Crafting Epic Stuff in a TTRPG and How to do it
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- Опубликовано: 13 фев 2020
- We take a look at crafting in your role-playing game, how you can use it to either sell, make use of or building something powerful to take on a difficult task.
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These are great!
One little thing though, since you're editing anyway maybe de-sync the sound when Kuda is talking.
Yes it's amazing great accent!!!!!
2:30 reminds me of a game I played once... The DM was a big fan of the His Dark Materials series and had us going through portals and closing them. On one of these trips, my character (Drow Rogue/Ranger with a LOT of daggers) was forced to walk through a metal detector which resulted in her being stripped literally down to her underwear. After going through the next portal, we fought a monster that repelled metal. The DM was caught by surprise when I set about turning troll teeth into non-metal daggers, and replacing the metal studs in my armor with stone and bone.
When he asked me to justify my decision, I pointed out that I had a 20 Intelligence and had just been rendered completely helpless because all my hideable weapons were metal, and had no desire to repeat the experience.
Portable smithies were actually a thing. However, they were portable more in the way that an artillery gun is portable. A horse drawn wagon carrying an anvil, assorted tools, and and the stonework necessary to craft a small forge, as well as a stockpile of charcoal, iron (probably pre-smelted into ingots), and assorted materials needed for the trade. They weren't up to doing much beyond repairing tools and making simple things like nails and horseshoes. The little farming villages scattered around often wouldn't have enough work for someone to actually work as a blacksmith full time in one village, so they went on the road going from village to village. Think people called them tinkers, back in the day.
In a fantasy setting, of course, a tinker tends to be doing precision small scale work rather than very basic blacksmithing. They're more along the lines of the gnome who makes the crazy clockwork madness.
My father actually owned a portable forge once upon a time. It was a cast iron contraption on a tripod about the size of a barbecue grill that weighed like 100 lbs. I would be perfectly willing as a DM to let a character carry one around, and an anvil, and the 30-40 lbs of basic blacksmithing tools (hammers, tongs, etc.). They might want to invest in a wagon though😁
Technically a traveling craftsman is called a "journeyman X" where "X" is the craft they're trained in. A tinker was a specific type of craftsman, usually someone who repaired metalwork - like pots and cooking utensils and similar items - but couldn't fabricate new items.
@@josephduncan9634 Wasn't a Journeyman just a middle ranked guildsman? Not a Master of the craft, but not an apprentice who still needs supervision. Such people would be found in a variety of roles, from the travelling craftsman you describe all the way up to higher level assistants at larger, more prestigious operations - the kind of place that would get an order for more stuff than a single craftsman could turn out.
@@josephduncan9634 Really, cast iron? Definitely wouldn't be smelting down fresh ore in that thing then - you'd melt your forge down too. You'd be able to get an ingot up to malleable temperatures, though. I figured they'd just carry the assorted stones or bricks needed to build a forge quickly - less the kind of thing you just plonk down and fire up, more the kind of thing you set up one day, use for a week or two, then pack up. But hey, I've never seen one before.
As for carrying, I've certainly had a character who could handle that kind of load easily enough, though I'd feel any GM would be well within his rights to say that it's not just a matter of weight. My mattress only weighs 30-40 lbs at most, but I'd have a devil of a time swinging any weapon while carrying it - I imagine a hundred pound cast iron forge, and anvil, and a bunch of assorted tools would be similarly cumbersome even if you could stand with it strapped to your back.
@@rashkavar I was like 12 when he got rid of it, so I could be wrong about the exact material, but it was a heavy beast. If you want to see one, check out the show Forged in Fire on the History channel. They use them in a few episodes where they are "traveling" to a different location other than the established studio forge. As far as carrying stone/bricks, making a loose stone forge would be time consuming, labor intensive, and highly impractical. You'd spend more time assembling the damned thing than actually using it, and then you'd have to tear it down again before you could go anywhere.
As far as smelting fresh ore goes, you dont really do that in a forge, that's what a foundry is for, though I suppose you could do low temperature smelting in a forge. The big issue would be how high a temperature do you need to smelt the ore vs. the temperature at which your forge vessel enters the plastic stage.
This subject ties in very well with the on going debate about how do players spend all of the gold that they have acquired during adventuring.
In a former campaign I had a dwarf who felt it natural to open a brewery using the fortune he had acquired adventuring and we ran with it as a small side quest! I kept it very simple with a few dice rolls and choosing a location within the group's favorite city and the player had many game sessions of fun checking back in to see how his establishment was doing when they returned from their adventures and offering out samples to increase his business.
The amazing thing that separates Dungeons & Dragons from many other games is the possibility to do anything, and sometimes the players will delight in doing the smallest things such as crafting an item or opening a brewery!
A couple of points... mostly exploration and addition (unpacking?). Loved this, btw...
First, there are two scales of "craft" in Game Terms... the minutia scale, and the large scale.
Minutia scale crafting is the handiwork of napping out arrow-heads, or carving buttons for a cloak out of the bones, horns, or antlers of fallen monsters and enemies... the kind of stuff you can do, lounging beside a campfire or in the relative privacy of any room... no overt space needed... It could even be conceivable to be tooling and stitching leather as part of the "down-time" activities on journeys...
Large scale projects are the likes of building a boat, or setting up a smithy (let alone using the thing)... And it's going to require "down-times" when the party is basically tied to that location for whatever duration the craft requires. SO (for the record) a basic 20 foot canoe can be fashioned in about a week and a half, provided the person involved is competent, and adequate materials are in relative abundance... While most canoes are closer to 16 feet or so, the added four feet isn't a huge issue with regard to the craft-skill required ( citing personal experience)... For a single person who "takes his time" it can linger on... and helpful hands to "work in shifts" can even drastically shorten the amount of time required.
Second... Crafting is one area where I rarely recommend any chance at a "full-on" kind of failure. Most crafts and projects are of the kind of thing that anyone competent (proficient enough to have an adequate skill-number listed) is able to see the quality of the work/material ahead of actually using it, and make adjustments as necessary. The results of a "dice-rolled failure" is not that the project gets built shoddily and collapses catastrophically, BUT instead, simply requires more time and materials for "rectifying problems" as they arise... Thereby (on the same principle) for successes well beyond "minimal success requirement", time can be shortened for the ease at which "everything just came together" for the crafting Character. This minimizes any frustrations for the Players, since they don't just waste their resources on a product that isn't going to function or last for them... AND the GM can still present other (now time-scale) problems for the Party to resolve as tension STILL gets to build in the narrative.
It's worth pointing out (especially among "noob's" who may not think much of craft skills) that Characters without a particular craft skill, can even "team up" with another PC to help out. This allows the "experienced" PC to even teach the skill to the "assistant", and subsequent craft attempts together can benefit as both their skills can grow over time. Obviously, you can't go blanketing "professional level proficiency" in anything over a single project, but at least granting a skill-number in the listing and letting the PC some agency to build it is some reward for PC's working together... AND of course, reducing the requisite time for the project is the obvious top benefit.
Finally, I can only add the two-cents' worth that the more I've encouraged my Players to craft and customize gear in the Game, the more my Players have invested in their very special Characters, their home territories, the group, and everything to do with the story along the way. The net benefits "Mechanically" have nothing to do with the appreciation for their very customized "Flavor" in the adventure.
The bonus was +1 to damage...
Had a Player with a round shield, dubiously decide to serrate the edge of said shield all the way around. It would allow him cutting damage at any angle he could get it into an enemy... Now, regularly slashing with the shield was (we guessed) about the same damage as a basic club... 1D6 in DnD terms... AND for some improvised serrations and a healthy dose of sharpening (he had about two weeks worth of travel and camping) I gave him a +1 bonus and we called it cutting damage rather than crushing... not much... BUT he absolutely LOVED that shield. The guy passed up "tower shields" over his plain round shield. He later hired a smith to "clean it up a bit" and that was that. It was one of his favorite Characters, ever... I rather thought it too bad he didn't have more time and ability to play at our Table, but his "regular" GM eventually decided to take a page out of my tricks, once he learned that all that craft customizing allowance only netted a bonus +1 cutting damage to using his shield... and he still had to "create" his shield's weaponry style/proficiency... (lolz)
I think this last bit (exemplar gratis) is simple enough to demo'... It's not perfect, but it functioned at the time, and everyone was happy. That's what we (GM's) should strive for. ;o)
A good crafting system or a GM willing and able to devise a fun method for creating custom equipment is always a joy in a RPG. Loved the video!
Yes, nice to be able to do something else than follow the classic: "Kill everyone and everything, loot and plunder, upgrade, move on to the next place and repeat over." -grind-railroad.
Lately I've been creating an exotic material sheet for my campaign, exotic materials like myrthil, deep iron, arcanite, orichalcum or dwarven brass change the properties of the weapons (and are very expensive), they don't only have higher stats but change the gameplay of the weapon, having a two handed claymore with finesse property, have a mace that may store spells, a shield that might reflect oncoming spell attacks.
and the advanced version of the exotic materials are guarded by certain factions, myrthil secrets are hold by the elves, the drow work the finest deep iron, the titan blacksmith from the poison swamps works the best ura-halnium, so now in order to get the materials you need to have a good relationship with those factions.
tons of fun it has been for me and let's hope my players use this system...
Great stuff!
Would you be willing to share that sheet?
@@DylanK2910 of course, shoot me up an inbox with your gmail to share the excel sheet.
it's still a work in progress so I would be adding more materials like special beast hides or other higher level materials.
There's another alternative to the point 6 ("What about other characters?") - Troupe-style play, as codified by Ars Magica back in 1987, but also found in newer games like Star Trek Adventures. In such a system, main characters can stay behind dealing with their crafting, research, and other important tasks, and the players have side characters ready (both personal side characters and ones from a "pool" available to everyone) which they play in the meantime.
In Ars Magica, the main characters are the mages, and side characters are their assistants, men-at-arms, and similar "unawakened" but still important to the working of the covenant and capable people. It's expected that most mages stay in the covenant while only one or two go out to the dangerous and important missions, accompanied by a posse of side characters.
In Star Trek Adventures, the main characters are the bridge crew (captain, second officer, chief technical officer and so on) and the side characters are the various other lower-ranked members of the crew and officers of the Federation ship which the players couldn't and didn't want to fill with their main ones. This means that missions, only the relevant characters go out, accompanied by a bunch of relevant specialists and "redshirts" played by other players, instead of risking the whole upper ranks of the ship each time.
There's an alternate approach to the way of handling crafting and mercantile activity (limiting its involvement and ensuring it remains a sideline of the game), and that's to go full ham on making a mercantile empire based campaign. There's a wonderful story called the "Tale of an Industrious Rogue" you can find that is an excellent example of an adventuring party's interest in economic activity and self motivated greed becoming the defining factor of the entire campaign. I imagine it takes quite a spectacular GM to pull it off at the level that the GM in that story did, and it certainly takes a far more in depth knowledge of the world's mechanics and interactions than any reasonable GM will have prepared in advance, but it's quite the tale.
"Sure I can let you use my forge to enhance your equipment, but you have to rent it out and I can only let you use it for one piece of equipment right now. We have to use it too, after all."
Prince Kingly, and his father, King Princely.
I love item creation in games... definitely something that builds depth to the world and the feeling that the characters have control over their characters.
I would like to request a video about introducing cursed items/making cursed items :D
I'd love something on a relatively simplified system for letting the PC's develop and craft their own spells!
While it's the kind of thing that can VERY EASILY be abused to death (of GM?)... I couldn't suggest allowing it all the time, but then... nobody should spend the WHOLE campaign on nothing but crafting and sales, anyway.
It's still fun enough to loosen up (myself) and let the Players explain what they want to make, and then figure out what to "base" it on... adding levels for "power required" and reducing for "expense of components, additional casting time consumed" and the like... It's just a bit informal, and might be nice if someone had a "basic mechanic" for that kind of thing. ;o)
Hello all,
My 2cp of thought, playing Pathfinder/3.5 as a crafter(artificer), on the subject. I love crafting and it's really fun! Limiting how much gold you get is an easy way to balance out how much someone can craft.
On the subject of other characters getting similar buffs as your crafting, I think that's a bit much. As the crafter I've built myself to be able to do this thing that lets me make all this stuff, if the guy who can swing his sword around gets something just as similar to me then why even craft? Each player built their character to do something or to be someone, having them blend lines with one another makes it feel like it wouldn't matter what you play you all get the same buffs.
That's all I've got. Love the video as always! Thanks and can't wait for the next!
Great video would love to see an expanded version. A while back some friends and I where playing a 2e exalted game with one player playing a master craftsman, and one player being a social juggernaut, it evolved into a spice and wolf like game where one character would craft masterpieces or trinkets of immense value and the other player would help sell the works with the skill of a master snake oil salesman. It was quite fun. There was quite a bit of player investment into npcs they ran into gathering materials and selling to. Particularly when the craftsman would craft small tokens of appreciation for npcs along the way and how that npc reacted in the moment and later as the craftsman gained fame
You never know where the Players are going to take off with the adventure. I've had campaigns like that... It's easy to get bored with "the same old hack and slash". ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464
It helps that Exalted is built from the ground up to enable this sort of play, with ability trees for crafting and social activity with the same importance and mechanical weight as the combat trees.
@@TheodoreMinick Just having (or being) a GM who can loosen up and go with the flow when he reads from his Players when the same "hack-n-slash" adventures are tiresome more than fun can really be all you need...
Bored with the combat pillar... there's still social and exploration to do...
Sure, some reasonable systemic tools to cater to every pillar of the Game is appreciated, but at the root of it, just being able to shrug off the "adventure you thought you were building" for the "adventure you have" has a lot going for it... A versatile GM can start from a "reasonable assessment of what it takes IRL" and make up a relatively "buy-able" mechanic for whatever randomness you want or need.
Nothing against Exalted... I've run Gurps for years because it's so easily "converted" for whatever setting or adventure type you need "ad-hoc". ;o)
@@TheodoreMinick lol I do love my exalted, unfortunately never been able to keep a group together for more than 10 sessions.
Honestly the biggest mechanical thing I've missed playing in other systems is the speed of crafting, with exalted you can get pretty crazy with how fast you can craft mundane things. The system also had a number of successes type set up which determined the quality of the work, a thing that can be harder to replicate in other systems using DCs. Also in a lot of systems crafting isnt necessarily the most robust rule set in a system. A lot of GMs have no problem with the RP side until the player is like soooooo how we handling crafting, and it comes down to homebrewing a more robust subsystem for crafting or hand waving something that a player wants to focus a chunk o the campaign around. Exalted's abstract but defined rules set definitely let us focus more on the RP. well you lugged all this lumber out to your hidden cave to hide your powers, and you have crafted this massive wooden statue of the city nobles and even alchemically scented the wooden Rose's to smell like real roses permanently, great! how are you getting it out of the hidden cave and down the waterfall thru the woods and back to town without ruining it? Once we got it to town it was how and who do we talk to about setting up a public auction to attract the attention of the nobles, and how do we convince them to let us do this without revealing the statue. At its root it was a relatively simple quest of how do we impress the city's nobles and get a private audience, but focusing on crafting allow the whole party to invest in a way that had the whole group engaged with the rp and world rather than just the combat mechanics.
Think of it it's hard to find a system that ties in the quality of the work with the roll to do the crafting as well. Of course it was a roll with a chance of failure but the roll mostly focused on not just completing the project but also it quality of the work.
I am really enjoying these side characters . It is a fun change of pace. I hope you keep it up. Thanks for the great content, and the increased quality and effort is appreciated.
I LOVE crafting stuff in games. In fact, one of my favorite roles to take is as a dedicated crafting specialist. As such, my group and I have come up with three separate "sub-systems" under the general system of crafting that we like to apply to all our games. If a rules set doesn't have one or more, we add them on to ensure they're there when needed (we use the rules the book has whenever possible for balance and ease of reference, of course):
1) Jury-rigging - a simple, two-role check for someone to cobble something together or patch something up "long enough". One die determines if they succeed (should work like the game's normal skills), the other how long before it comes apart (in minutes or seconds, depending on context).
2) Crude Items - Useful in certain situations or in games without a lot of downtime, this is a check to ensure a character can make the basics of adventuring/survival, such as water collectors from leaves, ammunition from sticks and rocks, very crude weapons, or anything else that doesn't require (many) tools but that are meant to last longer then jury-rigging and can be maintained. This doesn't usually require downtime and can be said to be done "in-between" other stuff (with appropriate checks, of course). This is also used for repairs of vehicles/buildings that are done properly but without proper facilities (repairing a breached starship hull after a battle but without returning to starbase, for example).
3) Full-scale crafting - What everyone thinks of when they think of "crafting" - what range of items can the characters make described in the book and how far can they go with custom stuff, assuming resources and tools are available? This is the one that requires downtime to do and allows the most creativity.
4) Obviously, if the system doesn't have equipment or items in a traditional sense and isn't really meant to have crafting, we only use jury rigging rules and ignore the other two - we don't care how anti-crafting the game is, we need to know if the slapped together whatsit we just thought of will do the trick or not, so we WILL have that rule in place, damn it!
Our guidelines for making full crafting rules that are sensible are as follows - usually takes us about 1-2 days of out-of-game deliberation to do at this point:
1) We usually shoot for giving a "dedicated" crafter access to make at least 50% of the items listed in the book by mid-campaign, with broad freedom to modify or upgrade them and create new stuff as they wish. "Part-timers" tend to be about half as effective and more limited in what they can create whole-cloth, though they're still free to upgrade and modify existing stuff.
2) We shoot for items to take up to 2-3 months of downtime to make at max - anything longer then that would require too much dedication from the character for them to adventure (too many resources to gather, too many people to supervise, etc), and thus need to either be bought or found. Average for most items should be 1-2 weeks, if not shorter.
3) For cost restrictions, we took a page from Pathfinder 1 for our general rule: it should cost no more then half your expected total wealth, rounded down (money) or be worth no more then half your total resources, rounded down and un-burned (points). To help us guage this, we look at one of the characters the book provides as an example build and then pretend that said character is naked and friendless and broke because they went mad and did everything in their power - burning contacts, allies, backstory, etc - to get this one item that is most important to their build (weapon, computer, spell scroll, Ring of Sauron, whatever), then we use that as our threshold for what players have access to make (e.g. if the sample player could conceivably get a fully armed and fueled attack VTOL but the player's asking to make a tactical nuke, hard no even if they're a nuclear physicist and have a cache of uranium somewhere; a self-propelled howitzer that fires "dirty" shells, however...).
4) Finally, if the crafter wants to sell their stuff (or work with someone to do so), we allow non-merchants to sell for up to 10% average profit and those who are merchants by blood to make up to 25% average profit (rolls and situation depending, natch). More then that requires a shop, contacts, reputation and other things that adventurers usually don't have time for since they're not going to be around long enough.
It should be stated that all of this is "hypothetical" and doesn't take the political/economic situation into account at all - this is all for the ruleset itself. The GM then takes this framework and applies their game's political and environmental stuff to restrict things further (e.g. This place has outlawed magic swords, so even though you *can* make magic swords, you better have a good hiding place if you want to do so...).
One way to curb reckless crafting, of course, is to have the party visited by a few gents from the Knifesmiths' Guild, or the Armorers' Guild, or any such craftsmen's guild, with a few not-so-subtle warnings about the perils of crafting without a Guild membership.
I truly believe I have the most flexible, accessible and easy to use crafting system I've ever seen. My group seems to like it and have invested a lot into it (creatively, in character and time wise).
Are you going to share?
@@josephduncan9634 He also has the Playstation 6, the Xbox 2 and his uncle works at Nintendo and thus, he can't show it to you...
Jokes aside, a working crafting system is the one that works for you and your party.
@@josephduncan9634 couldn't possibly post it all here but, in brief: There is weapons, Armor, general, magic item, potion and Brewing (because one play often brews alcohol). Every item has a difficulty from 5-20.
The material you use (wood, silver, admantine, ect) modifies this or in the case of items and potions, the spell potential you want it to have.
You need 4 successful roles to complete a project, each roll costs 7 hours; you can't attempt more than 2 rolls per day and crafting 14 hours fatigues you.
A success by 5+ earns you a perk.
The list of perks include:
- crude: gain 3 additional successes. The item is complete but of poor quality (often lose 1 die step of damage, a point of AC or reduced item hp/hardness).
- Masterwork: increases value and is suitable for enchanting
- cruel: has spikes or jagged edges that do 2hp to creatures that can bleed.
- exotic: an item that can only be properly used by a specific race or class.
- Resize item: scale up or down
- throwing: item suitable for throwing and gets range increments.
There are many, many options depending on what crafting list you're working from.
1's destroy half the materials you were going to use to make the item and magic can blow up in your face for 1d4 damage (you won't likely die).
Potions can be altered, enhanced, made into pills or powders. Extended durations, increased batches have beneficial or detrimental side effects.
Special ingredients can guarentee some desired effects. So it can really require planning, scavenging; sometimes you need someone to craft a Masterwork sword so you can enchant it.
Way too much to put here. I have 1 player who is 15th level and all of his weapons and armor were crafted by him.
ROFL I really do love these skits at the beginning of the videos (this one is my favourite by far) xD
You might not have the necessary knowledge to build an Apache attack helicopter but it doesn't take much thought to come up with the idea of sovereign gluing a sorcerer to the underside of a magic carpet.
I remember one game where we kicked off an adventure by running the first book of the 'Council of Thieves' Pathfinder adventure path, with three characters that had no magical talent to their names and not being over-tuned to be combat masters. That more or less left the rails when we stole an armored carriage with a light balista on the top of it because we had to save the prisoner inside it. Then across several iterations, magical items repurposed for improvements, and 3ish years in-game split between working on the horseless carriage and becoming the crime syndicate/freedom fighters fighting the corrupt and feindish power of the Chelish throne.
It wound up the rough equivalent of an armored tank complete with a main cannon, and support weaponry like a 'water cannon' that had at it's heart a decanter of endless water. It was horrifically expensive, but fun for the whole group. The biggest design hurdle was making an alchemical engine that fit inside whilst leaving room for the actual pcs. The end result there was constructing two tandem engines ship-in-a-bottle style inside bags of holding with the drive shaft and control mechanisms sticking out of the hole. By the end of it, it took all three PCs to man, but was more or less like having one mage a few levels higher than us instead of three nonmagic guys in overall ability.
Despite how off-the-rails and overpowered bonkers that sounds, that campaign gave us a real appreciation for spellcasters and magic items, since we struggled at every leg of the journey even in places a normal group doesn't break a sweat on, even with the tank at times. Also gave ideas on what life must be like for all the poor NPCs in the world that aren't adventuring groups. Life is bloody hard and adventuring neigh impossible if you aren't the Chosen One or at least a semi-standardized adventuring group. Even at 10th we had minor trouble dealing with mere Imps, what with the complete lack of magic spells and holy weapons if we didn't get the drop on it... whereas the standard parties at 10th just need to look at an imp and it was basically already dead.
When I saw the title I thought you were going to do half an hour on hot glue guns and Proxon tables.
Yes, luckily Guy is not the type who get high on sniffing paint and glue.
Can we just take a second and appreciate the fairly dead-on impersonations? John Cleese, David Attenborough, the Japanese general (missed the reference if there was one), Bjorn (who, based on his understanding of crafting, may be a ancient relative of the founder of IKEA), and American reporter from the South. I only wish my impressions were that good.
On the topic of "what about everyone else": I like the ICRPG system (even in plug-in mode to something like 5E or Pathfinder) in this case because they have something called Continual Time. Everyone takes their turn, in a circle around the table, like any other game. Time is measured in three lengths: Moments (while in combat), hours (during rests and the like), and days. So, you can handle downtime in-session very fast by making things the same skill challenges, and just giving everyone else their turn in days to do what they want to do. So, for the one that goes to train with a swordsman to learn a new skill, they make social and mental tests to learn the technique while the crafter is working on their gizmo and the diplomat can make some social checks to get some sort of social boon for themselves to be used where they are headed. In about ten minutes, you can handle an entire week or two of downtime and still have the feel of successes and failures that come along with dice rolling and good roleplaying.
About the link between other players and the crafter. To make it interesting, once, I made the fighter absorbed into a corrupted metal during a specific dark ritual. Then the better the roll and ideas of the blacksmith to forge, the easier it was for the fighter to defeat the weird metal monster he was facing.
I love playing engineer/techie characters in sci-fi games so this is very timely. And yeah, give a group of players any system and there will always be at least one guy that insists on being THAT GUY. Haven't really had much chance to do it because either I'm either the GM or because the other players love their hack and slash.
@@kevinsullivan3448 Oh yes. Well, technically technology is the "magic" of science fiction. Not having the ability to play with it is like having a high-fantasy RPG where you can't play a wizard,
This actually helped me think of characters with powers developed from crafting process. Like an active living forge.
As always a fantastic and useful video. As a fledgling GM I really value all the amazing content you have/are producing. Thanks
I desperately want to play a character in a game run by you...you voice pleases me on so many levels!
I'm loving your videos. And i love your style, so fun to watch.
I love it. I am running adventures in middle earth and crafting fits in extremely well in the hero phase (down time).
Fantastic video. I appreciate it greatly. I have been working with my own rules and did many of the things suggested though I have also fallen into some of the pit falls you mentioned. So thank you again for another great piece of advice.
As an American, I get a bizarre joy from Dirk's American accent. Fun video! Thanks for the tips.
16:12 "Now you'll have to make more coffee- *and then it stabs you!* "
Masterwork system. So a weapon, you can create a masterwork longsword but the way we do it as you can put that +1 into either damage or attack and you can take the masterwork further to a +2 or +3 adding those points into either strike or damage or a mix of the two. And each + you want to gain increases the DC by 4. 20 +1 24 +2 ect ect. With armor and shields you can lower the acp or increase max dex or increase armor. We tend to run low magic world's and it's a good way to encourage players to craft. And we can also do tools and whatnot as well. We also made alchemy a craft instead of a feat because the alchemy system in 3.5 is dumb.
I LOVE crafting! I always do custom systems. Great tips and ideas! Fantastic video thanks!
'...introduce a new element to the game...', 'that element is someone who is productive, someone who is supportive...' Because of course the main thing every TTRPG party is lacking is productivity.
I frequently play crafters and merchants. My game was 3.x edition D&D which had clear crafting rules.
Many GMs are frightened of crafting maybe not as much as they are of Psionics but that is another post.
Crafting is fun. It generates wealth for the smart crafter and a source of customized gear for the party. As a result it makes the game a notch easier for the players. This is what scares GMs. They seem to constantly want the game harder and harder for the PCs. They often forget that difficulty isn't inherently fun. The funnest thing for a PC is to BE EFFECTIVE at what they do. If they fight they want to be hacking up whole squads of enemies, If they socialize they want to be a VIP in the game world, and if they craft they want to place themselves and their team on easy mode. Yes the final boss fight should always be challenging. But a clever player wants to be rewarded on the way to that final fight by being super effective and cool. When GMs punish crafters by either making crafting SO hard it isn't worth the time OR by turning every little crafting attempt into a punishing drama ("Oh look you stole all my crafting supplies for the fifth time this month and surprise surprise we need to do another quest to get it back.") it hurts the crafter. He isn't looking cool or effective while he chases down thieves in every city. He is in fact wasting time just getting back to where he should have been weeks ago.
If you allow crafting and you should. Don't be afraid of letting your PCs make cool stuff or an extra pile of coins. This makes them happy. You can always just bump up monster difficulty a little if they are having too easy a time and everyone ends up happy.
This was quite the helpful video. The crafting system in pathfinder makes crafting take a very very long time at later levels. I've been thinking about modifying it. I did not however think about making it a case by case scenario in which I include the player in the decision. That seems like a great way to do it :)
I am currently DMing Tomb of Annihilation and I have adapted City and Wilds from the DMs Guild for the the Alchemy rules for potions poisons and explosives. I also intend to adapt the rules for creating a Guild Hall included in City & Wilds as the basis for creating a headquarters for the party in Port Nyanzaru (which I am going to connect to a speakeasy in the basement of The Thundering Lizard as well as a sewer network to various locations.)
I am also utilising Hammunds Harvesting also from the DMs Guild which gives rules and components harvestable from monsters in the Monster Manual and Volos Guide for the creation of Magic items. I have created a gatekeeper NPCs for each of Merchant Princes related to their specific enterprise. These NPCs are my crafters and artificers who the PCs can turn to if they want a specific item made.
I've also included a minor quest that each of these NPCs that will help level them up and make them into master crafters who are then able to craft rarer and more powerful items. e.g The Tabaxi 'Empty Flask' who runs "Kill Cure or Kaboom" in the Grand Souk is the gatekeeper for Jessamine. He can sell the party harvest utility items and extra spells to help with harvesting. He desires the Alchemy Jug which is in The Temple of The Man and The Crocodile, and is a very useful way to handle hydration in they jungle. However if they give it to Flask he will be able and willing to craft rarer, more effective potions.
The Smith needs "the greater flame" sourced from the forge at Hrakrammer.
I was pretty pleased with myself when I named Wakanaga Otamu's shop (run by another Tabaxi Mystic River) "The Wizard on The Coast". - that's the springboard for the Vorn quest which Wakanga will want them to donate to the protection of Nyanzaru but in return magic items that require more complex runes and spell infusions become available that will still require some hard to find components.
This is my plan at any rate. So far I've given my PCs plenty of raw materials but they have yet to have anything but a cursory chat with the alchemist where I can start laying all of this out.
I've spoken to one player (who wants to build a museum, hence the club house) who is playing a bard and I have some magical musical instruments I might be able to tempt him with. So here's hoping I can pull it off!
Thank you Bjorn.
Horse stuck on a roof?
Guy, have you been playing Gwent? :P
High Quality Content
A horse on the roof? Don't touch Roach!
For mechanics of crafting, Pathfinder 2nd ed. has a pretty clear system. I find it well thought out which functions well in game play and is balanced.
For the "request an accent" for next week: Creole / Cajun please! ^^
15:22 Love this idea!
I have found that younger players are more interested in crafting. My son and his friend love to craft things. I let them do it as I love to see what they come up with.
My sci-fi RPG centered around crafting weapons and vehicles. Characters had a "technology" score required to build things from a catalog.
A little hard to pay attention to some of the character with their accents but I really love the UI looking bullet points!
There has to be balance for this to work. To be exact, it has to be the balance of the forge.
"Last night me and the wife made a lad junior too!"
That laughter is going to keep me laughing for many minutes on end!!
Personally, I think he made this channel so he would have a reason to wear all the different costumes he buys. : -)
I simply love making characters who are built from the ground up to craft everything. Also love making constructs
1:19-1:20
5:02-5:03 Those transitions. He just swats the floating text away.
Did a detective just tell me to put something under a bridge?
Probably only someone trolling you...!
It took me 4 minutes until i realized Guy was still role playing an oc lol
Dear Guy, may I suggest a philosophical, yet controversial topic for a future video: "The soul - what is it, and how to use / abuse it in RPGs".
thank you shadiversity
It's an awesome excuse to learn more about real medieval blacksmithing, weaving, woodworking, etc. It will improve your ability to GM a realistic world. And you can start learning on youtube. :-)
Lewis & Clarke brought a portable smithy with them when they explored America. You can actually find a replica in photo here:
history.army.mil/LC/Explore/Circle_of_Cultures/captions.htm
Looks like it was quite unwieldy, what with a portable bellows, an iron box you could screw onto a tree stump for use as a forge, and an anvil that could also be screwed onto a tree stump (for stability), nevermind all their tools. Without mounts, just about anyone carrying all this gear is committing a lot of carry weight to it all!
I want to run a crafter in a game, but almost every time I run into the things you brought up in Game Play. Mostly time. Don't normally have any downtime in games. Always feels a bit 'go go go go go'. Just got back from the job to go clean out the goblin den? Alright, now go fight these kobolds or something. And it's not just the GM pushing things, it's the other players. Because there is literally no need for them to stop and rest, except for each night, they don't want to 'waste time' waiting around while I find the materials, facilities, and actually go through with making something. Especially if there's risk of failure and having to wait even more time. That's time they could be out getting more xp and money. And it's a waste because by the time I make that +1 sword... they'll have already found one or even gotten a +1 flaming sword or something.
I've been able to do a bit of crafting during travel in my current game, because it's been leatherworking and we were given an Airship, so I have enough space. But we're still pretty 'go go go' and so I haven't had time to try to find materials to make things I actually want, aside from this Glamoured Leather coat for our rogue.
mafair had gadgetry rules i used in other games
I like having master craft NPCs in the game. Yes you can make that fork yourself but you need the mastercraft NPC to be there to help you make it masterwork so you can enchant your fork to make everything taste like brussel sprouts
Oh what a wonderful prospect...
@@Xerxes2005 There is always a garden that can grow herbs, and to be able to grow those rare items you master craft NPC is a gnome.
The people who downvote these great videos need to craft a better attitude.
Everyone can roll an 1 ...
@@larsdahl5528 My man, that is the most and best nerd insult I have ever heard and I’m stealing it!
You record Avid, Cheese, and the others in bulk, right? You don't do all those costume changes for one video, do you?
I record 3 videos worth at a time yes. Some of the costumes take a bit of time to get into... and wait until you see who replaces Bjorn (his costume is in a box coming from Japan to Lonon :(_)
I would contend: IS it a problem if your players start making tons of money because they like crafting things? I wouldn't say so, necessarily.
I have to disagree with Dirk Knight here. Strongly! I have been a player in several campaigns where the immergent adventure of starting our own company, building and upgrading our own shop and, on one occasion, starting our own drug empire, was much more engaging and interesting than the official adventure and the epic plot our GM had prepared for us. Because, let's be honest, after the fourth epic quest, they all start to blend together. But building your own stuff never gets old.
If I ever find myself in that situation as a GM, I'll scrap the epic quest, have some farmboy from the next village save the world! If my players are that invested in the live they built for their characters, and thus the game world I created, then there should be enough seeds lieing around to quickly turn that trade war into the central conflict for the next couple of months.
Woof some of these accents are pushing it.
Very distasteful accents... great DM advice though, stick to that perhaps?