I have a player who's interested in crafting, and if I were to use the crafting item section from Xanther's guide, it seems a little lackluster.
I'm looking for some suggestions as to how to make crafting an item feel more like a challenge, instead of 'it takes two weeks of your time and you spend x amount of gold'.
Do other DM's usually include some rolls to determine the item's quality or to see if there are set backs in production etc?
You could set a D.C. for the crafting of the item, depending on how powerful it is or even on the quality of the materials.
To make things even more complicated- interesting you could set a D.C. scale. For example, instead of setting the D.C. at 10, thus considering any 10+ rolls a success and any rolls up to 9 a failure, you could say that a roll up to 7 is a fail, a roll from 8 to 12 is a partial success (the item is not as powerful as intended) and a roll of 13+ is a full success.
Another thing you could do is make the character hunt for materials. Spending gold does not give you what you need, if it is not available at a place or time. And then, you can offer alternatives for the materials, which, however, could compromise the item's quality.
And, of course, there is always the matter of the proper crafting equipment. The player might have some sort of kit, but maybe if they want to craft a sword, they should find a blacksmith, where they can use their skills and tools.
In any case, as the D.M. Guide says "the rules aren't in charge" so you can do whatever you think will make the process more challenging or interesting!
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I have a player who's interested in crafting, and if I were to use the crafting item section from Xanther's guide, it seems a little lackluster.
I'm looking for some suggestions as to how to make crafting an item feel more like a challenge, instead of 'it takes two weeks of your time and you spend x amount of gold'.
Do other DM's usually include some rolls to determine the item's quality or to see if there are set backs in production etc?
You could set a D.C. for the crafting of the item, depending on how powerful it is or even on the quality of the materials.
To make things even more complicated- interesting you could set a D.C. scale. For example, instead of setting the D.C. at 10, thus considering any 10+ rolls a success and any rolls up to 9 a failure, you could say that a roll up to 7 is a fail, a roll from 8 to 12 is a partial success (the item is not as powerful as intended) and a roll of 13+ is a full success.
Another thing you could do is make the character hunt for materials. Spending gold does not give you what you need, if it is not available at a place or time. And then, you can offer alternatives for the materials, which, however, could compromise the item's quality.
And, of course, there is always the matter of the proper crafting equipment. The player might have some sort of kit, but maybe if they want to craft a sword, they should find a blacksmith, where they can use their skills and tools.
In any case, as the D.M. Guide says "the rules aren't in charge" so you can do whatever you think will make the process more challenging or interesting!