Quick and Easy Crafting System

[Chamomile]

Quoting this verbatim from another forum where I posted it for the sake of my players.

First off, crafting is being divided up into four skills that adventurers take and the rest are all covered under Profession rules because they don't make anything useful. The skills are Craft(Alchemy), Craft(Bowmaking), Craft(Weaponsmithing), and Craft(Armorsmithing). Now in Tome there are skill-based feats (one in the main Tomes, a bunch of others in the appendix), but since Craft doesn't do anything on its own, I'm treating these Craft skills as though you automatically gained a corresponding feat with them for free. Like other skill-based feats, these give you a new, shiny ability every four ranks (ish), but unlike other skill-based feats, they also give you a shiny at rank 1. As opposed to rank 0. You do not get free crafting abilities if you don't have skills.

Crafting something typically takes a week. Usually the whole week, unless they're small items. This is up to DM fiat for now. Regardless, the cost of materials is one third the price of the finished product. No rolls are associated with it, you either can or cannot.

Note on masterwork items: These items require you to first take a week to prepare a masterwork ingredient before making the item itself. Thus, you need two weeks to make a masterwork item.

Alchemy
1: Acid, alchemist's fire, smokestick, tindertwig
4: Antitoxin, sunrod, tanglefoot bag, thunderstone
9: ?
14: ?
19: ?

Armorsmithing
1: Light armor, shields (except tower shields)
4: Medium/heavy armor, tower shields, masterwork
9: Mithril armor, Darkleaf, Spiderweb, Adamantine, Silksteel Armor, Stoneplate, Lobster Mail, Bone Armor, Crystal Shield, Ice Aegis, Kappa Shell
14: Dragonscale, Elukian Clay, Coral Armor, Mechanus Armor
19: Sun Armor, Demon Armor

Weaponsmithing
1: Simple weapons
4: Martial/exotic weapons, masterwork
9: Magic/Bane weapons
14: Axiomatic, Anarchic, Holy, Unholy weapons
19: Vorpal weapons

Bowmaking
1: Longbow or shortbow, arrows
4: Composite bow, masterworks
9: Magic/Bane bow/arrow
14: Axiomatic, Anarchic, Holy, Unholy weapons
19: Brilliant Energy

[Grek]

What are the rules for making things that aren't weapons/armour/alchemy? Bear traps, for example. Or locks. Or chairs?

[Chamomile]

Bugger, I forgot traps.

As for the rest:

First off, crafting is being divided up into four skills that adventurers take and the rest are all covered under Profession rules because they don't make anything useful.

I can't imagine any reason a player would want Craft(chairs) that lets him craft actual chairs instead of Profession(chairmaker) that lets him do the same thing, without my having to bother to figure out what good a masterwork chair does for you.

[Ice9]

These crafting rules seem a hell of a lot weaker than the standard ones. I mean, let's compare them:

Alchemy
Standard: Acid at 1st, Fire/Smokestick/Tindertwig at 3rd, others at 5th-6th. And you can make them earlier with high-Int or assistance.
Yours: Alchemist's Fire at 5th level, by which point it's most just for flask-Rogues. Thunderstone at 10th level?!

Armorsmithing
Standard: Everything but Heavy at 1st, Heavy at 2nd-3rd. Masterwork at 3rd.
Yours: If you wear heavy armor, this is useless. Otherwise, you get some mileage for 1st-2nd level, and then it becomes useless because you can afford MW gear long before you can craft it.

Weaponsmithing
Standard: Martial at 1st, Exotic at 2nd-3rd. Masterwork at 3rd.
Yours: Like Armorsmithing, good at 1st-2nd level (unless you use an Exotic weapon), then useless because purchased MW comes in well before crafted.

Bowmaking
Standard: Composite by 1st, +2 composite by 3rd, +5 by 5th-6th.
Yours: I think you see the pattern here.

Now you did reduce the crafting times (mostly), which is good. But OTOH, you bumped the cost from 1/3 to 1/2 - why? Mainly though, the problem is that you vastly overestimate how high level things should be crafted at. Why the hell do 15th level people care about making masterwork stuff 50% faster? At that point they are fucking ruling empires and slapping around powerful demons.

IMO, the fact that you needed a hack to make a reasonable-leveled master smith is evidence that your benchmarks are set way too high. By 6th level, a PC at the peak of skill for any real-world person ever. They should have completely mastered normal craftsmanship by that point. If you want to extend crafting beyond this, then enter some new territory! Craft things out of mythical materials, from dragonbone all the way up to solidified anger. Make a sword so sharp it can cut holes in space. Not just "finally craft the stuff you don't even bother to bring back for sale any more".