Tabletop RPGs tend to split up crafting into a high number of crafting subskills for every individual area of expertise. There's no question that crafting is still extremely powerful despite forcing you to go through this hassle, but what are your thoughts on which particular crafting subskills tend to be the most useful in the context of a TTRPG campaign, be it a medieval or modern or sci-fi setting?Pic related is from Legend of the Five Rings, where I'll be playing a crafter soon, and I intend to invest heavily into crafting. But feel free to talk about any game you've had experience with.
I've been regularly GMing for almost ten years over a variety of systemsI have never seen a crafting system that wasn't underwhelming, and I have never seen a player actually dedicate time and resources into crafting
>>97362482>There's no question that crafting is still extremely powerful despite forcing you to go through this hassleI'd argue that point. A big issue is the fact that the crafter requires a lot of time in order to craft, on top of the raw materials and the skill. For some goods and some campaigns this is a reasonable restriction, but often it ends up that the solution where you craft an object takes ages longer than the solution where you just buy or steal the thing. Time being somewhat valuable, and most player characters not being the sort that make great use of downtime, the later two options become more palatable for most parties.The exceptions are typically machinery or software in more advanced campaigns. These things can usually be completed fast enough to be valuable at campaign pace, as intermediary parts can often be scavenged or purchased at reasonable ROI. Further, access to certain forms of machinery to even purchase them can often be very limited, necessitating a long period of developing the connections to purchase them, which itself often takes as long as just building the damn thing.
>>97362482any item the GM wants or needs you to have, you will haveif you put points in crafting it then you'll just have spent them on something you could have had for free, either as a reward or found otherwisetherefore the only reason to invest in crafting is if you enjoy the crafting gameplay itself
>>97362583Of course someone who advocates stealing is lazy.
Crafting is based because it's the epitome of HFY in a single skill.If you can't figure out how to use it you're dumb as fuck. Literally animal tier intelligence.
>>97362646>Hold up guys, I'm forging this sword>Yes, I know this will take a while to find the ore>Make a bloomery>Smelt it>Make an anvil>Forge a weapon>Yes, I know that the goblins took those villagers>It'll only be a month, bro>They won't kill and eat them over that month, bro>'Steal the weapon?' Are you crazy?>'Buy it then?' And rely on someone else's craftsmanship?
>>97362742>Crafting is based because it's the epitome of HFY in a single skill.no it isn't. Dwarves and elves are better craftsmen than humans in most popular canons.
>>97362788Dwarves and elves are just quirky humans.
>>97362793no they aren't. they're different species.
>>97362507>I have never seen a player actually dedicate time and resources into craftingNot-homebrewing-it-yourself issue. Book writers always overcomplicate crafting when ripping of Terraria is hands down the best method.
>>97362507>and I have never seen a player actually dedicate time and resources into craftingI'm playing in a D&D 3.5e table where one PC is a crafting specialist.Shit's starting to get wild with him crafting things like prosthetics arms (effectively grafts) to replace the perfectly working arms of another PC.He's also slowly turning himself into a sort of half-golem.
>>97362817...No, singular bespoke input-recipe-output relationships are horrible cancers of page-space. You'd want a material setup like Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld has to procedurally define permutations.
>>97362817>>97362983why do you need rules at all? if the players have woodworking tools, they can make a bow. it takes some downtime. that shit is boring, don't waste the whole party's time with it.
>>97362482>MOM! I'VE POSTED THIS AGAIN!
>>97362857you've illustrated another problem with craftingit's swingythere's very little rules, so most of it is ad-libbed by GMas a result it's either useless or OP, because it's hard to get a feel for reasonable limitations of the created tools
>>97362983>singular bespokeFortunately this is tabletop like >>97363013 mentions so the oddities of binary crafting can be easily circumvented with improv mechanics instead of requiring a mod.
The player is ultimately the problem>GM: Where do you guys want to go?>Player 1: I want to explore the dungeon!>Player 2: I want to explore the dungeon!>Player 3: I want to explore the dungeon!>Player 4: I want to spend five weeks of downtime crafting chainmail. What are the rules for that, GM? player 4 can fuck themselves. Performing time-consuming manual labor has nothing to do with the campaign premise.
Not every crafting activity has to be a month long undertaking. There's a lot you can achieve in just a few minutes if you aren't retarded.
>>97363140...Or you can just use a system that allows for procedural definitions in the first place and not NEED to improvise for very basic "make thing A out of B book with Y material from Z book" permutations.
>>97362482>There's no question that crafting is still extremely powerful despite forcing you to go through this hassle,Only system I've seen it really useful in is 3e/PF1 where you can make magic items with it, I wouldn't call making things that are trivially easy to buy from a shop extremely powerful.
>>97362507Crafting is always "roll till fail". When in reality the likelihood of actually failing a craft with enough time, experience, and resources is low.
>>97362482Cyberpunk RED splits crafting into categories that are actually different in the game without much care about how it makes sense in-universe.People want guns, chrome, cars, and gadgets, maybe armour so you haveWeaponstech, Cybertech, Land Vehicle Tech, Electronics, Basic Tech as a catch-all for everything else. So if you're good at fixing glocks, you're good at fixing rocket launchers. Being good at fixing cars makes you an expert at fixing trains.Being good at fixing a cyberarm makes good at fixing nano skin-weave bullshit.If you can fix a leaking laundromat, you can fix a kevlar bikini suit, etc.The only exception is that they split vehicle tech into land/air/sea and in a campaign only one of those will be useful. But Techie and Nomad characters get a big +N modifier to all three of them anyway.
