Crafting skills - a new idea

[Mayhem]

The concern with craft skills is that either:

a) They allow characters to become excessively wealthy by manufacturing.

or

b) They don't, and thus become rather pointless in a world with wealth limits.

I wondered if we could use those wealth limits to our advantage.

What if a character were allowed to carry a single item relating to their particular skill/feat without it counting towards their overall wealth limit? It would still be limited by the single item threshold (or, perhaps, a x2 multiple of it).

So, the fighter that spends enough skillpoints on Weaponsmithing can carry the masterwork greatsword that he made, without its value counting against his wealth limit. Ditto the wizard with craft wand - he can carry a single Wand without its value being included in wealth assesments.

The feats and skills suddenly have value, giving their owner an edge not disimilar (if balanced correctly) to the power of the non-crafting skill/feat they could have taken instead.

Purely a speculative thought, and there may well be a gaping hole in the idea, but I thought it worth sharing.

[Zelknolf]

I'm not sure that saying that 0-value toward total wealth would be the best policy. I could see 1/2 value for magic items and 1/3 value for mundane items (i.e. the PnP costs to create the items) fitting somehow, perhaps to an upper limit based on level (i.e. up to 1000gold "credited" like this per level for CWI, for example... that number's not based on any math, just tossing it out there) to prevent someone from really abusing the feat/skill.

[Veilan]

I'm not sure a skill should have an effect on the overall wealth cap. This also still does not address a motivation for a PC to craft anything but this one single item.

Of course it's nice to have ideas how to make crafting interesting while balanced.

We also already only count half wealth in certain instances though, so if said fighter had a magical greatsword +1 but also his self-crafted masterwork greatsword, the latter would indeed only count half.

[Inaubryn]

Okay. Before I chime in on this one, I need more info. We currently do not have a crafting system in ALFA that is automated. I know that much. So, I pose a few questions to the masses.

What are the pros and cons of Obsidian's crafting system?

Are there any viable crafting systems anyone has seen on the vault. I've looked but not found much.

What is the biggest hurdle to implementing a fully automated full service crafting system in which a PC can be a viable merchant, or simply make items for PC companions?

[Mulu]

The crafting system that comes with the game actually has really high DC checks, which would limit special materials crafting to high level PC's (ironically, a bard is the best crafting class, due to skill bonus inspirations). Basically, at the point where you could actually make something useful, you should already have a much more powerful magic version. Of course, it's intended that you will then use a henchie to enchant said item.

I would say our biggest hurdle to implementing an automated system is our wealth limits. Simply put, if a PC can craft an item once, then it can craft that item a thousand times.

Now, way back when I did mention the idea of using guilds and limiting access to crafting components to prevent mass production. I don't know if that counts as "automated" though.

[Inaubryn]

Ok. So what if we were to lower the DCs on the OEI system, add an xp cost (1/10th market price of the item), and the need for components, would that make a difference? I'm building here as I gather more information.

Also, could any of our scripters reading this, look at the feasibilty of any and all of this?

[Mulu]

It would be far easier to make a "guild ring" that gave a crafting skill bonus than to edit all craftable items to lower DC's, and it would give the same result, access to crafting at an earlier level.

Then all you need is a way to control the flow of crafting components.

[Runestaff]

Ok. So what if we were to lower the DCs on the OEI system, add an xp cost (1/10th market price of the item), and the need for components, would that make a difference?

Perhaps it would be useful to distinguish between crafting (the manufacture of nonmagical items, including masterwork fare) and enchanting. In these terms, crafting should probably only cost money for components, using the various Craft Foo skills. Component costs can be used to keep PC wealth within reasonable levels. Making Joe the Blacksmith go adventuring to make more than five masterwork longswords (due to xp costs) doesn't make much sense.

Enchanting (actual honest to goodness magical item creation) would likely also work better with simple monetary costs for components rather than xp payments. Taking an xp penalty in a slow leveling environment like ALFA is likely to be harsh enough that most people wouldn't bother, begging the question of whether it is useful to have such a system in game at all. I'd rather see a quest to recover some rare component (hence keeping enchanting under DM control) rather than being automated.

[Inaubryn]

Hey, Rune, I'm with ya. But, I've been debating in ALFA so long, I've gotten to the point of preemptive arguing. The 10% xp penalty was just a little attempt at what I'm certain will be a balance argument. But, the fact is, if it cost you xp to enchant an item, that'll guarantee you won't see a flood of enchanted item. Seriously, doubt somebody's gonna backtrack a level in order to make that +1 sword.

And, yes, I meant for xp to be tied into enchanting not normal crafting.

[Mulu]

I don't see any reason why special materials crafting shouldn't result in a net loss of gold (though not xp). Adventurers are hobbyist crafters, throw in expected mistakes and they lose money making it themselves and selling to merchants, or if you wanted to be severe lose money even over buying it from a merchant. The advantage would be getting exactly what you want, which may not be available to purchase anywhere. "That's right, I want a darksteel sickle. Don't you have that in stock? What do you mean you've never heard of anyone making one?"

If a PC crafter made money from other PC's, well that falls under the category of player economy, and can be a good thing. Selling to merchants "creates" wealth, selling to other PC's redistributes wealth. It would likely never be enough demand to make a PC truly wealthy, so at that point you *could* automate it, since crafting and selling to NPC merchants would be a net loss over materials cost.

[Zelknolf]

From a tech perspective, automating any and all of this is possible, but it would redistribute volunteer work away from other mechanics.

From a rules perspective, PnP puts an XP cost on enchanment equal to 1/25 the market price (creating a +1 longsword costs 80xp and 1000 gold) and also provides rules for collecting special components to reduce the XP cost (Willing to harvest the souls of eight peasants? Good! No XP cost on that sword, but it's evil now! Similarly, willing to torture peasants enough and cast the appropriate spell to get 27 doses of liquid pain out of them, or make them happy enough to get 27 doses of ambrosia out of them? Also good! No XP cost on that sword!) I'm sure we could come up with more standard fantasy-campaign-style energy sources to power our magic for such a system, as well, but a system of "Either you quest or you spend XP" would keep the creation of magic items down to just what a character needs.

And if we want mundane items to be rare, just use the PnP rules -- crafting a masterwork item is a time consuming process, and very few PCs will have the ranks in craft (weaponsmithing) to get it done quickly (and those that do would profit very little, even getting good rates from PCs, relative to the wealth for their level.) Again, this would probably serve to keep PC crafted items down to what's needed.

[JaydeMoon]

Time, money, and materials.

Does the crafting system take all three of those into effect?

When I run crafting for a PC, the system I've come up with has it taking just over 3 weeks for him to produce a masterwork weapon (that was a couple of levels ago, actually) and almost 2 months to craft himself a suit of MW Plate.

If we automate crafting, is a PC with the cash and materials going to be pumping out the goods, or is there going to be some kind of time lock on how long before he can make the next thing?

[AcadiusLost]

Just F.Y.I. - we do have server time persistency working already with the ACR under NWN2, as managed by NWNx4 and the central SQL database- so scripting checks to see if an arbitrary amount of game-time has passed are quite feasible.

Just throwing it out there. Never crafted in the OC, and my NWN1-ALFA PC spent a feat on Craft Wonderous Item more than a year ago, and hasn't had opportunity to use it yet- so I've got no useful experience to contribute. Just seems to me we weren't sure what would be possible for time persistency back when these discussions rolled around last time.

Currently each server will track it's own persistent time, whenever the server is up. We can potentially sync all the servers together as well if needed, though I don't expect item crafting will involve crosserver travel.

[edit: Also, I thought questing for components was to offset the gold cost of magical crafting, not the XP cost- I've always seen the monetary barrier by far the most prohibitive to crafting. RP XP Happens- gp rewards are far more rare in my experience.]

[Mulu]

I wouldn't advise automated magic crafting. Automated special materials crafting (which basically supplants MW crafting) seems fine so long as it's a gp loss, so you can't repeat it ad nauseum for money. Looking over the list the DC's aren't as high as I remembered, so no skill add would be required.

[Rusty]

Status quo.