Post by SaintYin on Apr 4, 2015 2:48:14 GMT -7
I've decided to collect information about each crafting feat to see the relative fairness of investment into any one of them. The list and some basic opinions can be viewed here, but I'd prefer to go into more detail and suggest some various improvements to help elevate some crafting feats into a more pick-worthy position.
Overall-
Mundane crafting feats are nearly non-existent. In fact, there are three: Dragoncrafting, Demon Grafter, and Master Craftsman. Dragoncrafting has obnoxious requirements, such as "it must be a true dragon to harvest it." What's more, it produces mostly useless items and it's reflecting something that most GMs would simply allow a player to do: pull out materials from a dead body.
Demon Grafter, while interesting, is to produce items that are already produced by Craft Wondrous Item. It just requires feats, skillpoints, and uses a skill that is inferior to stack compared to spellcraft. Master Craftsman isn't actually a crafting feat. It's a feat to allow a mundane crafter to take a feat. It's basically combat expertise for crafting, but it requires level 5 and does very little itself. In addition, it limits what craft feats can be selected and what items can be created.
Magical crafting, on the other hand, almost always has fewer requirements to achieve full crafting benefits.
Problem-
Acquiring crafting feats has been stated to be an investment. The amount of investment required to get nonmagical crafting is always higher, but the product of this investment is always lower (excluding some corner cases).
Solution-
There are multiple possible solutions:
1) Nerf magical crafting. This can be done by making it so crafters can never generate their own magical capital, and non-crafters must pay in magical capital only.
Notes: This method is probably destructive to the community. If crafters aren't optimized, they'll essentially be losing 33 gold per 1000 for crafting someone's item, unless they already have magic capital from a previous trade. If non-crafters don't want to dick around with downtime, this means they'll be forced to if they want magic items. Overall, a bad answer.
2) Introduce new feats. If there is something GMs want craftable and it simply doesn't exist (templates? Elixirs?), then houserule in some basic feats that can work for those.
Notes: This method can work, but it's challenging to know the exact impact of houseruled additions, and non-existent feats mean new players are surprised.
3) Improve weaker feats. Instead of pulling out entirely new methods, existing feats can be broadened or empowered such that it becomes a desirable selection to compete with the bigger crafting feats.
Notes: This method can work, but changing existing feats may throw off some players, even if it's an all-around improvement to said feat.
Suggestions:
I'm not sure which path is to be taken, but I do have some suggestions:
Master Craftsman: I request that the user can select either Craft Magic Arms and Armor or Craft Wondrous Item as a part of taking this feat. It should not require two feats after reaching 5th level, especially when both of the selections are already fifth level or less to a caster.
Dragoncrafting: DG doesn't have nearly enough true dragons to really make use of this. I strongly suggest looking it over. Maybe add one of the other dragon-specific feats as a freebie (there's a few that're like +1 saves versus dragons). Maybe expand it to include all living dragons, instead of just true.
Demon Grafter: Perhaps give this feat additional reductions in cost to make it competitive with the all-around superior Craft Wondrous Item? Perhaps make it mimic CWI, but all items made through it have a chaotic evil aura? Increase saves against outsiders? I'm not sure what should be done with this, but I do know something should be.
Craft Shadow Piercing: Remove the nastiness about keeping track of con and wis to figure out the total number of piercings allowed, then boost the price to 2x. That'll put it in line with inscribe magical tattoo, with different weaknesses (more or less). Maybe consider nerfing its ability to stack so well with magical tattoo.
New Feat - Process Creatures
Requirements: Knowledge(Planes), Knowledge(Nature), or Knowledge(Dungeoneering) rank 7
Description: Pick one knowledge type (it must have the prerequisite number of ranks). Creatures identified by that knowledge can be harvested after being slain. The corpse must be no older than 48 hours to harvest from it.
To harvest from a creature, a Heal check with a DC of 10 + the creature's CR must be made. This is to collect materials up to a value of 15 x the creature's CR in gold and takes 1 hour of work. If the creature had poisonous qualities or some other specific/delicate organ of higher value, the DC can be increased by +10 to focus on collecting it. Failure by 5 or more destroys the source, making retries impossible. Failure by 10 or more results in the harvester being exposed to whatever is within the organ or the poison. Regardless of the action taken, each creature can only be successfully harvested once.
The value and volume of material gained through the latter method is determined by the GM. If quantities are excessive or would result in a wealth imbalance, then the material must be sold through downtime activity at a rate lower than 250 gold per day after considering all other sources of daily gains generated from this feat. Duration of this increase is determined by the GM.
Special: This feat may be selected multiple times. Each time you do, select a different knowledge check to determine what types of creatures can be processed.
Overall-
Mundane crafting feats are nearly non-existent. In fact, there are three: Dragoncrafting, Demon Grafter, and Master Craftsman. Dragoncrafting has obnoxious requirements, such as "it must be a true dragon to harvest it." What's more, it produces mostly useless items and it's reflecting something that most GMs would simply allow a player to do: pull out materials from a dead body.
Demon Grafter, while interesting, is to produce items that are already produced by Craft Wondrous Item. It just requires feats, skillpoints, and uses a skill that is inferior to stack compared to spellcraft. Master Craftsman isn't actually a crafting feat. It's a feat to allow a mundane crafter to take a feat. It's basically combat expertise for crafting, but it requires level 5 and does very little itself. In addition, it limits what craft feats can be selected and what items can be created.
Magical crafting, on the other hand, almost always has fewer requirements to achieve full crafting benefits.
Problem-
Acquiring crafting feats has been stated to be an investment. The amount of investment required to get nonmagical crafting is always higher, but the product of this investment is always lower (excluding some corner cases).
Solution-
There are multiple possible solutions:
1) Nerf magical crafting. This can be done by making it so crafters can never generate their own magical capital, and non-crafters must pay in magical capital only.
Notes: This method is probably destructive to the community. If crafters aren't optimized, they'll essentially be losing 33 gold per 1000 for crafting someone's item, unless they already have magic capital from a previous trade. If non-crafters don't want to dick around with downtime, this means they'll be forced to if they want magic items. Overall, a bad answer.
2) Introduce new feats. If there is something GMs want craftable and it simply doesn't exist (templates? Elixirs?), then houserule in some basic feats that can work for those.
Notes: This method can work, but it's challenging to know the exact impact of houseruled additions, and non-existent feats mean new players are surprised.
3) Improve weaker feats. Instead of pulling out entirely new methods, existing feats can be broadened or empowered such that it becomes a desirable selection to compete with the bigger crafting feats.
Notes: This method can work, but changing existing feats may throw off some players, even if it's an all-around improvement to said feat.
Suggestions:
I'm not sure which path is to be taken, but I do have some suggestions:
Master Craftsman: I request that the user can select either Craft Magic Arms and Armor or Craft Wondrous Item as a part of taking this feat. It should not require two feats after reaching 5th level, especially when both of the selections are already fifth level or less to a caster.
Dragoncrafting: DG doesn't have nearly enough true dragons to really make use of this. I strongly suggest looking it over. Maybe add one of the other dragon-specific feats as a freebie (there's a few that're like +1 saves versus dragons). Maybe expand it to include all living dragons, instead of just true.
Demon Grafter: Perhaps give this feat additional reductions in cost to make it competitive with the all-around superior Craft Wondrous Item? Perhaps make it mimic CWI, but all items made through it have a chaotic evil aura? Increase saves against outsiders? I'm not sure what should be done with this, but I do know something should be.
Craft Shadow Piercing: Remove the nastiness about keeping track of con and wis to figure out the total number of piercings allowed, then boost the price to 2x. That'll put it in line with inscribe magical tattoo, with different weaknesses (more or less). Maybe consider nerfing its ability to stack so well with magical tattoo.
New Feat - Process Creatures
Requirements: Knowledge(Planes), Knowledge(Nature), or Knowledge(Dungeoneering) rank 7
Description: Pick one knowledge type (it must have the prerequisite number of ranks). Creatures identified by that knowledge can be harvested after being slain. The corpse must be no older than 48 hours to harvest from it.
To harvest from a creature, a Heal check with a DC of 10 + the creature's CR must be made. This is to collect materials up to a value of 15 x the creature's CR in gold and takes 1 hour of work. If the creature had poisonous qualities or some other specific/delicate organ of higher value, the DC can be increased by +10 to focus on collecting it. Failure by 5 or more destroys the source, making retries impossible. Failure by 10 or more results in the harvester being exposed to whatever is within the organ or the poison. Regardless of the action taken, each creature can only be successfully harvested once.
The value and volume of material gained through the latter method is determined by the GM. If quantities are excessive or would result in a wealth imbalance, then the material must be sold through downtime activity at a rate lower than 250 gold per day after considering all other sources of daily gains generated from this feat. Duration of this increase is determined by the GM.
Special: This feat may be selected multiple times. Each time you do, select a different knowledge check to determine what types of creatures can be processed.
