GnomeWorks
Adventurer
Old-school D&D, to my understanding, has a significant "resource management" aspect to it - resting was more difficult, wandering monsters more common, and "resources" more rare.
In this context, I generally understand resources to mean spells, as that's typically what it means in a d20 context, the system I'm primarily familiar with.
I'm not talking about spells, though.
Item creation has generally been relegated to backgrounds or fluff skills, often with no real use past the first couple levels, if they're even useful then. So what if your 15th-level fighter is a blacksmith - unless he can make magical weapons and armor with that skill, it's worse than useless, as those skill points could have been spent in something useful like tumble or whatever.
I find this unfortunate.
I mean, what's one of the advantages of adventuring? Loads of money. Adventurers don't need day jobs, because adventuring is, effectively, a job. You find lots of money and loot, and you trade in that money for loot you want. Crafting requires spending money to buy "raw materials," and then the end product is something you probably won't use anyway because it sucks, and the return on investment is terrible comparable to adventuring.
But what if crafting were the means of money generation for an adventuring party? Or just resource management in general?
Instead of finding a massive hoard of wealth in a dungeon, say adventurers only find a smattering of coin, and a bunch of stuff that could be turned into useful things. Like raw materials, or poorly-made equipment that could be reprocessed into more useful stuff. Instead of dragons sitting on piles of wealth, maybe they roost in areas with rare mineral veins, which the adventurers can exploit after the dragon is dealt with.
In a lower-power game, with significantly less magic, crafting can become useful, too. If the fighter's weapon gets sundered or his armor gets damaged, having a person in the party who can repair it on the road - or in the dungeon, even - would be infinitely preferable to having to trek back to town, or use whatever random loot you find. Instead of crafting being a fluff skill that is treated as a dumping ground for skill points, it becomes a valued ability, something you want in the party as valued as exploration or interaction skills (which will hopefully be more valued in 5e than in the past).
Sure, this kind of moves away from the Conan-esque "kill things and take their stuff" sort of style. But honestly I find the idea of monsters sitting on huge piles of cash kind of weird anyway - I mean, once in awhile it could make sense, but all the time? Doing away with cash-oriented adventuring also would help with the weird economics you run into in d20 (which was the fuel for my thinking about this sort of thing to begin with), and eliminates the crazy price inflation that happened with high-end items.
Would anybody else like to see crafting be a more integral part of the game?
In this context, I generally understand resources to mean spells, as that's typically what it means in a d20 context, the system I'm primarily familiar with.
I'm not talking about spells, though.
Item creation has generally been relegated to backgrounds or fluff skills, often with no real use past the first couple levels, if they're even useful then. So what if your 15th-level fighter is a blacksmith - unless he can make magical weapons and armor with that skill, it's worse than useless, as those skill points could have been spent in something useful like tumble or whatever.
I find this unfortunate.
I mean, what's one of the advantages of adventuring? Loads of money. Adventurers don't need day jobs, because adventuring is, effectively, a job. You find lots of money and loot, and you trade in that money for loot you want. Crafting requires spending money to buy "raw materials," and then the end product is something you probably won't use anyway because it sucks, and the return on investment is terrible comparable to adventuring.
But what if crafting were the means of money generation for an adventuring party? Or just resource management in general?
Instead of finding a massive hoard of wealth in a dungeon, say adventurers only find a smattering of coin, and a bunch of stuff that could be turned into useful things. Like raw materials, or poorly-made equipment that could be reprocessed into more useful stuff. Instead of dragons sitting on piles of wealth, maybe they roost in areas with rare mineral veins, which the adventurers can exploit after the dragon is dealt with.
In a lower-power game, with significantly less magic, crafting can become useful, too. If the fighter's weapon gets sundered or his armor gets damaged, having a person in the party who can repair it on the road - or in the dungeon, even - would be infinitely preferable to having to trek back to town, or use whatever random loot you find. Instead of crafting being a fluff skill that is treated as a dumping ground for skill points, it becomes a valued ability, something you want in the party as valued as exploration or interaction skills (which will hopefully be more valued in 5e than in the past).
Sure, this kind of moves away from the Conan-esque "kill things and take their stuff" sort of style. But honestly I find the idea of monsters sitting on huge piles of cash kind of weird anyway - I mean, once in awhile it could make sense, but all the time? Doing away with cash-oriented adventuring also would help with the weird economics you run into in d20 (which was the fuel for my thinking about this sort of thing to begin with), and eliminates the crazy price inflation that happened with high-end items.
Would anybody else like to see crafting be a more integral part of the game?