Author Topic: Pure Crafting  (Read 61332 times)

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #100 on: April 11, 2013, 02:27:12 PM »
I don't get what you're saying...

A plain pure silver item has 300 gold in material costs.
A plain pure gold item is stated as costing exactly ten times that, so 3000 gold plus ten times the cost of the item if made from normal steel.

The cost of upgrading to masterwork or higher is exactly the same as normal.

Offline Anomander

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #101 on: April 11, 2013, 03:08:44 PM »
My bad, I meant it only for special materials that are masterwork to begin with. Like Cold Iron, Adamantine and Mithril.
I mean: Weapons and armors made out of them are always masterwork, so how can you make a basic version of them?

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #102 on: April 11, 2013, 03:12:08 PM »
Subtract from the cost, go from there? This isn't the exact same material, so it doesn't have to play to the same rule.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #103 on: April 11, 2013, 03:33:16 PM »
One year is a LOT of downtime. @_@
Hmm, it may be indeed, reduced all the times above masterwork considerably.

You theoretically can already do that with regular crafting (why yes my warforged/other immortal race spent the last 10 millenia crafting and selling mundane stuff, can I start the game with some billions of GP worth of stuff?). Good luck making it fly trough any DM.
Not quite.
When you begin you have a set of starting gold by level. Your starting gold represents what a character has after all his gains and expenses before the campaign begin.
It only changes if the DM changes it.
You may be suprised with how many of the people on D&D forums argue otherwise (why yes my character psychic reformated himself a bunch of times to gain cost reduction feats and crafting feats to multiply his wealth multiple times over and then back to other feats just before the campaign started). Only worst, because they'll also try to argue that by the exp charts, they would've recovered their lost exp by now.

Sillyness like that aside, as one of my old DM used to say, NPCs won't just buy your stuff blindly. If you want to sell stuff en mass, you need to develop a reputation, secure trading routes, etc, and by that point you're not much of an adventurer, are you?

Even if you argue that village is composed purely of idiots filled with gold that will blindly buy whatever you wave at them, what's the worst that could happen? A basic pure metal weapon nets you some hundreds of gold per day, for the best time-gain ratio. However you could've gained probably over a thousand GP if you had went out there adventuring. Plus exp, and finding plot hooks and whatnot.

So you can become a professional pure metal blacksmith if you want and earn a living, just don't be suprised when you go out there and everybody else is either dead or higher level.

However, what is done during the game is supposed to be alright. If you can do regular crafting to make any adamantine object in less than a day, then you're in for easy and quick profit. It could instead have a proportional craft time by pure metal type/upgrade.
It already has by upgrade.

You've avoided the high discounts again.
I believe I already adressed them. You need to get the stuff in the first place, you need to actually be proficient with the stuff, the bonus comes in fixed bundles instead of pick-and-mix-at-will, and it does limit a bunch of the character's options unless you care to reveal to us your secret skillz of instant shield juggling.

Also, how do you make basic pure silver/gold/etc) items? Crafting with these special materials makes them masterwork by default.
Silver and Cold iron can totally be made non-masterwork. For the rest, you just make them even more masterwork before going for the higher grades.

Speaking of which, the special effect probably shouldn't be available to basic pure items. Their effect is of very high worth even at their lowest and nothing less than a masterwork weapon makes a proper coat of arms.
Sure the lower level coat of arms don't affect that much of an area, but they're more intended for stuff like bandit kings and small teams that just want to cover a small area.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #104 on: April 11, 2013, 04:27:54 PM »
New question: How do the different quality steps interact with SRD Masterwork/ other non-magical weapon enhancements like Elven/Dwarven/whatever craft and the class abilities of The Master (an actual Dragonlance NPC class, not that I expect it to ever be used but I'm sure that it isn't the only thing of it's like floating around)?

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #105 on: April 11, 2013, 04:51:06 PM »
I'm pretty sure that class isn't official wotc work, as a lot of other dragonlance stuff, in particular with all the references to steel currency.  If your DM allows you to use, great for you even whitout pure metals, you can buy better masterwork stuff for the same price, and stuff like +8 to skill checks for just 1500 GP.

Masterwork pure metal still gives the same bonus as regular masterwork, +1 to hit with weapons, -1 armor check penalty to armor/shields.

Elven/Dwarven/whatever also work normally as well.


Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #106 on: April 13, 2013, 01:30:25 AM »
The Pure Crafting feat has a prerequisite of Craft (Weapons and Armor.) Does this mean ranks in both Craft (Weaponsmithing) and Craft (Armorsmithing) or is Craft (Weapons and Armor) a skill of its own?

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #107 on: April 13, 2013, 04:28:38 PM »
Changed it so that it  works from Armorsmithing or Weaponsmithing, but each allows you only to craft either armor or weapons respectively. Get both to be able to craft them all!.

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #108 on: April 13, 2013, 10:41:42 PM »
Changed it so that it  works from Armorsmithing or Weaponsmithing, but each allows you only to craft either armor or weapons respectively. Get both to be able to craft them all!.

That seems ideal.

Is Pure Silver the same thing as Alchemical Silver for cost, base HP/hardness and the like? Does it deal -1 damage as per the material entry?

If pure silver = alchemical silver, how much do pure silver armor and shields cost, since the material entry covers only weapons?

Offline zioth

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #109 on: April 14, 2013, 11:05:17 AM »
Looking through the pure metals I missed:
 
Mithril
Having artifactwork weapon, armor and shield gives you three extra attacks at full BaB per turn. On a rogue with TWF, that can get you up to 10 attacks pre-epic. Perfect TWF woudln't double the haste attack, but should double the other two, bringing you up to 12 attacks at level 21. Too bad you can't flurry with armor, or you could bring that up to 16. Is this overpowered? Likely, but maybe not compared to magic. Will it slow down the game? Yes. I know this from experience, having played a character who got 10 attacks per round. A fighter would get fewer attacks, but could combine these powers with the nice mage-destroying powers of the other pure metals.
 
I like the special power. Teleporting as a week-long action is really interesting, and it means that entire armies can teleport if they have enough money and time. Since Mithril is priced by the pound, everyone in the army could wield a fine-sized dagger costing only 1 or 2 gp.
 
You know, for people (like me) who are concerned about the power of these items, it would still be really fun to integrate just the special powers of pure metals.
 
Adamantine
Artifactwork: Are you sure you want to use Daze? That's a really powerful effect. A relatively low-level character with Whirlwind Attack or TWF could keep large numbers of opponents perpetually dazed. For that matter, enemies could do this to PCs.
 
Phantasmwork: It would be worth simplifying this somehow, or the game is going to grind to a halt every time someone swings the weapon, while people go and work out which bonuses are okay and which aren't.
 
Special Power: This is a little odd, and sounds very much like magic. If I put a dagger on one side of a house, how does that protect the other side? And why is this done with weapons and armor instead of raw adamantine? It would make more sense to me if you could spend an hour with a handful of adamantine chunks to reinforce the weakest parts of a structure.
 
Pure Gold
Artifactwork: This is more powerful by far than the entire Bardic Music abliity. At high levels, you could easily grant +20 or +40 to all your allies' attack rolls, meaning they basically auto-hit all the time (since you renew it each round). If your allies also have pure gold, the damage bonus becomes ridiculous. If they have non-gold pure metal, you also end up with some crazy bonuses.
 
Masterwork armor: This is an odd one, and strangely weak compared to your other pure metal abilities. You can grant an adjacent ally a +3 on skill checks, but only if that ally isn't wearing expensive armor? Why would the quality of your ally's armor matter?
 
Relicwork armor: Also strangely weak compared to other pure metals.
 
Special ability: This is okay, but some of the ranges are odd. Why would people 10 miles away, who don't even know that you've mounted pure gold on your front door, be friendlier towards you? Maybe the idea is that word spreads really quickly when this is done? But if that were what caused the effect, it would affect people at much greater distances...
 
« Last Edit: April 14, 2013, 09:15:08 PM by zioth »

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #110 on: April 14, 2013, 08:34:02 PM »
Regarding artifactwork weapons in general: You have to be lv16 (w/ full BAB) to use them so there's no possibility of their effects being problematic on low level characters and a straight rogue couldn't use them pre epic at all since only BAB from your first 20 HD count.

On artifactwork adamantine: 10+BAB isn't that impressive a save DC. The only targets you're likely to daze consistently with a single hit are mook types and casters have been taking out 10ft radiuses of those since lv3.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2013, 08:35:45 PM by Concerned Ninja Citizen »

Offline Anomander

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #111 on: April 16, 2013, 03:49:57 AM »
You theoretically can already do that with regular crafting (why yes my warforged/other immortal race spent the last 10 millenia crafting and selling mundane stuff, can I start the game with some billions of GP worth of stuff?). Good luck making it fly trough any DM.
Not quite.
When you begin you have a set of starting gold by level. Your starting gold represents what a character has after all his gains and expenses before the campaign begin.
It only changes if the DM changes it.
Sillyness like that aside, as one of my old DM used to say, NPCs won't just buy your stuff blindly. If you want to sell stuff en mass, you need to develop a reputation, secure trading routes, etc, and by that point you're not much of an adventurer, are you?
Even if you argue that village is composed purely of idiots filled with gold that will blindly buy whatever you wave at them, what's the worst that could happen?

I don't have to nor do I want to. People here already covered the idea that in D&D economy is whack and doesn't have to make sense. You also make the stuff by the hour and they don't have to be consecutive. You can craft you stuff on the go and get busy when things get slow, which tends to happen often. No problem.

A basic pure metal weapon nets you some hundreds of gold per day, for the best time-gain ratio. However you could've gained probably over a thousand GP if you had went out there adventuring. Plus exp, and finding plot hooks and whatnot.
You're definitively not calculating this right, or you really don't see how the rules you've made on pure metal crafting just contribute to maximizing profit.
If you're gonna craft for profit, always craft the most expensive thing possible. Duh.
It's always going to take only 8 hours for a basic version (there is no additional cost for making masterwork versions, only more craft time, so there is no point making one for profit).
Make pure adamantine heavy armors for a daily profit of about 7602gp if you don't sleep. Or any ridiculously heavy item of pure material that charges by the pound.
But we're still crafting for profit, so use your profit to craft large adamantine heavy armors for double profit. ...Might as well skip to when you're making colossal ones.
Have your leadership followers get the Pure Crafting feat and craft some with you too. Why not.

So you can become a professional pure metal blacksmith if you want and earn a living, just don't be surprised when you go out there and everybody else is either dead or higher level.
Get busy for a week or two and teleport to your buddies and bring your newly purchased epic magic items you just purchased off the profit you made while they searched for the next dungeon. Get some for the whole party while you're at it.

Since you'll quickly get more gold than you can spend, might as well try to bribe your encounters when you can for possible easy XP.
Providing payment for your army of called allies suddenly isn't a big deal anymore.

You can probably teleport to your allies whenever they need you.
I don't call it making a living. I call it winning the game by making treasures appear out of nowhere.

You've avoided the high discounts again.
I believe I already adressed them. You need to get the stuff in the first place, you need to actually be proficient with the stuff, the bonus comes in fixed bundles instead of pick-and-mix-at-will, and it does limit a bunch of the character's options unless you care to reveal to us your secret skillz of instant shield juggling.
I don't see how any of that justifies getting super items for cheap. Even without shield juggling. They really just sound like bad attempts at making minor inconveniences sound like a big deal.

Also, how do you make basic pure silver/gold/etc) items? Crafting with these special materials makes them masterwork by default.
Silver and Cold iron can totally be made non-masterwork. For the rest, you just make them even more masterwork before going for the higher grades.
There is no price for making an item masterwork. So items becoming more masterwork are done for free if you spend the time to upgrade them? Might as well just make the masterwork version of these items the basic version since it more or less amounts to the same thing.

Speaking of which, the special effect probably shouldn't be available to basic pure items. Their effect is of very high worth even at their lowest and nothing less than a masterwork weapon makes a proper coat of arms.
Sure the lower level coat of arms don't affect that much of an area, but they're more intended for stuff like bandit kings and small teams that just want to cover a small area.
Even at minimal area of effect the effect is still very powerful. I'm not discussing the size of the covered area, I'm talking about the power of the special effect.
Most are very strong for such a cheap bundle of basic items.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #112 on: April 16, 2013, 07:08:52 AM »
Take the extra material cost off of the 'always masterwork' things to get the basic version? Easy enough.

So... you can break the game in half through infinite wealth, if your DM is an idiot and lets you do it? You can hardly make a fortune and then go on a shopping spree in Sigil without being noticed. :/

Offline Anomander

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #113 on: April 16, 2013, 02:09:58 PM »
Easy enough but not in the current rules.

Every infinite money trick works only without DM fiat. I'm just pointing out that this one exists because it was ruled to make it possible.
It can also be tolerated to a point. Like the player making a costly pure item, then selling it because "its not the armor he needs after all".
As long as they are cheaper than their resell value, it is inevitable. There will always be a way.

Just send the lawful-good subtype outsider you called to the outer celestial planes with your shopping list and some money for the trouble. You can always make an order 'online' to have them crafted for you in timeless planes. Problem solved.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2013, 02:15:21 PM by Anomander »

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #114 on: April 16, 2013, 05:38:15 PM »
I think you missed the point of the "D&D economy is whack" conversation.

Said point was that the economy as outlined in the rules is absurd, party because economics is much too complicated and boring (for the majority of the target audience) to spend sufficient space and energy on making solid rules for it.

The economy in a D&D game is not supposed to be run by the rules. It is supposed to be fudged by the DM. If you take that caveat, the rules provided actually work fine. It's only when you start trying to lawyer your way to victory using only the printed rules that everything explodes.

Using that caveat, your whole point about being able to get infinite wealth by crafting and selling pure items is irrelevant. You won't do that because the DM won't let you and the DM has 20 billion solid reasons to not let you. Starting off with the issue that only characters with +8 BAB or higher can benefit from masterwork pure metal items. Most campaign worlds have relatively few NPCs of that level and it's perfectly reasonable for the DM to say that the ones that do exist already have all the armor and weapons they want so there's no market for your masterwork pure adamantine heavy armor.

In a related question: Is the cost for crafting with special materials different than the cost for buying it? That is, does crafting a suit of Mithral Full Plate cost 9,000gp, or 3,000? The SRD doesn't have anything to say on the matter.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #115 on: April 16, 2013, 05:51:29 PM »
Funnily enough, I think a high levelled world would have less of a market for these items, because high levels and high magic are rather linked. Got lots of high levelled NPC's? Magic items galore!

Offline Anomander

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #116 on: April 16, 2013, 06:05:20 PM »
@CNC: I know. I actually agree with that notion, as you might deduce from my previous comment.

The srd says you pay 1/3 the raw materials and 1/3 the masterwork cost. You pay 1/3 for special material cost modifiers.

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #117 on: April 16, 2013, 06:11:39 PM »
Then why have you spent several posts making a point that you agree is irrelevant?

Thanks for the price info. Does it specifically say you pay 1/3 of special material costs or is that extrapolated from the "1/3 raw materials" pricing info under the craft skill?

Offline Anomander

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #118 on: April 16, 2013, 06:45:01 PM »
First because I'm explaining that the craft discount as is is way too low. That it can be used to cheat is just an argument to show that it is, well, too low.
All items crafted that are more than simple mundane objects always get a different craft cost discount and a significant jump in price. A mere +600gp doesn't solve that.
Mundane weapon to basic pure iron craft item: +600 gp.
Mundane weapon to +1 magic weapon: +2000
And guess which weapon is better?

Second because although I trust DMs (most of them, at least) to discard such tactics, I'd rather for them not to be possible at all.
Why make it possible when you can just prevent it to begin with? Same as why we usually make clauses to prevent item duplication tricks.


From the raw material costs. Mostly because special materials are raw materials and because mundane crafting has no cost besides time, efforts, raw materials and tools of the trade.

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: Pure Crafting
« Reply #119 on: April 16, 2013, 07:15:43 PM »
The problems you are presenting are not really problems with the pure crafting subsystem. They're problems with the D&D crafting and economic rules as a whole. As such, there's not much Oslecamo can do about them.

Buying a pure iron weapon, as opposed to having the crafting feat, is unlikely to cost 600gp more than a normal weapon, or even be available at character creation. That's how pure crafting is supposed to work in the average game. However, the way the rules are set up means that it is not possible to write this out explicitly. You can't increase the market price without increasing the production cost and the production cost is where it should be. So you have to depend on the DM to regulate the market price and availability. That's not an ideal situation but the rules don't offer an alternative.

Also, "which weapon is better" depends a great deal on who is wielding it and what they want to do with it.

For context, most games on this site, including Oslecamo's, use the variant that a +1 weapon comes with a +1 ability, you don't pay for them seperately.

There are dozens of different +1 weapon abilities and many of them do things that pure metal weapons cannot. If you want to boost your initiative, pure metal can't help you with that. A +1 Warning or Eager weapon can. Also, pure metal items have effects that scale with their wielder's BAB. You need to have +4 BAB to benefit from a basic special material weapon.