Crafting: A More Complex Affair

BE YE DULY WARNED; THIS IS NOT UPDATED TO CURRENT CRAFTING SYSTEM STANDARDS.

This section manages the assorted rules for crafting everything from braiding your own whip to managing a business that mass-produces laser rifles, in theory. In case it's not clear, these are extremely homebrew rules and may be modified as scenarios come up in game!

Arcydean schizo tech means that there are items from every technological age that could feasibly be created by a sufficiently knowledgeable character. In addition, there are some items that require specialized understanding of esoteric skills (Arcana for magical items, Technology for technological items, Manatech for magical tech items, Psitech for psionic tech items, etc.), in addition to proficiency in any crafting tool kits required. To represent someone with particularly advanced experience in a crafting skill (beyond proficiency in the crafting kit), look into developing Expertise or Mastery in your Downtime.

Itemcrafting has multiple distinct phases: Discovery, which is mostly necessary for new and untested ideas but may also be relevant for making items you don't already have a 'recipe' for; Acquisitions, the obtaining of any materials, special or otherwise, for making the item; and Crafting, the actual business of converting the materials in question into a functional item.

The world of Arcydea is one where there is an actual goddess of innovation and technology, so that should give you some idea of where the world stands on new ideas. Generally, whether you already know how to make an item depends on how common it is; a proficient blacksmith would be familiar with most mundane metal items, while an armorsmith would be familiar with most styles of armor. Discovery might be necessary for things never tried before – neither a silversmith nor a blacksmith would have much trouble silvering a weapon, for example, but both would struggle to make a sword entirely from silver because it requires knowledge of both skills to succeed.

If a craftsman already knows how to make a piece (has succeeded in the past or has it as 'common knowledge' from their existing tool/skill knowledge), skip this phase. Otherwise, coming up with a new 'recipe' requires an Intelligence-based skill check (against Research to look up a pre-existing explanation, blueprints, or instructions if available, or against the best of all applicable crafting Proficiencies if not or you don't have access to research methods) and some time.

(Yes, DC 30 is extremely difficult to achieve in the current system; it generally requires someone be at the peak of their career, and probably have at least Expertise in the various crafting skills involved.)

If successful, this will provide the craftsman with a list of items required (which themselves will need to be crafted, in some cases, or at least harvested or bought), and any special requirements that can't be picked up at your local supply store (ash from a volcano sacred to Pele, the goddess of fire, generally requires better connections or a trip to fetch it yourself, for example.)

If failed, you will generally make at least enough progress to know that what you're trying to do is more difficult than the outcome of your roll (if you roll a 26 and are told it's harder than that, it's a Legendary item and your crafting time is going to be long indeed.)

Most basic crafting (and the type adopted by most shopowners) requires materials that are in ready supply; as a general rule, each link in the supply chain doubles the effective cost of the material (or thought another way, each link you traverse backwards in the supply chain halves the effective cost of the material; if a particular volume of steel costs 16 gold, using your own blast furnace to produce the steel costs only 8 gold, and paying the mining company for the iron ore requires only 4 gold, and hiring the miners directly costs only 2 gold. By developing businesses you can cut costs dramatically, but it does require more bookkeeping, management, and other such bother that is more relevant to high-level financiers than your typical village blacksmith or adventurer.

Generally, you will have a list of materials needed that is twice the 'weight' of the item in question. For example, a longsword costs 15 gp and weighs three pounds; you will need six pounds of steel to make that longsword. Assuming an effective 'cost' of 7.5 gp to make such a sword, half of your cost will be in raw materials; the other half will be time.

Time required to make an item is a labor cost; assume 2 gp per day for a standard craftsman who has no advanced processing facilities beyond the basic tools of their kit and you have a relative time to make the item, which is rounded up to the nearest hour. The longsword listed above would have a labor charge of 3.75 gp. At 2 gp a day for a skilled craftsman, that's 14 hours of work for those who are nattering about hourly wages.

Bespoke magical items are handled in another section, but here is a rough estimate of how the cost for magical items plays out.

Different goods have a relative labor value; that is to say, a skilled worker will expect to command these wages for this sort of work. An unskilled laborer commands half as much and probably should be managed by a skilled worker. Expertise drives cost up further but can create higher-quality goods.

This, divided into the 'labor charge' of an item, tends to provide a rough approximation of the time spent to make it for a normal skilled craftsman working alone.

Of course, there are ways to reduce this cost; many of them awful.

Underpaying your workers is a well known tactic, and will decrease cost without increasing time, but your workers may quit or leave unless you have control over the local labor market (or them.) Slave labor is obviously cheaper, but you are obligated to provide a basic standard of living for them if you wish to retain their services (remember, wretched cost of living involves no allotment for food and shelter, and if you are the one enslaving them they are likely to die in short order), and those that are not equivalently rewarded for their skill are far more likely to be disloyal.

Hiring unskilled workers will cut labor costs by half, but remember that they effectively have no bonus to skill from Proficiency (and probably no bonus from Attributes, either), and thus may struggle to churn out items as quickly as their professional counterparts, or may make items that are likely to break or fail at awkward moments.

Hiring more skilled workers will increase labor costs (by x2 for an expert craftsman, x4 for a master craftsman, and x10 for a grandmaster craftsman), but may be necessary in order to pass the DC checks needed to make the highest tiers of items.

Multiple people can work on an item, the most skilled person involved managing the rest; this allows you to effectively add the labor value of all workers together to speed up crafting, and requires at least an expert craftsman. There is an upper limit on how many people can work on a single object, based on reason and complexity (making a full suit of plate mail can be divided amongst many individual laborers making individual pieces; making a dagger can be split between two people (one to prepare the handle and one the blade).

Example: a smithy has a master craftsman (standard labor value of 2 gp per day, though the cost is x4) and four skilled craftsmen managed by the master (standard labor value of 2 gp per day); this allows them to craft at an effective speed of 10 gp per day for standard items and 25 gp per day for luxuries.

Example 2: a smithy has a single skilled craftsman (standard labor value of 2 gp per day) managing a 'crew' of 20 unskilled slaves (standard labor value of 1 gp per day). He can effectively get 22 gp per day of labor out of the workforce (without the business paying nearly that much).

By improving the equipment and technology available to a craftsperson, you can dramatically increase their effective labor output, or provide additional labor output through machinery that does some of the work for you. (This needs to be expanded a bit, but for now suffice to say that a smithy with its own computer-aided AI designer, blast furnace, and research center can get things done MUCH faster.)

You can choose to replace some or all of the materials in a recipe; for example, you could replace a small amount of steel in a longsword with silver to make sure it keeps the same weight but is more effective against certain creatures.

So you have your workforce, you have your crafting recipe, and you have all the materials you need. It's time to get crafty. Crafting is a series of two checks; one conducted at the halfway point, and one at the completion point. Items that take weeks to make may require a crafting check every week at the DM's option. The crafting check is rolled by the most experienced person involved (the manager, generally), and is usually a Dexterity or Strength based check, depending on whether crafting the item requires fine motor skill or brute force; if the check fails, the work for that period has been wasted (does not count towards labor totals), which can dramatically drive up costs as you still need to pay the workers (usually). If the check is a natural one, the materials relevant to that portion of work are also wasted (hope you brought extra volcanic ash). On a natural 20, either twice as much work is done in the period in question or the work is completed in half the expected time (allowing time to start other projects.) On any other success, work proceeds as usual.

Note that even a natural 20 may not be sufficient to succeed at difficult skill checks (especially with unskilled or poorly skilled labor). If a manufacturer is willing to accept shoddy work, the effective DC can be lowered by 5, but this guarantees that the item will be lower quality than usual and prone to failure or malfunction. In extreme cases, this can be done twice, for an incredibly shoddy item that is a very poor imitation of the original. Whether this affects the cost is up to the seller, but may affect their long-term business prospects if they charge full price for shoddy goods.

A craftsman seeking to make a masterwork or higher-than-usual-quality item may voluntarily increase the DC of the entire project by five and double the labor cost required in order to receive masterwork bonuses (typically a +1 to something the item already does) if successful. This can dramatically affect the price of complex ('Rare' or higher) items in particular, as the cost of labor due to unsuccessful checks will increase dramatically. A suggested cost is supplied below for people who want to skip that nonsense and go straight to what that item costs to put in their store.

Of course, the general point of making items beyond what you need for your own uses is because you expect to sell them. Typically, the manufacturer of an item can command list price for it; merchants commonly negotiate to buy from a manufacturer at somewhere between the actual cost and the list price so they can sell at list price (or a little less) and still turn a profit. Below is a quickly-knocked-together set of rules for haggling with manufacturers.

Make a Charisma-based Persuasion roll in order to haggle with a salesperson (who in turn does the same to try to outhaggle you.) A natural 20 adds a bonus +5 to the roll for purposes of determining margins; particular arguments can help or hurt your chances when haggling, as elsewhere. Market influences (higher or lower supply compared to demand) can also affect this. Larger businesses also may require particular incentives or connections to offer particular discounts (buying from another merchant seldom gives much of a discount unless you happen to be a very large and wealthy customer who can afford to take your piles of gold elsewhere.)

Mercantilism is covered in more detail elsewhere, but it's worth noting that many craftsman have an effective skill of 10 (no proficiency in Persuasion or Charisma bonus) for simplification purposes, and an average merchant has an effective skill of 12 to 16 (+2 Proficiency, +2 to +4 Charisma). If a craftsman's base cost is particularly low, they may be willing to offer greater discounts…

Of course, these are only guidelines. Individual merchants may have their own buying and selling policies.