[CONAN] Craft Overlap?

[Supplement Four]

How much skill overlap do you allow in your game? What do you think is intended by the rules, RAW?

For example, if a character needs to repair armor, can the Craft (Weaponsmith) skill be used instead, maybe at a higher DC, in place of Craft (Armorsmith)?

If you wanted to attach spikes to a shield or metal claws to a gauntlet, can either skill be used? What about creating a shield with spikes or a gauntlet with metal claws from scratch?

I ask, because I sometimes see this type of thing in official materials. For example, the Conan Core rulebook states that armor can be repaired with a DC 10 Craft (Armorsmith) check or a DC 15 Craft (Blacksmith) check. Well....what if you've got Craft (Weaponsmith)? Can that be used, maybe at a DC 20?

 

[Supplement Four]

Crafting Questions


Question 1. I assume the handle of a hatchet is part of the raw materials needed when a weaponsmith crafts the hatchet's head. The handle he buys from....the Craft (carpenter), I suppose?

Likewise, the fletcher buys arrow heads from the weaponsmith, which are included in the cost of raw materials when making arrows.

Can a weaponsmith make a hatchet without access to a carpenter (i.e., the weaponsmith makes the handle himself)?

Can a fletcher make arrows all by himself without access to a market where he can buy arrow heads?

Can a bowyer also make arrows?





Question 2. Can a weaponsmith make a club or a quarterstaff? Or, is this the realm of the carpenter?





Question 3. How do you figure the time it takes to craft a club or a quarterstaff when the items are listed with no cost?

 

[Supplement Four]

Another Crafting Question....

Caelis has Craft (Weaponsmith) +8, and he needs to make a dagger. Using Conan RPG pricing, the dagger costs 3 sp.

Caelis pays his 1 sp in raw materials cost, then he makes his Craft check, rolling a 17 for a total of 25. It's a DC 12 check.

Caelis needs a mere 15 to complete the weapon. His prodution total is (25 x 12 = 300).





Question 1. Every multiple of 5 cuts time to make the item in half, right?

Thus a production of 15 gets the dagger made in a week. A 30 production gets it made in half a week. A 45 production gets it made in a day and a half. A 60 production gets it made in 3/4 of a day. A 75 production gets it made in 1/3 of a day. A 90 production gets it made in about 2 hours. A 105 gets it made in 1 hour.

A 120 gets it made in half and hour.

A 135 gets it made in 15 minutes...

A 150 gets it made in 7.5 minutes....

A 175 gets it made in 225 seconds...

Wait! Wait! Wait!

C'mon...really? Caelis rolled so high that it virtually took him no time at all to make this dagger? Heck, firing up the forge probably to 15 minutes by itself.


Question 1 is: Are there no minimums on Crafting? Shouldn't there be a minimum amount of time that it takes to make a dagger?

Or, am I doing something wrong here?



Question 2: Barring an answer to Question 1, is there anything else that the character can do with those production points?

Let's say Caelis stopped at the 150 mark. Caelis still has another 150 points to go. If he paid the second raw materials cost, could Caelis make two daggers in 7.5 minutes?





Question 3: Explain to me what I'm doing wrong here. Please.

 

[Jeraa]

Question 1. I assume the handle of a hatchet is part of the raw materials needed when a weaponsmith crafts the hatchet's head. The handle he buys from....the Craft (carpenter), I suppose?

Likewise, the fletcher buys arrow heads from the weaponsmith, which are included in the cost of raw materials when making arrows.

Can a weaponsmith make a hatchet without access to a carpenter (i.e., the weaponsmith makes the handle himself)?

Can a fletcher make arrows all by himself without access to a market where he can buy arrow heads?

Can a bowyer also make arrows?

Question 2. Can a weaponsmith make a club or a quarterstaff? Or, is this the realm of the carpenter?

A weaponsmith can make all weapons, including clubs and quarterstaffs. And since they can make clubs, there is really nothing stopping them from maxing the handles for things like axes as well.

Arrows don't have their own category, so I would say that Bowyers can make their arrows all by themselves, just as weaponsmiths can make their weapons all by themselves.

Question 3. How do you figure the time it takes to craft a club or a quarterstaff when the items are listed with no cost?

Just assume they have a cost of 1sp.

 

[Jeraa]

Question 1. Every multiple of 5 cuts time to make the item in half, right?
*removed for space*
Wait! Wait! Wait!

C'mon...really? Caelis rolled so high that it virtually took him no time at all to make this dagger? Heck, firing up the forge probably to 15 minutes by itself.

By the rules, that is correct. Conan broke the Craft rules. It would be better to just ignore the "reduce the time by beating the DC in multiples of 5" thing. Crafting time should not be based on item value anyway.

Question 1 is: Are there no minimums on Crafting? Shouldn't there be a minimum amount of time that it takes to make a dagger?

Or, am I doing something wrong here?

There is no minimum time.

I would suggest dropping the Crafting time all together, and replacing it with something like the following times. I use something similar for my 3.5 D&D games. IT doesn't cover all possible craft skills, just the ones my players were most likely to use.

Armor/Shield - 1 week per point of damage reduction or 2 points of shield bonus
Weapon - Most take 1 week. Simple weapons like clubs and staffs 1 day, complex ones 2 weeks.
Alchemical items - total of 100sp/day. can be made in batches of more then 1 item at a time.
Poison - 250sp/day. Can be made in batches of more then 1 dose at a time.
Arrows/Bolts - 50 per day

Primitive 1/2 the time
Superior/High-Quality/Akbitanan items +2 weeks
Add +10 to the DC, reduce time to 1/2, or double the number of batch items made
Add +20 to the DC, reduce time to 1/3, or triple the number of batch items made.

The problem with basing item crafting times on value are things like simple golden rings. Relatively easy to create, but high value.

 

[Supplement Four]

By the rules, that is correct. Conan broke the Craft rules. It would be better to just ignore the "reduce the time by beating the DC in multiples of 5" thing.

I don't think Conan broke the crafting rules. They were already that way. I made a dagger using the 3.5 D&D rules, and I got a similar silly result.

The problem with basing item crafting times on value are things like simple golden rings. Relatively easy to create, but high value.

Agreed.

I think I'm going to go with minimum (and maybe maximum, now that you've mentioned the ring) construction times.

A dagger? Min 2 days.

A ring? Min 1 day.

I'll just use quick, knee-jerk common sense, like in the good old AD&D days.

 

[Jeraa]

I don't think Conan broke the crafting rules. They were already that way. I made a dagger using the 3.5 D&D rules, and I got a similar silly result.

Assuming a 3.5 Crafter got the same score on his check as the crafter above (25 total), then a 3.5 crafter makes the dagger in half a day.

Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week’s work. If the check succeeds, multiply your check result by the DC. If the result × the DC equals the price of the item in sp, then you have completed the item. (If the result × the DC equals double or triple the price of the item in silver pieces, then you’ve completed the task in one-half or one-third of the time. Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner.) If the result × the DC doesn’t equal the price, then it represents the progress you’ve made this week. Record the result and make a new Craft check for the next week. Each week, you make more progress until your total reaches the price of the item in silver pieces.

25 (check result) x 12 (Craft DC) = 300sp of progress. A 3.5 dagger requires 20 sp to finish, so the crafter got 15x the needed progress. That translates to 1/15th the time. Since crafting is done with a weekly check, that is 1/15th of a week, or roughly half a day.

Even if you use the Crafting by the Day stuff, its still 2/3rd of a day.

(Adding 10 to the DC reduces the time down to 1/28th of a week, or roughly 6 hours. 8 hours if using the crafting by the day rule. Note that by the rules, you can only ever add +!0 to the Craft DC in order to speed up the time taken.)

In order to get the time down to 4 minutes (like the Conan crafter did above in one of your posts*), the 3.5 crafter would of had to gotten a 2290 on his craft check. So yes, Conan did very well break crafting. (Well, broke it more. It didn't work too great to begin with.)

*Actually, the Conan crafter would of taken only seconds. You just stopped calculating the time take when it got down to 4 minutes, so that is the time I used. Which also means that the 3.5 crafter would of needed to get much, much higher then a 2290 on his check to replicate the same time.

 

[Jeraa]

The problem results from how the Conan rules reduce the time. For every 5x the amount needed, the time is halved. So the progression goes 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, 1/256, 1/512th of the time needed.

In 3.5, however, the progression goes: 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, 1/8, 1/9, 1/10th of the time needed.

If the Conan rules were changed to the following, the problem should be fixed. New stuff in red.

1. Find the item’s price.
2. Find the DC in the table below.
3. Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.
4. Multiple the items price in silver pieces by 5. This is the items Craft Threshold.
5. Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week's work. If the check succeeds, multiple your check result by the DC. If the total is equal to the items Craft Threshold, you have completed the task. If the total is equal to double the items Craft Threshold, the task is done in half the time. If the total is equal to triple the items Craft Threshold, the task is done in one-third the time. Other multiples of the Craft Threshold reduce the time in the same manner.

Now, lets look at the result of the change. Assume the same craft check result (25). A 3sp dagger has a Craft Threshold of 15.

25 (check result) x 12 (craft DC) = 300
300/15 (Craft threshold) = 20

So since the result is 20x the amount needed, the time required is 1/20th of a week. That is roughly 8 hours.

If we assume the minimum necessary check to craft a dagger (12), then the dagger is completed in roughly 18 hours.

Accurate or not, the crafting rules are now back to roughly where they were in 3.5 D&D. Which means that expensive items still take too long to craft, but at least you aren't making weapons in the blink of an eye.

 

[Supplement Four]

25 (check result) x 12 (Craft DC) = 300sp of progress. A 3.5 dagger requires 20 sp to finish, so the crafter got 15x the needed progress. That translates to 1/15th the time. Since crafting is done with a weekly check, that is 1/15th of a week, or roughly half a day.

And that's still pretty quick to make a dagger.

I notice most of the D&D crafting Feats and rules, when dealing with magic (there isn't much info for dealing with mundane items in D&D) have a minimum crafting time of 1 day.

THIS PAGE gives a pretty good, step by step description of what it takes to forge a knife. Given all the time it took this guy to make a knife, I could see a seasoned smith, with some pieces ready to go, creating a dagger in one day minimum.

I certainly can't see 5 or 6 hours, given everything that needs to be done.

 

[Supplement Four]

Comparison of D&D and Conan Crafting.

Average Joe Smith has Craft (Weaponsmith) +4

Item made: Dagger.

Takes 10 on this DC 12 task, for a total of 14. Production = 14 x 12 = 168





D&D way...

Dagger = 20 sp.

168/20 = 8. So, Dagger made in 1/8 week. (12 hour days, 7 days week).

Dagger completed in 10 hours.





Conan way...

Dagger = 3 sp. 3 x 5 = 15 production needed.

168/15 = 11. So, Dagger made in 1/11 week. (12 hour days, 7 days a week).

Dagger completed in 7 hours.





The two systems seem to be pretty close to me--and the Conan method will go easier on those expensive swords that take a long time to make.

But, I still think there should be a minimum time associated with items. If you get a good smith and roll high on the crafting check, this person could make a dagger unbelievably fast.

So, I'm thinking hard about invoking a one day minimum on most items (outside of nails and pots and pans, hinges, stuff like that).

 

[carthaginian]

I know it's taking an abstract view of abstract rules, but here's how I viewed it:

At a certain point, your guy is a truly established 'weapon smith.' It is his primary job, and any time he isn't doing something else, he's plugging away at a forge somewhere, making parts for later use. So, even though he's crafting things 'from scratch,' he isn't doing all the work RIGHT THAT SECOND. Instead, he has- by working 'off the clock' a bit- a supply of basic parts and pieces (blade blanks, pommel caps, handguards, leather washers and strips) that he keeps in stock. When he 'forges' that dagger in just a few hours, he isn't actually starting from a metal ingot and a few strips of leather... he reaches into his haversack, pulls out a blade blank, a hand full of leather washers, a pommel cap and a hand guard. He then does what basically amounts to 'finishing' work on the pieces and puts them together. This kind of assumption works especially well for an NPC who has a fixed point where he works; his shop is full of half-finished projects and spare parts that he has tinkered with in his spare time... finishing them is then a matter of hours, not days.

 

[Supplement Four]

Not a bad take on it, Carthaginian.

I'm still considering the one day minimum, though. Since so many magic items in D&D use that rule, it makes me think it was just omitted from the mundane crafting rules but intended.