With the rules for crafting in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide and 2024 Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Masters can allow characters to turn their free time and gold into useful items! Crafting is normally a difficult activity to run because of its innate complexity, but the streamlined rules found in the 2024 Core Rulebooks provide Dungeon Masters with flexible mechanics to allow their players to express their creativity.
In this article, we’ll explore how Dungeon Masters can bring crafting to their games with the help of the rules found in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide and 2024 Player’s Handbook, so let’s fire up the forge and get crafty!
- The Basics of Crafting
- What Can Players Craft?
- A Little Help From Your Friends
- Bastion Crafts
- Why Add Crafting to Your Games?
- Master the Art of Crafting!
The Basics of Crafting
The 2024 Core Rulebooks have introduced a new crafting system that’s flexible, in-depth, and seamlessly integrates into the game by expanding on an existing aspect: Tools.
Now, characters proficient with certain tools can craft specific items, given that they have the raw materials and time required. This provides tool proficiencies a newfound purpose and utility.
The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide contains rules for DMs to guide players who want to craft magical items, while in the 2024 Player’s Handbook, players will find rules for crafting nonmagical items, Potions of Healing, and Spell Scrolls.
What Can Players Craft?
Crafting Nonmagical Items, Spell Scrolls, and Potions
Nonmagical items can be crafted using the new rules found in chapter 6 of the 2024 Player’s Handbook. To craft nonmagical items, you must have proficiency with the proper tool, expend the necessary raw materials (half the item’s purchase cost rounded down), and spend a number of 8-hour workdays working on the item equal to its purchase cost divided by 10 (round a fraction up to a day).
Potions of Healing and Spell Scrolls are the two magic items that characters can craft using the rules from the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Potions of Healing are fairly simple, only requiring a day's work and some gold, provided you're proficient in the Herbalism Kit. Scribing Spell Scrolls takes a little more work, however.
Crafting Other Magic Items
At the Dungeon Master’s discretion, characters can craft more magic items than just Potions of Healing and Spell Scrolls, as detailed in chapter 7 of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide.
In order to craft a magic item, characters require the following:
- Proficiency in the Arcana skill.
- Proficiency in the tool associated with the type of item you’re crafting. For example, crafting rings requires proficiency with Jeweler’s Tools.
- Raw materials, the cost of which is based on the rarity of the item. The DM determines whether the appropriate raw materials are available.
- Any item with a purchase cost that is incorporated in the magic item, such as a weapon or armor. If the character doesn’t have this item on hand, they can pay the entire cost of this item or craft it using the rules from the 2024 Player’s Handbook.
Once you have all of the requirements for the item, you can start crafting it! This process will take a number of 8-hour workdays based on the rarity of the item, which can be anywhere from 5 to 250. These workdays don’t need to be sequential, and the time and gold required for consumable items (other than Potions of Healing and Spell Scrolls) are halved.
If the magic item allows the user to cast any spells, characters must also have those spells prepared each day they spend crafting. But after the process is complete, they’ll have a brand new magical item to bring with them on adventures!
A Little Help From Your Friends
Crafting magic items is a time-intensive process. However, this time can be reduced by asking for a little help. When crafting an item, you can enlist the aid of an assistant, which can be either another character or a hireling from your Bastion, as long as they also have the necessary proficiencies.
The time needed to craft the item is divided between the number of characters or hirelings working on it, and while normally only a single character can assist at a time, your DM might allow more assistants to help out in certain circumstances.
Bastion Crafts
The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide also introduces the Bastions system, which provides rules for characters that want to create their own bases of operations. These rules synergize with the rules for crafting and provide an alternative crafting option that requires a less hands-on approach from characters.
If a character is in possession of a Bastion, some special facilities come with the option to issue the Craft order. When this order is issued to a special facility on a Bastion turn, its hireling can undertake crafting an item specific to that facility.
For example, the Arcane Study special facility can be issued the Craft: Magic Item (Arcana) order, provided the character who owns that Bastion is level 9 or higher. Once issued, the hirelings of that facility craft a Common or Uncommon magic item in the same way that a player character could, using the rules from the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. (Magic items that allow the user to cast spells must be crafted by the character, but the facility’s hirelings can assist, thereby halving the amount of time required!)
Why Add Crafting to Your Games?
The crafting rules in the 2024 Core Rulebooks are more than just a time-filler between adventures; they provide a dynamic system that gives players more autonomy throughout the campaign.
In-Session Creativity. Crafting gives players a chance to prepare for situations—or even MacGyver their way out of them—as long as they have the tools, raw materials, and time necessary. For example, if the characters are heading into an environment they think will be filled with poisonous creatures, they can use Brewer’s Supplies to craft Antitoxin. Or, if your party is trapped in a chasm, a character could use Weaver’s Tools to fashion some Rope by breaking down the party’s Bedrolls for raw materials.
Build-Your-Own Rewards. If your players are looking for a specific magic item for their characters, previously, they would have to find it through adventuring or connect with a rare purveyor of magical artifacts to buy the item. This new crafting system allows you to simply reward them with gold and let them decide what to craft as long as they are proficient in Arcana and with the proper tool.
More Customization Options. Besides story and roleplay purposes, crafting is also a great way to allow players to customize their characters. Whether they’re looking for a new set of nonmagical armor, some furniture for their Bastion, or want to wield a Hammer of Thunderbolts, the crafting system gives them the freedom to make these choices and shape their character's capabilities to fit their playstyle.
Out-of-Session Activity. Crafting encourages players to engage with their characters and the campaign between sessions, especially if you facilitate resting time through out-of-session discussion.
Master the Art of Crafting!
The rules for crafting found in the 2024 Player’s Handbook and 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide provide a clear and accessible way for players, with the help of their DMs, to spend time preparing for future adventures and equipping their character in just the right way.
But these mechanics are the beginning, not the end, of what crafting can be in your game. Using these guidelines and combining them with roleplay and quest hooks, DMs can turn crafting into a homebrew adventure in its own right.
The possibilities are endless, especially when combined with other mechanics presented in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, such as Bastions in chapter 8 or Creating Adventures in chapter 4.
Davyd is a moderator for D&D Beyond. A Dungeon Master of over fifteen years, he enjoys Marvel movies, writing, and of course running D&D for his friends and family, including his daughter Willow (well, one day). The three of them live with their two cats Asker and Khatleesi in south of England.
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Posted Oct 18, 2024healing potion crafting is big news
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Posted Oct 19, 2024Crafting has always confused me because of the amount of time required. Upwards of 250 days? The BBEG might have taken over the world while you make a +1 Longsword! I have long since homebrewed since I first started out as a DM many years ago but it makes a lot more sense to only spend a few days some mundane junk than to toil nearly a year to make some stuff. Not for me, not for my table.
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Posted Oct 19, 2024The time component was always the worst part of the crafting rules. 150 days to forge a plate armor? Most campaigns are over before that amount of time happened.
The rules should have involved multiple ways to reduce the time. Like: Using better tools (+1 to +3) that let's you craft worth 2 or more days, per day, Facilities like a actual Smithey or carpenters guild, should double the speed, spells could help too, like the haste spell could allow for a whole day of crafting done in one hour. And there are certainly more ideas that could have been used.
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Posted Oct 19, 2024I imagine the 250 days thing is for legendary items, as those are more difficult to make. Probably somewhere around 5 days for common, 10 for uncommon, 50 for rare, 150 for very rare, 250 for legendary.
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Posted Oct 19, 2024you still need to craft the common items with the normal rules (i.e. 150 days for a plate armor), which is at times ridiculous that a very rare magic items needs the same as a mundane plate armor.
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Posted Oct 19, 2024I like the core ideas for magical item creation. I'm a bit concerned that the requirement for the crafter to have proficiency in both Arcana and the relevant tool will place stress on background selection. The typical wizard will not have a tool proficiency unless they started as an Artisan or with the Skilled origin feat and selected one or more tool proficiencies rather than skill proficiencies.
As a DM, I think I would expand on the crafting assistant option and allow for the crafting duo to collectively cover all requisite proficiencies rather than requiring each person to have all of them.
It's still good that they've updated the crafting rules for the new DMG.
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Posted Oct 20, 2024A character can learn to use new tool sets in down time, and what's to say you cant hire someone to make the item while the character enchants it. More hooks for the DM to use for adventures.
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Posted Oct 20, 2024You could just buy the plate armor to start, reducing the time. As for the creation times, making plate armor did take a long time, 4 or 5 months in real life, because each individual piece had to be fitted to the person who would wear it so they could move effectively. You can't just weld together metal tubes and expect to be able to walk, let alone run.
As for magic items, I suspect it is a way of balancing out the power level of the item. The rarity of the item would become meaningless if you could crank them out in a week or less. So, you want to make a very rare magic staff? well, it's gonna take 5 months of casting spells into a specially prepared staff made of a special kind of wood, while standing within a magic circle. You have to take the time to do it right, or the enchantment could backfire. Also, an inanimate item doesn't take to magic as readily as a living being, so that takes some time. Also, most magic items have decorations or an appearance that points to them being special. I like to think that these flourishes are used to contain the magic infused in the item.
Here is a link to some information I found regarding making armor in real life, it's a long technical read, but pretty useful if you like to add verisimilitude to your games. real world armor creation
I think the issue here is DM's not allowing for downtime in their campaigns. If your campaign is set at a breakneck pace, then player crafting just is not an option for you. Alternatively, you could allow items to be made quickly, but perhaps allow the item to "malfunction" if it was created in haste.
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Posted Oct 20, 2024In response to some comments, unfortunately the stress on skills/backgrounds is there regardless of whether you have someone else make the base item or you buy it yourself, because the rules require you to have the associated tool proficiency if you are crafting the item - and turning a suit of plays into +1 plate is still crafting +1 plate. This I’m sure is intended - you can’t very well be carving arcane tunes into plate in order to render it magical without the knowledge of how to properly heat the metal, chisel the sigils into the plate surface, etc. But it does mean that smith’s tools, leatherworker’s tools, and woodcarver’s tools are now attractive pick-ups.
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Posted Oct 21, 2024But what happens if a random rust monster eats your plate armor, destroying those 150 days of hard work? Maybe that's how the paladin switches from his current oath to an oath of vengeance: a rust monster eats his plate armor, and he swears to hunt down all rust monsters to extinction, using only non-metal weapons and armor.
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Posted Oct 21, 2024The issue is not DM's not allowing downtime. It is that most campaigns are done within about a months time for most campaigns, even pre written ones. The time frame of most campaigns is too short for months of time needed to craft something. Crafting rules should accommodate that. Like a "slow" track to mimic real world times, a "standard" track to follow the time that most campaigns are (sub 2 months), and a "fast" track for campaigns nd adventures that are done within less than 2 weeks.
Arguing real world times is pointless for a fantasy game that let's spellcasters reach the powerlevel of fabricate within two months to just pop items into existence each day.
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Posted Oct 22, 2024you could always make healing potions
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Posted Oct 23, 2024in most prewritten campaigns you don't have a chance to buy anything alot of the time either, these rules are for h9omebrew campaigns. They are rules that can be used if the DM wants to incorporate them into their games. as for lenght of a campaign, I have had games where in game time has been multiple years.
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Posted Oct 24, 2024Regarding the time component for crafting legendary items, the book Ptolus had a 9th level spell that allowed the caster to access a special 13th month that was otherwise hidden from the world. The caster would then have 30 days to do things like crafting and research, and only a single second passed for the rest of the world. They would have to prepare for that extra month, because they couldn't interact with anything outside of the designated area of effect for the spell. So they would need supplies and the ingredients as well as the necessary workshops etc. within the effect of the spell. But I could see a group of player characters carefully preparing, working together and combining their efforts to create a powerful magic item in that extra magical month. That would be epic.
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Posted Oct 24, 2024The old crafting rules allowed multiple characters to participate in the crafting of an item, mainly to speed progress. I suppose we'll have to wait and see if that's still an option in the 2024 DMG's rules, and whether that allows the crafting team to collectively meet the prerequisites. I hope it does, not just because it alleviates the demands on the spellcaster, but also because it's pretty cool thematically - for ex. a mage and a master smith collaborating to create a magic weapon, or a wizard and a clockwork machinist cooperating to build mechanical constructs.
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Posted Oct 28, 2024I definitely will not be sticking to these "rules". Ill be using some ideas from here and homebrew the rest. If dudes on forged in fire on History channel can make a blade in day of filming, i can extrapolate that to drum up some BETTER rules and guides. Stuff to think about:
How skilled are you?
Do you have crap tools or the perfect workshop setup ala Celebrimbor?
Do you have help? How good are they?
Are you a Weapons crafter or more of an Armor crafter?
Are you attempting to craft in your perfect domain with resources or are you trying to craft on the road or in a small unfamiliar Hamlet?
To magic or not to magic?
Do you know a good enchanter?
(I hope so)
There are a ton of ways to make a better system.
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Posted Oct 28, 2024In the first rounds yes they have a day but they do not complete a finished blade in one day, the first round is usually the rough cut, the second round is finishing the blade, and usually those are not that great quality. the final round they are given 3-5 days to make the weapon.