allows her to, at a significant-but-not-back-breaking cost, fund any other elements tricks and resources she’d need to ‘hand craft’ this ring, like retraining or consumables and masterwork tools.
Time required for the craft can be assumed to be either since her last gift attempt (multiple years), one-two weeks (comic time / real-life session schedule), two-three days (since their argument in in-game time). Even a magical, 2k gold ring would take two days for a average crafter, and one can assume that Thief isn’t using the mundane crafting rules for this special ring (or is not using the illogical RAW ones).
Depending on extravagance/magic of the ring, it takes a higher DC or feats to craft. It would need to be at minimum a masterwork quality ring to make it magical (300gp), but the actual magic enchantments might be done by a second party who possesses the feats she can’t qualify for, who she can hire or ask for a favor (Cleric, Magus, etc). If not, she needs to suck it up and retrain two of her feats to get Forge Ring and Master Craftsman as feats to make a magical ring from scratch, and use scrolls or hired casters for the spells she lacks (or do a harder check for any missing spell).
The skill check can be done in several ways. Retraining skill points, utilizing magical potions or scrolls to gain herself bonuses (Crafter’s Fortune is a big one) is a slow/costly but viable option. Buying a headband of intelligence, keyed to a specific skill, lets her become an instant expert in the crafting skill (as if she had full skill ranks) and makes the check effortless. There’s also the option that she’s already got a skill in jewelry – it wouldn’t be a far cry that she has the Profession (Jeweler) skill as a ‘day job’, which allows for making a ring.
Unchained rogues have talents and signature skill unlocks, both of which can supercharge an otherwise mundane crafter with bonuses or uncanny ability. They also tend to favor intelligence as their main stat, have craft as a class skill, and have a massive allocation of skill points. So Thief is already pre-disposed to be good at crafting – she just needs to refocus her skills into it over combat and thievery a little, i.e. retrain some stuff.
She would do this check in secret most likely, so she’d be outside of Warrior’s bad luck influence if she was avoiding the party to do it. So, a take10 would be assumed for the check.
So, let’s get to the math and add it up! Let’s assume she’s making a magical ring from scratch, is level 7 (minimum for Forge Ring feat), has an INT of at least 16, full ranks from a INT headband, and has the Forge Ring and Master Craftsman feats, and bought a Crafter’s Fortune potion from Alchemist.
3 (INT) + 3 (Class Skill bonus) + 7 (full craft skill ranks) + 2 (masterwork tools) + 10 (take 10) = 25 result on her craft checks for a magical ring.
What can she craft with a DC25? Anything that fits the formula of 5+item’s caster level + 5* any spell she can’t supply.
What is the perfect Wedding Ring that she could buy for Wizard? A ring of Wizardry I. Which is exactly in her ability range, as it has a DC of 21 to craft without any spells. It would take her 20 days to make this ring, or half that if she risks failing the check to do it twice as fast (+10 DC).
Costing 10000 gp in magical mats, 4000 gp for a keyed skill headband, 55 gp for the mwk. artisan tools, 500gp in potions or scrolls and roughly 500gp for a masterwork sanctified golden ring.
https://aonprd.com/EquipmentMiscDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Sanctified%20rings%20(pair)
To conclude, in the span of two weeks to a month, Thief can, well within the regular Pathfinder rules, craft a Sanctified Wedding Ring of Wizardy I, at the ‘minor’ cost of 15k gold. Talk about commitment!
Y’all need to get yourself a crafting automaton: (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/hpljyg/automated_item_production_lines/).
Ours was a custom version we buffed up in INT, granted wizard classes, and allowed to make Dedicated Wrights with Cooperative crafting and Valet Familiars.
Y’all want robot villains? This is how we get robot villains.
Those already exist as Assembly Oozes in Starfinder!
http://rollforcombat.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Starfinder-Alien-assembly-ooze.jpg
It’s nice to switch over to an unfamiliar setting. The whole, “WTF is that!?” reaction out of players is all manner of rewarding.
They don’t have much reason to rebel. They have the specific purpose of only crafting items, and we have a special device called AI inhibitors that reduce ego on them.
Still, awesome plot point!
EDIT: We are also building advanced and improved versions of them in my system.
Crafter tales? Boy, have I!
Our run through Return of the Runelords featured two main crafters. My ratfolk wizard, who focused on wondrous, wands, scroll and staves (purely to get staff-like-wand feat), whilst our Kitsune Witch got Craft Arms/Armor and Forge Rings. With the exception of tattoos and potions, we were able to craft whatever we wanted (and were allowed to mix & match properties on items to get around the slot limitations a little, at a higher cost).
My wizard constantly churned out magic items at double-speed with his absurdly high skill checks (and usage of magic buffs), with the ultimate goal of developing a permanent timeless demiplane and gaining immortality to make ‘time required’ no longer an element in ANY crafting.
I’m fairly certain our double-effective-wealth in items is the reason we survived it once we hit the rocket tags levels and things got increasingly, ludicrously deadly.
His crafting prowess helped us significantly against a planned boss fight as well – for a super-powered undead we knew we’d have to fight and had full time to prepare the battlefield for, he arranged to engulf the boss in a high-powered Wall of Fire, whilst simultaneously having a Draconic Ally minion tossing Pyre Salt into it, dealing it grievous harm as the opening move made it take quadruple the fire damage (double for being undead, double again for the Pyre Salt).
As for how it affected the story and RP – our Kitsune Witch was fairly traumatized through the adventure due to various tragedies (PCs dying, horrible things happening in the AP in general, being scared out of her wits). Mechanically, she was also frequently affected by emotion-traumatizing effects and horrors or RPs as distraught and worrysome.
To combat this trend, empower her in combat, and simultaneously offer her a very nice, thematic RP gift (that her girlfriend, our sorcerer PC, co-funded), my Wizard crafted her a Padma Blossom – an item that immunized her in combat from various effects and was thematic to her race and playstyle – acting as a ‘security blanket’ later in the game as things got worse.
We even considered fluffing the item as a plushie toy she would hold, but she ultimately decided for it to be it’s normal appearance of a jade blossom.
In our current Mummy’s Mask game, our Samurai is a knitter, and knitted the whole party various plushies as gifts – e.g. a red dragon plush for my red-scaled Kobold Gunslinger.
But like… What magical properties did the knitwear have? What was its gold piece value?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/priceless
No magic involved (mundane/fluff craft), but probably less expensive (and smaller) than a Badger plush!
https://aonprd.com/EquipmentMiscDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Badger%20plush
I love that that is an item.
Why the hell is that an item?
To badger animals with it, obviously.
Hey, my Wizard did craft a demiplane for Rise of the Runelords! ^_^
Made it permanent, and added a permanent NMage’s sanctum-spell.
The party Cleric permanently Hallow‘ed it.
Apart from being a really cool clubhouse and storage space for our loot, I figured it’d be our hidey-hole if the fight with Karzoug went south or he started sending opponents we couldn’t handle after us.
Demiplanes are a part of the game I tend not to touch. The clubhouse building part of the game is Laurel’s bag, no mine. Happily, since she’s an illustrator, the rest of us get to ooh and ahh at her floorplans.
I would like to address a point on mundane crafting.
Mundane crafting is often derided as laughably slow. However, what most people don’t realize is that is the time to craft the item from completely unworked things, like chunks of steel, strips of untanned leather, etc. If you are using premade components (like you would if you had access to a decently stocked workshop) there is a very good argument to speed up crafting by crafting in gp, etc.
Are you talking about Pathfinder 1e crafting? Did my bit on that back here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/crafty-thief
For me, it’s not so much the crafting time being slow. It’s just that it’s too slow for “we must hurry and stop BBEG’s plot” type storylines.
For me, it’s less that and more it takes an unreasonable amount of bonuses to craft a dagger in less than a month. Hence, the point I brought up.
Fun fact: The devs of a Star Wars RPG were the first to address this pint. Players were complaining about how it took so long to craft a laser psitol, only for the devs to say that was the time to craft it from scratch with no assisting facilities.
Pictured here, the devs: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/q_HCUgtJGoI/maxresdefault.jpg
Did you know that you can, theoretically, craft items like laser rifles and robots using magic? Look up the hybridized quality from Starfinder.
Would be a heck of a gift for a gunslinger or a techie.
One day I’m going to get to play Starfinder as a PC. One day.
In the meantime, on to Book 5 of Dead Suns! I’ve got to read it by session time next Saturday.
Word of advice: if you wanted your players to be less dependent on gear, don’t play it. Also, trying to extrapolate a pure abstraction of “levels” to items is just silly.
In any case, Starfinder is probably the one game whose economy is even more broken than 3.X. It is to the point where stationwear, basically commoner’s clothes, takes weeks to buy for the average man, to say nothing of anything above level 1. PC wealth disparity is somehow even worse in the far future.
I really need to do a “Thou shalt not attempt to rationalize the economy” comic. That way lies madness. And also the Tippyverse.
Whenever possible, assume NPCs have ways and means of making more money than a PC rolling profession willy-nilly or that things are just cheaper overall in certain places rather than others. Think 1890s-1900s country stores system.
One of my players crafted a ring to propose to another player’s character. She had the proficiencies, she had the materials. But wedding rings are expensive, and accordingly, somehow, take a long time to craft. After the first month of downtime, I realized that allowing this to go on any longer would stop it from being fun, so I fudged the numbers to finish the ring then and there. Besides, there’s no sensible reason why affixing a diamond to a ring would take a hundred times longer than using any other inexpensive stone.
The PC said yes, by the way. Though they’re delaying the wedding until after they’ve saved the world.
Someone else in the thread reminded me that these rules exist, but they do a nice job of fixing this issue:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/craft/alternative-craft-rules-3pp/
…which is why you should give large bonuses or just let players craft in gp when it makes sense, otherwise you fall into the “sun spot” paradox where the sun is unseeable by RAW.
The problem with crafting is that D&D is aboot adventuring for loot, not working a 9-5. If I can make the Hammer of smacking evil upside the head then why go adventuring for it? If I need to go adventuring to get the special components for it then it’s just adventuring for it with extra steps.
That said I have gotten great mileage out of tools in adventuring. Painter’s supplies for example were used to do things like do composite-sketch-work to help identify a target, use my painting skills to get invited to a noble court which I wished to infiltrate, etc.
I’ve got a lot of sympathy for this point. It’s how I run my games too.
Look around the thread though. There are some folks that really, REALLY dig crafting. Figuring out how to support that subsection of players without derailing a campaign is friggin’ tough. I think dungeon exploration games are big enough to accommodate though.
My own long-running megadugneon game has a joke item from the early levels: The Book of Racial Stereotypes. It provides a +2 bonus to drawing composite mugshots.
Oh boy, a wedding strip is incoming! Just imagine all the poofy, frilly dresses, tuxedos, wedding furnishings and decorations, along with numerous, numerous characters that Laurel will get to draw for the wedding ceremony!
Speaking of, predicted strip: Thief and/or Wizard go into bridezilla mode.
I was like, “Hey Laurel! Should one of them go for the tuxedo?”
“NO!”
And that was the end of that discussion.
Short answer: Yes. I made a crafting wizard cohort in Pathfinder-he basically specialized in knowledge skills, making magic things, and being a smartass jerk to everyone. He was a great character. He also was feat taxed into oblivion because Pathfinder has something like 27 Crafting feats, and you need at least three of them to be properly useful as a crafter.
Reflectively though… I feel the concerns about game economy are overblown. You, as the GM, have within your power to give enemies extra health, extra bonuses, and extra everything. I run custom balance in my game, and no one complains about it because they understand that I’m also going the extra steps to be fair and transparent about that balance. I have also tweaked the economy a bit where drops are sold back for less than is ‘normal’ so I can give enemies threatening weapons without making my players instantly rich.
This is all session zero stuff. And since we are talking about session zero stuff again, I asked a question about this during my session zero about this very thing.
“Which would you all prefer – me custom making special magic items for you guys, or you guys going on adventures to get money and make your own awesome items?”
And their answer… was that they wanted some of both. They wanted a chance to find amazing items… but they also wanted to have the option of custom building their items. It was useful to know that was what they wanted.
A little further up the thread:
Item crafting of this magnitude pretty much demands custom balance. The example about “Rob’s Cleric” is always in the back of my mind:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/Magic-Item-Creation/#Magic_Item_Gold_Piece_Values
I love having complex crafting rules to serve as a starting place. But for my money, actually implementing that mess is a case-by-case negotiation between GMs and player.
The sad part is that most people (and to some extent, Paizo itself) tends to err on the side of the really expensive. But when all is said and done, a loom that weaves cloth by itself is NOT as strong (and therefore should’nt be as expesnive as) a 10 ft. tall death bot.
Well. You are always having to maintain custom balance one way or another. The quickest way to do that is I force all my players to clear crafted items with me.
I don’t think I need to explain how there is no amount of logic contortion that gets a player an item like that at my table.
Yes, of course! This is something that NEEDS to be done. The problem comes when you get an overzealous GM who wants to charge you 2000+ gp for a self cleaning bowl or something.
In any case, the ridiculous WBL economy needs to be replaced by a system that allows players freedom and creativity in crafting (and other concepts).
Laurel is really enjoying the opportunity of redoing old pages, right? 😛
As for crafting, my Daybreak abyssal really was good to make spiked armors, spiked “medical” tools and spiked swords. He got a running joke of adding skulls and spikes to everything. Even cutlery made out of soulsteel. What made things fun wasn’t to roll the dice but to get the ingredients. That is where the fun of crafting is. In most game crafting is either rolling dices or waiting until something is done. So the real adventure is to get the materials you need. Like in Starbound, Graveyard Keeper or other games. Logistics are more important than the final product 🙂
Naw. This one is all me. I always felt like that old wizard hat comic was where a lot of people (including me!) fell in love with this couple. I wanted to do the callback.
I forget. Are there any elves in Creation?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-04
He would see that design and ask himself: “Could i add more spikes?”. The rest of the circle would scream at him: “Stop adding too much spikes to everything.” He ignoring them and mussing: “Maybe i could add more spikes on the toilet? As a experiment on the armor spike surface covering” 😛
By the way, is the ring cursed? o_O
Me immediately after reading this: “Laurel! What if the ring is BBEG’s phylactery?”
Her: “How would that work? Didn’t Thief just make it?”
Me: “I did not think this through.”
I was thinking on a curse ring of marital engagement +5. Your idea is also good 🙂
But i am a little worry my plot ideas keep surprising you :/
I like Witch+Craft from… I want to say Astrolago Press? … for this in 5e. That said, I’ve never found a crafting system that wholly fits the needs of my game, so my general approach is rather a patchwork one.
My best wishes to the happy couple!
Assuming, of course, Wizard accepts… there are two scenes to go.
DRAMA!!!
They will need them if they have fey’ri children 😛
I’m not familiar. How does that mess work?
To cut a long story short, it’s based off the general themes around crafting in Ghibli films, and has each character (who wishes to) possess a “Craft Class” which progresses alongside their main class. There is then a (massive) series of craft feats which allow you to add properties to or ignore prerequisites for items, and a set of rough guidelines on the creation of such things which allow the gm scope to set their own limits and the player scope to create something unique and wonderful.
As I suggested, it isn’t perfect for my game, but any system which makes crafting a nonmagical pie feel heroic and special is a good system, as far as I’m concerned.
I seriously recommend taking a look.
Regarding today’s comic: yeeeheeheeheeheehee vibrates gently with anticipation
Regarding today’s prompt: The one 3.5 game I played in, I had the idea of making my dwarven fighter a smith. The campaign didn’t really take off (and I’m not sure how many of the other characters would have been able to use stuff my dude would have made), so nothing ever came of it, but it was still a fun idea.
More recently, I had an idea for a dwarf fighter who had skill with cooking. Basically be a wandering chef who would go adventuring to find interesting ingredients for his dishes. Not quite as permanent as making people magic rings or swords or stuff, but still fun.
I KNOW!
I think a lot of folks have noodled with this idea, myself included. I’ve never quite pulled the trigger though, and that’s mostly because I want to find a good “make stuff from monsters” system before I pull the trigger. It’s one thing to say “I turn the minotaur into beef stock,” but I want the resulting soup to have mechanical weight in the game, you know?
For me, not getting to run my wandering dwarven chef is a combination of being the DM of our group, the ongoing plague, and the knowledge that I’d have to come up with a long list of really tasty-sounding recipes if I wanted to do it right. My character might have a huge bonus to his cooking checks, but my IRL cooking skill is significantly lower (I can follow a recipe just fine, but coming up with stuff from scratch is a whole ‘nother prospect).
Possible inspiration for your list of dishes:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084GFVTTY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Linguistics is my personal favorite skill to throw my excess points into, just because you never know when you’ll need to communicate something in a way only you and your party can understand.
Also, knowing every non-secret language on the planet and then some is hilarious.
I like throwing Linguistics on to INT headbands as the associated skill. Handing a player a list of the 20 languages they learn is always a hoot.
INT headbands giving languages is a fun idea. I think one of my players had one at one point that taught them C#. Which, I mean, it’s a language, in theory. Probably would have been better in a modern or scifi game than on renaissance-tech-level golarion, but more power to them.
Headband of Tech Support.
If you want a story of epic crafting, look no further than Dave the Commoner, a solo PC commoner who, adhering entirely by the rules of Pathfinder, rose from level 1 to extravagant riches and power over a few years of in-game time.
https://davethecommoner.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/the-journey-begins/
Two words: Operation Moonstrike.
I was thinking the industrious rogue:
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_I
The ideas present here contributed greatly to inspiring me to create my system in order to allow players to attain the awesome accomplishments described in stories like these, and more as well.
My friend Matthew and I were discussing crafting in D&D just the other day. Mostly griping about how weird it is that they tried to make it “realistic” how hard it is to make things like say plate armor in a setting where your combat abilities are so unrealistic that you’re basically guaranteed to be able to kill enough goblins, orcs, and whatnot and loot their piles and piles of weapons and sell that to buy plate armor in a store somewhere far before you’d ever have the time to create your own.
Still, I very often give my characters a tool proficiency or two just because it fits the character concept. Even though I know its basically guaranteed to never come up in a game since the amount of time required to make things is just basically infeasible in most games.
There’s always Cook’s Utensils at least. shrug
My take is that complex crafting systems are meant to give the “I love crafting” guys something to sink their teeth into. It’s never a core part of the combat / adventuring gameplay, so it never quite fits with that progression. I my mind, it’s more of an RP element similar to PF1e downtime. You don’t make money at it, but you get to push a few numbers around and grab some minor bonuses and do a bit of RP.
But it’s not actually complex. It’s “you can make 5gp of progress crafting a day”. Sure they added “how to downtimes” stuff in Xanathar’s but…. how often do people play games where their character routinely spend a week or more in an actual town or city not doing adventuring stuff? Certainly not the 43 weeks of downtime it would take to make a single set of plate armor.
And the downtime ways to earn money are equally as bad/”realistic”. You can earn in a week about what you’d earn looting an enemy with a single mundane weapon.
If anything, actually making such threadbare rules for it is just basically telling players they shouldn’t be trying to do it at all. Because they provided just enough details to tell you what you can’t do, but not enough mechanical system to give you any reason to do what you can.
This was obviously better in previous editions where you could actually make magic items. But in 5e you can’t. At best you can use Xanathar’s downtime rules to arrange to buy one. Assuming you’re in a big enough city in a setting where that’s even possible.
Crafting would have actually worked out to be a better RP element if they hadn’t given any rules for what you can and can’t do. Then the GM would just adjudicate what actually makes sense for their game.
(Yes GMs can always do that anyway, but we all know ~95% GMs never ask themselves the question “Does this rule work in a way that’s actually ruining people’s fun and maybe I should do something else?” about stuff like that.)
Aw. Thief and Wizard finally commiting. And Thief somehow still making it scary in a “What’s she got up her sleeve way.” I like it.
For crafting, the biggest “fun” of the “Wait, this takes how long?” variety was had in my recent Mummy’s Mask game. The DMPC wizard was crafting magical items for the group and had requested some downtime in a place where she could set up an actual workshop. Note that she has Hedge Magician, a Valet Familiar and one of her Arcane Discoveries is reducing the time it takes for Wondrous Items, she’s good at this. But one of the PCs had requested an item that would take even her a month. So during the downtime, one of the PCs decided he would make a warhammer. A plain old Masterwork Warhammer. Can’t be that big of a deal, right? So for fun, we pulled out the Pathfinder Core and looked up the craft skill. What resulted was him actually taking a week longer than the wizard to finish making a Cold Iron Masterwork Warhammer and everyone in the party laughing at it. Its honestly kind of insane the trouble you have to go through.
She’s tricksy.
That’s how my sorcerer buddy felt when she realized how hard it was to activate a cleric scroll with UMD. Sometimes, the rules just don’t work quite the way you’d have imagined. There are game balanced reasons behind this sort of thing, but man does it feel screwy when it comes up.
One of our Game Night crew DM’s a campaign wherein we had to make blind choices for our PC based on race & gender. I selected human female from the remaining options and got the baker’s daughter. The premise was that we began at 0-level and were assigned a class after the first gaming session based on our choices and role-play. The baker’s daughter became the cleric, Honoria “Honey” Baker, and now bakes cookies of healing (as a potion, but they don’t shatter if you drop them) and the best-tasting trail rations in the county.
—> Ages ago, I also played a LARP character who was told by the rules committee that he could not choose any new Craft or Profession skills, as “his brain was now full”: I had taken ranks in so many different crafting skills in my efforts to create a polymath that the typed index card with his statistics had no more room for text.
—->My son anticipated the Mandalorian with his 3E halfling fighter blacksmith. He took Craft (Weaponsmith) at 1st level and added Blacksmith and Armorsmith as he went. Between adventures he tinkered with his suit, slowly upgrading from breastplate to full plate, paying “the dwarves” to replicate enchantments from found treasure into his gear. Once the campaign discovered a special mystery metal, he forged his entire suit out of it, bit by bit, piece by piece, over the course of many missions. Now he’s a tiny titan of terror, trotting into battle in a tricked-out adamantium suit of his own design that does everything but fly. (I’m the DM, and even I will sometimes say “no, too silly.“
Index card brain made me flash super hard on The Gamers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSynJyq2RRo&feature=youtu.be&t=2612
Surprisingly, my lizardfolk has not gotten a chance to use his race’s inbuilt crafting yet. All our enemies have been humanoids or undead so far, two types not mentioned in the list of potential crafting materials. At least the humans still double as trail rations, especially after the tortle got fastball-special’d onto a trio of pirates.
Now, in a currently-on-hiatus game, my raised-in-a-dwarven-mining-town eldritch knight was planning on making a special ring. For the prince we’ve been helping. To give to his foxfolk bodyguard who he’s clearly infatuated with. There is a cinderella story there waiting to happen and darn it I will not let things like the in-universe equivalent of Vatican city being nuked or a continent-wide war get in the way of that.
My pathfinder barbarian had profession: cook as part of her backstory, and was going to dabble in making meals out of monsters. Sadly that game didn’t go too far.
Also pathfinder, I had a unicorn wizard specialized in fireworks (read: fireball) who I made sure to give max ranks in swim to because before the campaign she was basically a surfer chick but also a savant in evocation spells.
Is that unicorn wizard Pathfinder or Ponyfinder?
‘Cause hey, I like that particular expansion. ^_^
Ponyfinder. Though the game has since been translated into 5e since the GM couldn’t contain my raw spell power and 2 of other players prefer it over PF. Lost SO MUCH casting versatility.
Not familiar. What inbuilt crafting to lizardfolk get?
5e lizardfolk can take the remains of a small or larger beast, construct, dragon, monstrosity, or plant and turn it into a shield, a club, a javelin, or 1d4 darts or blowgun needles over the course of a short rest.
Great, now all I can imagine for the wedding is a Up movie type thing where one half the aisle are these hoity toity elf types and the other half is Swash+Buckle and a bunch of shotgun and hand crossbow toting tieflings and criminals.
I agree that things may seem lopsided at first glance. But you have to remember that all the ninjas are on Thief’s side of the aisle as well. You just can’t see them.
I am not sure Thief would let Swash and Buckle attend the wedding.
Not unless she could skin them to provide the red carpet for her to walk down, anyway.
Other than that, sounds great! ^_^
… But would Aristocrat even want to attend Wizard’s wedding?
Ehhh there are enough people in Wizard’s family to fill out the seats. (She can just cast illusions to fill in the gaps.)
S and B would invite themselves. Everyone else in Thieve’s aisle would be the contents of an entire ethnic street gang and a pirate crew.
After the Heart Grove Massacre, I’m not sure Wizard has any family left apart from Aristocrat, especially now Wicked Uncle is pushing up daisies.
If by ethnic you mean tiefling, that might be true. Then again, we don’t know what Thief’s family does for a living.
If Swash and Buckle just show up, it’ll be a brawl wedding for sure.
There’s always the scrollover text on this one:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/conflicts-of-interest
Oh, my. Sorcerer and/or his granny, glowering at Wizard from the bride’s family section… Provided she can enter a temple without bursting into flame.
Speaking as someone who grew up playing 3.5, basically all of the simplifications 5e made make sense, and I’ll agree that most of them were good for the game overall. The loss of skill points, not so much.
Sure, they were a little clunky, added extra bookkeeping, and 90+% of a typical character’s skill points would go to keeping a handful* of skills maxed anyways. But it was so simple to have a few skills you dabbled in.
Nowadays, you’ve got less than half a dozen skills you’re good at, and also you’re okay at any other skills based on your dominant attribute(s). If you want to dabble in other skills, you’re SOL; I guess you can take two levels of bard, if you want to invest two levels in that. Then you get a bonus to all skills you aren’t proficient in, without needing to decide which ones fit your character!
Sorry for the salt, this is my least favorite change in 5e, aside from the way warlocks were butchered on the altar of Vancian magic. (I really liked 3.5 warlocks and dislike Vancian magic on principle. It feels really artificial, and seems like such a clunky way to balance abilities.)
*Or more than a handful, for high-Int characters and classes with lots of skill points
On the magic system: I think it should say a lot about the system in general that when compared to Spheres of Power/Words of Power (systems I think you would enjoy), Vancian magic is STILL considered more powerful.