I can't add a lot to that except that there are solid rules for how long it would take to transcribe spells. That can help ballpark the time and cost for a scroll - ignoring profit.

Some spells state how long it takes to make them last a long time - 8 hours for Plant Growth (lasting only 1 year), 1 casting a day every day for 1 year for Teleportation Circle.

Imbuing items with magic can take considerable time even if it is temporary.

Having such guidelines would be a good idea. Being specific about requirements could be detrimental - as mentioned above, some folk will scream RAW when maybe the example materials don't exist in the campaign world.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

 The thing about crafting is "If I could make money at all similar to what I get from adventuring by sitting around crafting, why am I adventuring?" If you really are concerned with worldbuilding verisimilitude... how crafting works is mostly irrelevant because PCs are never going to do it.

 and yet, every group I have ever ran has had at least one player that wanted to do it.

We have a level 1 feat around crafting things.  It should be in the game.

Quote from Flamepulse >>

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

 The thing about crafting is "If I could make money at all similar to what I get from adventuring by sitting around crafting, why am I adventuring?" If you really are concerned with worldbuilding verisimilitude... how crafting works is mostly irrelevant because PCs are never going to do it.

 and yet, every group I have ever ran has had at least one player that wanted to do it.

 What this means, essentially, is that crafting items should be designed in a way that doesn't make it profitable. If crafting an item does not cost meaningfully less than buying it (so the only real benefit of crafting is that you don't need a merchant), it can be arbitrarily fast without causing issues other than the same issues that are caused by shops.

One of those things that decades of gaming has taught me is that you shouldn't have magic shops.

Everyone does, mind you. Hell, even I did for years. So I don't say "you shouldn't" in the sense of "this is a bad thing", just in the sense of "this is what I learned".

As our play style evolved into the strange "this is the life of this person" sort that it is today, magic shops became a kind of short hand, an easy way to get a few items, and ultimately a sort of general store, and then they faded as we began to break things down into the merchant stalls and specialty shops and workshops of the towns all of it growing ou t of the role play and questions about the world.

So, I don't have magic shops. You can buy items (always the most common, most useful to the average person -- not average adventurer -- type stuff), but you have to get them from a person who makes that kind of thing. And they aren't everywhere. 

But the existence of them has been such a deeply ingrained thing, that I think they should do a kind of "model shop" -- show folks what the designers think a magic shop would be like. 

I do use some involved rules for spell creation (and by involved, I mean, you can fail, not that they are horribly hard),  and as I have noted previously, I have set things up so that spells either have to be created or found, bought or bartered. Grimoires are rare and exceedingly valuable, and spell scrolls are literally parts of someone's grimoire, not something that is crafted to stand alone.

And, as I made the mistake of catching up on news, I also have to note the thing that is unpopular about my games and my efforts: I never use any idea from the harry Potter stuff, in any way, and ideas that are close to HP stuff get shot down immediately.

There's no resentment about it (folks understand why), but it is still not a popular thing.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

One of those things that decades of gaming has taught me is that you shouldn't have magic shops.

Everyone does, mind you. Hell, even I did for years. So I don't say "you shouldn't" in the sense of "this is a bad thing", just in the sense of "this is what I learned".

As our play style evolved into the strange "this is the life of this person" sort that it is today, magic shops became a kind of short hand, an easy way to get a few items, and ultimately a sort of general store, and then they faded as we began to break things down into the merchant stalls and specialty shops and workshops of the towns all of it growing ou t of the role play and questions about the world.

So, I don't have magic shops. You can buy items (always the most common, most useful to the average person -- not average adventurer -- type stuff), but you have to get them from a person who makes that kind of thing. And they aren't everywhere. 

But the existence of them has been such a deeply ingrained thing, that I think they should do a kind of "model shop" -- show folks what the designers think a magic shop would be like. 

I do use some involved rules for spell creation (and by involved, I mean, you can fail, not that they are horribly hard),  and as I have noted previously, I have set things up so that spells either have to be created or found, bought or bartered. Grimoires are rare and exceedingly valuable, and spell scrolls are literally parts of someone's grimoire, not something that is crafted to stand alone.

And, as I made the mistake of catching up on news, I also have to note the thing that is unpopular about my games and my efforts: I never use any idea from the harry Potter stuff, in any way, and ideas that are close to HP stuff get shot down immediately.

There's no resentment about it (folks understand why), but it is still not a popular thing.

 

 My alternative to a magic shop is.... a magic market, which sounds weird/the same, but basically my setting has a few shops made by a magical guild, anyone with a password (Kinda like Diagon Alley) or a member can get in, and go to the potion shoppe/healer, where you can buy magic potions, mostly ones that heal, or have wounds healed by a special healer, which gives both full health, but a temporary buff too.

You could also go to the blacksmith, where you can get your weapons and armor fixed up and modified, or buy new ones

You can go to a specialized spell shop, where I sell limited use scrolls and books, where they give a spell, sometimes a slightly higher level than the ones that they can cast for pretty expensive for usually 5-time use spells.

And many other shops. They markets all over the place, and sell specially modified things, and they're for adventurers specifically. That's about it, I have to go now.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Quote from Gwar1 >>

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Quote from Gwar1 >>

I think its fine to have downtime activities, but players should also be able to actively pursue things, and, get things done while adventuring. I think exp should be another option for progressing certain things. The rules for crafting were kind of crazy to me, the time in workweeks was far beyond the time to level.

 The time requirements for crafting are totally reasonable from a worldbuilding perspective. They're just ... not useful to most PCs.

 everything is reasonable from a world building perspective, if you define it as what ever I say in lore makes sense.

it doesn't really make sense in terms of game design, consistency, or much else really.

20 days to create an uncommon item, why? game design wise thats super slow, lore wise, people can cast simulacrum and create a whole new magical person that lasts forever in 12 hours, yet for some reason it would take this guy 200 days of 8 hour work to make a dagger that does fire+piercing damage? It makes no real sense. 

 

it makes sense from a standpoint of, we want it to take 200 days to make a rare item so people don't engage with this mechanic in normal games, and people wanting to profit in downtime are inefficient. But there were many possible solutions to the second issue, and the first is a questionable goal.

 
So, I am particularly big on the idea of crafting being a downtime thing. It took an effort for me to acknowledge that folks can crochet, do needlework, and knit in a dungeon, lol. But I want to point something out about that effort -- it was a player effort and it was mostly about me being willing to let them make socks while traveling and exploring.

Yes, that was the literal example that won me over, lol. I tend to approach things from a "real word" and then add fantasy to them. Iwas sort hung upon the whole "in the dungeon thing", and I was wrong to be so.

So, a mail shirt might take 500 hours to make. That's not the fantasy, that's the reality, It is shocking how easily one can google stuff, y'know?

That's a fairly standard "middle ages" baseline -- for mail.  It also requires a workshop, and includes fitting and other factors, so for the "fantasy" part, I'd cut it down to probably 250 hours. TO people who make chain mail, that is easily the most unrealistic thing they could think of. So, fantasy part met.

Note that I describe Hours, as well.  I don't deal in days, myself, I deal in hours.

Most standard portraiture done during that era took about 180 hours.

making a cask to age wine or bourbon in could take as much time as a chain shirt. You start to dig into things, and suddenly the notion of 200 hours for something seems, well, really gentle -- and these are non-magical items. Even if you can move away from the requirements for a workshop, the crafting of a dagger back then took far, far longer than it does today, where someone can use modern tools and technology (starting with a hearth and the ready presence of ingots) to make a knife in about six hours -- for them, it was a lot more time. Like 100 hours, easy.

because of the 8 hours a day rule, that means you can apply fatigue to time over 8 spent -- which shorten the number of day -- or you can have someone help and reduce that time (if done in shifts or combined), and so forth.

Again, this is before magical item stuff comes around.

I see magical item stuff as being the second stage in the creation of something -- they have to make an ordinary thing before they make a magical form of it. So the magical part might take less time -- I mean, generally, magic is pretty quick. So, if the "normal" phase of the item includes rare or unusual ingredients, it could easily take more time since they aren't part of the normal process.

THen comes the enchanting or imbuing or whatever, and that's a process as well.

So even then, most of the items that folks want to make during an adventure are still going to require downtime -- assuming that one tries to follow a realistic set up.

On the other hand, one can also go the videogame route -- "sure, you go the stuff? you got the tools? Go for it, make your roll."

That's going to be a hard sell to a lot of DMs and even more players. Enough to block it from reaching the 80% popularity point? I think so. Whereas I don't think that would be the case for a system that comes even marginally close to "reality".

I could be wrong -- as I noted, the PF system is popular among its folks.

on the other hand, the party now has less penalty as they tread into cold weather because when they were still in warmer lands, player A picked up a few skeins of yarn and started knitting and player b did the same and now the whole party has cold weather clothes.

how many hours of crafting time is that?

THe big challenge is always going to be the "i want to make it now, in the dungeon" crowd -- and ime, that isn't going to fly, because while carving a pretty basic, boring stick into a wand might not take a long time, the lore of the game world may add or require special materials, or intricate detailing, and all of that adds to the complexity of creating it.

what time period do you think dnd is representing?, making a dagger doesnt take 100 hours. In midevil times making a sword took a week, not working that hard, maybe 30 hours. Also this is world with magic, there should be some things that are relatively easier to achieve through magic. I can't speak to crafting armor, but in game it costs way more to make full plate, so it might not surprise me that it takes longer. As an artist, the 180 hours on a portrait thing, highly depends on the skill of the artist, and maybe the medium.180 is on the high side though.

However, I wouldn't assume the time consuming part of crafting is the magic side. Or that everyone crafting something is starting from scratch. Magic generally appears to take a lot less time than doing mundane things, and is more about skill than time. Its probable that someone might buy or repurpose basic mundane parts of magic items rather making them. The problem with using time as a basis, as you pointed out, its not really time that actually decides how common something is. Making a gold ring is a lot less time consuming than making a sword. There are relatively common things that take a long amount of hours, and relatively rare things that take less. Some things are rare due to requiring people of high skill, or because of the resources, or number of people. From a creating things point, designing or coming up with something new, or more pretty, can be the most difficult part.

As far as crafting in a dungeon, that probably depends what you are doing, and how you are doing it. I imagine a dude with a Magnificent mansion of forging wouldn't have much trouble. Likewise, a guy with heat metal can make red hot metal instantly instead of having to heat up a forge and all the inefficiencies that brings. Person with a bag of holding can have the best tools available instantly.

But a 5e level crafting system doesnt need to be realistic first and foremost, it mostly needs to meet the needs of players and be fun. And probably needs to fit the fiction of the world enough not to break the avg immersion.

Quote from Gwar1 >>

 But a 5e level crafting system doesnt need to be realistic first and foremost, it mostly needs to meet the needs of players and be fun. And probably needs to fit the fiction of the world enough not to break the avg immersion.

 
It also needs to be one more thing: it needs to not break the game. Other than DM fiat, using your post as a guideline, what's to prevent PCs from making multiple vorpal weapons or staffs of the magi?

If you're going to create a crafting system that places "fun" as a priority and doesn't require much time, you're going to have to absolutely factor in the potential for abuse.

Quote from Gwar1 >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Quote from Gwar1 >>

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from Gwar1 >>

I think its fine to have downtime activities, but players should also be able to actively pursue things, and, get things done while adventuring. I think exp should be another option for progressing certain things. The rules for crafting were kind of crazy to me, the time in workweeks was far beyond the time to level.

 The time requirements for crafting are totally reasonable from a worldbuilding perspective. They're just ... not useful to most PCs.

 everything is reasonable from a world building perspective, if you define it as what ever I say in lore makes sense.

it doesn't really make sense in terms of game design, consistency, or much else really.

20 days to create an uncommon item, why? game design wise thats super slow, lore wise, people can cast simulacrum and create a whole new magical person that lasts forever in 12 hours, yet for some reason it would take this guy 200 days of 8 hour work to make a dagger that does fire+piercing damage? It makes no real sense. 

 

it makes sense from a standpoint of, we want it to take 200 days to make a rare item so people don't engage with this mechanic in normal games, and people wanting to profit in downtime are inefficient. But there were many possible solutions to the second issue, and the first is a questionable goal.

 
So, I am particularly big on the idea of crafting being a downtime thing. It took an effort for me to acknowledge that folks can crochet, do needlework, and knit in a dungeon, lol. But I want to point something out about that effort -- it was a player effort and it was mostly about me being willing to let them make socks while traveling and exploring.

Yes, that was the literal example that won me over, lol. I tend to approach things from a "real word" and then add fantasy to them. Iwas sort hung upon the whole "in the dungeon thing", and I was wrong to be so.

So, a mail shirt might take 500 hours to make. That's not the fantasy, that's the reality, It is shocking how easily one can google stuff, y'know?

That's a fairly standard "middle ages" baseline -- for mail.  It also requires a workshop, and includes fitting and other factors, so for the "fantasy" part, I'd cut it down to probably 250 hours. TO people who make chain mail, that is easily the most unrealistic thing they could think of. So, fantasy part met.

Note that I describe Hours, as well.  I don't deal in days, myself, I deal in hours.

Most standard portraiture done during that era took about 180 hours.

making a cask to age wine or bourbon in could take as much time as a chain shirt. You start to dig into things, and suddenly the notion of 200 hours for something seems, well, really gentle -- and these are non-magical items. Even if you can move away from the requirements for a workshop, the crafting of a dagger back then took far, far longer than it does today, where someone can use modern tools and technology (starting with a hearth and the ready presence of ingots) to make a knife in about six hours -- for them, it was a lot more time. Like 100 hours, easy.

because of the 8 hours a day rule, that means you can apply fatigue to time over 8 spent -- which shorten the number of day -- or you can have someone help and reduce that time (if done in shifts or combined), and so forth.

Again, this is before magical item stuff comes around.

I see magical item stuff as being the second stage in the creation of something -- they have to make an ordinary thing before they make a magical form of it. So the magical part might take less time -- I mean, generally, magic is pretty quick. So, if the "normal" phase of the item includes rare or unusual ingredients, it could easily take more time since they aren't part of the normal process.

THen comes the enchanting or imbuing or whatever, and that's a process as well.

So even then, most of the items that folks want to make during an adventure are still going to require downtime -- assuming that one tries to follow a realistic set up.

On the other hand, one can also go the videogame route -- "sure, you go the stuff? you got the tools? Go for it, make your roll."

That's going to be a hard sell to a lot of DMs and even more players. Enough to block it from reaching the 80% popularity point? I think so. Whereas I don't think that would be the case for a system that comes even marginally close to "reality".

I could be wrong -- as I noted, the PF system is popular among its folks.

on the other hand, the party now has less penalty as they tread into cold weather because when they were still in warmer lands, player A picked up a few skeins of yarn and started knitting and player b did the same and now the whole party has cold weather clothes.

how many hours of crafting time is that?

THe big challenge is always going to be the "i want to make it now, in the dungeon" crowd -- and ime, that isn't going to fly, because while carving a pretty basic, boring stick into a wand might not take a long time, the lore of the game world may add or require special materials, or intricate detailing, and all of that adds to the complexity of creating it.

 

what time period do you think dnd is representing?, making a dagger doesnt take 100 hours. In midevil times making a sword took a week, not working that hard, maybe 30 hours. Also this is world with magic, there should be some things that are relatively easier to achieve through magic. I can't speak to crafting armor, but in game it costs way more to make full plate, so it might not surprise me that it takes longer. As an artist, the 180 hours on a portrait thing, highly depends on the skill of the artist, and maybe the medium.180 is on the high side though.

However, I wouldn't assume the time consuming part of crafting is the magic side. Or that everyone crafting something is starting from scratch. Magic generally appears to take a lot less time than doing mundane things, and is more about skill than time. Its probable that someone might buy or repurpose basic mundane parts of magic items rather making them. The problem with using time as a basis, as you pointed out, its not really time that actually decides how common something is. Making a gold ring is a lot less time consuming than making a sword. There are relatively common things that take a long amount of hours, and relatively rare things that take less. Some things are rare due to requiring people of high skill, or because of the resources, or number of people. From a creating things point, designing or coming up with something new, or more pretty, can be the most difficult part.

As far as crafting in a dungeon, that probably depends what you are doing, and how you are doing it. I imagine a dude with a Magnificent mansion of forging wouldn't have much trouble. Likewise, a guy with heat metal can make red hot metal instantly instead of having to heat up a forge and all the inefficiencies that brings. Person with a bag of holding can have the best tools available instantly.

But a 5e level crafting system doesnt need to be realistic first and foremost, it mostly needs to meet the needs of players and be fun. And probably needs to fit the fiction of the world enough not to break the avg immersion.

 

 
I can grant that a sword takes 60 hours to make using a medieval sword, assuming that is the only thing a single blacksmith is working on in a given week. I would hope that said blacksmith has several apprentices of differing capabilities working for them so that their shop could still stay open, working on other things. 

On the portraiture -- that's a literal average of the amount of time most sittings took. It wasn't merely a factor of an artist sitting down and painting start to finish, it was an aspect of time for the modes to sit, time to get the right lighting, and of course, the all important you will get this right or you won't be paid for it" factor. Since broad wealth of merchants wasn't a common feature enabling strong patronage outside of major trading hubs until into the 1400s, portraiture was often limited to the nobility and in folklore Nobility had a propensity to lop off heads of artists who displeased them.

Yo asked what time period: the time period is generally thought to be 600 through 1400, in terms of Europe. I go off on tangents about this, so will try hard to avoid talking about it (pseudo-Greco-Roman/Dark/Early Middle/Late Middle/Renaissance/Victorian/Edwardian with elements of Middle period Egypt, Abbasid (6th C), and other such, primarily pre through late stage silk road).

The pair of us agree on the magic part not generally taking near as long -- my general take slots in alongside your "creating new or more pretty" part, as the introduction of non-standard materials (the heart of a gryphon) tends to create challenges in the fabrication process of the core item.

I will say that given there is no magical forge creation spell (The Mag Mansion doesn't create a forge, and even if it did, anything removed from it would vanish once you step outside it or the spell ends), that heat metal doesn't remove the need to have a hammer, anvil, quenching, honig, and carving stuff. I do grant that a bag of holding could hold those things (though that Anvil is going to be a pain -- those plain simple blocks were usually only about 20kg flat topped hunks, but the non-moving base was what was really important, and you can't get that in a dungeon).

But this, of course, is all presuming that we are dealing with Smithing -- which is not the only skill or craft possible. Of course, we are also skipping over the big part about this. In the time period in general use, iron had to be alloyed -- or made into steel. Making steel in a standard furnace was the blacksmith's job -- they had to take the time to do it, which was generally a couple days, because they had to get to the high temperatures and keep it there -- a kg of steel could take two days to make, and that's before it was molded into a bar. A simple iron sword was quick, comparatively, to the finer, more in demand steel.

And yeah, in those days most blacksmiths didn't make swords -- you had to be someone who was taught in a special place to do so by someone who had an arrangement with a noble or other patron who could afford the raw ores, and usually you worked as part of a larger smithy under the aegis there. We are dealing with a higher level of demand than they did and of course the essential fantasy aspect of "well, go see a blacksmith for a sword".

(this also raises the question of why an adventurer would need to forge a sword in a dungeon. I mean, default rules don't have weapons break all that much, and it is entirely possible for a sword they start with at 1st level to be the sword then end with at 20th level, lol)

All of which really shows that the use of smithing as an example is really a bad one for this purpose -- while one can try to twist and invet and sort of kludge one's way into "ok, yeah, maybe", it really is a lot of work to justify something that is generally going to be a downtime activity overall.

Other crafts, well, they are different.

Handiwork -- the crochet, embroidery, needlepoint, lace making, knitting kind of stuff is absolutely a craft that can be done in dungeons -- and, much to the surprise of many, was something that sold far more highly than many blacksmith's good. I'd even argue it could be done during rest periods. A pair of trousers in that time period could cost more than a sword (mostly because they didn't wear trousers -- they wore woven or knitted leggings).

The weaving arts -- rug making, cloth weaving, spinning, carding -- are a little different. One could card easily, and I suppose a spinning wheel could be dropping a bag of holding. Some of the small looms that were used could be done (nothing big, mind you, talking about a meter wide and maybe a meter and a half high), i suppose.

Instrument making could be done is bits and pieces. But that is also a much more involved process, specially once you get into lamination.

Some of the clothing crafts would work -- glove making, cobbling, hat making. Plain old tailoring/seamstry requires a good amount of light.

Not going to be much chandlery or ink making, no enameling or tanning going on. So, just sitting down to really think about it, when folks talk about Crafting they really don't mean actually using crafts.

They may mean smithing -- black, silver, gold, white, copper, farrying --but no, what they really mean is "magically taking things they find and turning them into something else".

Now, I say that because I have a list of around 200 actual crafts and skills and such that were common to the period. And my Adventures can take a few months to resolve in-game time. But my understanding is that most adventures for most other people take place over a period of days -- often fewer than 15. Where downtime is filled in with camping and cooking and bedding down for the night -- but also apparently no one does random wilderness encounters at 3 am, depriving them of a long rest, etc.

I never hear about people hauling their wagons up to a dungeon entrance, making them ready to haul away heaps of treasure, carrying their adventuring supplies like water and food stuff and cooking gear (because the usual travel pot is about enough for 1, after two hours of cooking). Setting a guard on the goods as they dive in, hauling stuff back through the dungeon to get it to the carts.

My group plays all of that. because things happen, and there is a reason player's are generally expected to make their own maps (something VTT is killing) and they do forget wherethose traps they got past were.

but we also do see the entire thing as being like a book, not a movie or video game. All of that is part of the story of the characters. It does go a lot faster, don't get me wrong ("We're leaving." Seven minutes later in real time they've done five hours in-game of work getting out of what took them fifteen days in-game and six months of session time getting into).

Crafting to make money? Yeah, possible -- but most actal crafts took multiples of actual hours longer then than they do today.  To buy a bolt of cloth -- we'll say simple muslin, not even high grade -- would have cost as much as a typical village merchant earned in 3 months, at the minimum. Those bolts might be enough to make 1 tunic. 

There is a degree of fantasy involved -- no question, but how you apply that fantasy is one thing. "I can make a bolt of cloth with magic". Well then, make a bolt of cloth with magic. Use that spell slot on fabricate. go for it.

That isn't crafting, though. That's using magic to make something. And not everyone -- not even all magic users -- can do it.

Simply put, there is no "realistic in the same sense as the rest of the game, even abstract like HP" way to do "I want to make a +3 Flametongue Battle Axe for my character in the middle of this adventure in a matter of a couple of hours." 

Which is not an argument against a crafting system.

I took that list of 200 ad boiled it down to around 30 things, based on what they do and what they need to do it. That gave me about 30 crafting skills that ca be used to create things during downtime. And it means tat there are ways to create a magical weapon -- during downtime -- as part of preparation.

Potions of healing and other odds and ends, yep, they can make those too.  The big thing is that even a fighter in my game can do it -- they need to do a bunch of stuff and they cannot do it alone, but they can make it happen. Are they going to make a wand of fireballs? Well, if they can get the stuff to do it, yeah -- and I'm not going to stop them, but it will take them a bit to do it in terms of in-game time, even if actual play time is only ten, fifteen minutes.

This is why I say that if what folks want is a Video Game Crafting system -- I stop in the dungeon and make a thing really fast while we are waiting -- that's going to crash and burn as far as 2024 rules go. They aren't going to create that. Such a thing would need to be a home brewed set up.

THe same way that my more involved and researched one would do the same. But what I did is closer to what the game currently has, and builds off what it already has in place.

If 80% of the players of the game decide they want a video game crafting system, then they may indeed put one in -- I'm not saying that isn't a possibility. But I don't see it as such -- most folks want that semblance of reality.

What players want is for their characters to be self-sufficient and/or creative. For their gear to reflect some aspect of their personalities. To have cool stuff and to feel like they earned it. I think these ambitions can be served in other ways.

This game already has a system in place to make rewards feel earned, and to facilitate a degree of player choice in what they get. It's called leveling up.

Crafting could certainly be conceptualized as a piece of the leveling system. This would divorce it from in-game time in a manner that seems uncomfortable at first. But let's consider. Does a Fighter improve more at fighting in one day of cave crawling than he did over years of training? Or do we just accept that it doesn't make sense, because it plays better?

The problems to overcome with crafting are two: 1) Keep players from getting things that are too powerful for the level they're at, and 2) don't allow wild discrepancies in item wealth based on different amounts of downtime. The point is to flatten out the variance. Control it. Well! What's more controlled than the leveling system?

"At level 3, you finish working on a magic item. Choose one from this list."

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

What players want is for their characters to be self-sufficient and/or creative. For their gear to reflect some aspect of their personalities. To have cool stuff and to feel like they earned it. I think these ambitions can be served in other ways.

This game already has a system in place to make rewards feel earned, and to facilitate a degree of player choice in what they get. It's called leveling up.

Crafting could certainly be conceptualized as a piece of the leveling system. This would divorce it from in-game time in a manner that seems uncomfortable at first. But let's consider. Does a Fighter improve more at fighting in one day of cave crawling than he did over years of training? Or do we just accept that it doesn't make sense, because it plays better?

The problems to overcome with crafting are two: 1) Keep players from getting things that are too powerful for the level they're at, and 2) don't allow wild discrepancies in item wealth based on different amounts of downtime. The point is to flatten out the variance. Control it. Well! What's more controlled than the leveling system?

"At level 3, you finish working on a magic item. Choose one from this list."

The thing about that is that not everybody always wants to be crafting a magic item at all times.

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

What players want is for their characters to be self-sufficient and/or creative. For their gear to reflect some aspect of their personalities. To have cool stuff and to feel like they earned it. I think these ambitions can be served in other ways.

This game already has a system in place to make rewards feel earned, and to facilitate a degree of player choice in what they get. It's called leveling up.

Crafting could certainly be conceptualized as a piece of the leveling system. This would divorce it from in-game time in a manner that seems uncomfortable at first. But let's consider. Does a Fighter improve more at fighting in one day of cave crawling than he did over years of training? Or do we just accept that it doesn't make sense, because it plays better?

The problems to overcome with crafting are two: 1) Keep players from getting things that are too powerful for the level they're at, and 2) don't allow wild discrepancies in item wealth based on different amounts of downtime. The point is to flatten out the variance. Control it. Well! What's more controlled than the leveling system?

"At level 3, you finish working on a magic item. Choose one from this list."

 
Counter proposal:

Set the DC of a crafting check at DC 30 minus Level of the Character. They still get their Proficiency bonus if they are proficient, and they don't if they are not proficient.

This still ties crafting to level in terms of growth in skill, while also having an impact on the potential for a low level character creating a high value item. 

If one wanted, you could even increase the DC by +1 for each degree of rarity.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Set the DC of a crafting check at DC 30 minus Level of the Character. They still get their Proficiency bonus if they are proficient, and they don't if they are not proficient.

 that still ties crafting to downtime. Anything that makes downtime significantly valuable is a problem for game flow.

One reasonable option is to have an earnable resource (every level, or some such) that permits you to perform things that normally take an extended period of downtime in a much shorter time.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Set the DC of a crafting check at DC 30 minus Level of the Character. They still get their Proficiency bonus if they are proficient, and they don't if they are not proficient.

 that still ties crafting to downtime. Anything that makes downtime significantly valuable is a problem for game flow.

One reasonable option is to have an earnable resource (every level, or some such) that permits you to perform things that normally take an extended period of downtime in a much shorter time.

 
wait -- how is downtime being valuable a problem for game flow?

I disagree with that assessment as it reads to me superficially.

Downtime, for most games, is only available outside of an immediate adventure (we used to say "between modules"), and isn't played out.

Or do you mean "we interrupt this adventure to run off and do a down time activity" type stuff -- which isn't a problem of downtime or crafting, but rather a problem on the side of the DM?

A resource "earning" is another gimme, and as a grumpy old lady I don't like gimmies. But, in that sense, there's Bastions for an income if the point is to provide an income "from crafting".

Quote from AEDorsay >>

wait -- how is downtime being valuable a problem for game flow?

It means the power level of the party is significantly dependent on adventure pacing. That's already a problem with long rests, it doesn't need to get amplified -- if anything, getting a long rest in a mere 8 hours should be recognized as cinematic and cost a resource other than time (recharge on level-up, or on waypoint, or cost some form of consumable).

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

wait -- how is downtime being valuable a problem for game flow?

It means the power level of the party is significantly dependent on adventure pacing. That's already a problem with long rests, it doesn't need to get amplified -- if anything, getting a long rest in a mere 8 hours should be recognized as cinematic and cost a resource other than time (recharge on level-up, or on waypoint, or cost some form of consumable).

 
So, starting again -- how is the pacing affecting the power level of the party? Most games seem to use Milestones, so it isn't a matter of combat impacting the progression scale (though if you use experience, perhaps), and all the assorted special features are tied to long/short rests.

A long rest resolution is like five minutes total play time at my table, and that's mostly narration. Is it more at yours? 

Are you arguing that rests shouldn't be enabled, and if so ,how does this impact a crafting system that is meant to be a downtime activity outside of an adventure, not inside one?

Not being facetious or anything -- I'm genuinely thrown off by where you are coming from here as it seems like the problem is related to downtime (again, a DM thing, not a crafting thing), and not to the process of crafting something.

Unless you mean "instacrafting", which not only stops PCs from actually taking a long or short rest (because crafting requires exertion), or the issue of "Phil is going to stay behind because he's gonna make a new bundle of torches" that involves party splitting up (again, a DM issue, not a crafting issue).

If you mean that everyone else is bored while the Player of Xazer builds some toy, well, that's also a DM thing. 

Or are you arguing that instacrafting should be allowed? Because that's pretty much opposite what I am talking about.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

One of those things that decades of gaming has taught me is that you shouldn't have magic shops.

Everyone does, mind you. Hell, even I did for years. So I don't say "you shouldn't" in the sense of "this is a bad thing", just in the sense of "this is what I learned".

As our play style evolved into the strange "this is the life of this person" sort that it is today, magic shops became a kind of short hand, an easy way to get a few items, and ultimately a sort of general store, and then they faded as we began to break things down into the merchant stalls and specialty shops and workshops of the towns all of it growing ou t of the role play and questions about the world.

So, I don't have magic shops. You can buy items (always the most common, most useful to the average person -- not average adventurer -- type stuff), but you have to get them from a person who makes that kind of thing. And they aren't everywhere. 

But the existence of them has been such a deeply ingrained thing, that I think they should do a kind of "model shop" -- show folks what the designers think a magic shop would be like. 

I do use some involved rules for spell creation (and by involved, I mean, you can fail, not that they are horribly hard),  and as I have noted previously, I have set things up so that spells either have to be created or found, bought or bartered. Grimoires are rare and exceedingly valuable, and spell scrolls are literally parts of someone's grimoire, not something that is crafted to stand alone.

And, as I made the mistake of catching up on news, I also have to note the thing that is unpopular about my games and my efforts: I never use any idea from the harry Potter stuff, in any way, and ideas that are close to HP stuff get shot down immediately.

There's no resentment about it (folks understand why), but it is still not a popular thing.

 

 i have magic shops and havnt had an issue, I also generally do not have anything higher then Uncommon in the shop and if there is it is astronomically expensive.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Are you arguing that rests shouldn't be enabled, and if so ,how does this impact a crafting system that is meant to be a downtime activity outside of an adventure, not inside one?

 I'm saying it's the same problem.

An adventure that's balanced on the assumption that it will be completed in one day is super easy if the PCs instead take two days. Similarly, an adventure that's balanced on default resources will be super easy if the PCs come in with a whole bunch of items they crafted in downtime. What this means is

• The PCs will always want more downtime.
• The DM will always want to not give them downtime.

That's not a recipe for a healthy game. Much better to make downtime essentially valueless.

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

What players want is for their characters to be self-sufficient.

 This IMO is the big problem with today's players. D&D is a social game, the whole point is that characters are not self-sufficient, otherwise why do you need a DM and other players at the table? In a single-player game it is totally fine for the player to be totally self-sufficient and not need to interact with NPCs and just do whatever they want. But in a multiplayer-cooperative game, it sucks. Shopping sessions are bad enough, but at least those the DM gets to play and have fun as the NPCs, but crafting is just so boring. Nobody wants to sit there for 2 hours listening while each other player looks through rules, searches through their inventory, and rolls a bunch of checks in order to craft their own whatsit.

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

"At level 3, you finish working on a magic item. Choose one from this list."

This is interesting. 

 

 
Counter proposal:

Set the DC of a crafting check at DC 30 minus Level of the Character. They still get their Proficiency bonus if they are proficient, and they don't if they are not proficient.

This still ties crafting to level in terms of growth in skill, while also having an impact on the potential for a low level character creating a high value item. 

If one wanted, you could even increase the DC by +1 for each degree of rarity.

This is also interesting.

Both of which I had not considered before. I previously had my PCs collect the right mats, find the right person to put them together, and in XX days it was done. 

Properly written rules would present these options in way that gives GMs multiple ideas on how to run it in their games.