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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG Starfinder RPG (2nd Edition)

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Treasure Vault / Secrets of Crafting / Complex Crafting

Critical Crafting

Source Treasure Vault pg. 161
The critical success and failure effects of the Craft activity are safe, reasonable effects that are appropriate any time a character wants to Craft: on a critical success, they make more money per day Crafting, and on a critical failure, they ruin 10% of the item's raw materials. However, these monetary rewards and penalties are not the only potential outcomes of crafting criticals. With this variant, you can consider rarely handing out custom critical success rewards and critical failure penalties appropriate for the situation. However, you won't want to do this too often, especially since a high-level crafter who makes a lot of low-level items will critically succeed with some frequency. If crafting is a big part of your game, consider limiting the special effects to natural 20s and 1s, and even then, only when a special item is being created.

Most often, the special critical success or failure effect will be something distinctive and appropriate to the exact situation in your campaign. For instance, if a PC Crafts a commissioned sword for a prideful ruler obsessed with their heroic ancestor, perhaps on a critical success the item manages to call forth the spirit of the ancestor, who nods gravely while acknowledging the sword. On a critical failure, the PC finishes the sword but accidentally includes a part of the heraldry of the traitorous noble family that murdered the ancestor, enraging the monarch. As you can see from this example, the critical failure effects sometimes tend towards possibilities where the item is still created despite failure, but its completion creates a serious problem that must be resolved. When using this system, consider rolling the checks to Craft the item in secret to prevent a player's knowledge from influencing their decisions.

While it's usually best to invent your own special critical success or failure effects, here are a few examples of possibilities that can be used in a variety of circumstances.

Critical Success

Source Treasure Vault pg. 161
  • The crafter's dazzling success and passion imbue a fragment of their self into the item, causing it to become an intelligent item.
  • If the crafter was creating a max-level item, they can pay more to create an item above their level that they normally couldn't Craft. For instance, while trying to Craft a wand of fireball (a 7th-level item), a 7th-level wizard might be able to create a wand of 4th-level fireball (a 9th-level item).
  • The item has a minor beneficial special ability beyond other items of its type. This can be whatever you choose, but it's usually another minor activation with a daily frequency. The benefit should be better than a quirk (as quirks are meant to be neutral).
  • The item is so well made that it's nearly impossible to damage, doubling its Hardness or greatly increasing its total Hit Points. The item might also be resistant to grime, tarnishing, or other cosmetic changes.
  • The item is so beautifully made that it grants a bonus to Diplomacy and Intimidation checks when displayed or used as part of the check. Alternatively, it could be worth more than usual just as an art object.
  • The item is so finely crafted that it distracts the attention of opponents when used in battle, granting a bonus to checks made to Feint or Create a Diversion when used as part of the check.
  • The crafter is in tune with the object, its powers, and its potentials, turning it into a relic. In addition to its base abilities, the crafter can designate other abilities that the object develops over time.

Critical Failure

Source Treasure Vault pg. 162
  • The crafter Crafts the item, but the item is secretly cursed.
  • The crafter Crafts the item, but the item permanently drains a portion of the crafter's life force and resists attempts at destroying it, permanently reducing the crafter's Hit Points until they complete a quest to destroy the item once and for all.
  • The creation process explodes or otherwise exposes the crafter to significant harm with a long-term effect that demands interesting interplay to remove. There's little point in dealing Hit Point damage during downtime, as it's usually trivial to restore it before adventuring.
  • The Crafting process is so flawed that it draws a malevolent intelligence that chooses to complete the item and inhabit it. The intelligence of the item is opposed to the crafter and attempts to secretly thwart them at every turn.
  • The item appears perfectly normal and fully functional, but when someone attempts to use it for its intended purpose, it fails. For example, armor might fall off, weapons might break, or a wand might simply emit an acrid, burning odor instead of the desired spell.
  • The crafter is cursed by their own failure and takes a penalty to all future Crafting checks until they get a critical success or a casting of remove curse to end the effect.
  • The Crafting goes so poorly that it pollutes the nearby environment. This might mean that the workshop needs extensive cleaning to be usable again, or it could be much worse, polluting the local water supply and making those who live nearby seriously ill.

Converting Magic Items

Source Treasure Vault pg. 162
Many magic items found by higher-level characters never see play, destined instead to live at the bottom of a backpack, forgotten and unused. Others are quickly sold to fund the purchase of a more appropriate item. Others still are so irredeemably evil that selling them is an unconscionable act, and the item ends up being destroyed. All of these situations can make it difficult for the GM to properly calculate and balance the party's wealth, which can lead to imbalanced encounters and other problems at the table.

This variant simplifies the problem by giving the players another option for items that they don't intend to use, allowing them to break an item down and recycle its parts for the creation of another item.

When breaking down an item, you have a choice on how to proceed. You can immediately use the components to create an item with a similar theme to the one that you deconstructed, or you can save the components for use in any one item created later. If you create a similar item, such as deconstructing a magic weapon in order to create a different but similar type of magic weapon, you can harvest more of the components and residual magic for the new item, giving you more in return than you might otherwise get by simply harvesting the best parts of an item.

The GM determines whether the new item is similar enough to warrant this benefit, but the new item should be similar in ability or in general theme. For example, deconstructing a crown of intellect to create a headwrap of wisdom certainly qualifies, as does deconstructing a moderate maestro’s instrument to create a horn of exorcism. Items of the same general type might qualify, but only if their abilities are thematically similar.

Generic components can be saved for later, but they can't be combined with other components from another deconstructed item. If excess value remains after making a new item, that value is lost, as the remaining parts are just the leftover bits, with the best parts being used for the new creation. The deconstructed item has the same Bulk as the original. GMs might want to put an expiration date on deconstructed items to prevent too many of them from piling up in character inventories, but unless players are breaking down items all the time, it shouldn't be a problem.

Deconstruct

Rare Downtime 
Source Treasure Vault pg. 162
You deconstruct an item to provide the starting point to convert it into a new item. You need the Alchemical Crafting skill feat to deconstruct alchemical items and the Magical Crafting skill feat to deconstruct magic items.

To Deconstruct an item, you must meet the following requirements.
  • The item is your level or lower. An item that doesn't list a level is level 0. If the item is 9th level or higher, you must be a master in Crafting, and if it's 16th or higher, you must be legendary.
  • The item isn't a cursed item, artifact, or other item that is similarly hard to destroy. The item isn't a consumable item.
  • The item has a listed Price.
  • You must have an appropriate set of tools and, in many cases, a workshop. For example, you need access to a smithy to deconstruct a metal shield or an alchemist's lab to de-concoct alchemical items.
At the start of this process, you must decide if you're using the deconstructed item to build a new, similar item, of if you are simply breaking it down for raw ingredients that can be used at a later date for any item. In either case, this activity takes 1 day to perform, but if you're using the item to create a new, similar item, that day can be counted as one of the crafting days for the new item.

At the end of the activity, you must attempt a Crafting check. The GM sets the DC of this check based on the level of the item you are attempting to deconstruct, its rarity, and other circumstances.

Critical Success If you are deconstructing the item to make a new, similar item, you can apply 80% of the cost of the deconstructed item to the new item. If you are deconstructing the item for raw materials alone, you can apply 55% of the cost of the deconstructed item to a single new item. In either case, if this is in excess of the new item's cost, the remainder is lost.
Success As critical success, but you can only apply 75% of the deconstructed item's cost to the new similar item and 50% of the deconstructed item's cost to any single item.
Failure You fail to deconstruct the item, wasting your time. You can try again.
Critical Failure You fail to deconstruct the item and damage it in the process. You must either repair it before attempting again, or you can attempt to deconstruct it again but lose 5% of the value of the item.