I'm with Stanislav here, as far as mundane crafting is concerned (alchemy included), there really is no need for limiting crafting time. Mundane crafting is already so slow it's just not going to break anything. The most it can do is provide a discount on some already cheap gear. Crafting magical items is a bigger concern, because it's far faster in value per time. But here the limiting factor is not going to be time, but money, at least until someone has hundreds of thousands in gold to burn for crafting.

And like Zelona, I too am interested in how crafting magic items is going to interact with existing economy rules. I have never used crafting with my characters before, but this campaign seems made to try it out. Zelona, what feats are you planing on taking?

Really depends on what levels we get to eventually... The main two I want to get/do are Forge Ring/Craft Staff. Brew Potion/Cultivate Magical Plant are also potentials before I get the right levels for those.

Most useful would be Craft Wondrous but I'll probably leave that one open for others to do.

My understanding is that a Caster's Tower costs 6 BP to create. This investment returns 3 BP each Kingdom turn. This is in line with any other type of commercial development.

That a BP is "roughly" equivalent to 5000 gp is just a frame of reference to help the DM (and maybe players) adjust developments outside of Midmarch. BPs can never be converted to coinage, coinage can never be converted to BPs.

Also that a Caster's Tower is capable of creating 1 minor magical item and 1 medium magical item each Kingdom turn.

And that one of the questions is how much crafting time a magic user (who owns a caster's tower for example) can have to produce magic items in addition to the 2 produced by the tower during a Kingdom turn.

And that leads to the request for a more definitive answer to how long a Kingdom turn is, to calculate the answer to the first question.

Is that about right?
This message was last edited by the player at 07:23, Wed 03 Apr 2019.

In reply to Zelona (msg # 28):

I was thinking of going with Craft Wondrous Items next level, and maybe Arms and Armor later. But I would not mind it at all if you wish to take Wondrous Items as well.

*grin*  I suspect I need to revisit that.  A caster's Tower will return 3.5 bp per Kingdom turn.  The Minor, Medium and Major magic indicators are actually an economic (BP) return based on all the magical items the tower makes -  not the specific number of items the tower can make.

And the secret is out :) Making magic Items, can make you very rich (in BP terms)

Other than that, you are pretty much right.

Large arenas net you 4 BP each KT for a 6 BP investment.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 07:41, Wed 03 Apr 2019.

No.  A large Arene returns 2bp per kingdom turn.  You get 0.5bp per point of economy.

Warning: This is kind of all over the place.  I started writing an idea but it took on a mind of its own.  I didn't want to cancel, rewrite and so on because there are concepts I thought important that came out as I wrote so forgive the unruly presentation and please accept the content for its intent and forgive the chaos.

One thing I am not seeing addressed is the non-crafting aspects of the game.  I for one cannot craft anything more than a bandage but yet am potentially a top tier healer through professional and skill even before clerical magic is involved.  We're discussing how much one spends on items, how long it takes and so on but what is the idea behind someone like myself who will by game rules have to pay full price for an item?  If I took the feats to make magic items I could easily save a fortune enchanting my sword but I don't want to do that.  What do I do when I want to upgrade my MW sword to something more?  Sure I can say "Dara goes to some merchant and spends hard earned money from an adventure to get it done" but I would much rather go to a Fuzzy thread and RP talking to another player who owns a shop and skill for it and purchase from them to do it.

I would recommend we keep it as close to the book as possible.  Businesses run as per downtime, points are generated and so on.  If a character wants to craft, they can use their business and its benefits to pay 50% and do it.  If someone without a business wants to craft, say a Wizard writing a scroll or Alchemist brewing a potion using their level 1 feat, they can pay the cost to do so.  For those like myself who lack the skills, let us engage a player who does and pay them to do it.  They used a feat that could have easily been put towards something else, let them earn something from it!  But don't forget the people with Professions.  The single biggest point of a profession is making a wage during downtime.  I really don't like how some books allow other skills to mimic profession's ability but that's for another time and discussion.  Let Dara spend her downtime working, give her gold based on her skill so she can then pay a player to craft the item she wants.

Then we run into a disparity.  Let's assume Dara takes 10 every week of downtime.  Calculating her skill that is roughly 10gp a week.  She could work as a manager for 5gp a day per one of the rules but let's rule that out for the moment.  Now if she wanted to upgrade her scimitar to +1 she'd need to work 40 hours a week for years.  9 months of downtime would net her ~390gp which is still not even close so adventuring money would be required to fill that gap.  A crafter making the sword would charge her 2000gp (200 weeks' wages or almost 4 years' salary assuming she never takes a vacation or goes adventuring) and pocket 1000gp of the profit (as they should!).  It will take them 2 days per the rules to do it.  Crafters will make a significant amount more over non-crafters so some kind of balancing might need to be considered for this.

Downtime duration?  I suggest we do 3 rounds of DT for every round of adventuring.  It slows things down on the timeline, allows ample time to build and grow business and so on.  We don't need to make them hard and fast times either.  No one is going to adventure for 3 months and then stay home for 9, it isn't like military deployments.  They might adventure a week, work a month, adventure a month, work six months, adventure two weeks...

Anyways, this is all over the place and I admit it.  Summary: Let's let the players go to players for crafting needs, give Professions an equal opportunity to earn and be useful and find a way to balance them so that one is not impoverished compared to the other.

Welcome to my can of worms :)

Dara - this isn't meant as an attack of you, or your argument -  just a recognition that this isn't as simple an issue as it might appear :)

Which I came to realize as I was writing, hence the chaotic nature of the end product. Revelation while writing.

We are not taking into account supply and demand. As pointed out above its 4 years' salary for a NPC to afford a +1 scimitar. Who is going to buy this in a small town besides a PC? How many can you sell in a year? There is just no market for these things. There is like 1% per week that you can sell a magical sword at full price through a store. I would say maybe 5% chance if you start selling at a discount, but then there are all of these guilds who will now go after you for undermining their business. And speaking of which 50% of the item price is just materials, how about guild dues, taxes and insurance(protection money).

If you actually consider these things, yes a PC can make a living selling magic items, but it will be a full time activity and he is not getting super rich.

I am thinking the best way to do it is take that 2000 and say that the crafter gets 0 of it.  The money is absorbed by business, expenses, materials, payroll, gas, electric, cable, insurance, guild fees, lawyer fees, loan sharks and so on...

Downtime rules balance things out by saying that you get (10+Skill)/2 GP per week of downtime labor using profession, craft, perform or whatever.  For balance sake I would think go by the rules.  Does it make sense?  Not completely, but it is even.  And when you think a profession is something done daily while a seller of magical items might spend a lot of time waiting for that one adventurer to make that one big sale, it kind of works?  The crafters will get a benefit of making their personal use items on the cheap but that's not entirely game breaking.

So did the GM get what he needed?
Have we narrowed down the options that will work for you?

I have taken the sense of the discussion so far  :) and have a feel of what people have said.  I haven't yet had time to let it peculate around in my head -  nor have I had a chance to read over the rules.

Once I have done that (which may take a few days) I will come up with (what  think) is a workable solution.

I am currently considering way to tie this into the Kingdom Rules.  One of the things I never liked about the Paizo kingdom rules is that they didn't match up with their down-time rules.

My only comment would be that it should be Ok for characters to create items for themselves that effectively mean they can get (up to) double the bang for their buck for the treasure they earned adventuring. If they have invested all their feats in item creation feats instead of combat-oriented or other adventure-oriented feats there is no reason they should be penalised for that choice, just as there is no reason that they should be allowed to gain a huge advantage either.

The only problem with a limit on the proportion of days that can be spent on item creation is that it might have no effect on lower level characters and disproportionately higher impacts on higher level characters. For example, a 1st to 4th level wizard wants to scribe his highest level spell on a scroll, that's less than 200gp each so only takes 2 hours, so he can scribe 4 scrolls in a day. A 5th to 8th level wizard is looking at a scroll value of under 1000gp so 1 day per scroll. For a 9th level wizard creating a scroll of a 5th level spell that's 2 days per scroll.

So, if you want to say a 1st to 4th level wizardess shouldn't be allowed to create more than say 12 scrolls for herself between adventures, you limit item creation to only 3 days per kingdom round. That only lets a 5th to 8th level wizardess create three 3rd or 4th level scrolls and a 9th level wizardess can only create one 5th level scroll and one 3rd or 4th level scroll. And they can forget about ever enhancing their own +1 ring of protection to +2! Not to mention ever crafting that staff they always dreamed of. (Yes, that might be  an extreme example but just illustrates the point I am making.)

Perhaps that's why D&D used to impose an experience point cost on the item creator, as well as the gp cost? Perhaps you could impose a 'temporary' XP cost on the item creator instead? For example, the exhaustion associated with excessive item creation might temporarily drain enough XP to lose a level until the middle of the next kingdom round, which affects their abilities in the upcoming adventuring round too.

I don't see this as a problem. You need more time to enchantment, then stay home and enchant or go adventuring. Everything has an opportunity cost.

My current view is :-

• Three Kingdom turns, two adventuring turns and one 'Winter' turn  per calendar year.
  
• Each Kingdom Turn will have 20 days free in which you can Craft or pursue Professional interests.   The rest of the time will be taken up running Businesses, Civic Duties and carrying out background tasks for Henry.
  
• However, there will be restrictions on levels of and types of components available to you.
  
• You will be allowed to sell items to other PCs (for GPs not BPs) via an 'exchange' -  which will take a percentage of the sale price.
  
• There will also be restrictions and benefits related to the elements of the kingdom Building rules.
  
• There will be a thread (or maybe more than one) where you will be required to post (In Private Lines) the calculations that you have used in your Crafting / professional work.

Your thoughts?

About selling items, is selling / buying BPs from other players for gold also prohibited? If not, then it's just an extra step to sell them for BPs.

At the moment, I am in two minds about that.  I always intended to keep distance between the Adventuring and Kingdom sides of the game - which is why I shied away from giving BPs a cash value.

Part of the problem is that in a couple of years of Kingdom rounds, some PCs could be generating quite a lot of BP per kingdom round.  Henry started out with an 'income' of about 10 BP - and he has spent quite a chunk of it on civic and low return developments -  but even so his personal income has doubled in the time the game has been running.

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Spoiler for Yeah.  I'm sad: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
I do all the same calculations and apply all the same rules to Henry's personal holdings,  the Midmarch holdings and Ringbridge as well.  :)

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My 5 cents worth ... thinking out loud, so apologies if I've missed someone already saying some or all of this.  :>

1a) crafting magical items is all about supply and demand (as someone(s) noted).  If you're making to order you have to wait till those orders come in before you can start; if you're making up items then you take your chances as to whether anyone wants or can afford them or not - if you have unsold stock on hand, you're rich on paper but might not be able to afford the rent this month due to cashflow problems.

1b) Still on supply and demand - magic items require raw materials as well as the relevant Feats, spells and XP costs.  In settled lands, in a big city you can easily find what you want - out here it'll either need to be made for you or ordered in.  To use the extreme example, if you're making 60 rings of protection +1, then you're going to need someone to supply and craft you 60 rings of precious metal, which will take time (and in a small economy, when they discover how much you're paying them and how much you're selling the finished item for, the cost of raw materials might just rise).  Even normal weapons - you should be able to get the weaponsmith to make you what you need, but he might have to finish up a few other orders ahead of yours.

2) Too much coin ?  I vaguely recall some rules in previous editions (or maybe other RPGs) that covered living expenses ... would it be possible to adapt them to the BP measure ?  The more BP you have, the more coin you are assumed to spend to maintain the lifestyle expected of someone in your position (rich food, parties etc).  Conspicuous consumption.  If all else fails there's always taxes and tithes.  Perhaps some of that coin goes in bribes to speed up build time.

3) Fuzzy time ... I'd base it on how long it takes to build all these temples, walls, warehouses etc.  If we need to skip ahead six months or a year at any point to keep the timeline straight, then it matters not.  With Kingdom building there's an awful lot of stuff that a character has to keep an eye on and they're rarely going to have time to head out adventuring.  And if the years roll by and my character dies of old age ... I'll just roll up another one.  :>  I know our GM has a fondness for character family trees, and would just love to have the children and grandchildren of our current PCs venturing out on their own.  <grins>

More about selling / buying BPs...

It would make sense that one can sell or buy BPs in some way. BPs are not just money of course, but money still makes a very big part of it. If a rich merchant were to arrive in Tusk tomorrow and offer a big bag of gold for a shop build there, why could he? And if he can't buy BPs directly, why couldn't he buy a shop someone else already build there?

The problem of converting BPs to large amounts of cash could be avoided by putting a few limitations on it. Maybe a PC can only sell certain (very low) amount of BPs per turn? Or there is an inefficiency in form of sales tax, licences or what not, so that part of the BPs sold go to waste instead? And the more BPs are in the sale, the worse it is?

Percy - Unfortunately I have already used 'Cost of Living' as a core element of the Kingdom Rules.  It is (in part) built into each character's arrangements with Henry - and into the Star rating for residential buildings.

Supply and demand (particularly for magical items) will be covered by various limitations - possibly based on the  Purchase limit of the settlement.

And if Percy wants to see his children running around in this world, he had better start dating .....

Safiya - As you know, we have discussed (and probably agreed) a base value(*) for  BPs in the trade thread.  And restricting the number that anyone can realise as cash in any given turn (or perhaps number of turns) is a good idea.  It costs a lot of good will from 'The Community'
 to convert a BP to hard cash - sometimes that good will runs out ...

That part of the Trade thread was based around the desire for Adoven (now) and other merchants (later) to be able to build in places other than Midmarch - ie Restov, Mivion, etc ...

And, as I suspect you worked out - Duma came to Midmarch to buy the right to build a  settlement - and payed a huge amount in cash and magical items.  However, I won't make any of you pay at the same rates as he did  :)



(*) Note1:  In Midmarch a BP is seen to represent 5000gp worth of labour, goods, services, permissions, favours and money.  If you cash all of that 'good will' in for cash - you can get 2500gp.  BUT -  it has made life difficult for your trading partners.  If you do it too often and you will annoy partners and they will stop playing ball witgh you - and the rate will drop.

(*) Note2:  Just because a BP represents 5000gp worth of value in Midmarch -  doesn't mean it represents the same amount of value in Restov or Mivon.  A building that costs 1 bp in Midmarch might cost 1.5 bp in Restov and 2bp in New Stetven.

Response to Note 2.....that depends on how much Influence you can bring to bear.

Since I joined and took over Adoven from his previous player, was it ever established what city he was born in, and what family he has/had?

Yes - Influence will play a part in the price of buying in a different city -  however, not sure how much yet -  because that thread has been put on hold, while we debate other matters.