Talk:Book of Gears (3.5e Sourcebook)/Crafting

I think most of your ideas are far more sensible than the core rules, but this part shouldn't "make you cry". First of all, the crafting DC is based on complexity, not the difficulty of working with the raw material. But even if it was working the way you're saying and the candle holder HAD a DC of 5 there still would be no difference. It would just imply the holder could be made by any newbie if said newbie spent a considerable amount of time making it. But no newbie is going to make it since that "considerable amount of time" is so long he would die of malnutrition before he finished, assuming he has no other income. In other words, if crafting was based on difficulty of working with the material(which is not), a beginner goldsmith can work on something that worths lots of gold. Hell, an apprentice bonecarver or a venerable fisherman can do it too, but all three have thousands of better things to do than sitting around crafting decoration for months. Conversely, you can increase the crafting DC with any multiply of 10, so a craftsman who already has an idea about shaping shiny stuff into something nice, like someone with 10 skill points in Craft(Goldsmithing), he can just add +10 to the DC and finish it in no time. The only difference this system would make is some rich idiot noble who has his peasants to work in his stead can spend half his life smacking a gold ingot with a rusty hammer until it happens to look somehow, and afterwards gain the reputation of a master craftsman, which makes no sense at all, but it's hilarious if anything and brings no ill to your campaign in any way.

That +10 adding limitation could change, though. Why can't we just add any number? Reducing the DC would be gamebreaking, obviously, but adding smaller or bigger amounts to it should be applicable.

Also, I know exactly where the extra cost in matials goes for creating a masterwork sword as opposed to a normal one - waste. Take a Longsword for example, it weighs 3 lb. whether is masterwork or not. Thoughout history the best swords have been made by various painstaking proccesses to create the right alloy of steel in enough quantity to forge the sword from, burning extra coal to work on extra metal that is mostly scrap when you are finished, or the same metal multiple times. Lesser quality swords just focus on getting the right amount of steel into the right shape, regardless of quality.