One of my players has approached me about wanting me to create a smithing system so he can make and cell armor (Dwarven Forge Cleric.)
I have the concepts figured out the point i am struggling with is setting the price for the raw materials.
this is my current understanding of how this works in 5e
1 lb of material is equal to 50 coins.
1 lb of copper would be worth 50 copper
1 lb of silver would be worth 50 silver
1 lb of gold would be worth 50 gold
1 lb of platinum would be worth 50 platinum
1 lb of Mithril would be ???
1 lb of Adamantium would be ???
I have also added three custom metals Which will be used to forge (+1, +2, +3) items
1lbs of Metal#1 would be ???
1lb of Metal#2 would be ???
1lb of Metal#3 would be ???
I have a labor mechanic in mind so the cost of the raw material cant be to high because its basically just part of the "Able to complete task" condition and will be consumed as part of the task.
The first thing my cleric wants to craft will be a +1 Flail (his personal weapon of choice) according to the PHB the flail weighs 2lbs and has a value of 10 Gold. A +1 "enchantment" is ranked as uncommon. so the Labor required would be 520 Gold worth (2x item cost + enchantment level cost) and in order to work on it they would have to have 2 lbs of Metal#1 and smithing tools.
Are you planning on making the acquisition of rare materials part of the adventure?
If not - you might be making this overly complicated trying to figure out exact materials.
I think that Players might only really care about:
Can I obtain the material ( purchase and/or locate through adventure )?
Can I find the work space ( set up an appropriate workshop, or rent smithy and/or ritual space )?
How much time will it take me to do this?
Can I succeed?
The latter breaks down to:
Do I have access to spell effects that would replicate the effect I want? If not, I can't do this. If so, then I can automatically do this.
Do I have the construction skill, and what's the DC?
If you're looking at forging a +1 flail with a finished value of 500 g.p., then I'd say the finished item is worth 30% ( or 150 g.p. ) of materials, with the balance - or 350 g.p. - being equated to time and skill. If you fixed a conversion rate between "gold of labor" and time - I'm arbitrarily spit-balling a factor of 5 g.p / day - that equates to 70 days of downtime.
Target DC I'd equate to the Rarity of the item. Common @ DC 15, with 5 DC steps, until Legendary has a DC of 35. I'd say critical failures destroy the item, with normal failures consuming a portion of the materials and/or labor, based on the amount of failure ( maybe 10% per point of difference between roll and target DC? ).
Back to the flail, it would take 150 g.p. of material, 70 days of construction/engraving/consecrating time, a forging/enchanting DC of 15, and could only be built if the spellcrafter had a spell ( maybe Bless? ) they could incorporate into the item.
If your Cleric rolled a 12 on the DC of 15 ( a miss of 3, = 30% ), I'd say 30% of the material would need to be replaced, and 30% of the labor, which means that they could try again in 21 days of re-crafting, after spending another 105 g.p. on replacement materials.
So - arbitrary parameters you could "tune":
Percentage of book cost which represents materials and how much is labor.
Labor cost to time conversion factor.
DCs to craft the item
Amount of material and/or labor needing be replaced for each point gap between DC and crafting roll.
You could add all sorts of modifiers if you like and the player thinks of them:
Bonus/penalties for quality of materials
Bonus/penalties for quality of working facilities
Bonus/penalties for other people helping
Bonuses for particularly rare optional components ( read, quest! ) being included in the construction.
etc.
It's a different approach - but I hope it helps - or gives you some ideas to incorporate into your current system.
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so far every town he has traveled through he has been asking around where to find exotic ores, i spoke the player outside the game to kind of figure out what hes looking for ... it sounds like he wants to be able to craft his own gear and gear for the party ... As DM in my narrative i have always described weapons like a +1 long sword as a "Long sword with uncommonly good craftsmanship" because its strange to explain what a +1 enchantment is ...
He also wants to be able to craft things like adding the reach property to a flail or quarterstaff
By having the material be a thing it just allows me to adjust the game balance by making materials more or less common in the world.
Hmmm ... having this be a personal quest / RPG-flavor for the Player is an excellent reason for concentrating on the materials :)
I would - as you seem to be - roll with the player's approach, and reward them for taking an active role-playing approach to this.
If I were to extend my approach to include specific materials, I'd probably slot those under "positive modifiers for rare optional materials" - so that he could ( possibly - see below ) build an enchanted item out of ordinary high-quality steel, at the original DC - but his seeking out local exotic ores would allow him to incorporate materials which would make the crafting of such an item much easier - Lower DC, less crafting time, less loss of materials per point of a missed rolls, etc. This would reward him for seeking out exotic materials, without having to work out a complex metallurgical theory of enchanted weapon crafting.
If you want to control the production of such items for game balance - and to explain lore-wise why these aren't being pumped out in a factory somewhere - you just need to bottleneck one rare component that is required for enchanting any weapon.
I'd be tempted to make the acquisition of that substance a party quest, personally - and have whatever material you choose have small local quantities, which are quickly mined out - so repeat items requires repeat quests. How rare such deposits are would be directly related to how common enchanted items are in your world.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
In order to attempt to smith something the player must have ... enough metal to equal the weight of the item and blacksmiths tools (i offer three different levels of tools)
The quality of the item is dependent on the metal being used.
Common Base Value of Smithing Materials
Material
Cost
Material
Cost
1 Lb of Copper
0.5 gp
1 Lb of Mithril
25 gp
1 Lb of Silver
5 gp
1 Lb of Adamantium
25 gp
1 Lb of Electrum
25 gp
1 Lb of Elyrium
25 gp
1 Lb of Gold
50 gp
1 Lb of Thallium
50 gp
1 Lb of Platinum
500 gp
1 Lb of Promethium
500 gp
1 Lb of Steel
1 gp
1 Lb of Durantium
50 gp
Quality of Crafting Multiplier Base Values
Quality level
Quality Value
Quality Modifier
Common
0 GP
.5
Uncommon
500 GP
2
Rare
5,000 GP
3
Very Rare
50,000 GP
4
Legendary
500,000 GP
5
The Crafting Formula
Effort = (Quality Modifier * Base Cost of item) + Quality Value + Weapon Property Modification Value
Effort = The total time and/or money of required to create an item.
The Crafting Process
For every hour dedicated to the task, the player will roll 1d20 and add their proficiency modifier, unless other rules override these defaults. This value will be subtracted from the effort amount remaining toward crafting the item.
i reckon your mithril and adamant prices are a bit low, personally i'd work out the price of a set of armour made from it and how much that weighs, then divide one by t'other
so say mithril plate costs 3 times what steel plate does, but weighs only half as much.
that's 4.5k for the steel plate, and it wieghs 32.5 lbs. so say rough calculation 140gp per lb of weight when it's worked, half that for raw materials and we have about 70GP per pound of mithril bullion.
for your adamantium then say it costs 5 times that of a suit of plate armour, but weighs the same, so you're looking at around 115 GP per lb worked and half that say 60 gp perlb for bullion bar weight.
also consider that making adamant is a pain in the crevice, hitting it shatters normal hammers, blunts files and causes lots of swearing from the dwarven smiths who normally do it, so they make special smithing tools to do it and they make them out of adamantium. in a multi stage process, first you make a rough adamant tool so you can make a finer quality tool and repeat till happy with your tool quality., once you have a decent hammer, then make a decent file, use your nice posh hammer to form a bar, then blunt lots of diamonds and spend lots of hours cutting the file teeth in it, then you can think about working adamantium into something else. without that preparation you're stuffed
I was planning on just using the rarity of the material to limit things like that ... if each shop only has like a few pcs ... and they need 33 pcs to make the suit it will take a long time to gather the necessary parts. I dont really want to penalize them a whole lot more with making it super expensive as well, although 60-70 GP per pcs isnt excessive ... but a certain point it is no longer cheaper to make something than buy it.
it's still going to work out cheaper as those prices are calculated from half the cost of buying a suit of plate made from it. unless your other premiums that you're adding on are too high. though that can be explained by the cost of making adamantium tools being factored in to make one set. which makes it a waste of time doing unless you're going to use the tools more than once
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
my other question is, hows he going to get access to a forge to do it is he a member of a craftsmans guild, if not they're not going to allow him to use them and asking a dwarf for the loan of his tools and forge would receive a slightly more hostile reception than if you asked to sleep with his wife, craftsmen invest lots of money in guild memberships, establishing their own forges, it's their lively hood, they're not going to be choughed with any so and so rocking up and demanding to use their facilities for nothing.
that's why you go find a master craftsman and pay them lots of money to make things for you, because the other option should be absurdly expensive for making a one off yourself.
having said that, that's applying my version of worldbuilding to the matter, it's your world where you do as you like to create your vision in which case i'd completely ignore everything i've just said :)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
The character is a member of the merchants guild who is on a mission to try to discover new materials to make weapons and such from ... bring home new crafting ideas to the last Dwarven stronghold.... So im allowing him to use merchant guild facilities in major cities to do the forging in ...
seems reasonable to me , the main things are you makes your decisions, reason them out and then be consistent with them for your own world and you're definitely covering that
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
that was a highly valuable contribution excellent work well done
though if you want to be really picky about things i was getting confused, it should be adamantium for the raw ore adamant for bullion and adamantine for crafted objects
i mean if we are being all technical ... i dont think Mithril in 5e is any lighter than the steal version of its product.... its just described as light and flexible and waives the stealth disadvantage but the actual item weight is the same ... i think it was half back in 3.5 ... but you know ... reasons ...
How about a lvl 11(8) forge cleric with x5 modifier on all forge abilities thanks to moridans hammer, lvl 1 (knowledge) lvl 1 war, lvl 1 grave. With a strength of 28, and a 2 handed great handed greatsword of Dwarvish fire. Bu iol les things just by thinking and praying real hard.
One of my players has approached me about wanting me to create a smithing system so he can make and cell armor (Dwarven Forge Cleric.)
I have the concepts figured out the point i am struggling with is setting the price for the raw materials.
this is my current understanding of how this works in 5e
1 lb of material is equal to 50 coins.
I have also added three custom metals Which will be used to forge (+1, +2, +3) items
I have a labor mechanic in mind so the cost of the raw material cant be to high because its basically just part of the "Able to complete task" condition and will be consumed as part of the task.
The first thing my cleric wants to craft will be a +1 Flail (his personal weapon of choice) according to the PHB the flail weighs 2lbs and has a value of 10 Gold. A +1 "enchantment" is ranked as uncommon. so the Labor required would be 520 Gold worth (2x item cost + enchantment level cost) and in order to work on it they would have to have 2 lbs of Metal#1 and smithing tools.
thoughts ?
Are you planning on making the acquisition of rare materials part of the adventure?
If not - you might be making this overly complicated trying to figure out exact materials.
I think that Players might only really care about:
The latter breaks down to:
If you're looking at forging a +1 flail with a finished value of 500 g.p., then I'd say the finished item is worth 30% ( or 150 g.p. ) of materials, with the balance - or 350 g.p. - being equated to time and skill. If you fixed a conversion rate between "gold of labor" and time - I'm arbitrarily spit-balling a factor of 5 g.p / day - that equates to 70 days of downtime.
Target DC I'd equate to the Rarity of the item. Common @ DC 15, with 5 DC steps, until Legendary has a DC of 35. I'd say critical failures destroy the item, with normal failures consuming a portion of the materials and/or labor, based on the amount of failure ( maybe 10% per point of difference between roll and target DC? ).
Back to the flail, it would take 150 g.p. of material, 70 days of construction/engraving/consecrating time, a forging/enchanting DC of 15, and could only be built if the spellcrafter had a spell ( maybe Bless? ) they could incorporate into the item.
If your Cleric rolled a 12 on the DC of 15 ( a miss of 3, = 30% ), I'd say 30% of the material would need to be replaced, and 30% of the labor, which means that they could try again in 21 days of re-crafting, after spending another 105 g.p. on replacement materials.
So - arbitrary parameters you could "tune":
You could add all sorts of modifiers if you like and the player thinks of them:
It's a different approach - but I hope it helps - or gives you some ideas to incorporate into your current system.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
so far every town he has traveled through he has been asking around where to find exotic ores, i spoke the player outside the game to kind of figure out what hes looking for ... it sounds like he wants to be able to craft his own gear and gear for the party ... As DM in my narrative i have always described weapons like a +1 long sword as a "Long sword with uncommonly good craftsmanship" because its strange to explain what a +1 enchantment is ...
He also wants to be able to craft things like adding the reach property to a flail or quarterstaff
By having the material be a thing it just allows me to adjust the game balance by making materials more or less common in the world.
Hmmm ... having this be a personal quest / RPG-flavor for the Player is an excellent reason for concentrating on the materials :)
I would - as you seem to be - roll with the player's approach, and reward them for taking an active role-playing approach to this.
If I were to extend my approach to include specific materials, I'd probably slot those under "positive modifiers for rare optional materials" - so that he could ( possibly - see below ) build an enchanted item out of ordinary high-quality steel, at the original DC - but his seeking out local exotic ores would allow him to incorporate materials which would make the crafting of such an item much easier - Lower DC, less crafting time, less loss of materials per point of a missed rolls, etc. This would reward him for seeking out exotic materials, without having to work out a complex metallurgical theory of enchanted weapon crafting.
If you want to control the production of such items for game balance - and to explain lore-wise why these aren't being pumped out in a factory somewhere - you just need to bottleneck one rare component that is required for enchanting any weapon.
I'd be tempted to make the acquisition of that substance a party quest, personally - and have whatever material you choose have small local quantities, which are quickly mined out - so repeat items requires repeat quests. How rare such deposits are would be directly related to how common enchanted items are in your world.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Okay so here is my plan for concept ...
In order to attempt to smith something the player must have ... enough metal to equal the weight of the item and blacksmiths tools (i offer three different levels of tools)
The quality of the item is dependent on the metal being used.
Common Base Value of Smithing Materials
Material
Cost
Material
Cost
1 Lb of Copper
0.5 gp
1 Lb of Mithril
25 gp
1 Lb of Silver
5 gp
1 Lb of Adamantium
25 gp
1 Lb of Electrum
25 gp
1 Lb of Elyrium
25 gp
1 Lb of Gold
50 gp
1 Lb of Thallium
50 gp
1 Lb of Platinum
500 gp
1 Lb of Promethium
500 gp
1 Lb of Steel
1 gp
1 Lb of Durantium
50 gp
Quality of Crafting Multiplier Base Values
Quality level
Quality Value
Quality Modifier
Common
0 GP
.5
Uncommon
500 GP
2
Rare
5,000 GP
3
Very Rare
50,000 GP
4
Legendary
500,000 GP
5
The Crafting Formula
Effort = (Quality Modifier * Base Cost of item) + Quality Value + Weapon Property Modification Value
Effort = The total time and/or money of required to create an item.
The Crafting Process
For every hour dedicated to the task, the player will roll 1d20 and add their proficiency modifier, unless other rules override these defaults. This value will be subtracted from the effort amount remaining toward crafting the item.
i reckon your mithril and adamant prices are a bit low, personally i'd work out the price of a set of armour made from it and how much that weighs, then divide one by t'other
so say mithril plate costs 3 times what steel plate does, but weighs only half as much.
that's 4.5k for the steel plate, and it wieghs 32.5 lbs. so say rough calculation 140gp per lb of weight when it's worked, half that for raw materials and we have about 70GP per pound of mithril bullion.
for your adamantium then say it costs 5 times that of a suit of plate armour, but weighs the same, so you're looking at around 115 GP per lb worked and half that say 60 gp perlb for bullion bar weight.
also consider that making adamant is a pain in the crevice, hitting it shatters normal hammers, blunts files and causes lots of swearing from the dwarven smiths who normally do it, so they make special smithing tools to do it and they make them out of adamantium. in a multi stage process, first you make a rough adamant tool so you can make a finer quality tool and repeat till happy with your tool quality., once you have a decent hammer, then make a decent file, use your nice posh hammer to form a bar, then blunt lots of diamonds and spend lots of hours cutting the file teeth in it, then you can think about working adamantium into something else. without that preparation you're stuffed
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
I was planning on just using the rarity of the material to limit things like that ... if each shop only has like a few pcs ... and they need 33 pcs to make the suit it will take a long time to gather the necessary parts. I dont really want to penalize them a whole lot more with making it super expensive as well, although 60-70 GP per pcs isnt excessive ... but a certain point it is no longer cheaper to make something than buy it.
it's still going to work out cheaper as those prices are calculated from half the cost of buying a suit of plate made from it. unless your other premiums that you're adding on are too high. though that can be explained by the cost of making adamantium tools being factored in to make one set. which makes it a waste of time doing unless you're going to use the tools more than once
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
my other question is, hows he going to get access to a forge to do it is he a member of a craftsmans guild, if not they're not going to allow him to use them and asking a dwarf for the loan of his tools and forge would receive a slightly more hostile reception than if you asked to sleep with his wife, craftsmen invest lots of money in guild memberships, establishing their own forges, it's their lively hood, they're not going to be choughed with any so and so rocking up and demanding to use their facilities for nothing.
that's why you go find a master craftsman and pay them lots of money to make things for you, because the other option should be absurdly expensive for making a one off yourself.
having said that, that's applying my version of worldbuilding to the matter, it's your world where you do as you like to create your vision in which case i'd completely ignore everything i've just said :)
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
The character is a member of the merchants guild who is on a mission to try to discover new materials to make weapons and such from ... bring home new crafting ideas to the last Dwarven stronghold.... So im allowing him to use merchant guild facilities in major cities to do the forging in ...
seems reasonable to me , the main things are you makes your decisions, reason them out and then be consistent with them for your own world and you're definitely covering that
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
it is adamantine, not adamantium.
that was a highly valuable contribution excellent work well done
though if you want to be really picky about things i was getting confused, it should be adamantium for the raw ore adamant for bullion and adamantine for crafted objects
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
yes i realized that and edited my notes after i posted it ... pop culture vs dnd doesnt always work out right lol
i mean if we are being all technical ... i dont think Mithril in 5e is any lighter than the steal version of its product.... its just described as light and flexible and waives the stealth disadvantage but the actual item weight is the same ... i think it was half back in 3.5 ... but you know ... reasons ...
How about a lvl 11(8) forge cleric with x5 modifier on all forge abilities thanks to moridans hammer, lvl 1 (knowledge) lvl 1 war, lvl 1 grave. With a strength of 28, and a 2 handed great handed greatsword of Dwarvish fire. Bu iol les things just by thinking and praying real hard.
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