Your tools are used to craft wooden structures. This structures can be anything made of wood like cabins, shacks, wooden dressers and wooden tables.
Carpenter's tools consist of a saw, a hammer, nails, a hatchet, a square, a ruler, an adze, a plane, and a chisel. Carpenter's Tools weigh 6 lbs and cost 8 gp.
Unlike other tools, you need access to large quantities of wood, and depending on the type you use, it may be more expensive and have different effects. Location is also important, if you find yourself wanting to create a log cabin in the middle of the desert, you may have to ship materials in to work with. This may increase your costs per the DMs discretion.
If you can dream it, you can probably build it with the help of your Carpenter's Tools… though it may require a large purse of gold and a lot of time.
If you aren't proficient in Carpenter's Tools, you can still hire others to build the structure, you just can't help.
To begin building your structure, you need a plot of land. If the land lies within a kingdom or similar domain you may need a:
Land can also be acquired by inheritance or other means, and if it is out in a haunted forest where no one goes, you may just be able to build without needing paperwork.
Once you have the necessary paperwork, you can begin construction of your structure. Each day you spend working on your structure, you must expend 25 gp to cover the costs of materials. If you are unable to cover the costs, you are unable to purchase the needed materials and your day of work is wasted.
As an adventurer, you aren't always willing to stay in one spot for a year to build a small cabin. By hiring skilled workers, they can keep the progress moving forward on your structure, though their services cost 2 gp per day. With multiple skilled workers on site, they can expedite the building process, but structures have a maximum number of workers that can work on it at a time.
By hiring skilled workers, you must spend 25 gp per day per worker, plus the worker's wage of 2 gp per day. If you are unable to pay this, than no work is done on your structure.
Only characters and hirelings that are proficient with Carpenter's Tools can build structures and objects made of wood.
The assumption is that you are building your structures out of simple wood native to the area. By importing or building with expensive materials, like ironwood, lignum vitae, or even palm, the cost can increase drastically.
See the chart Exotic Materials below for estimated cost information. The increased cost is subject to DMs discretion.
Building a wooden object requires more time than a structure compared to the total cost of materials. When building an object, you must expend 5 gp to cover the costs of your materials per day. If you are unable to cover the costs, you are unable to purchase the needed materials and your day of work is wasted.
Material | Cost Increase | AC | Damage Threshold | Hit Points per inch |
---|---|---|---|---|
Ironwood | x10 | 18 | 20 | 50 |
Palm | x5 | 15 | 10 | 35 |
Wood | - | 12 | 5 | 25 |
A structure built with ironwood is incredibly hard and cancels out the double damage from seige weapons.
A structure built with palm is far lighter and flexible than regular wood and can bounce off projectiles that deal bludgeoning damage from siege engines. When a bludgeoning projectile hits the structure roll a d20, on an 18 or higher, the projectile bounces off harmlessly.
Each structure is abstracted out to be built up by 10' x 10' x 6“ panels of wood. Upon your structure being attacked, the attacker determines which panel they would like to target and must roll against the AC of the structure. On a successful hit, they then roll damage. If their damage meets or exceed the damage threshold for your chosen material, then the damage goes through, otherwise they only deal superficial damage and no affect on your structure.
If you wish to repair your structure, you must spend an hour with the structure and your Carpenter's Tools and succeed on a DC 15 Carpenter's Tools (Strength) check and repair 1d6 + your Strength modifier in hit points to that panel of wall. For each hit point that you restore, it costs you 1 gp in materials. This cost increases per the Exotic Materials chart for different materials.
Structure | Total Cost in GP | Days to Build (Single Worker Only) | Days to Build (Max Workers Only) | Maximum Number of Workers | Minimum Acres Required |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Farmhouse, Small | 1,000 | 40 | 14 | 3 | 1 |
Farmhouse, Large | 4,000 | 160 | 40 | 4 | 10 |
Outpost / Fort | 15,000 | 600 | 100 | 6 | 0.3 |
Tower, Fortified | 15,000 | 600 | 100 | 6 | 0.3 |
Trading Post | 5,000 | 200 | 50 | 4 | 0.1 |
Defensive Wall | 25 | 1 | 1 | 1 | - |
Wooden Palisade | 5 | .2 | .2 | 1 | - |
Object | Total Cost in GP | Number of Days to Build |
---|---|---|
Armoire | 25 | 5 |
Dresser | 20 | 4 |
Nightstand | 10 | 2 |
Table | 15 | 3 |
You can build a variety of wooden structures and objects with your Carpenter's Tools, each structure requires a different amount of time and total cost. The cost of each structure can be paid for over time, and you can always go back and work on your structure at a later date. See the chart Structures and Objects for more information.
The defensive wall is a structure built in a quick time frame to help protect from invaders. Each defensive wall built consists of two: 10-foot by 10-foot by 6-inches thick walls, with AC 12 and 25 HP per inch of thickness.
Alternatively, you can decrease the thickness of a panel to 3” and have a wall that is 10-foot by 20-foot.
Only a character proficient in Carpenter's Tools, and has their tools available, can build a defensive wall, though others can help with an effect determined by the DM.
This cheap palisade can be quickly erected and is used to slow down and funnel attacking armies. Each palisade built consists of a 10-foot by 10-foot by 2-inches thick wall, with AC 10 and 15 HP per inch of thickness.
Only a character proficient in Carpenter's Tools, and has their tools available, can build a defensive wall, though others can help with an effect determined by the DM.
When building objects, the examples in the Object graph are just the base examples without anything fancy added on. At the DM's discretion, they may determine it costs more gold to input pearl veneers or that it will take more days for you to put in intricate wood carvings into the legs of a chair.
Certain spells can be used to help speed up, and even reduce, the cost of building your structures.
Having proficiency with Carpenter's Tools can allow you to use the Fabricate spell to help produce your structure or object. When casted, you must have the materials present and you can shape them into part of your structure, though only in 5' cubes. For every casting of the Fabricate spell, you decrease the number of days needed to build the structure, for an individual worker, by half a day but the cost of the materials must still be paid (12.5 gp per casting on Wood).
Your knowledge of carpentry allows you to spot weak points in wooden walls. On a successful DC 15 Carpenter's Tools (Intelligence) check, you deal double damage to a structure with your weapon attacks.
You can build structures faster by having workers work around the clock. To do this, you must expend 75 gp per day plus 6 gold for wages and this means that for each worker and day you do this for, they do double the amount of work per day. I.e. If you wish to build a Defensive Wall with Overtime, you would pay 75 gp + 6 gold for wages and you could create two Defensive Walls in 1 day.
When building a structure, sometimes problems can come up that aren't foreseen. At the DMs discretion, you can roll on the Setback chart below.
These setbacks are just natural parts of working on a structure, and normally are absorbed by the costs of materials. This is a great way for the DM to create set ups for quests, maybe the creatures stealing materials are skeletons that have been ordered to rebuild part of their underground tomb by a necromancer. Or there is supernatural weather at work stopping any shipments of materials from coming through, and its up to the party to figure out why 5 feet of snow dropped in the middle of summer.
Setback | Effect |
---|---|
Bad Workers | Unfortunately the workers hired understand nothing about carpentry and have halted progress on your Structure for 1d4 days. For each day they halted progress, lose that many days and half the gold due to destroyed or stolen materials. |
Stolen Materials |
Structure. |
Poor Quality |
you must wait 1d4 days. |
Bad Weather | The weather has halted work on your Structure for 1d6 days. There is a 15% chance that the weather was so bad that it destroyed part of the Structure; you lost 1d3 days worth of materials. |
Vandalism | Someone has broken up some of your materials and you must spend a day on repairs. |
Delayed Shipments | The shipment of materials has been delayed for 1d6 days. |
Out of Stock | The materials are out of stock and you must 1d6 days for more to arrive… or spend double on materials for 1d6 days. |