I agree with Lauren Morten, who wrote that someway the worst a part of crafting video games is the crafting. I’ve by no means interacted with a crafting bench and thought it was a worthwhile use of my time, and punching timber is boring. I noped proper out of Valheim on the level the place it anticipated me to care about making roof tiles that had been the precise form to assemble over my drafty hovel.
And but, trying over the current rationalization of the crafting guidelines within the 2024 Gamers Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons 5E, I believe they may be good truly? Definitely an enchancment over the earlier downtime guidelines for making issues in D&D, which required such a large funding of time I may see the sunshine in my gamers’ eyes die as I used to be explaining them.
Now anybody with a herbalism package and the related proficiency will be capable to craft, for example, their very own potions of therapeutic. It’s going to require “a full day’s work and 25 GP of uncooked magic goo” for each, however that is a way more attention-grabbing use of the instrument proficiency than simply having the ability to establish poison and discover crops. (They’ll additionally make antitoxins, healer’s kits, and candles now.)
As a sidebar, ingesting these potions now formally prices a bonus motion slightly than a full motion—a home rule so widespread it was utilized in Baldur’s Gate 3, and which it is good to see the core guidelines undertake.
In the meantime, adept customers of painter’s provides will be capable to make their very own holy image or druidic focus. Crafting spell scrolls is cheaper and crafting armor might be twice as quick, and the Crafter feat—one of many new origin feats that may be taken as early as stage one—can be utilized to make sure helpful gadgets in a single day, like grappling hooks, nets, torches, and cord, must you not have already got 50 ft of it that you just forgot about written down in your character sheet already.
Instrument proficiencies have been made extra helpful on the whole, with solutions and problem lessons for actions like utilizing mason’s instruments to sneakily look right into a secret room earlier than you crack the door open or utilizing alchemist provides to begin a hearth. These are the type of issues a beneficiant Dungeon Grasp would allow you to do already, however it’s good to have them codified with a DC so you do not have to adjudicate one on the fly. Being proficient within the sleight of hand ability additionally provides benefit on the thieves’ instruments examine you make to select a lock within the 2024 guidelines.
I’ll ignore crafting methods once they’re bolted onto RPGs like Fallout 4, however I’ll undoubtedly be making use of those guidelines in my subsequent sport of D&D. I completely know there might be a participant who desires to seek out that “uncooked magic goo” with out having to pay 25 of their hard-earned gold items for it, and by god I will make them undergo gross ooze hell to seek out it—after which remind them the place it got here from each time they want 2d4+2 hit factors in a rush from then on.
