In the MMOs that I’ve played, I tend to get into the crafting system if it’s not broken. I’ve also played a craft-heavy PC in D&D.
While I have some very mixed feelings about the crafting system in D&D, let’s look at one of the few ways specifically mentioned to aid crafting - the Fabricate spell.
Here’s Fabricate spell description in all it’s glory:
You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material. Creatures or magic items cannot be created or transmuted by the fabricate spell. The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication. If you work with a mineral, the target is reduced to 1 cubic foot per level instead of 10 cubic feet.
You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship.Casting requires 1 round per 10 cubic feet (or 1 cubic foot) of material to be affected by the spell.
This is all for a 5th level Sorcerer/Wizard spell.
What’s That All Mean?
What it means is that if you make something “requiring a high degree of craftsmanship” then you need to make an (as in only one) craft check to successfully create this item.
I believe we can all agree that the “high degree of craftsmanship” largely refers to anything that’d be considered masterwork quality.
The line “The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication.” is important to us. This means if we use mithril or adamantine, then the resulting item will be a masterwork item - provided that we succeed on our DC 20 craft check of the appropriate type; such as Craft(Weaponsmithing) or Craft(Armorsmithing).
We can also use the same high-quality steel that’d make normal masterwork weapons, but where’s the fun in that?
How Is This Useful To Your Crafter?
I think what we need is a slight paradigm shift here. I know whenever I imagine a crafter (particularly of the blacksmith persuasion) that I picture a large, bulky man with arms fatter than tree trunks slaving over a furnace all day. With magic, this need not be the case. Perhaps the best crafter of magical arms and armors is the frail and wirery mage.
Say What Now?
Think about it. Craft is a class skill for both Sorcerers and Wizards. While they don’t get a lot of skill points, the Wizard at least has an advantage here. Since intelligence is the key stat for the Wizard, they should be able to sacrifice a few here and there. In addition to this, Craft is an Intelligence-based skill, further giving our mage an edge.
The Wizard can cast 5th level spells starting at 9th level. By this point, you should have already dumped your two ability points at 4th and 8th into Intelligence. If you were lucky, you were able to get one stat at 16-18 and put this into Intelligence from the start. In addition to that, by 9th level you probably have a magic item that gives you at least +2 to Intelligence.
Right off the bat we’re talking about a mage with a 20-22 Intelligence.
In addition to that, a quick casting of Fox’s Cunning bounces you to 24-26 Intelligence for an ability mod of +7 or +8.
Even if you put 5 ranks total into Craft over 9 levels, this is a base +12 at the lowest. The DC to craft masterwork arms and armor is only a 20 - which is more than achievable at this point.
If you’re able to create or purchase wondrous items, you should be able to spring for something that’d grant a +5 to your craft skill for little gold. Remember the formula for items that give a competence bonus to skills is equal to the bonus squared x 100gp. A +5 Circlet of Weaponsmithing should only cost 2,500gp.
The Risk Of Failure
The only thing that Fabricate doesn’t go into is the result of failing the craft check for fine objects.
There’s two plausible eventualities:
- The spell fizzles and nothing happens. This is fine, just cast the spell again. With a base Intelligence of 20 you get two 5th level spells per day. No reason you can’t have Fabricate memorized twice.
- The item is created of non-masterwork quality. This is fine too - just cast the spell again and make your next craft check. There’s no limitation on Fabricate to require you to use “raw materials”.
All-in-all, even if you don’t get your craft skill up to a 19 for an automatic success, the risk of failure in this case is extremely low. Quite frankly, since craft is not a trained-only skill, if you’re lucky with the die, you may not even bother with any ranks in craft and leave it up to lady luck.
Poor Little Blacksmith
The biggest loser out of this is our hammer-swinging blacksmith/armorsmith/weaponsmith. They have to spend countless weeks pounding away at that metal to work it into a form that’s useful.
In the past, our mage would likely have outsourced the creation of the masterwork arms and armor to a skilled artisan and waited weeks for their completion. One has to wonder now, why bother? It’s both cheaper and faster to do it in-house and get right to work on enchanting.