Are you referring to PC when you mentioned "people" above?

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I do like the fact that we've keep the kingdom building and the economy at the Macro level. Not sure that I would be favor of adding more things on the Micro level.

The entourages are not allowed to take Craft/Profession skills that might turn into micro-economy. Is the question opening the doors to change all of that going forward?

In reply to Kendrick Winters (msg # 2):

yes -  PCs :)

Are these items to be used in play, or sold off as a source of income?

Nothing will change as far as Entourage-Assistants go.  It is way too easy for unbalance the game if Entourage-Assistants are creating stuff for you  all the time.

My concerns relate to PCs cafting -  the way the game runs, PCs could easily have 100-150 days per year of crafting, aided by entourage assistants and MW tools in craft workshops they own (so quite a few pluses), with (potentially) a lot of money to spend.

Speaking as someone who doesn't have any of the craft feats, I would actually support the concept of PCs being able to use them to make magic items. There are very few games where that is an option, and I think this one is perfect for it considering the amount of downtime.

What you could do is make it an either/or proposition. Meaning, either you participate in kingdom building this round or you craft. That may be too harsh, but something like that.

The issue with crafting had always been, what are the rest of the PCs doing during that time and what advantages are they getting. I don't think it has to be equal, considering it takes a feat to craft magical items, but as long as there is something else to be gained by others (ie. Kingdom building) then I think it's fine.

I suppose that crafting will be part of the PC if that is the route that they took. It's a matter of how much time will be allowed to do that AND the other Kingdom events.

Thought that most of the time, the PC was using their time to do Kingdom things. So now, we'll be able to do Kingdom Things, Craft, and whatever else we can find :)

If the character were to craft 10 Wands of Eel Detection, not to be used on campaign, but solely to be sold for gold, then an (somewhat) equal opportunity would need to be made for characters with other income producing abilities as well, such as Performance, Merchant, or Eel Pie Eating Contests.

If instead, the crafting is intended for a campaign item such as a Mithral Fork of Greater Eel Summoning, then I would be in favor of these unique bonuses. It can add flavor, RP, and progression to the game. If such an item is considered unbalanced, then it can be denied at the beginning. Or it could always be eaten by the Mother of All Eels for an RP solution.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:30, Tue 02 Apr 2019.

PCs have always been able to make things  - so far scrolls, potions, alchemical items and (I think) Holy Water.  Before long some PCs may be able to craft other items.

We already have Fuzzy thread, and 'fudged' time to get everyone back in town at about the same time.  Then there is the 'assumption' that you are doing stuff for Henry, business, organizations etc ....

The key question is how much time is reasonable?

If the PC has the crafting skills / feats, why shouldn't they be able to use them? Crafting is part of the game, and one that I've seen used very rarely. And it's not like Kingdom turns would occupy all of their time. Depending on what they actually do during Kingdom turns, it might not even occupy any of their time, especially if they have NPCs actually running things for them.

(Up to) 10 days a month, or 120 days a year? This could equate to about a third of their time working for Henry, one third kingdom building and other personal tasks, and one third for crafting.

Safiya - As I said, Crafting has always happened in the game.  The question is how much?    So far I have been making arbitrary decisions about that.  That isn't very fair, and  it is starting to irritate me doing that on a case-by-case basis.  So I want some guidance from across the player base :)

Cass - When was the last time you were able to tell me when a month or a week had passed in this game?

Kendrick has been in the Midmarch for 3 Kingdom Turns + 1 Adventuring Turn. Does this mean that he has been in the game for a year?

If we go with Cass' suggestion :)
Then 10 days a month gives 30 days per Kingdom Turn. That sounds reasonable. Or is it too high or too low?

EDIT: I've been trying to figure out Jensen :)
This message was last edited by the player at 21:06, Tue 02 Apr 2019.

Whenever you tell me it has, boss. :)

If you say that a character has been traveling for 3 weeks, then they can't have more than 7 days total of downtime. Even if they are able to dedicate 50% of that downtime to crafting, they can't have more than 3.5 days of craft time for that month.

I think what you need to decide first is how much time other "kingdom round" activities take, and then you can figure how much time there is for crafting.

For example, how much time does "running a business" like Adoven does, take? If he's spending BP to extend that business, does that add additional time since there is the buying of goods, negotiating agreements, overseeing construction, etc.? Should the amount of time be connected to how many holdings they have, or how many BP those holdings add up to? I would think managing V&A Shipping is going to take a lot more time than managing a single Tailor Shop.

How much time does filling a "stewardship role" take? Obviously Cass expends some amount of time as the Mayor of Tusk Town and Kendrick now spends time as the Marshal.

And then of course there is the point that perhaps a PC could have an entourage member pick up at least some of those duties. For example in Marik's case he has Pekwik to manage Sootscale and Valgard to manage Iron Keep. The easiest answer here would be to allow an entourage member to manage one holding (or perhaps multiple small holdings in the same location as Marik has) or fill one stewardship role, but then they can't do anything else substantive.

Once we have a rough idea of how much time these activities take, then you can see how much time people have left for crafting. It is probably also worth taking a look at Ultimate Campaign to see what other activities could be done during downtime for those without crafting feats to fill the time as well.

As some who has used Crafting in my and other people's campaigns, I think you are making too much deal out of it. Look at it this way, each crafting check takes a week of time. The amount created is DC of the item x the check.

For example, I want to create some bladeguard. It's a 40gp item. I rolled a 31 and upped the DC to 25, to speed things up. In 2 days I am 220sp of the way to that 400 total.

There is no impact on the economy with these rules. It just a hobbie for those in town.

In reply to Stanislav Wolkov (msg # 17):

My focus is more on the crafting of magic items using the crafting feats.

In reply to Marik (msg # 18):

Ok. Potions, wands and scrolls are self limiting in terms of number of spells the caster knows and cost associated with making the item. Player characters selling items receive 1/2 the items value, so unless they are into business of making these things there is not too much profit. If they are into business then they are not adventuring and it's a full time position. Hitting other to run it is already covered by rules.

What it's mostly good for is getting people items that they can not find or are not for sale.

I'm thinking about feat and game balance, myself- if we go ahead and throw open the doors to crafting, doesn't that really open up a whole big brouhaha of just what kinds of things could be crafted?  I mean, yes, there are all sorts of wonderful fun things that could be created to help out adventuring parties- stuff like wands of knock, detect secret doors, detect magic, read magic... pretty much creating a working stash of equipment for the use of Henry's people.

Maybe it requires a certain amount of trust or something for certain projects?  I mean, I wouldn't trust some random person in my town to just start making stuff willy-nilly because a) I don't know what they're making and b) who the blazes are they selling to?  I mean, if an unknown alchemist came in and started brewing up huge batches of alchemist's fire, I imagine Henry would have something to say about that- mostly because of the fire danger that could represent, as well as if he starts selling it to every adventurer that came through with the coin, because having massive amounts of something even a goblin could use to torch a town out there wouldn't make me sleep much better at night.

Maybe the OOC rule is only sell the dangerous stuff to fellow PCs- IC, it would be people that can be obviously trusted to do the right thing with said item, and not for sale to NPC randoms.

That actually sounds like something the Marshal should keep tabs on. He can have everybody register their skills, weapons, lovers, haters, next of kin, etc. LOL
Sorry I got off-topic there ;)

Just not going to happen. Do the math.

As someone who is planning on taking magical craft feats moving forward I'm very interested in this question.

Part of my Kingdom building plan IS setting up magical (aka Exotic artisan) craftsmen. I plan to use those shops/resources to aid my own crafting eventually.

120 days of crafting per year is equivalent in Magic Item terms to 120,000 (base price) gp in magic items per year assuming all craft checks succeed. DC to craft a magic item is only 5+CL+other modifiers. Example, for me to forge a ring of Protection (some future day when we make it to 7th level) without knowing the shield of faith spell, is DC 15.

At 7th level I should easily be able to craft a Ring of Protection +1 in 2 days for 1,000 gp, or 60 of them a year. Not planning to do this, just for the theory exercise of it all.

What would I sell those rings for if I have magic shops? If I'm partnering with Adoven and his trade routes or have set up my own?

I mostly plan to use my crafting for myself or for other PCs in trade for other items/BP/political favors ;) I just want to give context to what we're talkin about on the crafting side of things.

In the Trade thread, we roughly estabilished that a BP is worth ~ 5,000 gp locally. Can I trade a Ring of Sustenance for 0.5 BP to Henry or others as negotiated?

But there is a possibility that a PC would want to pay much more for a particular magic item since BP hasn't been clearly defined. There is some wiggle room when converting BP to GP.

So we have two different aspects of the problem there.

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It takes Stas 4 days to make  a pot of Blade Shield, while it would take a (slightly higher level) Zelona two days to make Ring of Protection +1.  Money doesn't always limit what can be produced magically, especially when there are a lot of PCs around to purchase  'Items made to Order', or an End Boss drops a load of monetary wealth.

Items Crafted or  and created like that won't become part of the economy - the Business Section of the kingdom rules cover that sort of sale.  Nor will they be saleable for a BP allocation - tried that and it didn't work well :)  Nor does it finish up affecting the amount of magic available to the group as a whole -  because I'll adjust treasure dropped to accommodate WBL considerations  :)  *Evil DM Grin*.  What it does affect is magic and gear distribution inside a party - as I reduce the treasure drop -  the crafter finishes up with a larger proportion of the Party's magical gear (etc).

I want to find  something that has the backing of the group -  rather than me making arbitrary decisions each time the question of  'How much time do I have' comes up.

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The second issue has to do with Time during the Kingdom round, which is something that I haven't really addressed.  I have played around with various methods.  I was intending to have 4/year.  That never quite worked and I went for a kingdom round each level up.  That hasn't quite worked as I would have liked it either.  The end result is that Tusk is almost a city in the space of one year of adventuring.  Uber-Boomtown!

That becomes important because, as someone said earlier, 'In a conventional game, time for creating is controlled by how long the other PCs are prepared to hang about'.  In this game, I Fudge and Fuzzy time quite a lot to keep all the groups on something like the same time line.  That matters so that I can allow interaction between groups from different players, manage advancement so that everyone is in some sort of sync and to let me reorganize groups, when it is appropriate.

As someone has pointed out

I have been hand-waving time for kingdom Round jobs

Public Appointments (such as Mayor, Treasurer, Councillor, Marshal)
Running a business or organisation.
Tasks for Henry.

I am going to pick on Cass here as an example.  Nothing personal, and Cass hasn't done anything I haven't encouraged  :)  However he is:...

• Mayor of Tusk
• Stronghold owner for Silverton
• Boss of the Mithral Hotels Chain
• doing simple background jobs for Henry.

All within times that have been hand-waved and used to fill the very Fuzzy/Fudgey kingdom round time.

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I am not sure that running a large business/Organisation takes up more time that a small business.  As the business gets bigger, you get a larger organisation backing up the decisions, junior managers etc.  You still just make 'Strategic Calls' and carry out oversight.

In the trade thread a Midmarch BP has been loosely  as worth about 5000gp, that can roughly equate to a 2,500gp redemption value - in certain circumstances. That takes  gold / cash wealth out of the BP barter economy -  and isn't a standard sale price.  Do it too often and the value will decrease and the realizable wealth is drawn from the economy to be replaced by favours.

That value is a device that will allow you guys to get a foothold in places like Restov, Mivon or New Steven.  It is not a regular exchange rate.

Another thing - Going away from the computer to get a coffee leaves the mind free to wander ....

I don't want to punish people for taking part in any of those Kingdom activities.  For Example - Zelona and Safiya want to take part in those  AND craft :)  And I don't want a system that discourages that.