Crafting System Suggestion

[Crunch]

Let me start by saying this would only probably be fair if it started in NWN2 since so many of us have already made levels in crafting where this wouldn't hurt us in the current game.

I propose that each character only be allowed to complete a set number of crafting actions per real life period.  

For example:  You are allowed to tailor 8 items per day.  On day one you collect cotton and try your hand at making cloth.  You make 8 attempts and succeed in making 2 bolts of cloth.  On day two you could attempt to turn those 2 bolts of cloth into patterns and also try 6 more times to make more cloth.  Eventually you start using your attempts to cure leather, make thread, and then eventually make your black leather armor.  

I chose 8 items per day arbitrarily, maybe the right answer is 20.  If this could be coded without too much difficulty, you could tweak the number of items per day to get a balance between a reasonable economy and a reasonable skill progression.  You might also find that with a system like this, you could reasonably adjust the xp rate such that you advance a level by making say 40 iron long swords at 50% instead of making 70 iron long swords at 50%. It would also create a market for journeymen who create cloth patterns, thread, clay molds, etc.

I think this would get rid of the weakness of the current crafting system which is that your best served by finding your niche and then rinsing and repeating.  (e.g. in tailoring you start doing dire badger pelts as soon as you have about a 30-40% chance of tanning them.  you throw away the resulting leather because it isn't useful for anything in quantity.  Next you change to dire boar.  Those leathers make belts of cunning. You do the leather curing for a few levels and start making the belts at around 40% chance and those will carry you to where you cure dire bear.  Same drill until you are making gloves of fury.  Soon you are level 22 like so many characters before you.  

By reducing the number of items which could be made in a batch the crafting has become more frustrating, in my opinion, to discourage over production.  However, the old formula for leveling remains in effect.  The same thing goes for enchanting, except it is a good bit more expensive as you go through a huge amount of enchanting oil.

My hope would be that by limiting how much an individual could craft in a day we could:
1. Slow the production of high level crafters.  It becomes a long term commitment instead of putting in a short burst of time and money to get the levels to produce whatever widget you desire.
2. Slow the production of items at levels -- someone wouldn't be producing dozens of oak bows in a weekend to hone their skills to make the mahogany bow he is dreaming of.
3. Increase the economy for intermediate products.
4. Hopefully lower the incentive to hoard large quantities of mid-level CNR.

[LoganGrimnar]

nice idea, might want to take that bit out about fast track tailoring.. i sure dident know that and it might be best if others dident think to try it.

As to the rest of your idea, this would sure kill crafting for me, Crafting is like the hobby i do when im board. This would most likly kill it for me. Though, Crafting is for thouse that wish to be merchents and such, so it should be hard work and take dedication, so id not condem the idea. It would be for NWN 2 though, sence to get it to work effectivly we would need a whipe of the crafting levels.

[Crunch]

I agree this is a NWN2 idea.  I'm just thinking; how many hides can a tailor work, how many fire opals can an enchanter enchant, within a given time?  I think if we had limited production per day, that the limit on how many items you could work in a single shot could go away.  If someone wants to make crystal rod 4's, instead of just buying enormous quantities of sand, he would buy the intermediate product, glass.  It just seems sensible that the master craftsman isn't messing around making glass in tinkering, or cloth patterns in tailoring, or essence of healing in alchemy.  He has journeymen for that and he does the tough stuff.

My goal would be to restore the fun to crafting of "gee I just made something new."  Instead of making it a huge production line at 85% to make that next level.  I also hope that this would get people more willing to risk that diamond ring at 75% or that staff of the elements at 60%.  Maybe I'm just spent to long in engineering, but right now given a tight supply of diamonds and an easy source of fire opals, I'll just craft fire opals until the diamond is a fairly sure thing.

[Dorganath]

The big question here is...define "item" or "crafting action".
  Some finished items take many intermediate steps to complete a single finished item.
  I can think of at least one finished product in alchemy, for example, that would require no less than 6 steps just to create a single finished potion. (totals of 6 dusts of one type, 3 of another, two essences and the final product)....some even more.
  Not all crafters *raises hand* utilize journeymen or apprentices or whatever, whether for reasons of RP or simply availability, so limits like this would hurt them more than anyone.
  Prior to January 1 of this year, people could put large amounts of CNR on the tables at one time and craft up to 99 finished products in a single attempt. In most cases now that is down to 1 item per attempt. This in itself effectively limits the number of items that can be crafted in a single day, though as with all things, it depends on how much time a crafter has to devote to the efforts.  
  While I'm all for keeping crafting rates at a reasonable rate, I'm fearful that this would impact some crafts more than others....and/or be rather cumbersome to track accurately if we had different per-day limits depending on the item or craft.

[forsettii]

Vulcano's 3E Crafting
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=scripts.Detail&id=2088

This is a crafting system that does what you want it too.  Granted I thought that crafting this way takes forever.  You have to spend skill points in crafting so you can make the high end items.  It limits the stuff you can make, and well pushes the limits of character creation to do some items.

Taking feats to do some crafitng.  I think that it goes the extream otherway.

So, I guess the real questions is what do you really want?  You need to balance Fun / realism for crafting.

BTW:  No mass creation here.  It will take days to create Items, even longer and XP and Feats to create items that you really want to use.