Talk:Functional Craft Trap (3.5e Variant Rule)

Strongly Retarded
In the worst of ways. Suddenly everyone can make money x100 faster since they're making gold pieces per day rather than copper. The ramifications of how it upsets the economy and whips it over a barrel are beyond me. But it's very, very retarded. If you want traps to be made faster, simply say that all traps have their current cost divided by 100. If that's not enough, 200. But changing the way that the base economy works is just stupid without changing the whole system. Thus, this is retarded in the worst of ways. --Ghostwheel 13:32, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Since I am not aware of all traps made, WotC and otherwise, I was unable to determine how many of them were actually worth their price in gold. So rather than muck with their cost and potentially let people get really cheap and very fatal traps at low level, I reduced the time.  A disclaimer added for DM's too silly to think that NPC people might act like, well, real people. -- Eiji-kun 13:56, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Might I suggest a possible compromise that would work for Traps. Rather than dramatically increasing the GP per day of the manufacturer, reduce the labour requirement. As you pointed out, most traps really don't need that much setup, and those that do range from the relatively inexpensive to the astronomical...  Now I did say labour here, not actual trap cost.. So a trap base price for example would be say, 1,000 Gold, so the player has to cough up 333 gold (and 3 silvers and 3 coppers but who's counting) for the materials, but the formula for completing the work is slightly different in that the cost of the trap be divided by 100 to find the total target number the crafter has to accumulate through their daily craft trapmaking check.  So this 1,000 GP trap, requires the crafter to accumulate 1,000 cp worth of progress, using the normal craft rules, so even a trapmaking noob, can bang off this trap in just over 4 days worth of work.  Having said that, I think that the rule that if all elements of a simple trap are on site at the time construction commences then a simple DC 15 trapmaking check allows for construction in 1d4 rounds makes a great deal of sense and is a great addition.  With this rule the high cost of traps is maintained, but the labour to build them is dramatically reduced making them viable.  As Ghostwheel mentioned, there isn't much of a market for prebuilt traps, they are generally custom order work, thus players aren't in a position to make cash hand over fist. Tunganation 18:36, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Isn't that the same thing? All I did is say you craft in gold instead of copper, so x100 as normal, while you suggest that the crafting time is done as if the price was /100 normal, which actually ends up the same number.  In both situations, the actual price of the trap hasn't changed, just the crafting time.  Though you may have been confused anyway since I'm the one claiming there isn't a market for prebuilt traps.  Ghost is suggesting some DM's treat it like a video game, and if you happen to have items, no matter how unsellable they would be normally, you'll find a buyer who will buy it for its value.  Needless to say, I find that silly.


 * Of course, some traps might just ignore crafting times depending on what it is. I'd never make it cost days of time to smear expensive poison on a door handle. -- Eiji-kun 22:47, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Essentially what I am suggesting, is an exception, specifically for traps, that only effects time spent on construction, not any other cost. While being more closely related to the canon craft rules.  As in, it would be seen as less of a divergence... Not seem like a special rule that makes traps way more lucrative than normal crafts and more like a small exception to make traps usable and deployable in a more realistic fashion.  Since the cost (and thus time to build) of a trap is radically effected by the damage it can do, and how repeatably it can deal that damage.  Compared to say a melee weapon, where it's cost bears no real relationship to it's damage capability. (eg. Rapiers being more expensive than scimitars, at half the weight and otherwise identical stats)


 * Your trap variant dovetails nicely with your craft variant, in fact your craft variant if used, makes the trap variant redundant. But otherwise this trap variant differs considerably from any other form of craft, in that you are even changing the usual craft formula to a square your roll formula.  I just personally think that dividing the build time price calculation by a factor of 100, but leaving the craft rules in all other ways alone, will seem like a more palatable change than using an otherwise unique formula. Thus the same result but in a less novel way. Tunganation 01:28, 30 October 2011 (UTC)