Crafting

Crafting is the art of taking rough materials and using them to manufacture a usable item, such as a weapon or an armor. The following crafting rules are meant to replace and elaborate on the current D20 crafting rules.

Step 1 – Determining the Item

The first step in crafting an item is naturally selecting which item to craft. The list below mentions all weapons and armors from the Player’s Handbook, as well as their weight and the type of material used in their construction. The list also mentions the base crafting DC as well as the crafting time for each item.

Note that when a material type is mentioned, it is considered the active material used in the weapon. For example, even though an axe is manufactured mainly from wood, it is still considered to have metal as its active component.

Weapons

Step 2 – Determining Item Quality

There are 11 different categories when it comes to weapon and armor quality. The quality of an item ranges from Common to Divine, which is the highest level of craftsmanship one can achieve when crafting an item. Each level of craftsmanship increases the production time of an item as well as increasing the Craft check DC. Items of higher quality gain a bonus appropriate to the item being crafted.

Item Quality

Divine is the highest level of craftsmanship one can achieve when producing an item.

A weapon of higher quality than Common gets an Equipment bonus to its damage found in the Bonus A column. The weapon also receives an Equipment bonus to attack found in the bonus B column.

An armor of higher quality than Common gets an Equipment bonus to its Armor Bonus found in the Bonus A column. The armor receives a reduction to its Armor Check Penalty according to the Bonus B column. The armor receives a bonus to its Maximum Dexterity Bonus according to the Bonus B column.

Step 3 – Determining the Material

Once the appropriate item and item quality has been selected, the next task in the crafting process is selecting the material from which the item will be crafted. If the material is not one which can be easily purchased, it must often be acquired. Some material is so rare that it is virtually never sold, and acquiring such rare material can be a quest by itself. All materials have a Crafting Time modifier as well as a Crafting DC modifier. For example, Wavesteel has a Crafting Time modifier of x2 and a Crafting DC modifier of +2. That means that if a dagger is going to be made out of Wavesteel, then the crafting time increases from 2 days to 4 days and the Crafting DC increases from 12 to 14.

Step 4 – Determining Modifications

An item can be crafted with any number of modifications added to it. Further along is a list of all possible modifications which can be applied to a weapon or armor when it is crafted. Modifications typically influence the Crafting Time and Crafting DC of the item they modify. Some modifications add only a fixed amount of time to the total Crafting Time, whereas other modifications increase the Crafting Time by a certain factor with which the Crafting Time is multiplied. If a modification increases the Crafting Time by a fixed amount of hours, then that amount of hours is added to the Crafting Time after all multiplicative modifiers have been added.

Step 5 - Determine Total Price

This step is only important if it is not the player himself who is manufacturing the item. To determine the price, find the totalt Craft DC on the table below. Next to the Craft DC is the daily charge paid to a smith capable of actually crafting the item. Items with exceptionally high DC's require extremely skilled smiths that demand high fees. When you pay for a craftsman to manufacture an item for you, you are guaranteed that he will succeed at his task as long as all his costs are covered.

Daily Crafting Fee

For each additional point by which the Craft DC is increased after DC 50, the price is increased by 500 gp. per day. Anyone able to Craft an armor or weapon with a DC of more than 50 is likely to be a legendary smith who will only craft an item in return for more than just gold. Often, such a craftsman will have more than enough gold and will ask a group of adventurers to perform some quest or mission for him in addition to the price he may charge. At other times, a craftsman of such legendary status will offer to manufacture an item for the adventurers if they have become famous enough, or if they have helped someone he holds dear.

Examples

Example 1: Joe the Warrior wants a smith to produce a dagger of a slightly above average quality with some helpful modifications added to it. Joe knows that he is going to participate in a fighting competition where all participants must fight unarmoed while wielding two weapons, so he needs a good offhand dagger. He chooses to have a Superior Quality Dagger made with the Fencing Guard, Folded Blade and Tashi Edge modifications. He purchases 3 lb. of Adamantine, which costs him 600 gp.

The base DC of the Dagger is 12. Making the Dagger of Superior quality increases the DC by +18 to make it 30. Making the Dagger of adamantine increases the DC with +6, making it 36. Adding the Fencing Guard increases the DC by +2 to 38. Adding the Folded Blade increases the DC by +4, making it 42. Adding the Tashi Edge modification increases the DC by +2, making the final DC 44. Joe is going to need quite an accomplised smith to make this weapon.

The base crafting time of an Dagger is 2 days. Since the Dagger is going to be of Superior quality, the crafting time is multiplied by 8, thus becomming 16 days. Making the weapon of Adamantine doubles the crafting time, so the crafting time becomes 32 days. The Fencing Guard modification increases crafting time by 1.5, the Folded Blade modification increases crafting time by 4.0 and the Tashi Edge increases crafting time by 1.5 as well. This means that the modifications put together increase the crafting time by 5.0. The modifications are added together before their net total is multiplied with the crafting time. So the final crafting time of the Dagger becomes 62 days.

From the table above we can see that the smith is going to charge 500 gp each day for crafting the weapon, so the final cost for crafting the dagger is going to be 62 x 500 = 31.000 gp. In addition to the crafting price comes the 600 gp spent on adamantine, making the final price for the dagger 31.600 gp.