It reminds me of a movie scene (Knight's Tale?) where an artisan takes a chunk of a statuette to keep as payment. This is an example of Trade Goods to me.
It reminds me of a movie scene (Knight's Tale?) where an artisan takes a chunk of a statuette to keep as payment. This is an example of Trade Goods to me.
I don't know if that's right, but I've seen Knight's Tale and I remember that or a similar scene. The Artisan would have probably been the female blacksmith. I would call that accepting an Art Object as payment (with change?) but whether that's Art Goods or Trade Goods, it is functionally the same; they are standing in for a payment in traditional currency.
You wouldn't build a suit of plate from raw iron, you'd build it from a bunch of less processed parts such as metal plates, but raw materials are really just an abstraction for a crafting system that itself is only vaguely correlated with reality.
RAW they leave the “appropriate” open to DM discretion. Yes the DM is a gatekeeper. What I am saying is it implies there are appropriate and inappropriate raw materials, it is not just an input or a nebulous transaction.
As you said before, you aren’t going to make plate armor with 300 pounds of cinnamon. but you could trade it for iron, silver, and gold.
If you killed a young dragon and got a bunch of trade goods in the horde, you could swap them for other trade goods you need from a merchant, right?
If trade goods did not exist I would jump on board with the nebulous abstraction approach. But because they exist and can be traded and purchased, I think that is RAI raw materials.
Trade Goods are not raw materials. Trade Goods are functional substitutes for Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Copper.
Trade Goods are goods that are used by artisans and less common than wood that can simply be harvested from a tree.
They are traded by merchants via the barter system and maintain their value when resold.
The trade goods section provides the price per pound of raw materials like iron, canvas or silk that are needed for crafting. From this list and the gear stats we can infer formulas for crafting.
This requires advanced experience and good math skills to calculate the precise formulas. It is easier to skip it and narrate “you bought the raw materials from a merchant”.
However with implements treasure theme you can also get things for free during adventures and might even be able ti use Fabricate to create new items before even leaving the dungeon.
You wouldn't build a suit of plate from raw iron, you'd build it from a bunch of less processed parts such as metal plates, but raw materials are really just an abstraction for a crafting system that itself is only vaguely correlated with reality.
Right. There is a lot that goes into a suit of plate armor that isn't metal and I don't want to see a crafting system that itemizes it out. Just the fact that you can complete plate armor on the go with an 8-pound kit should tell anyone that realism is not a goal. If anyone is fashioning armor out of metal alone and wearing just that is ... brave and I hope them a speedy recovery.
In addition to the straps of the armor itself, you would have leather straps and padded layers underneath. The notion of turning 1 or 3 types of metals into full plate is overly simplistic.
You wouldn't build a suit of plate from raw iron, you'd build it from a bunch of less processed parts such as metal plates, but raw materials are really just an abstraction for a crafting system that itself is only vaguely correlated with reality.
Right. There is a lot that goes into a suit of plate armor that isn't metal and I don't want to see a crafting system that itemizes it out. Just the fact that you can complete plate armor on the go with an 8-pound kit should tell anyone that realism is not a goal. If anyone is fashioning armor out of metal alone and wearing just that is ... brave and I hope them a speedy recovery.
In addition to the straps of the armor itself, you would have leather straps and padded layers underneath. The notion of turning 1 or 3 types of metals into full plate is overly simplistic.
* Proceeds to promote crafting from GP *
For plate armor you could assume a pound or two of wool and leather. Its not rocket science. If you used a formula to get it to about 745 gp and then just bought the rest from a merchant that would satisfy me as a DM.
The key here is the player crafter needs to figure out the formula if they are crafting from trade goods from treasure hauls.
Since slow crafting takes a while, I would suggest a chest or sack for the project that can be stored in a wagon. Obviously you won’t be crafting plate armor on the road while traveling. But it is conceivable to ride in a wagon and weave or what have you. It depends on the campaign.
In my mind slow crafting is for Elf Time and down time between sessions, when the party has lodgings and is spending time in a city. This is a fairly reasonable concept in the medieval fantasy world.
You wouldn't build a suit of plate from raw iron, you'd build it from a bunch of less processed parts such as metal plates, but raw materials are really just an abstraction for a crafting system that itself is only vaguely correlated with reality.
Sure. All I’m saying is there is enough in the rulebooks to infer formulas for crafting. But only for advanced players who are good at math and spreadsheets.
For plate armor you could assume a pound or two of wool and leather.
No, you can't.
That's not the purpose of Trade Goods
The form the Trade Goods are in is never described
Wool and Leather are not Trade Goods, Sheep and Pigs are. This is also consistent with my previous suggestion that the Iron Trade Good is unrefined iron ore and not ingots.
The key here is the player crafter needs to figure out the formula if they are crafting from trade goods from treasure hauls.
Since slow crafting takes a while, I would suggest a chest or sack for the project that can be stored in a wagon. Obviously you won’t be crafting plate armor on the road while traveling. But it is conceivable to ride in a wagon and weave or what have you. It depends on the campaign.
You can craft with Smith's Tools which weigh 8 pounds and raw materials which have no defined weight. Your take relies on the DM handwaving Trade Goods into raw materials instead of the RAW process of purchasing the raw materials. Yes, RAW is a weird abstraction, but RAW sometimes works out that way. This is not a physics simulator and this is not a crafting simulator. RAW is that you buy the materials with coin or Trade Goods unless your DM determines that they are not currently available.
You wouldn't build a suit of plate from raw iron, you'd build it from a bunch of less processed parts such as metal plates, but raw materials are really just an abstraction for a crafting system that itself is only vaguely correlated with reality.
Sure. All I’m saying is there is enough in the rulebooks to infer formulas for crafting. But only for advanced players who are good at math and spreadsheets.
(I …. can math…..)
I mean, I don't think anyone is saying you can't do any of that in your game... but none of that is RAW. And RAW is all this subforum is for. Inferring crafting formulas and then turning Trade Goods (i.e. NOT Crafting Goods) into some type of material component for your crafting is all well and good for those who enjoy that kind of thing, but that has nothing to do with RAW.
For plate armor you could assume a pound or two of wool and leather.
No, you can't.
That's not the purpose of Trade Goods
The form the Trade Goods are in is never described
Wool and Leather are not Trade Goods, Sheep and Pigs are. This is also consistent with my previous suggestion that the Iron Trade Good is unrefined iron ore and not ingots.
The key here is the player crafter needs to figure out the formula if they are crafting from trade goods from treasure hauls.
Since slow crafting takes a while, I would suggest a chest or sack for the project that can be stored in a wagon. Obviously you won’t be crafting plate armor on the road while traveling. But it is conceivable to ride in a wagon and weave or what have you. It depends on the campaign.
You can craft with Smith's Tools which weigh 8 pounds and raw materials which have no defined weight. Your take relies on the DM handwaving Trade Goods into raw materials instead of the RAW process of purchasing the raw materials. Yes, RAW is a weird abstraction, but RAW sometimes works out that way. This is not a physics simulator and this is not a crafting simulator. RAW is that you buy the materials with coin or Trade Goods unless your DM determines that they are not currently available.
Look, your OP is about whether or not Crafter Discount applies to raw materials when crafting. Am I wrong?
Your basic position is “no” because raw materials are not items.
But the text does not define items, nor fully define raw materials. RAW, it is DM discretion.
So within the “DM discretion” framework of the rules I am discussing RAW trade goods and RAW trade good prices per pound and RAW weights of crafted gear and RAW the word “appropriate” and the text of the Fabricate and the text of the Crafter feat and the text of the crafting rules, etc etc etc.
Your position assumes a narrow definition of “item”, a specifically vague assumed definition of raw materials, a completely worthless interpretation of the Crafter feat, and it seems to be all tied to the fact that as a DM you are simply annoyed by the idea of a D&D player taking time to craft rather than going on your adventures. And that last part I fully understand, and it deserves a separate conversation about the role of crafting in the game, how to handle exploits and antics, how to kindly sabotage stupid players, and how to refocus an off task party that wants to skip your carefully planned quests and plotlines in order to make shiny sparkly things. Am I wrong?
RAW…. and this is a fact, Smite….. the 2024 crafting rules are not well organized and have to be pieced together. Pretty much everybody I talk to would love to craft a little. So here we are, trying to figure out how to do it.
RAW…. in the PHB DM determines if raw materials are available for non-magical items. I am making the case that part of that is setting up stores, theming treasures, and building in opportunities for downtime in the narrative in order to allow for this.
And RAW, you can exchange trade goods for the correct raw materials in order to craft gear…. even with your narrow definition of items. I am simply making the case that metals make plate armor and they have a determined value RAW, are available at merchants and in treasure hordes, and exist in the world of D&D.
If RAW is simply how the text reads, RAW it is DM’s discretion. So I am sharing this DM’s discretion as part of the RAW framework. What’s the problem in my logic? Because as far as I can tell, you just hate crafting and want to be right about it.
You wouldn't build a suit of plate from raw iron, you'd build it from a bunch of less processed parts such as metal plates, but raw materials are really just an abstraction for a crafting system that itself is only vaguely correlated with reality.
Sure. All I’m saying is there is enough in the rulebooks to infer formulas for crafting. But only for advanced players who are good at math and spreadsheets.
(I …. can math…..)
I mean, I don't think anyone is saying you can't do any of that in your game... but none of that is RAW. And RAW is all this subforum is for. Inferring crafting formulas and then turning Trade Goods (i.e. NOT Crafting Goods) into some type of material component for your crafting is all well and good for those who enjoy that kind of thing, but that has nothing to do with RAW.
RAW it is DM’s discretion in the PHB but in the DMG they outline trade goods as a kind of treasure and explain the market for these items, that they are commonly traded, etc.
So are trade goods merely for roleplay flavor? Or do they have actual uses? If I buy a cow, kill it, can I make a ton of beef jerky with Cooking Utensils and salt? Or must I ignore the text of the Chef feat and the Chef tools?
If I buy a sheep, can I sheer it with weaving tools, spin yarn, and make wool garments?
If I buy a canvas, can I use Painting Tools to paint a picture? Or is this just a substitute for gold pieces for flavor?
Nobody will ever be able to convince me that tools applied to these trade goods will not produce other products.
Trade goods only really exist to be entries in a loot table -- if you want to, say, produce food, you don't look up the components of food on the trade goods table, you look at the Food, Drink, and Lodging table, and there has been zero effort to be consistent with the trade goods rules. Frankly, the trade goods table is a waste of space -- the numbers are mostly nonsense, and also serve no real purpose in game.
Trade goods only really exist to be entries in a loot table -- if you want to, say, produce food, you don't look up the components of food on the trade goods table, you look at the Food, Drink, and Lodging table, and there has been zero effort to be consistent with the trade goods rules. Frankly, the trade goods table is a waste of space -- the numbers are mostly nonsense, and also serve no real purpose in game.
I don’t want to overthink it.
I think the discount applies to raw materials because they are non-magical items that can be purchased from merchants, and so should get the discount.
In practice it will be handled in about 30 seconds of table narrative, will likely be handled as a transaction, etc. I bring up the trade goods to merely suggest the possibility of House Ruling crafting formulas within the RAW framework of “DM determination.”
Either RAW or a house rule, anyone who takes Crafter is getting 20% off all non-magical everything except services and such.
Look, your OP is about whether or not Crafter Discount applies to raw materials when crafting. Am I wrong?
Your basic position is “no” because raw materials are not items.
But the text does not define items, nor fully define raw materials. RAW, it is DM discretion.
The text does not have a Rules Glossary entry for "item" but does have several patterns with regards to the use of the term. That pattern is item refers to end results. Things that are used by adventurers in their own right. Raw materials are not used in their own right and the description for raw materials says that they are expended used to make items, not other items, not manufactured items. That wording suggests that raw materials are used to produce items and are not themselves items because the only thing distinguishing raw materials from the end product is that the end product is an item. By the normal rules of grammar, that means that an item is different than a raw material.
Your position assumes a narrow definition of “item”, a specifically vague assumed definition of raw materials, a completely worthless interpretation of the Crafter feat, and it seems to be all tied to the fact that as a DM you are simply annoyed by the idea of a D&D player taking time to craft rather than going on your adventures. And that last part I fully understand, and it deserves a separate conversation about the role of crafting in the game, how to handle exploits and antics, how to kindly sabotage stupid players, and how to refocus an off task party that wants to skip your carefully planned quests and plotlines in order to make shiny sparkly things. Am I wrong?
You are wrong on many facts. You assume that I want D&D to have a lame crafting system. I have tended to have Paladins (or Templars or Crusaders) since 3rd edition and Artificers since 3.5. I had Alchemists and Tarot Mages in Rolemaster, which probably means nothing to most people here. I evaluate crafting in every RPG I play. It's WotC doesn't want players crafting items, not me. You are on the Rules & Game Mechanics espousing DM fiat as a substitute for evaluating RAW and RAI. This is not really the place for that. There is the Dungeon Masters Only and Homebrew & House Rules for discussing table rules. That's technically off topic here.
RAW…. and this is a fact, Smite….. the 2024 crafting rules are not well organized and have to be pieced together. Pretty much everybody I talk to would love to craft a little. So here we are, trying to figure out how to do it.
2024 crafting is a slight improvement than 2014 but a massive downgrade from 3.x. I strongly believe that WotC does not want PCs to craft items. Maybe they don't want them to because they "balance" everything around a target GP for a level even though they say that they balance everything ignoring magic items. I don't know. I get the strong feeling that they don't want PCs crafting. They want magic items found in treasure, not bought and sold. They want Bastion NPCs to do your crafting for you. The Artificer update for 2024 even curbed their crafting in some respects, and that is the "crafting" class.
RAW…. in the PHB DM determines if raw materials are available for non-magical items. I am making the case that part of that is setting up stores, theming treasures, and building in opportunities for downtime in the narrative in order to allow for this.
And RAW, you can exchange trade goods for the correct raw materials in order to craft gear…. even with your narrow definition of items. I am simply making the case that metals make plate armor and they have a determined value RAW, are available at merchants and in treasure hordes, and exist in the world of D&D.
If RAW is simply how the text reads, RAW it is DM’s discretion. So I am sharing this DM’s discretion as part of the RAW framework. What’s the problem in my logic? Because as far as I can tell, you just hate crafting and want to be right about it.
Instead of spending currency for raw materials, you can indeed spend Trade Goods for those raw materials. I don't think anyone has disagreed with you. Whether the raw materials are available will be subject to DM discretion. The problem is that you are presenting your "DM's discretion" as if it was the RAW or RAI; you are not presenting it as your table rules like you claim to be here. If you are the DM, you are welcome to adjudicate at your table any way you like. If you are the player, you will be subject to your DM's discretion.
Always strive to understand RAW and RAI to the best of your ability and then change the parts you don't like or don't work for you. RAW is not an end goal, it's a foundation.
The text does not have a Rules Glossary entry for "item" but does have several patterns with regards to the use of the term. That pattern is item refers to end results. Things that are used by adventurers in their own right. Raw materials are not used in their own right and the description for raw materials says that they are expended used to make items, not other items, not manufactured items. That wording suggests that raw materials are used to produce items and are not themselves items because the only thing distinguishing raw materials from the end product is that the end product is an item. By the normal rules of grammar, that means that an item is different than a raw material.
You are wrong on many facts. You assume that I want D&D to have a lame crafting system. I have tended to have Paladins (or Templars or Crusaders) since 3rd edition and Artificers since 3.5. I had Alchemists and Tarot Mages in Rolemaster, which probably means nothing to most people here. I evaluate crafting in every RPG I play. It's WotC doesn't want players crafting items, not me. You are on the Rules & Game Mechanics espousing DM fiat as a substitute for evaluating RAW and RAI. This is not really the place for that. There is the Dungeon Masters Only and Homebrew & House Rules for discussing table rules. That's technically off topic here.
2024 crafting is a slight improvement than 2014 but a massive downgrade from 3.x. I strongly believe that WotC does not want PCs to craft items. Maybe they don't want them to because they "balance" everything around a target GP for a level even though they say that they balance everything ignoring magic items. I don't know. I get the strong feeling that they don't want PCs crafting. They want magic items found in treasure, not bought and sold. They want Bastion NPCs to do your crafting for you. The Artificer update for 2024 even curbed their crafting in some respects, and that is the "crafting" class.
Instead of spending currency for raw materials, you can indeed spend Trade Goods for those raw materials. I don't think anyone has disagreed with you. Whether the raw materials are available will be subject to DM discretion. The problem is that you are presenting your "DM's discretion" as if it was the RAW or RAI; you are not presenting it as your table rules like you claim to be here. If you are the DM, you are welcome to adjudicate at your table any way you like. If you are the player, you will be subject to your DM's discretion.
Always strive to understand RAW and RAI to the best of your ability and then change the parts you don't like or don't work for you. RAW is not an end goal, it's a foundation.
Your personal House Ruled “item definition” does not make sense logically to me. For one, saying that a raw material is not an item because it is not used seems to overlook the fact that raw materials are used in crafting, therefore are used. You are limiting the definition of item to basically equipment. But that simply is not the case.
What’s more difficult to reconcile is that non-magical items can be used as a component in crafting magical items, even reducing the amount of raw materials used. By your definition an item ceases being an item during the crafting of a magical item and does not become an item again until it emerges as a magical item. This might not be your actual view but it is the implication of your definition of item.
You reference “normal rules of grammar” at one point. I mean if we are doing that, lets also look at regular semantics. Absent a special D&D definition would not the normal definition apply? Item: “an individual article or unit, especially one that is part of a list, collection, or set.” It has nothing to do with how a thing is used, but how it is part of a list, collection, or set. Raw materials like iron, silk, canvas and linen are listed in trade goods, and are items on the list. And they are non-magical and can be purchased.
As far as your motives on this topic…. thank you for clarifying. This was not a personal attack but merely pattern recognition on my part. You might very well prefer crafting in other rpg systems over 2024 D&D. I think the rules in 2024 are uniquely designed to promote crafting low level items but to limit the creation of game breaking magical items and to maintain DM control over these things. Even with Fabricate, you are limited to non-magical items and must have the raw materials.
The part that I think you are forgetting with raw materials is that RAW they have to be targeted by the Fabricate spell. You can get them from the environment (ie a grove of trees, a patch of hemp). They are not nebulous abstractions but physical targets. They are not an input of gold but real items that are transmuted into something else. Here is the text of Fabricate:
“You convert raw materials into products of the same material. For example, you can fabricate a wooden bridge from a clump of trees, a rope from a patch of hemp, or clothes from flax or wool.
Choose raw materials that you can see within range. You can fabricate a Large or smaller object (contained within a 10-foot Cube or eight connected 5-foot Cubes) given a sufficient quantity of material. If you’re working with metal, stone, or another mineral substance, however, the fabricated object can be no larger than Medium (contained within a 5-foot Cube). The quality of any fabricated objects is based on the quality of the raw materials.”
The part you fairly point out is that I am discussing my DM take on raw materials. The issue is the PHB simply says “DM determines” and I am trying to base this determination on the broader rules of D&D.
We can discuss both RAW and RAI. I believe that trade goods are raw materials RAI, even though they do not have the RAW label. The reason is because of the language of the Fabricate spell seems to imply that raw materials can be physically seen and targeted within range of the spell. Whats more is the quality of them matters. So to me this implies there are at least two levels of raw materials: low quality and high quality. I think the case can be made RAI that trade goods are “high quality” but ones in nature can be either and it simply depends on the source. Healthy trees provide high quality wood….. diseased and drought stricken trees probably lower quality. I think its DM discretion, but do DM’s have a logical thought process here?
Raw materials are tangible items in the world that players and DMs are supposed to be able to see and evaluate the quality of. That is RAW.
On trade goods, is generally a list of if you were to trade X its value is Y so it could trade for something equivalent. But yeah I think if you were trying t buy 1 lb of silk it would cost you 8GP instead of 10. Now if you were trying to use it as an item of trade it would still only "buy" one cow. You would not get 2GP back. And if you tried to sell the silk to a merchant you would get 5GP as selling items to merchants you get 50%. So I do not think it would create a infinite money glitch.
As for are they items, yeah and the trade list is useful for ballparking how much it would cost to make something that is not in the PH. Why is it just listed as RAW goods, well because they don't want a 10,000 page manual listing every bit and part necessary to make every crafted item in the game. And then explain under every item what those raw goods are. For your soup you are going to need 1 chicken carcass, 1 pound of chicken meat, 2 tsp of salt, pepper, 4 carrots, 2 celery, 1 onion, 1 ounce of thyme, 1 bay leaf, 1 gallon water.. That would be absurd, so they abstract it to 1/2 the value in raw materials. But they are still items, just items they felt no need to list in detail. And since almost none of us will know all the materials necessary to build your castle or whatever it makes it easier on the player and DM to just say I buy all the materials I need to build my thingamabob.
Your personal House Ruled “item definition” does not make sense logically to me. For one, saying that a raw material is not an item because it is not used seems to overlook the fact that raw materials are used in crafting, therefore are used. You are limiting the definition of item to basically equipment. But that simply
Context is not a house rule. The text that raw materials are used creates items suggests that the two are different. The fact that adventurers do not normally craft is consistent with "items" being end products and raw materials are not "items". The way crafting was buried in the 5e rules was a major complaint when they came out and Xanathar's provided additional details in response. While the situation has improved in some ways with the 2024, I think WotC is still treating crafting as something adventurers don't do. The mechanics make the task still difficult for characters to undertake themselves and instead you have mechanics for NPCs crafting for you via Bastions and purchasing equipment. The money awards will tend to scale such that it is not worth the time to craft anything yourself; just buy it if it's a thing you can buy or sell.
What’s more difficult to reconcile is that non-magical items can be used as a component in crafting magical items, even reducing the amount of raw materials used.
When a mundane item is required for crafting a magic item, it is separate from the raw materials for the magic item. The mundane item is not a raw material and it does not reduce the raw materials. If you are crafting Uncommon Magic Plate Armor, you have to provide 200 GP in raw materials and Plate Armor which you can buy for 1,500 GP or craft for 750 GP. If you think mundane items are reducing the raw material cost of magic items, reread the DMG.
You reference “normal rules of grammar” at one point. I mean if we are doing that, lets also look at regular semantics. Absent a special D&D definition would not the normal definition apply? Item: “an individual article or unit, especially one that is part of a list, collection, or set.” It has nothing to do with how a thing is used, but how it is part of a list, collection, or set. Raw materials like iron, silk, canvas and linen are listed in trade goods, and are items on the list. And they are non-magical
No, but only because we need to examine the sentence structure to infer a definition. I have repeatedly stated that the usage suggests a meaning or intent. You are free to disregard it or disagree with it without needing a counter. However, a dictionary definition, isn't particularly helpful in this case. "a list, collection, or set" have no significance if they are not limited. For example, a collection could be whole numbers and 1 would be a member but 1.5 would not even though they would both be a part of a collection of numbers or real numbers. Without a definition of a list, collection, or set, the dictionary definition does nothing for us. The writing pattern and the definition of raw materials does suggest that raw materials and items are not included in the same sets.
As far as your motives on this topic…. thank you for clarifying. This was not a personal attack but merely pattern recognition on my part. You might very well prefer crafting in other rpg systems over 2024 D&D. I think the rules in 2024 are uniquely designed to promote crafting low level items but to limit the creation of game breaking magical items and to maintain DM control over these things.
Accusing another of "hating crafting" and "needing to be right" are personal attacks and they weren't the only ones.
And no, D&D's rules are not particularly good at either except in that they limit player crafting in general.
The reason is because of the language of the Fabricate spell seems to imply that raw materials can be physically seen and targeted within range of the spell. Whats more is the quality of them matters. So to me this implies there are at least two levels of raw materials: low quality and high quality. I think the case can be made RAI that trade goods are “high quality” but ones in nature can be either and it simply depends on the source. Healthy trees provide high quality wood….. diseased and drought stricken trees probably lower quality. I think its DM discretion, but do DM’s have a logical thought process here?
Raw materials are tangible items in the world that players and DMs are supposed to be able to see and evaluate the quality of. That is RAW.
Fabricate doesn't care about the quality of raw materials. Mechanically, all that matters is the GP value of the raw materials and/or DM's thumbs up. There is no quality level.
On trade goods, is generally a list of if you were to trade X its value is Y so it could trade for something equivalent. But yeah I think if you were trying t buy 1 lb of silk it would cost you 8GP instead of 10. Now if you were trying to use it as an item of trade it would still only "buy" one cow. You would not get 2GP back. And if you tried to sell the silk to a merchant you would get 5GP as selling items to merchants you get 50%. So I do not think it would create a infinite money glitch.
For Trade Goods, it's an infinite money glitch, but a boring and uninteresting one. You buy 1 pound of silk for 8 GP and sell it for 10 GP. Trade Goods are not sold at half cost. When you sell them, you get the full value.
Selling Equipment
Equipment fetches half its cost when sold. In contrast, trade goods and valuables—like gems and art objects—retain their full value in the marketplace. The “Magic Items by Rarity” section of “Magic Items” has prices for magic items.
As for are they items, yeah and the trade list is useful for ballparking how much it would cost to make something that is not in the PH. Why is it just listed as RAW goods, well because they don't want a 10,000 page manual listing every bit and part necessary to make every crafted item in the game.
They don't have to. If they say Raw Materials were the items required to craft equipment or something similar, the conversation is dead, raw materials would be items. They didn't. We don't have any clear insight as to why, so we have to guess. The language suggests that they are not items.
As a side add on top this does this feat reduce the cost of posion?
Also silver, mitheral and adamantine, dragon hide Items mage from these are classified as magic however it does not seem like the material itself is magic.
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It reminds me of a movie scene (Knight's Tale?) where an artisan takes a chunk of a statuette to keep as payment. This is an example of Trade Goods to me.
I don't know if that's right, but I've seen Knight's Tale and I remember that or a similar scene. The Artisan would have probably been the female blacksmith. I would call that accepting an Art Object as payment (with change?) but whether that's Art Goods or Trade Goods, it is functionally the same; they are standing in for a payment in traditional currency.
How to add Tooltips.
My houserulings.
You wouldn't build a suit of plate from raw iron, you'd build it from a bunch of less processed parts such as metal plates, but raw materials are really just an abstraction for a crafting system that itself is only vaguely correlated with reality.
Trade Goods are goods that are used by artisans and less common than wood that can simply be harvested from a tree.
They are traded by merchants via the barter system and maintain their value when resold.
The trade goods section provides the price per pound of raw materials like iron, canvas or silk that are needed for crafting. From this list and the gear stats we can infer formulas for crafting.
This requires advanced experience and good math skills to calculate the precise formulas. It is easier to skip it and narrate “you bought the raw materials from a merchant”.
However with implements treasure theme you can also get things for free during adventures and might even be able ti use Fabricate to create new items before even leaving the dungeon.
[Redacted]
Right. There is a lot that goes into a suit of plate armor that isn't metal and I don't want to see a crafting system that itemizes it out. Just the fact that you can complete plate armor on the go with an 8-pound kit should tell anyone that realism is not a goal. If anyone is fashioning armor out of metal alone and wearing just that is ... brave and I hope them a speedy recovery.
In addition to the straps of the armor itself, you would have leather straps and padded layers underneath. The notion of turning 1 or 3 types of metals into full plate is overly simplistic.
* Proceeds to promote crafting from GP *
How to add Tooltips.
My houserulings.
For plate armor you could assume a pound or two of wool and leather. Its not rocket science. If you used a formula to get it to about 745 gp and then just bought the rest from a merchant that would satisfy me as a DM.
The key here is the player crafter needs to figure out the formula if they are crafting from trade goods from treasure hauls.
Since slow crafting takes a while, I would suggest a chest or sack for the project that can be stored in a wagon. Obviously you won’t be crafting plate armor on the road while traveling. But it is conceivable to ride in a wagon and weave or what have you. It depends on the campaign.
In my mind slow crafting is for Elf Time and down time between sessions, when the party has lodgings and is spending time in a city. This is a fairly reasonable concept in the medieval fantasy world.
Sure. All I’m saying is there is enough in the rulebooks to infer formulas for crafting. But only for advanced players who are good at math and spreadsheets.
(I …. can math…..)
No, you can't.
You can craft with Smith's Tools which weigh 8 pounds and raw materials which have no defined weight. Your take relies on the DM handwaving Trade Goods into raw materials instead of the RAW process of purchasing the raw materials. Yes, RAW is a weird abstraction, but RAW sometimes works out that way. This is not a physics simulator and this is not a crafting simulator. RAW is that you buy the materials with coin or Trade Goods unless your DM determines that they are not currently available.
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That's easy: outside of unusual conditions, you can't.
I mean, I don't think anyone is saying you can't do any of that in your game... but none of that is RAW. And RAW is all this subforum is for. Inferring crafting formulas and then turning Trade Goods (i.e. NOT Crafting Goods) into some type of material component for your crafting is all well and good for those who enjoy that kind of thing, but that has nothing to do with RAW.
Look, your OP is about whether or not Crafter Discount applies to raw materials when crafting. Am I wrong?
Your basic position is “no” because raw materials are not items.
But the text does not define items, nor fully define raw materials. RAW, it is DM discretion.
So within the “DM discretion” framework of the rules I am discussing RAW trade goods and RAW trade good prices per pound and RAW weights of crafted gear and RAW the word “appropriate” and the text of the Fabricate and the text of the Crafter feat and the text of the crafting rules, etc etc etc.
Your position assumes a narrow definition of “item”, a specifically vague assumed definition of raw materials, a completely worthless interpretation of the Crafter feat, and it seems to be all tied to the fact that as a DM you are simply annoyed by the idea of a D&D player taking time to craft rather than going on your adventures. And that last part I fully understand, and it deserves a separate conversation about the role of crafting in the game, how to handle exploits and antics, how to kindly sabotage stupid players, and how to refocus an off task party that wants to skip your carefully planned quests and plotlines in order to make shiny sparkly things. Am I wrong?
RAW…. and this is a fact, Smite….. the 2024 crafting rules are not well organized and have to be pieced together. Pretty much everybody I talk to would love to craft a little. So here we are, trying to figure out how to do it.
RAW…. in the PHB DM determines if raw materials are available for non-magical items. I am making the case that part of that is setting up stores, theming treasures, and building in opportunities for downtime in the narrative in order to allow for this.
And RAW, you can exchange trade goods for the correct raw materials in order to craft gear…. even with your narrow definition of items. I am simply making the case that metals make plate armor and they have a determined value RAW, are available at merchants and in treasure hordes, and exist in the world of D&D.
If RAW is simply how the text reads, RAW it is DM’s discretion. So I am sharing this DM’s discretion as part of the RAW framework. What’s the problem in my logic? Because as far as I can tell, you just hate crafting and want to be right about it.
RAW it is DM’s discretion in the PHB but in the DMG they outline trade goods as a kind of treasure and explain the market for these items, that they are commonly traded, etc.
So are trade goods merely for roleplay flavor? Or do they have actual uses? If I buy a cow, kill it, can I make a ton of beef jerky with Cooking Utensils and salt? Or must I ignore the text of the Chef feat and the Chef tools?
If I buy a sheep, can I sheer it with weaving tools, spin yarn, and make wool garments?
If I buy a canvas, can I use Painting Tools to paint a picture? Or is this just a substitute for gold pieces for flavor?
Nobody will ever be able to convince me that tools applied to these trade goods will not produce other products.
They aren’t magical.
They can be in your inventory or chest.
They are items.
Discount applies if I am a crafter buying them.
Trade goods only really exist to be entries in a loot table -- if you want to, say, produce food, you don't look up the components of food on the trade goods table, you look at the Food, Drink, and Lodging table, and there has been zero effort to be consistent with the trade goods rules. Frankly, the trade goods table is a waste of space -- the numbers are mostly nonsense, and also serve no real purpose in game.
I don’t want to overthink it.
I think the discount applies to raw materials because they are non-magical items that can be purchased from merchants, and so should get the discount.
In practice it will be handled in about 30 seconds of table narrative, will likely be handled as a transaction, etc. I bring up the trade goods to merely suggest the possibility of House Ruling crafting formulas within the RAW framework of “DM determination.”
Either RAW or a house rule, anyone who takes Crafter is getting 20% off all non-magical everything except services and such.
And Fabricate is going to be the Midas Touch.
The text does not have a Rules Glossary entry for "item" but does have several patterns with regards to the use of the term. That pattern is item refers to end results. Things that are used by adventurers in their own right. Raw materials are not used in their own right and the description for raw materials says that they are expended used to make items, not other items, not manufactured items. That wording suggests that raw materials are used to produce items and are not themselves items because the only thing distinguishing raw materials from the end product is that the end product is an item. By the normal rules of grammar, that means that an item is different than a raw material.
You are wrong on many facts. You assume that I want D&D to have a lame crafting system. I have tended to have Paladins (or Templars or Crusaders) since 3rd edition and Artificers since 3.5. I had Alchemists and Tarot Mages in Rolemaster, which probably means nothing to most people here. I evaluate crafting in every RPG I play. It's WotC doesn't want players crafting items, not me. You are on the Rules & Game Mechanics espousing DM fiat as a substitute for evaluating RAW and RAI. This is not really the place for that. There is the Dungeon Masters Only and Homebrew & House Rules for discussing table rules. That's technically off topic here.
2024 crafting is a slight improvement than 2014 but a massive downgrade from 3.x. I strongly believe that WotC does not want PCs to craft items. Maybe they don't want them to because they "balance" everything around a target GP for a level even though they say that they balance everything ignoring magic items. I don't know. I get the strong feeling that they don't want PCs crafting. They want magic items found in treasure, not bought and sold. They want Bastion NPCs to do your crafting for you. The Artificer update for 2024 even curbed their crafting in some respects, and that is the "crafting" class.
Instead of spending currency for raw materials, you can indeed spend Trade Goods for those raw materials. I don't think anyone has disagreed with you. Whether the raw materials are available will be subject to DM discretion. The problem is that you are presenting your "DM's discretion" as if it was the RAW or RAI; you are not presenting it as your table rules like you claim to be here. If you are the DM, you are welcome to adjudicate at your table any way you like. If you are the player, you will be subject to your DM's discretion.
Always strive to understand RAW and RAI to the best of your ability and then change the parts you don't like or don't work for you. RAW is not an end goal, it's a foundation.
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I consider infinite money glitches to be unlikely to be intended behavior. My assumption is that you get a bonus on things that can be crafted.
Your personal House Ruled “item definition” does not make sense logically to me. For one, saying that a raw material is not an item because it is not used seems to overlook the fact that raw materials are used in crafting, therefore are used. You are limiting the definition of item to basically equipment. But that simply is not the case.
What’s more difficult to reconcile is that non-magical items can be used as a component in crafting magical items, even reducing the amount of raw materials used. By your definition an item ceases being an item during the crafting of a magical item and does not become an item again until it emerges as a magical item. This might not be your actual view but it is the implication of your definition of item.
You reference “normal rules of grammar” at one point. I mean if we are doing that, lets also look at regular semantics. Absent a special D&D definition would not the normal definition apply? Item: “an individual article or unit, especially one that is part of a list, collection, or set.” It has nothing to do with how a thing is used, but how it is part of a list, collection, or set. Raw materials like iron, silk, canvas and linen are listed in trade goods, and are items on the list. And they are non-magical and can be purchased.
As far as your motives on this topic…. thank you for clarifying. This was not a personal attack but merely pattern recognition on my part. You might very well prefer crafting in other rpg systems over 2024 D&D. I think the rules in 2024 are uniquely designed to promote crafting low level items but to limit the creation of game breaking magical items and to maintain DM control over these things. Even with Fabricate, you are limited to non-magical items and must have the raw materials.
The part that I think you are forgetting with raw materials is that RAW they have to be targeted by the Fabricate spell. You can get them from the environment (ie a grove of trees, a patch of hemp). They are not nebulous abstractions but physical targets. They are not an input of gold but real items that are transmuted into something else. Here is the text of Fabricate:
“You convert raw materials into products of the same material. For example, you can fabricate a wooden bridge from a clump of trees, a rope from a patch of hemp, or clothes from flax or wool.
Choose raw materials that you can see within range. You can fabricate a Large or smaller object (contained within a 10-foot Cube or eight connected 5-foot Cubes) given a sufficient quantity of material. If you’re working with metal, stone, or another mineral substance, however, the fabricated object can be no larger than Medium (contained within a 5-foot Cube). The quality of any fabricated objects is based on the quality of the raw materials.”
The part you fairly point out is that I am discussing my DM take on raw materials. The issue is the PHB simply says “DM determines” and I am trying to base this determination on the broader rules of D&D.
We can discuss both RAW and RAI. I believe that trade goods are raw materials RAI, even though they do not have the RAW label. The reason is because of the language of the Fabricate spell seems to imply that raw materials can be physically seen and targeted within range of the spell. Whats more is the quality of them matters. So to me this implies there are at least two levels of raw materials: low quality and high quality. I think the case can be made RAI that trade goods are “high quality” but ones in nature can be either and it simply depends on the source. Healthy trees provide high quality wood….. diseased and drought stricken trees probably lower quality. I think its DM discretion, but do DM’s have a logical thought process here?
Raw materials are tangible items in the world that players and DMs are supposed to be able to see and evaluate the quality of. That is RAW.
On trade goods, is generally a list of if you were to trade X its value is Y so it could trade for something equivalent. But yeah I think if you were trying t buy 1 lb of silk it would cost you 8GP instead of 10. Now if you were trying to use it as an item of trade it would still only "buy" one cow. You would not get 2GP back. And if you tried to sell the silk to a merchant you would get 5GP as selling items to merchants you get 50%. So I do not think it would create a infinite money glitch.
As for are they items, yeah and the trade list is useful for ballparking how much it would cost to make something that is not in the PH. Why is it just listed as RAW goods, well because they don't want a 10,000 page manual listing every bit and part necessary to make every crafted item in the game. And then explain under every item what those raw goods are. For your soup you are going to need 1 chicken carcass, 1 pound of chicken meat, 2 tsp of salt, pepper, 4 carrots, 2 celery, 1 onion, 1 ounce of thyme, 1 bay leaf, 1 gallon water.. That would be absurd, so they abstract it to 1/2 the value in raw materials. But they are still items, just items they felt no need to list in detail. And since almost none of us will know all the materials necessary to build your castle or whatever it makes it easier on the player and DM to just say I buy all the materials I need to build my thingamabob.
Context is not a house rule. The text that raw materials are used creates items suggests that the two are different. The fact that adventurers do not normally craft is consistent with "items" being end products and raw materials are not "items". The way crafting was buried in the 5e rules was a major complaint when they came out and Xanathar's provided additional details in response. While the situation has improved in some ways with the 2024, I think WotC is still treating crafting as something adventurers don't do. The mechanics make the task still difficult for characters to undertake themselves and instead you have mechanics for NPCs crafting for you via Bastions and purchasing equipment. The money awards will tend to scale such that it is not worth the time to craft anything yourself; just buy it if it's a thing you can buy or sell.
When a mundane item is required for crafting a magic item, it is separate from the raw materials for the magic item. The mundane item is not a raw material and it does not reduce the raw materials. If you are crafting Uncommon Magic Plate Armor, you have to provide 200 GP in raw materials and Plate Armor which you can buy for 1,500 GP or craft for 750 GP. If you think mundane items are reducing the raw material cost of magic items, reread the DMG.
No, but only because we need to examine the sentence structure to infer a definition. I have repeatedly stated that the usage suggests a meaning or intent. You are free to disregard it or disagree with it without needing a counter. However, a dictionary definition, isn't particularly helpful in this case. "a list, collection, or set" have no significance if they are not limited. For example, a collection could be whole numbers and 1 would be a member but 1.5 would not even though they would both be a part of a collection of numbers or real numbers. Without a definition of a list, collection, or set, the dictionary definition does nothing for us. The writing pattern and the definition of raw materials does suggest that raw materials and items are not included in the same sets.
Accusing another of "hating crafting" and "needing to be right" are personal attacks and they weren't the only ones.
And no, D&D's rules are not particularly good at either except in that they limit player crafting in general.
Definitely not RAW raw materials.
Fabricate doesn't care about the quality of raw materials. Mechanically, all that matters is the GP value of the raw materials and/or DM's thumbs up. There is no quality level.
For Trade Goods, it's an infinite money glitch, but a boring and uninteresting one. You buy 1 pound of silk for 8 GP and sell it for 10 GP. Trade Goods are not sold at half cost. When you sell them, you get the full value.
They don't have to. If they say Raw Materials were the items required to craft equipment or something similar, the conversation is dead, raw materials would be items. They didn't. We don't have any clear insight as to why, so we have to guess. The language suggests that they are not items.
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As a side add on top this does this feat reduce the cost of posion?
Also silver, mitheral and adamantine, dragon hide Items mage from these are classified as magic however it does not seem like the material itself is magic.