Bit of a necro, but just to address the "why doesn't the system spell out an exact recipe for each item" question in a bit more detail, it's because crafting recipes only work in a pre-defined setting, and generally back-engineer how materials are used to fit what sources of material exist in the setting. That's obviously not an ideal approach for a game whose major selling point is "design your own worlds of adventure"; saying a flametongue sword requires components from a red dragon sounds fine up until someone designs a campaign setting without dragons. Telling people to use their imagination keeps any item potentially open so long as someone can reasonably expect to get at common raw materials.
I personally am fine with the vague 1/2 cost to make, DM decides the materials style rules. And yes your reasons for it make sense. For mundane items I'd generally just google it unless i am in a odd ball setting like dark sun where metal virtually does not exist or somehting. I think the time frames they came up with are not good though. It is sort of a way to say, don't craft. Even the somewhat faster time in 2024 from xanthars becomes crazy long for many mundane items. It becomes a sort of only wizards craft things system as they have access to fabricate. And yes campaigns can vary, but when it takes 10% of retail cost time it quickly puts any items where its a noticeable amount of money saved well outside the vast majority of games(without fabricate). And spell caster favoritism rears its head in the crafting rules as scrolls have a much shorter craft time, just because. Personally I think i am going to house rule the scroll table time is used for all crafting. Check value of scroll compare to mundane item cost, use scroll crafting time.
The point of the time frames is that you’re trading time for cost. The cost discounts from XGtE are substantial in the Uncommon to Very Rare range; Common comes in high presumably to help mitigate player desire to accrue a whole mess of items, and Legendary because those are the ones with absolutely insane powers. Thus, crafting as a mechanically separate system from “immediately turn X gold into a magic item”- regardless of whether you flavor it as buying from a vendor or speed crafting- needs something to offset the hundreds to tens of thousands of gold discount it offers, otherwise it simply becomes the strictly better pick, particularly now that the suggestion to make an encounter/mini-adventure out of getting a fantastic component has been dropped and the tools/Arcana prof are even more of a token requirement than before. If your campaign is running too fast to spend weeks of downtime, my suggestion is to functionally have the players buy the item they want to craft and say in-game that their character crafted it. Maybe discount it some for having tool prof if you want- pricing is always ultimately DM discretion anyways. But saying crafting is flawed because it doesn’t let players acquire magic items at massive discounts in no appreciable span of time because they checked off a box that had little to no opportunity cost at character creation just doesn’t hold up.
Also, the assertion about spell scribing is fairly inaccurate- the time and gold costs spike in time with the shifts in rarity on the scrolls by level, and the gold costs are in line with the XGtE crafting prices when halved for consumables. It takes most of a week to get a single 3rd level spell, double that for a 4th, and most of a month by 5th. By the time a caster can really grind out the short-term crafting spell scrolls, I’d expect their cantrips to be doing about as much damage.
Bit of a necro, but just to address the "why doesn't the system spell out an exact recipe for each item" question in a bit more detail, it's because crafting recipes only work in a pre-defined setting, and generally back-engineer how materials are used to fit what sources of material exist in the setting. That's obviously not an ideal approach for a game whose major selling point is "design your own worlds of adventure"; saying a flametongue sword requires components from a red dragon sounds fine up until someone designs a campaign setting without dragons. Telling people to use their imagination keeps any item potentially open so long as someone can reasonably expect to get at common raw materials.
I personally am fine with the vague 1/2 cost to make, DM decides the materials style rules. And yes your reasons for it make sense. For mundane items I'd generally just google it unless i am in a odd ball setting like dark sun where metal virtually does not exist or somehting. I think the time frames they came up with are not good though. It is sort of a way to say, don't craft. Even the somewhat faster time in 2024 from xanthars becomes crazy long for many mundane items. It becomes a sort of only wizards craft things system as they have access to fabricate. And yes campaigns can vary, but when it takes 10% of retail cost time it quickly puts any items where its a noticeable amount of money saved well outside the vast majority of games(without fabricate). And spell caster favoritism rears its head in the crafting rules as scrolls have a much shorter craft time, just because. Personally I think i am going to house rule the scroll table time is used for all crafting. Check value of scroll compare to mundane item cost, use scroll crafting time.
The point of the time frames is that you’re trading time for cost. The cost discounts from XGtE are substantial in the Uncommon to Very Rare range; Common comes in high presumably to help mitigate player desire to accrue a whole mess of items, and Legendary because those are the ones with absolutely insane powers. Thus, crafting as a mechanically separate system from “immediately turn X gold into a magic item”- regardless of whether you flavor it as buying from a vendor or speed crafting- needs something to offset the hundreds to tens of thousands of gold discount it offers, otherwise it simply becomes the strictly better pick, particularly now that the suggestion to make an encounter/mini-adventure out of getting a fantastic component has been dropped and the tools/Arcana prof are even more of a token requirement than before. If your campaign is running too fast to spend weeks of downtime, my suggestion is to functionally have the players buy the item they want to craft and say in-game that their character crafted it. Maybe discount it some for having tool prof if you want- pricing is always ultimately DM discretion anyways. But saying crafting is flawed because it doesn’t let players acquire magic items at massive discounts in no appreciable span of time because they checked off a box that had little to no opportunity cost at character creation just doesn’t hold up.
Also, the assertion about spell scribing is fairly inaccurate- the time and gold costs spike in time with the shifts in rarity on the scrolls by level, and the gold costs are in line with the XGtE crafting prices when halved for consumables. It takes most of a week to get a single 3rd level spell, double that for a 4th, and most of a month by 5th. By the time a caster can really grind out the short-term crafting spell scrolls, I’d expect their cantrips to be doing about as much damage.
The point is poorly executed as it trades so much time it is basically unusable. And no my assertion about spell scribing is not inaccurate, the costs to craft it is vastly less than mundane items. A 3rd level scroll would cost them 150 GP and 5 days a mundane item prices the same at (retail 300) would take 30 days. Plate armor equivalent 1500 gp takes 25 days not 150. i am not sure what mundane items would cost 50k, maybe a ship but that is 120 days for a scroll but would be 5000 days for a mundane crafter. And that is without giving the 1/2 discount. And sure building a ship solo would take a ridiculous amount of time. So at that scale i have no idea if 5,000 days makes sense. Though logically it just could not be done as you'd need multiple people just to lift and move heavy beams etc. But it scales time wise in a way you can use the feature for scrolls, it does not scale time wise for mundane items where it can be used. Sure cheap items where the amount saved is such petty cash no one cares you saved it can be done, but any time the amount is worth saving the time is inflated to the point no one will ever use it bastion system or not as the campaign very likely will be over or the item scaled well past by the time its finally crafted.
And yeah I don't expect a wizard to craft many 9th level scrolls for the same reason, but 5 days, the time to make a great sword to make a 3rd level scroll sure, knock out some 1st level scrolls here and there sure. And these things would be taking 5 days for a mundane item, not 2 because consumables are 1/2d. As an aside I don't think you will ever grind out 1st level attack spells, you grind out niche utility spells and maybe a couple spare fire balls or something if you want extra attack spells. Like I don't necessarily prepare dispel magic daily, but its nice to have a scroll of it when we unexpectedly come across something that needs to be dispelled.
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The point of the time frames is that you’re trading time for cost. The cost discounts from XGtE are substantial in the Uncommon to Very Rare range; Common comes in high presumably to help mitigate player desire to accrue a whole mess of items, and Legendary because those are the ones with absolutely insane powers. Thus, crafting as a mechanically separate system from “immediately turn X gold into a magic item”- regardless of whether you flavor it as buying from a vendor or speed crafting- needs something to offset the hundreds to tens of thousands of gold discount it offers, otherwise it simply becomes the strictly better pick, particularly now that the suggestion to make an encounter/mini-adventure out of getting a fantastic component has been dropped and the tools/Arcana prof are even more of a token requirement than before. If your campaign is running too fast to spend weeks of downtime, my suggestion is to functionally have the players buy the item they want to craft and say in-game that their character crafted it. Maybe discount it some for having tool prof if you want- pricing is always ultimately DM discretion anyways. But saying crafting is flawed because it doesn’t let players acquire magic items at massive discounts in no appreciable span of time because they checked off a box that had little to no opportunity cost at character creation just doesn’t hold up.
Also, the assertion about spell scribing is fairly inaccurate- the time and gold costs spike in time with the shifts in rarity on the scrolls by level, and the gold costs are in line with the XGtE crafting prices when halved for consumables. It takes most of a week to get a single 3rd level spell, double that for a 4th, and most of a month by 5th. By the time a caster can really grind out the short-term crafting spell scrolls, I’d expect their cantrips to be doing about as much damage.
The point is poorly executed as it trades so much time it is basically unusable. And no my assertion about spell scribing is not inaccurate, the costs to craft it is vastly less than mundane items. A 3rd level scroll would cost them 150 GP and 5 days a mundane item prices the same at (retail 300) would take 30 days. Plate armor equivalent 1500 gp takes 25 days not 150. i am not sure what mundane items would cost 50k, maybe a ship but that is 120 days for a scroll but would be 5000 days for a mundane crafter. And that is without giving the 1/2 discount. And sure building a ship solo would take a ridiculous amount of time. So at that scale i have no idea if 5,000 days makes sense. Though logically it just could not be done as you'd need multiple people just to lift and move heavy beams etc. But it scales time wise in a way you can use the feature for scrolls, it does not scale time wise for mundane items where it can be used. Sure cheap items where the amount saved is such petty cash no one cares you saved it can be done, but any time the amount is worth saving the time is inflated to the point no one will ever use it bastion system or not as the campaign very likely will be over or the item scaled well past by the time its finally crafted.
And yeah I don't expect a wizard to craft many 9th level scrolls for the same reason, but 5 days, the time to make a great sword to make a 3rd level scroll sure, knock out some 1st level scrolls here and there sure. And these things would be taking 5 days for a mundane item, not 2 because consumables are 1/2d. As an aside I don't think you will ever grind out 1st level attack spells, you grind out niche utility spells and maybe a couple spare fire balls or something if you want extra attack spells. Like I don't necessarily prepare dispel magic daily, but its nice to have a scroll of it when we unexpectedly come across something that needs to be dispelled.