Crafting, general philosophy

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ç i p h é r
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Ronan wrote:Well, there is the fact that masterwork items suck. They just aren't very good unless your level 2. Require a feat to make them? Who would take that feat? Shell out a few hundred gold to a local smith, providing him with special materials if needed. Thats a lot easier.
Anyone with ambitions for crafting magical items. You can only enchant masterwork quality items.
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Post by Blackwill »

Just one point. I'd love seeing crafting, but I feel that access to multiple crafts must be reduced. We don't want a PC which is a master smith, woodworker, tailor, tinker, etc.
I'd like to see PCs being able to reach a master status on one craft only, and limit the other crafts maximum growth in skills (or the like).
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Post by Mulu »

Blackwill wrote:Just one point. I'd love seeing crafting, but I feel that access to multiple crafts must be reduced. We don't want a PC which is a master smith, woodworker, tailor, tinker, etc.
Yep, which means either a hard rule, "thou shalt not craft in more than one area," or a system that limits multiple crafts, like say the feat/class restriction combo that I suggested above.
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Post by Fionn »

So if we are going to require a feat for any sort of mundane crafting, its not going to be for MW stuff. Its going to be for the working of rare pseudo-magical materials.
+1

I'm not firm that we need the Feats, but it makes more sense to require them for materials rather than items. Skills make more sense for items.

Question - since these allow DR, will there be a magical alternative?
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AlmightyTDawg
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Post by AlmightyTDawg »

My recommendation on the feat front is to assume for the purposes of Masterwork value v DC rolls, that we simply assume someone has the relevant Skill Focus and exceptional (+4) INT, and that the value of the "+craft" gear they are assumed to have is moderately connected to the level at which they'd be crafting a particular value item.

It wouldn't preclude someone from doing the work, but it would create a statistical barrier to entry by virtue of not having it. It would also impose some limitation on how "masterful" you can get in so many craft skills. I'm still not entirely sold on feats for special materials unless we lump them into some pretty broad swaths. An example would be no-feat:

- No feat: Cold Iron, Living Metal, Darkwood, all minor-bonus items.
- Feat1: All of the element-attuned materials like Darksteel or those with a notable/powerful effect
- Feat2: Mithral and Adamantine (clearly the most valuable of the set, so just two of them)

I don't know the materials well enough to offer a perfect breakdown, just that to start. Not having the feat would be a -5 to craft checks. I'm also going to push an "aggregate craft" system which involves more than a single roll - probably an average - to generate actual value on a table at the end.
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Post by Mulu »

Well, the problem with simply raising the DC roll is you shut out low level crafters, and ALFA is supposed to encourage slow leveling, not punish it. I also don't see mundane crafters as being particularly intelligent individuals. A feat investment allows low level PC's to participate, with some sacrifice, and without resticting MW crafting to the high IQ crowd.

Restricting types of crafting by feat obviously narrows the field of what any one PC can make. I thought my three proposed feats for classes of items were actually rather generous.

Another way to look at it is: What kind of NPC could craft these items? Would they have to be sixth level artisans with skill focus feats and high IQ's? If so, I can see high DC rolls being required. If not, then the barrier to entry should probably be lowered.
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Post by Ronan »

ç i p h é r wrote:
Ronan wrote:Well, there is the fact that masterwork items suck. They just aren't very good unless your level 2. Require a feat to make them? Who would take that feat? Shell out a few hundred gold to a local smith, providing him with special materials if needed. Thats a lot easier.
Anyone with ambitions for crafting magical items. You can only enchant masterwork quality items.
Yeah, but you can easily commission a MW item's creation in order to enchant it later. Creating a MW item just isn't that much of a feat. Forging something out of adamantine is.
Mulu wrote:But they sell for a profit, and if you add in all of the material X v. monster X issues, they are quite useful under 3.5 rules. Bottom line is, it takes time and energy to learn how to craft MW quality items, and that's time you are not spending learning to dodge or trip your opponent. Make MW crafting a class, make it take a feat or two, but make it do *something* that shows significant investment and deviation from the pure adventurer. Feats are certainly less investment than a non-adventuring class, and tie in very well with magical crafting feats.
Selling MW items for a profit is posssible, but the profits are poor compared to magical crafting or adventuring. And 3.5's DR rules are moot with normal MW items, since MW items don't effect DR. Special materials are mostly assumed to be MW quality, so I'd prefer to require a feat for them than normal MW items.

Blackwill,

Currently, in order to "master" all crafts, you'd have to get a skill-centric class and put all of or nearly all of your skills into crafting. Then there are feat requirements... Overall I think it would seriously compromise the ability of the PC to do other things, so I'm not sure there is any need for additional rules here. The biggest possible problem I can see is a wizard with many skill points from int becoming a master in many crafts, and of course would still be able to pwn things with his magic. One thing which would help this is altering the base stat of crafting skills - int alone seems a bit off. Another is altering the class skills of many classes - why should wizards (and all other classes) get ALL crafting skills as class skills? I think if you combine those last two ideas, it ceases to be a problem.

By the way, we can get started on coding the system. Specifics such as these can generally be altered pretty easily later, so we could get started on a framework to track time spent crafting, define the specs to do data-entry on recipies, do some data-entry on recipies, auto-generate "lore" items needed for magical recipies, etc. And when I say "we" I mean "not me" :P
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Post by Mulu »

Alright, so we have

1. Crafting skills limited by class.
2. High DC's for MW items.
3. Even higher DC's and a feat or two required to work special materials, e.g. adamantite.

I can live with that. For special materials, I'd suggest a base feat available to all that includes the weaker special materials, and then a second feat for the really powerful materials like adamantite. So, "Craft Special Materials" and "Advanced Craft Special Materials" or whatever. And maybe even limit the "Advanced" one to dwarves.

Then you could limit the ability to learn the "Advanced" feat to an NPC quest, and availability of special materials to DM quests as a stopgap against over manufacture.
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Post by AlmightyTDawg »

Mulu wrote:Well, the problem with simply raising the DC roll is you shut out low level crafters, and ALFA is supposed to encourage slow leveling, not punish it. I also don't see mundane crafters as being particularly intelligent individuals. A feat investment allows low level PC's to participate, with some sacrifice, and without resticting MW crafting to the high IQ crowd.
Well, it's more a function of scaling. You wouldn't assume they'd have the feat at low level and structure your DCs accordingly, more like around 6th level you'd start to bump your DCs on the basis of having that focus. Those taking it earlier would obviously have a leg up on non-focus brethren at low levels, where it's assumed you don't have it.

And bear in mind, what I'm talking about is a sliding scale of DCs. That to create a 40k item, you need a higher quality (read: higher craft roll) item than it would take to enchant an 8k item. It gives a sliding scale of value to continued advancement without necessarily impinging upon the general ability to produce "masterwork" goods.
Mulu wrote:Another way to look at it is: What kind of NPC could craft these items? Would they have to be sixth level artisans with skill focus feats and high IQ's? If so, I can see high DC rolls being required. If not, then the barrier to entry should probably be lowered.
Well, that one's a bit of a misnomer - you can debate the wisdom of putting a craft roll off INT if you want, but really I think we all tend to think of craft as more rank/experience than ability-influenced anyway. In the most basic sense of comporting with D&Ds advancement system, it's level which should/would make the biggest difference. At any rate, regardless of the NPC population model, you still have to balance your system on the PC model, which does presume that advancement. So if low-level crafters with skill foci are masters, then mid-level PCs with no skill foci are masters - in all the areas to boot.

So in essence, comparing the two ideas is whether you lock people out of crafting outside of their feats, but within those broad feats they can master most everything. Or you let people craft by the skills, and limit their master craftsmanship to one area per feat.
Last edited by AlmightyTDawg on Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Ronan wrote:Yeah, but you can easily commission a MW item's creation in order to enchant it later. Creating a MW item just isn't that much of a feat. Forging something out of adamantine is.
I assume[d] it's a feat tree, meaning you can't just leap frog the MW feat to get to the better stuff. That would indeed make it pointless.
Ronan wrote:And when I say "we" I mean "not me" :P
But "we" is really just an upside down "me".... :P

I'm still very much interested in developing a crafting system so count me in, provided other people are working on the essentials of course. One thing I don't want to do is duplicate effort with OE's scripts. It's based on 3.5e from what I understand so we might be able to salvage a fair bit of work. Which reminds me...this is something our beta testers could analyze if we give them a spec....
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Post by Ronan »

Mulu wrote:Well, the problem with simply raising the DC roll is you shut out low level crafters, and ALFA is supposed to encourage slow leveling, not punish it. I also don't see mundane crafters as being particularly intelligent individuals. A feat investment allows low level PC's to participate, with some sacrifice, and without resticting MW crafting to the high IQ crowd.
If they aren't talented, they are dedicated. You don't need a high INT to master a skill at all, obviously. We don't want low-level crafters to be able to make powerful mundane items. I'd really prefer it if there only ends up being two or three PCs in ALFA2 who can make a suit of platemail out of adamantine. Skill DC can scale with the value of an item, and in that way we can make it scale with the level of the crafter. So low-level crafters might have trouble with MW stuff, doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

The barrier to entry needs to stay. We don't want PC3s able to make suits of mithral mail any more than we want them crafting +2 swords. As for lowering it, well, thats a matter of DCs, and I don't want to discuss such specifics here. Such things are easily tweaked, anyways.
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Post by Mulu »

AlmightyTDawg wrote:So in essence, comparing the two ideas is whether you lock people out of crafting outside of their feats, but within those broad feats they can master most everything. Or you let people craft by the skills, and limit their master craftsmanship to one area per feat.
Well, if that's truly the effect, the obviously it's mastery that needs to be limited the most. Though I'd actually want to limit both, limit the type of items that can be crafted at all and limit mastery in those items, while still allowing low level entry. Which is why feats work the best. :P

It's going to be (allegedly) a long time before any PC's reach 6th level in ALFA NWN2. Something else to consider. I can see a combination of feats and skills required for MW/special materials crafting, with a balance that allows some crafting at low level (MW) and limits advanced crafting to mid level (special materials). With each requiring investment that penalizes combat effectiveness and with class specificity to different items.

[edit] Ronan, I don't think any of those items you mentioned qualify as MW.[/edit]
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Would PCs gain XP through crafting? It makes little sense to require them to adventure to gain levels only to spend skill points and feats in crafting to overcome high DCs.

Oh and I agree about the class skills/base stats. We need to assign base stats to skills according to the profession (metalworking -> strength, tinkering -> dexterity, brewing -> intelligence/wisdom, and so on).
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Post by Ronan »

Alright, I see we are mostly in agreement. Only thing left is specifics (which, admittedly, will probably be really complicated). I'm still not convinced we need feats for even special materials crafting, as ATD points out we can set the DCs high enough that supporting feats (skill focus, +2/+2 skill crafting feats) are needed until really high levels, and I think achieve the same effect in a less artificial manner. Kicker is these higher-level PCs achieve more power if they can skimp out on those feats by waiting a bit longer to get the necissary skill points. Though 5 levels is a long time to wait...

Anyone have a good name for a "tinker" skill?
ç i p h é r wrote:One thing I don't want to do is duplicate effort with OE's scripts. It's based on 3.5e from what I understand so we might be able to salvage a fair bit of work. Which reminds me...this is something our beta testers could analyze if we give them a spec....
VERY good point... We may want to hold off on the coding then.
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Post by Fionn »

While I agree it's silly to have crafters gain XP only from monster bashing, I *really* don't want to see level advancement based upon standing at an anvil. First off, there's no way to die at the anvil, and second off, it leads to item farms ala KotOR. Justify that the XP earned crafting is so trivial by comparison that we set it to 0.
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