What was wrong with D&D 3.5 crafting rules?

[Looonatic]

I don't quite understand what was wrong with using a combination of skills and feats instead of some sort of 'leveling system' in order to represent crafting skill. I also don't understand what was so wrong with using mostly common materials(refined metals, rare woods, gemstones etc), the occasional rare material(black pudding bones) and spellcasting to create them from.

What was so borked with a crafting system that more closely followed 3.5 edition rules that it had to be replaced by a complex and unrelated add-on system instead?

While we're at it, why can we still not craft potions and scrolls?

[Tharlak]

What was so borked with a crafting system that more closely followed 3.5 edition rules that it had to be replaced by a complex and unrelated add-on system instead?

Not enough grind.

[Jahmin]

I have sadly wondered this myself... trust turbine to re-invent the wheel and **** it up in the process

[jackabat]

I don't quite understand what was wrong with using a combination of skills and feats instead of some sort of 'leveling system' in order to represent crafting skill. I also don't understand what was so wrong with using mostly common materials(refined metals, rare woods, gemstones etc), the occasional rare material(black pudding bones) and spellcasting to create them from.

What was so borked with a crafting system that more closely followed 3.5 edition rules that it had to be replaced by a complex and unrelated add-on system instead?

While we're at it, why can we still not craft potions and scrolls?

If they used 3.5 rules, everyone would just make artisan characters to handle crafting, to avoid needlessly hobbling their main character with feats and skills completely useless while within a dungeon.

Also, by 3.5 rules, it takes months to make a +5 sword or so. This makes sense at the tabletop where you can waggle your hands and months have passed.

The system they made has problems, but the p&p ruleset just doesn't translate well for a system where you can just role up an alternate character. Crafting's something I want to do on my main character without being shunned whenever I want to join a raid.

The ingredient names can be a little silly. I'll give you that one.

[Angelus_dead]

What was so borked with a crafting system that more closely followed 3.5 edition rules that it had to be replaced by a complex and unrelated add-on system instead?

The D&D 3.5 crafting rules are bad for 3.5 D&D, and would be far worse for a computer game, and even worse for a multiplayer game.

Seriously: the failure of crafting in D&D has been extensively documented.

I also don't understand what was so wrong with using mostly common materials(refined metals, rare woods, gemstones etc), the occasional rare material(black pudding bones) and spellcasting to create them from.

That concept is completely opposed to D&D 3.5 crafting, where the only material you need is gold pieces.

[dkyle]

The 3.5 crafting rules would be awful in a game like DDO. Only casters could craft, and requiring feats would mean that any remotely skilled crafters would be gimped actually questing.

All real crafting would be done on crafting bots, and unlike hagglebards, they would serve almost no purpose in questing.

Furthermore, plat and XP are extremely plentiful. Import the costs of items in 3.5, and the best gear would be trivial to get. That is not a wise design for an MMO that wishes to remain financially viable. Grind exists for a reason.

[Chai]

How much is this game really related to 3.5e at this point? Seems like most changes that have been made have moved us AWAY from 3.5e and closer to other MMO mechanics we see in other available games.

That concept is completely opposed to D&D 3.5 crafting, where the only material you need is gold pieces.

This is not true in a good DMs campaign who has experience with the crafting system. Theres no issue with making people find / make materials, with the understanding that you cant just waltz up to "darkwood vendor_0_2" in the marketplace of City_0_4 and throw gold at the issue.

Yeah, Id like to buy some mithril....leads to every dwarf in the place rolling onthe floor laughing. Sure the DM guide assigns it a value, if its for sale....

[Trillea]

That concept is completely opposed to D&D 3.5 crafting, where the only material you need is gold pieces.

I have to disagree here, in its current format gold pieces are the secondary ingredients that are a poor substitute for the actual main ingredient - Turbine points.

[Trillea]

How much is this game really related to 3.5e at this point? Seems like most changes that have been made have moved us AWAY from 3.5e and closer to other MMO mechanics we see in other available games.

Agreed, and this is NOT the route that DDO should take in their changes. Not saying that the crafting should be 3.5 based, but other things should be changed closer to 3.5.

[PsiGuy]

In addition to the above XP CAP

Crafting 3.5 style would require XP to be spent to make the items. That would mean removing the hard cap, coding so character can loose a level, and a **** ton of other, probably very difficult changes.

[Missing_Minds]

I don't quite understand what was wrong with using a combination of skills and feats instead of some sort of 'leveling system' in order to represent crafting skill. I also don't understand what was so wrong with using mostly common materials(refined metals, rare woods, gemstones etc), the occasional rare material(black pudding bones) and spellcasting to create them from.

What was so borked with a crafting system that more closely followed 3.5 edition rules that it had to be replaced by a complex and unrelated add-on system instead?

While we're at it, why can we still not craft potions and scrolls?

Simple, some things don't translate to a real time system, or online game world.

XP in PnP wasn't always the easist to come by. Flipping easy here.

Skill points.
1. You have to create brand new skills.
2. You have to create brand new feats.
3. You have to give wizards access to these feats.
4. You have to give everyone a free respec due to the complete addition of new skills.

People will create a mule who's sole job is to craft, then they hire themselves out to craft. Only dedicated people would probably do this. In an MMO, if you are going to surive, you have to make "simple" things like crafting more accessible. "because it was this way in PnP" falls flat in an MMO in this case.

The "grind" for rare material is NOT NOT NOT fun. They had this in Lotro for a while, and removed it. I'm not surprised they did not have such here after that.

Crafting takes time. In PnP "DM: X months have passed. you have crafted your item." How are you going to do time in the game? Are you going to shelve your character for days to let it craft? No, that would be player breaking. Do you let it just happen in the back ground and you have to wait? Ok sure, but when do you roll? Will you see your check to see how well you did?

[Missing_Minds]

That concept is completely opposed to D&D 3.5 crafting, where the only material you need is gold pieces.

and spell components (gems, rare matierials, etc.) the cost of XP, and the cost of time.

Really, it depended on how detailed your DM wanted to make it.

[Seikojin]

I personally don't see a problem with crafting in PnP D&D 3.5e.

However, I do think, at this stage in DDO's life, that crafting like PnP would be completely impossible for them to do in any reasonable amount of time.

They would have to make a system (much like they have with u9 crafting) that instead of requiring items only, would require feats and spells to be cast. Also exp would be lost.

Those things alone is enough for most people to say no.

If they wanted to make it more like 3.5, I think they would have had to make a questing exp pool and crafting exp pool. Doing quests fills both. But doing crafting takes from the crafting pool. This way you wouldn't be hindered by actually crafting anything.

Also they would probably add crafting feats or crafting enhancements. And you would have to have scrolls or spell slots equipped and components to cast said spell as you make the item.

In all honesty, they could have made a more like Pnp version. But it was more accessible for them to make it with an existing system (GS). Takes less code, causes less bugs, and is quicker to get out there.

Consumable are later as already stated by the devs in other topics.

I just hope the crafting ingredient drops from the vale are for either reworking GS items, or for unlocking hidden shard combos for the rest of the crafting. But it looks like food ingredients. So probably they will be used for consumable crafting.

[Missing_Minds]

In addition to the above XP CAP

Crafting 3.5 style would require XP to be spent to make the items. That would mean removing the hard cap, coding so character can loose a level, and a **** ton of other, probably very difficult changes.

No. They re implement the "death penalty xp", but put a cap on it so you have to actually remove the "debt" before you can craft again. That one is actually quite easy to put in.

But they probably won't because of how the "death penalty xp" was complained about. Their should be an xp cost however in my opinion, and then remove the grind of crafting to pay up for it.

[dkyle]

I just hope the crafting ingredient drops from the shroud are for either reworking GS items, or for unlocking hidden shard combos for the rest of the crafting. But it looks like food ingredients. So probably they will be used for consumable crafting.

What's this now? First I've heard of new ingredients dropping in Shroud.

[Killdaelf]

Well for one XP cost "yay my new sword, now back to grind shavarath!"
then all the feats your character has to take "*** dude! why your firewall was hitting for 30 damage???" "sorry had to swap maximize for craft wands"
and the very long ingame time it takes to craft anything "your crafting ability is currently on CD, please try again next month "

And seriously..that craft system was bad for PnP, in a mmorpg will be definitely impractical

[donfilibuster]

Not enough grind.

this but that aside there's more to it:


First, there's nothing wrong with PnP craft *and* there's nothing wrong with DDO craft as well.
A lot of DDO's simplification over PnP can have various reasons, but in the end we are not supposed to bother with some things while adventuring in Stormreach.

In DDO we are not supposed to have to do our own crafting, be it for game balance or for our mercenary background.
Instead we can only find items that follow the prefix-suffix convention (as i won't call it rules).
This is fine by itself, to some extent, yet raises the question of wether both mechanics are compatible.

I believe they are, and makes it a big myth that altar crafting is entirely different to PnP crafting.
PnP crafting made a point of having a process involving labs and components.
For the sake of simplification PnP just listed a gold value to these things needed to craft any given item.

But Stormreach is just a growing venture on the edge of X'endric, settled by the patron houses in hopes of hauling in shards and other riches back to Khorvaire.
The patrons just want us mercenaries to keep the dangers at bay on promise of fame and fortune.

As such, there's none of the usual city services, there's no real bank for example, just the House K vaults.
Conversely they provide the spirit binders, the city regen, the teleporters, the crafting altars, etc.
There's no forges you can use, nor can teleport wherever you want, etc.
Likewise the 12 keep tight control of magic, given the many wards over the city.

There's no all-purpose magic shops, and what they sell is limited.
There's no libraries, there's no labs, there's no components being sold for plat.
You need to provide your own or use the given facilities in the form of the altars.

PnP assumes you have the feats, the material components and the required spells.
What it actually goes on the lab is not described in PnP, it is up to the DM to give it flavor.
In 3e you have the costs broken down in chart so you need not bother with it.
The 2e version described it as enchanting the item to accept magic, based on components the DM would pick for you.
The DMG encouraged the DM to make getting the mats a quest by itself, they weren't sold at shops.

In this sense crafting with components fits both 3e and 2e.
It also gives some of that 'spirit of PnP crafting' that the ten-ton-hammer reviewer speaks about despite trampling over the differences.

Crafting with altars instead of the feats is more tricky, but they may fall in the same category as transformation rituals.
Rituals are for example, one of the ways to do a character respec (savage species or phbII style).
There's given costs and a general process, but the rest is still flavor.
It assumes that either you know what you are doing, found someone that does or something can be done with the right steps.
In this sense you can say the crafting device has the power to do the same task done at the magic lab.

The way i picture it, if you had the feats and the lab you could figure out the recipes and provide the devices.
People without the feats and lab can only go by known recipes and devices, the sort of which the 12 is happy to provide.

After all, the d&d rules go into detail to tell you what works, but leaves the rest to the DM to do the flavor.


p.s. i began writing this when the thread was new :/

[Angelus_dead]

This is not true in a good DMs campaign who has experience with the crafting system. Theres no issue with making people find / make materials, with the understanding that you cant just waltz up to "darkwood vendor_0_2" in the marketplace of City_0_4 and throw gold at the issue.

Oberoni.

Yeah, Id like to buy some mithril....leads to every dwarf in the place rolling onthe floor laughing. Sure the DM guide assigns it a value, if its for sale....

The Dungeon's Master Guide also assigns the fact that it is for sale. If you change that, then Oberoni (and making the class balance worse).

[Chai]

Oberoni.


The Dungeon's Master Guide also assigns the fact that it is for sale. If you change that, then Oberoni (and making the class balance worse).

Naaa, it merely assignes a value. The DM can decide if something is for sale or not. Oberoni is not absolute, nor is it in itself always true or false, due to the fact that "broken" is a matter of opinion. (note the countless 4e threads where people claim the 3.5e imbalance is "fixed" in 4e, heh, where someone familiar with Oberoni would claim that it was altered yes, but not necessarily fixed, because to make that claim we need to assume it was broke in the first place, and we also need to assume that 4e is not broken, neither of which would be 100% accurate.)

Example: If the DM says we are playing in a low magic campaign, we are playing in a low magic campaign. This is not fixing or breaking anything, it just is what it is.

Another example: A very long protracted campaign where the PCs do not encounter "friendly civilization" in its current form where the DM guide qualifies that certain minimum level items / materials can be for sale in cities with certain populations or higher. This also would not be a fix or assume anything is broken. It just is what it is.

In either case, I think we need to be careful what we wish for when asking for things to be more like 3.5, because when they were alot more like 3.5 in the past, the forumites sure did complain up a storm that this game was too hard, not soloable, etc. Now its so easy that anyone can solo or run a hireling through 95% of the content. LOL.

[Hutoth]

why ... not craft potions and scrolls?

Seconded.

My two cents/ what I'd like to have seen:
#1 prioritise crafting of consumables (of superior type to those readily avavilable from vendors, e.g. cure crit pots)
#2 any crafting should rely heavily on the collectibles already in the game. There are hundreds of ingreds. Why not use more of them?
#3 expand on the shroud crafting system for high level stuff. make ingreds drop in a variety of places (variety of places with no single obvious farm).
#4 expand on the alchemical rituals for lower-level crafting.
#5 don't make it reliant on playing a whole different game (e.g the crafting game). crafting levels? Jeez, just give us new quests, classes and races. and less gear-power-creep.
#6 have improvements to weapons/items incremental with increasing cost-benefit, to allow instant crafting and long-term crafting.