Player Economy: I want to make money like brewers!
-
Unlike wand crafting, Potion Brewing is all about grinding potions for sale. It is a Job, pure and simple, and the only one actually available to PCs that generates gold consistently without outside input or interactions with DMs. It is a unique class ability for wizards, sorcerers, and occasionally Clerics, and rarely druids.
Why should these classes have an added advantage of having near unlimited income? Every other crafter needs to expand time, energy and experience Danger in varying amounts to output profit. Crafting in CoA in general is broken and unequal, an amalgamation of multiple systems that do not benefit from the fact that the power levels in CoA vary every few years.
Give all classes an ability to mindlessly grind gold, similar to potions please.
For example, make Basic Whetstones which give +2 damage. Everyone has to have it, even at level 1 or 10. 8gp to make, Sales price of 10-15. can be churned out, and we can actually use the tons of iron that we find and immedaitely throw away. Made by smiths.
Basic Cantrip Attack Rod, powered by Helmlands Sand. 25 charges of Ray of Frost, 50gp to make, selling price of 75gp. Usable by anyone. Allows non-wizards the ability to cast attack cantrips as wizards if they are willing to pay a small fee. Craftable by trapmakers.
Woodworkers already have arrows, which basically fulfill the functions of steady income. I'll let a woodworker chime in here.
Also, there are items like Grease for tight spaces, Climbing Spikes, Vaulting Rods, Rope and tackle. You can have gradients of +2, +5 and +10 to Jump, Climb, Swim, etc, which are made by PC crafters, that can provide stable income and that people will actually find worthwhile to buy. +2 will sell for 25 GP, +5 for 150, +10 for 250 for example, but would make EXPLORATION so much EASIER.
-
I like the idea of making adventuring gear craftable. More often than not, many explorations are cut short or made annoying by someone who just can't make the check and these could benefit everyone. I think Blacksmithing, especially, needs a constant income source to balance out the fact that you will never make back the investment you put in. The combined time, money and effort to make things people will actually buy, means you spent all of that effort, time and money on a ton of crap people will never buy, especially when quest loot is usually better. If there was something that allowed crafters to make a small amount of money from the get go, it could help fund the investment to get to the coveted silver/steel items.
-
There's a bit of a false positive here, where the logic is Potion Brewers are rich, therefore Brewing makes you rich. Its not quite that simple, the real reason why potion brewers are rich is because they're wizards. Wizards very often sit on the back end, buff the frontline and doesn't spend the comparable 6-800 gold in consumables a fighter needs to on a high level spell, but from a combination of their spells being vital to the success and a whole lot of OOC stink about unfairness they get even shares. So in effect, wizards get paid several hundred gold more per quest than any other class, except possibly Rogues (who, conicindentally also tend to roll in cash)
That being said, potions could quite possibly benefit from a craft cost increase. They are at present sold around half the price of NPC stores and that's abit of a stretch. Upping the craft cost so that the price point ends around 75-80% of NPC costs would probably be a good idea.
-
There's a bit of a false positive here, where the logic is Potion Brewers are rich, therefore Brewing makes you rich. Its not quite that simple, the real reason why potion brewers are rich is because they're wizards. Wizards very often sit on the back end, buff the frontline and doesn't spend the comparable 6-800 gold in consumables a fighter needs to on a high level spell, but from a combination of their spells being vital to the success and a whole lot of OOC stink about unfairness they get even shares. So in effect, wizards get paid several hundred gold more per quest than any other class, except possibly Rogues (who, conicindentally also tend to roll in cash)
That being said, potions could quite possibly benefit from a craft cost increase. They are at present sold around half the price of NPC stores and that's abit of a stretch. Upping the craft cost so that the price point ends around 75-80% of NPC costs would probably be a good idea.
That's really more of an IC thing. Make it known up-front that people are going to get paid based of usefulness. If the rogue disables a crap ton of traps and unlocks a lot of stuff and does a bunch of sneak attack damage, then pay them equal, but if they just kinda hide out and don't do much, don't pay them much. Same thing with spellcasters, pay them based on their usefulness. It starts with people doing it IC and setting the standard, if they want to get upset OOC, tell them to keep it IC.
Now… with back on track, I confirm that potion brewers are "rich" because they don't need to spend money as much in combat, however, the point still stands that potion brewers have a limitless, low cost, source of profit, while some of the other crafters do not. They are gold sinks with little to no profit to make up for it.
-
And if these people with gold are doing their job properly, they're using this gold to create fun for other players. I don't sit around on my gold - I save up, then use it to fund a plot. I'm not spending it on OP gear and consumables for myself.
-
And if these people with gold are doing their job properly, they're using this gold to create fun for other players. I don't sit around on my gold - I save up, then use it to fund a plot. I'm not spending it on OP gear and consumables for myself.
Basically this. I'll be honest, i usually make 5-10k gold a week as a wizard. As a brewer, maybe 300 gold of that is from potions. What do i do with that gold? Burn it. Literally. A single trip to the redwood costs between 1000-5000 gold. If you are doing more than questing, your gold dissapears.
Keep in mind, potion brewing is an equal time sink to normal crafting. Why? You can brew a maximum of ten potions a rest. If you wish to make 50 potions for three people, say goodbye to the next 2:30 hours, during which you will be mostly useless outside of RP.
Other classes, in fact ALL classes do have access to craftig skills. Some, like blacksmithing, do not pay out as well these days. Alchemy is a good one if you want to roll in the dough.
-
For example, make Basic Whetstones which give +2 damage. Everyone has to have it, even at level 1 or 10. 8gp to make, Sales price of 10-15. can be churned out, and we can actually use the tons of iron that we find and immedaitely throw away. Made by smiths.
While I'll not comment on the rest because it's just too complicated for me right now :)
This was the intention of whetstones for blacksmiths. A constant means of supplying useful goods, that are always useful to everyone, at a steady profit.
If these are too "hard" to make, or cost too much to make, compared to how much they sell for, then it needs adjustment.
However, we can't make the magic weapon spell cost 8GP, that's… too low.
To add to this.
The bone charms etc, were put into leather/bone working, for the same reason, they should be a constant supply of useful goods, fairly easily made, for a stream of profit. They aren't intended to be a gold mine (and I'd argue that potion brewing is too much of a gold mine, and these other means are simultaneously too little of one)
Each crafting "tree" is supposed to have these.
-
Unlike wand crafting, Potion Brewing is all about grinding potions for sale. It is a Job, pure and simple, and the only one actually available to PCs that generates gold consistently without outside input or interactions with DMs. It is a unique class ability for wizards, sorcerers, and occasionally Clerics, and rarely druids.
Firstly, they burn WAY more time in this than just the time they spend actually crafting. For every "batch" of potions you brew, you're unable to quest or adventure for half an hour because you burned all your spell slots and can no longer keep yourself alive or be useful.
…Every other crafter needs to expand time, energy and experience Danger in varying amounts to output profit...
That's because most other crafters can produce PERMANENT and powerful effects on their craftable goods. Like Perma+2 equipment, +5 skills, etc… Dire Crocodile weapons, Steel helmets, etc..
Basic Cantrip Attack Rod, powered by Helmlands Sand. 25 charges of Ray of Frost, 50gp to make, selling price of 75gp. Usable by anyone. Allows non-wizards the ability to cast attack cantrips as wizards if they are willing to pay a small fee. Craftable by trapmakers.
I'm not sure if you've looked into Alchemy… but there are some REALLY nice buffs you can create in alchemy crafting. Ability buffs with crazy durations, stoneskin potions, etc.. It just takes a bit of time and dedication (and luck) to find the recipes and get the skill.. which it should to be able to replicate a high level wizard spell with no magic.
Also, there are items like Grease for tight spaces, Climbing Spikes, Vaulting Rods, Rope and tackle. You can have gradients of +2, +5 and +10 to Jump, Climb, Swim, etc, which are made by PC crafters, that can provide stable income and that people will actually find worthwhile to buy. +2 will sell for 25 GP, +5 for 150, +10 for 250 for example, but would make EXPLORATION so much EASIER.
I love this. I personally am not a fan of all the climb/jump/swim checks. I don't like anything that really gets in the way of exploration, and it REALLY sucks to pull a big party together to explore and have to leave someone behind because they can't make the swim or climb checks. Really really sucks. And to get these bonuses above +2 you currently have to spend pretty large sums of money in remote dangerous areas AND to get bonuses to everything it eats up a lot of encumbrance which not all PC's are going to have. IDeally I'd love to see everything involving these checks vanish… but if not making the items all smaller, weigh less, and craftable by PC's would be a halfway solution/compromise.
There's a bit of a false positive here, where the logic is Potion Brewers are rich, therefore Brewing makes you rich. Its not quite that simple, the real reason why potion brewers are rich is because they're wizards. Wizards very often sit on the back end, buff the frontline and doesn't spend the comparable 6-800 gold in consumables a fighter needs to on a high level spell, but from a combination of their spells being vital to the success and a whole lot of OOC stink about unfairness they get even shares…
This is on the money. Wizards aren't righ because they brew potions. Wizards are rich AND they brew potions. But if you want to cut the wizard out on fair pay, try running that quest again without keen, GMW, II, SS, 4 Hastes, etc and see what your profit vs consumable burn looks like… There's a reason some players even pay wizards MORE than the rest of the party. Because if you have a good wizard, you can pay them extra, and everyone else can still make more than if you didn't bring them at all. But that conversation is going to derail the train.
@latoksinned:
Now… with back on track, I confirm that potion brewers are "rich" because they don't need to spend money as much in combat, however, the point still stands that potion brewers have a limitless, low cost, source of profit, while some of the other crafters do not. They are gold sinks with little to no profit to make up for it.
And my final point… how did we get to this "Wizards have a gold source nobody else can match" crap? It's very very false. Clerics have INCREDIBLY useful spells, and can also brew and craft wand. Healing, barkskin with the right domains, aid, remove poisons, remove paralysis, remove fear, NEP, AID, bless, Divine favor, clarity, death ward, freedom of mvoement, divine power, restoration... These are all amazing buffs in a bottle from your local cleric brewer. Druids and sorcerers can also brew and craft wands, and so can bards (arcane healing anyone?). Cap all that with VERY powerful alchemy designs and the fact that brewing does not, in fact, make wizards rich, being a wizard makes wizards rich, brewing makes them richer faster, and this argument starts to fall apart.
Also... so what? Some classes have large benefits over others. Wizards are rich. Guess what, an unbuffed level 8 fighter won't get one shot by a basic spawn 100ft outside the gates of arabel? IF wizards are rich, and your not, find a way to use that IC. Take out loans, goto them for plot funding, etc. Handle it IC instead of just complaining you don't have a way to be rich too. My last wizard never had less than 30k, and I would dump 5-10k at a time on characters to fund plots, explorations, dm quests/missions, etc... I would literally make sendings to give out free money and nobody would show up. Nevermind that I know a dozen fighters who may not have more than 3-4k in gold.. but I promise they have 100k in potions and consumables. So making money really isn't a problem.. and if you find yourself starving of gold, consumables, etc... maybe you're doing something wrong and need to find a teacher, IC or OOC?
-
Bone charms are more expensive to make than a potion, and harder to come by the reagents. My bone crafters never found a source of income from them.
If they were 3 uses per charm, that would be much better!
And don't tell me how to spend my coin. If I want to hoard my coin, that's my business. Any class can be rich, if you aren't, then you are doing something wrong.
-
I would like to also point out the Brew Potion might be a "Print Money" feat, but that's ALL it does for the PC that takes it. Most of the PCs that take the feat aren't going to see a huge increase in personal usage of those potions, they're for OTHER PCs.
The interaction is important when considering the cost to brewing. It takes a feat, which is important, and it's only real benefit is to make a PC gold. It's the only feat that really functions like that and to reduce its effectiveness would be to completely undermine the point. To treat it as if it were not a significant investment on a server where it can amount 17%-25% of your total feat selection would be to not do it justice.
If you want to be rich without Brew Potion, make a Merchant PC! One of my favorite things to do on this server these days is to include a merchanting aspect to my PCs. It's a gold mine on a server where people for some reason hoard thousands and thousands of gold to just walk around with.
-
Bone charms are more expensive to make than a potion, and harder to come by the reagents. My bone crafters never found a source of income from them.
If they were 3 uses per charm, that would be much better!
This is useful info. They are meant to allow you to make a profit of some kind, and, potentially, help you out with having cheaper access to the things they provide for yourself here and there.
-
Also yeah, some classes are going to make more money, and that's fine.
Classes are different, they are meant to be, in many aspects. They will never all be completely 100% balanced and that is fine, it's why it's multiplayer.
-
having played a few woodcrafter now, I think I can safely say the arrows are basically the only source of income there is for woodcrafters. The rest of the gear is weak, so no one buys.
The good gear is ironwood and sussur but the ingredients are near impossible to get. For ironwood (the less hard of the 2 to get), there is maybe 1 or 2 trees IG as far as I know, you cannot replant them, and only druids can get the wood. Unless you manage to get your hand on an ironwood axe and then wait for a reset for the tree to regenerate. For sussur, the tools are far too rare. You need 2 different tools for sussur… the root extractor to get the wood and the seed one to plant some trees around the UD. The seed extractor is the one that spawns the most. I've only ever seen 1 root extractor since the woodcrafting's been around... Oh and it breaks...
No one buys wood items besides the ammo...
Bows are no good, everyone goes for the bone ones.
The specific items (oak, juniper, yew, apple) are rarely bought, there are better things IG and in the other crafts.
Some of the good stuff in it needs rare reagents like the Guardeye Flower for the juniper charm. Issue is, I only ever found 1 flower in over 6 months.Woodcrafting could use some love.
As for brewers, well, its the benefit that comes with those classes. They can use it to reward people and pay those body guards they need so badly. Brewing is time consuming too.
-
Wood crafting was the first one made so yeah, it's probly more out of date than anything else, even though it did get an update.
Regarding iron wood, there can be more trees than there are, but they are immensely rare yes.
There is a way for druids to plant more… but even then, it'd be rare that happens (and no, it does not require a DM, and yes, I have tested it and it does work)
They are meant to be sacred, and almost limited entirely to druids.
Sussur stuff is crazy hard to get because there's some insane stuff you can make out of it.
Like an on hit dispel whip.
-
Both Wood craft and Blacksmith need to be updated, for Wood crafting it is outclassed by Bone Crafting, and Blacksmithing requires to many resources for a very small return.
-
Fortunately, there is a quick fix for blacksmithing, by manipulating the prices of coal and tinder. Wood crafting requires much more work, I feel, just to bump its power.
-
For woodcrafting, maybe migrate the Really Good To Make stuff to a different resource, and make the other ones a bit easier to gather?
-
If there was an npc like the bounty masters who gave a bounty for tanned hides, and bars of metal, with the price set a little above the cost of crafting, then that would solve much of the issues with the crafting systems for leather working and smithing.
-
Its been mentioned. I think a fear of resource farming stops it from happenning
-
Yeah. It's hard to make sure that's not a money fountain