Understanding Crafting Through Examples

If you already understand the basics of crafting or found the general explanations distracting in the Crafting Guide, and just wanted to look at some concrete examples, this guide is for you. They’re going to be based on the examples as the Craft Guide, but rather than being organized conceptually, this is organized as you’d actually experience it in the world, and I’m going to include every option feature I can think of to show everything in use together.

For our Example, we’re going to be a Level 5 character with a Wisdom Modifier of +2, an Intelligence Modifier of +2, and Level 2 in the Apothecary craft. We want to craft a Health Potion. We have a Level 1 Workshop, Blueprints, and, when relevant, an instructor. We’re going to run through 4 scenarios. 

• Scenario 1. You chose the Health Potion formula as a part of selecting or levelling up your Apothecary Craft
• Scenario 2: You find a guidebook and a professor willing to teach you the formula
• Scenario 3: You know Health Potions exist, but you have no idea how to create one
• Scenario 4: You actually want to create a Stealth Potion to make you sneakier (these do not exist at this time)

Each scenario will lead to the creation of the potion, which we’ll put at the end.

Scenario 1: We Have the Formula Already

Congratulations! Because our character has learned the formula already, we can jump straight to creating the Potion below.

Scenario 2: We found a guide to Health Potions, and an Apothecary is willing to teach us the formula.

If we have the resources to learn a formula, we go through the Learning a Formula process.

We must succeed on a DC 13 Apothecary check (DC to learn is the DC of the formula – INT, so 15-2). We have a +5 Learning Modifier, calculated below.

The Learning Modifier = Crafting Level (2) + ½ Proficiency Bonus (1) + Attribute Modifier (2), so ours is +5

Assuming we roll an 8 or higher, we succeed are check and calculate the time and cost.

The time to learn a formula uses the GP/Day system. We need a total GP value of 10% of the Market Value worth of work done to learn the formula, and 1% of the Market Value worth of materials. Our Market value is 50GP, so we need to do 5GP worth of work and pay 5 Silver worth of materials.

To calculate time to learn, we need our own GP/Day.

Learning GP/Day = 2[5 + (Craft Level -1)] + INT 

Additional bonuses include +2GP/Day for every crafting level above yours if you have an instructor, and +2GP/Day for learning per workshop level.

So for us, that’s 2(5+1)+2, or 14GP/Day, then we add +2 for the workshop and +2 for the instructor, bringing the total to 18.

Since we assume 8 hours is a full day, and we need to do 5GP worth of work, we can estimate a little more than 2 hours of work (we’re doing it in 5/18 of an 8-hour day, which works out to just 2.2 hours).

Now that we’ve learned the formula, we can jump to creating the Potion below.

Scenario 3: We know Health potions exist, but we don’t know how to actually make them.

To reproduce the item without a formula, we increase the time to create it by half, and the preparation check takes a -2 penalty for each craft level below what is required.

Because we have the necessary level, all we need to do is complete the Creating the Potion step and increase the time by 50%

Scenario 4: Health Potion? No, I want to make a Stealth Potion

Creating a Formula is almost entirely homebrew, aside from 25GP/Formula Level per day of work, and that each day has a check with a DC set by the GM. So here’s one way this could go.

You tell your GM you want to create a Stealth potion. You spend some time working with your GM and determine you’d like it to grant advantage on Stealth checks for one minute. Because this isn’t too strong, you compromise that you can follow the provided formula for a Health Potion, but alter its effects.

It costs 25GP/Formula Level per day, which will be 25GP/Day because it is a Level 1 formula. The GM decides it would take 5 days of work. Your GM tells you that inventing a new potion is not as easy, so they ask for a DC 17 Apothecary check and say, which you roll with your preparation modifier. 

Preparation Modifier = your craft level (2) + ½ proficiency bonus (1) + attribute modifier (2)

This means we’re doing 125GP worth of work (5 Days multiplied by 25GP/Day). Our actual rate of work is called our “GP/Day” which is calculated in the Creating the Potion section below, which we calculated to be ___________. This means it takes ____ days of successful work to do that 125GP worth of work, making that DC 17 check every day. If we fail, it counts as a negative day toward our 125GP.

Creating the Potion:

Creating the Potion requires us to execute the formula and put in a certain amount of work and resources.

We need to do 25GP (half the market value of the final product) worth of work. Our rate of work is called our GP/Day

GP/Day = 5 (base value) + 1 (Our Level 2 Craft, bonus is +1 per level above 1), +1 (Instructor Bonus), +1 (Blueprint Bonus), +1 (Workshop). This gives our final GP/Day value at 9!

So it’ll take us about 3 days to complete the health potion (25GP needed divided by 9 per day is ~3).

Note* On the go, you probably don’t have an instruction, blueprints, or a workshop, so typical  GP/Day = 5 + 1 per Crafting Level Above

Finally, we need to beat the DC 15 Apothecary check, and we have a +5 Preparation Modifier to do so.

Preparation Modifier = your craft level (2) + ½ proficiency bonus (1) + attribute modifier (2)

Assuming we succeed, we have created our potion!