THIS is how I run CRAFTING in D&D

welcome back to Tales Arcane one thing that 5 D and D doesn't really have is a robust crafting system and so I made one for my own games and that's what this video is about you can use this system for forging weapons and armor brewing potions cooking meals and by the end of this video you're going to know how to use this system and how to adapt it to the specific kinds of items your players want to craft by the way if you want to support what I do here on the channel you can back me over on patreon when you join the taesc patreon you get access to more than 1,000 pages of my original Homebrew content that includes encounters campaign settings Adventures battle maps and a lot more two disclaimers up top firstly this system is not designed to dovetail with any of the pre-existing crafting mechanics that are built into vanilla D and D for example if your players want to run a crafting system for meals they want to become Master Chefs where you wouldn't use the chef feet you would just remove that from the game likewise if your players want to get into potion brewing you would ignore any current rules for crafting potions in 5V secondly this system is intended for DMS and players who are happy to add a bit more complexity and depth to their rules uh if you're looking for something that's very rules light and roleplay focused it might not be so much for you however I think once you've understood how to run the system and once you've done the necessary prep work it does feel very easy and organic to implement at your own table especially from the player side now let's go through the system step by [Applause] step start by making a list of all the items your players might be able to craft for example if you're going to be implementing a potion crafting system make a list of all the standard potions you might find in 5 D and starting with your common potions of healing all the way up to Legendary potions of storm giant strength now assign a DC to all of the craftable items this is the DC that must be beaten for the players to produce the item they're trying to craft for common items you might go for a d d c of 10 or even lower while more powerful items that are harder to produce should be up at a DC 15 to maybe even DC 20 you don't have to go too far above a dc20 because as long as the key component needed to produce more powerful items is quite hard to come by you don't need to worry about players spamming and creating loads of them speaking of which let's cover key components every item on the crafting list needs a key component the key component is the essential component needed to produce the item so for example a potion might need a rare ingredient harvested from a dangerous Monster uh a particularly interesting meal might require herbs that grow in uh hard to reach locations Metal work might be dependent upon uh rare metals or even rare or expensive tools for example the key component of a potion of Greater healing might be the blood of a monster with regenerative properties like a troll so now the players are going out hunting trolls and being rewarded for that by getting ingredients key components for their potions and this also uh prevents the players from just spamming uh multiple potions of Greater healing once they've got uh the ability to beat those higher DCS to make any item on that list the players are going to need that key component and they're also going to need a relevant kit or tool set to go along with it which we'll call crafting kits a player's crafting kit is the kit or tools relevant to the items that they're crafting so for example uh players who are crafting potions might use an alchemist or herbalist kit while players who are going in for blacksmithing would need Smith's tools a crafting kit has five charges and charges represent essential basic ingredients and tools needed to go through the crafting process every time you craft an item or attempt to craft an item you use one charge and when you're out of charges you need to replenish it at a relevant store even if it's just a general store in the next Village you pass through I usually charge 10 gold pieces per charge so to fully refill your kit will be 50 gold pieces at first 50 gold pieces might feel like a lot especially considering some of those charges will be used on failed crafting attempts but remember that the players can create items with that that they'll be able to sell for a profit so in the long term 50 is pretty fair now let's talk about the actual crafting process how do they go about making the items crafting can take place at any time but it will usually usually occur as part of a long rest or a period of downtime rules as written long rest can include 2 hours of light activity before the player goes to sleep so that could cover things like potion making or cooking for metal work or other crafting that involves heavy physical labor that obviously wouldn't work as well for a long rest but then again you're probably not going to be forging swords on a campfire so that would occur when the players have access to a forge maybe across the course of a day of downtime either way at some point the players are going to sit down and try to craft something and for the purposes of this example we'll imagine that you're running a potion crafting system and a player wants to make a potion of Greater healing as we talked about earlier the key component is a vial of trolls blood and they harvested that during a recent combat encounter so they're all set they've got their Alchemist kit with five charges they're ready to go during the first two hours of the long rest the player sits down by the Light of the crackling campfire and they attempt to make a portion of Greater healing they have the crafting kit which in this case is The Alchemist kit and they have the key component in in this case a vial of trolls blood they roll a D20 The Hope here is that they beat the DC that you've assigned to potion of Greater healing on your crafting list in this case let's say it's uh DC3 they roll at D20 and if they're proficient with the crafting quit which hopefully they will be then they add their proficiency bonus to the role if they succeed they produce the potion of Greater healing they expend one charge from the crafting kit and they consume the key component in this case the trolls blood if they fail they still use up the charge from the crafting kit either way of course on a failure the player does not produce the thing they're trying to craft but they do get to recover the key component when they recover a key component from a failed attempt the key component is diminished and it can only be used once more um regardless of the outcome of the second attempt which might be tried during the next long rest uh it is going to be consumed at that point now if the player did succeed the key component is consumed one charge is used up and they have their crafted item and they also have a crafting Point crafting points are basically crafting XP if you get enough of them you level up your crafting skill to level up for the first time you need six crafting points and after you level up the number of points resets to zero you then need eight crafting points to level up for a second time then 10 then 12 and so on every time you level up you can add an extra plus one to your crafting checks going forward so for example if you've leveled up once you can now roll your D20 then add proficiency then add plus one you level up a second time it's plus two and so on if that fuse is like it's moving too slowly then add plus two each time so after the first level up you're getting plus two to checks after the second level up you're getting a plus four and so on as an alternative to using static bonuses for each level you can have a crafting die that gets stepped up every time you level up so the first time you level up you get a D4 that you can add to your checks the second time at D6 up to level five where you get a D12 while both options work I prefer the the crafting dice option because then players have this very visual reminder of the fact that they're advancing in their crafting that they've gone up from one die to the next and also maintains a good sense of randomization no matter how good you get you might still roll a one on your D12 even if you are level five crafter now I can already hear someone in the comments saying stop this is getting too complex there are too many moving Parts here maybe we should just keep it simple no every time you level up your crafting skill you get a specialization and a specialization is a kind of bonus or advantage that helps you out in a particular area of the the crafting skill that you're developing here are some examples of specializations a chef always gets a D6 added to their crafting check when they're working with seafood a potion crafter gets very good at the business side of things and starts refilling their uh crafting kit for 2d6 Less gold than normal uh leather worker is able to to recover the key component twice from a fail check rather than just once there's two ways you can do specializations you can either create one big list and have the players choose from that every time they level up giving them a wide range of options from the get-go or you can create a kind of branching tree where every time they level up they get two options to choose from they pick one specialization and the other gets taken out of circulation forever where this option the specializations are probably going to get more powerful and interesting each time whereas with a list that gives you do more General Freedom you're probably going to want to keep all the specializations roughly the same level of Effectiveness personally I like the option where you choose between two specializations each time losing access to one and getting more powerful specializations as you level up to the higher levels but again it's really up to you and your players what you like best at this point we've covered basically all the core rules for this crafting system is it a bit crunchy and rules heavy yes but you'll find that once you've done all the prep you've made that list you've the DCS you've thought out some key components for the the craftable items when you bring that to the table it doesn't really feel that crunchy because you've done all the work in advance and for the player it's all about hunting trolls and occasionally rolling a dice to craft something occasionally picking a specialization for the most part it doesn't feel like a very rules intensive system during the implementation only during the prep process now as I said those are the core rules of the system but I'm going to finish by covering a bunch of optional extra rules that you may want to incorporate if you want to tweak the system in different directions just different ways that I run over the years that I found interesting but which I wouldn't include as the the main parts of the system before we cover those extra optional rules let's talk about today's sponsor this video is sponsored by describe I use describe in all of my home games and that is because of describes Opus feature Opus is a huge collection of ttrpg Music Ambiance and sound effects that you can search and save to custom soundboards then during your game in person or online you can layer Loop and level the different audio to build really dramatic and scene specific soundtracks descripe also comes with more than 10,000 pieces of pre-written flavor text that you can use to add detail and immersion to your games just search a few keywords find a piece of text you like and you're good to go they've got vivid descriptions of NPCs locations spells monsters all produced by a team of talented writers and you can even save some of the text to the opice interface so you can have all your custom soundboards and your flavor text in one place if you want to try out any of these features for yourself you can get an extended free trial by going to the link below this video and using the coupon code Tails Arcane that's Taos Arcane all caps all one word thank you to describe for sponsoring this video One optional rule is to include recipes schematics and other documents that can be found or bought in the world that are needed before the players proceed to the crafting process for example before making a potion a player might need to spend a long rest studying a particular recipe for that potion or before crafting a weapon the player might need to get a hold of a schematic for that particular item alternatively instead of having these items being essential for the crafting process they could just be there as fun bonus items for example reading the recipe for a meal might give a player plus two when they make their crafting check or might generate an extra dice that they can roll for that particular check in a similar vein you can also have NPCs in the world who are masters of The Craft so for example a player might spend a bit of downtime hanging out with a master blacksmith or a powerful Alchemist and as a result of that they get a bonus to a particular skill or perhaps they get to a get some additional crafting points speeding up the process by which they level up and this is cool because now players are going to actively seek out people when they hear that the uh you know a famous chef has been abducted by goblins that player who uh is really interested in the the meal crafting system might now want to seek them out just so he can learn something from the chef you may also want to make this whole process more collaborative with the players instead of making that big preset list of craftable items with DCS and key components you can leave it up to the players to approach you and tell you what it is they want to craft they might come to you and say that they want to make a potion that allows them to communicate telepathically with dolphins and there might not be an official portion on any list that is meant for that but you can just talk to them about it and say well what do you think that key component might be and then you can come up with a DC that feels appropriate to the power level that they're going for and then you're ready to roll just make sure that after those discussions happen you note down the name of that new portion that's been invented and what the DC might be uh what the key component is and then you've essentially you develop the list as you go along rather than at the start that should be enough to get along with for now I know this system will not be for everyone but I hope you either get a chance to use this system or have inspiration from this video to go away and create your own or adapt this one for your own purposes cuz a crafting system of any kind is just tremendous fun and it really works for some players to get them invested and excited about exploring and finding key components hunting monsters to get rare ingredients and all the rest of it a massive thank you to describe for sponsoring this video if you want that extended free trial just hit the link below this video use that coupon code Tsar all one word all caps and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Tales Arcane

Views: 14,070

Keywords: dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, 5e, fifth edition, 5th edition, crafting, dungeon master, ttrpg

Id: pbZTJrXCOh8

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024