Crafting Basics

Crafting in Eldareth uses the D&D 2024 crafting rules as its foundation. Most ordinary items can be made with the appropriate tools, suitable materials, and enough time. Eldareth expands this foundation with Special Materials, Formulae, and advanced forms of construction when a particular project calls for them.

These additional systems are not required for ordinary crafting. A smith can forge a steel sword, a carpenter can make a chest, and an alchemist can prepare ordinary goods without first gathering rare ingredients or learning specialized Formulae.

Standard Crafting

Unless an item has its own crafting procedure, creating a nonmagical item requires proficiency with the appropriate tool, access to that tool, suitable materials, and the necessary Crafting Time.

The Material Cost is normally half the item's Purchase Price, rounded down.

Crafting Time is determined by dividing the item's Purchase Price in gold pieces by 10 and rounding up to the next whole workday. One workday represents 8 hours of crafting, and those workdays do not need to be consecutive.

An item worth 25 gp, for example, requires 12 gp 5 sp of materials and 3 workdays to complete.

The Mundane Recipes catalogue provides the Purchase Price, Material Cost, Crafting Time, and eligible tools for ordinary items covered by these rules.

Routine Crafting

Crafting is normally reliable when the proper requirements have been met.

A character with the correct tool proficiency, materials, workspace, and time does not normally make an ability check simply to complete a routine project. Checks are reserved for situations where the circumstances introduce meaningful uncertainty, such as damaged materials, inadequate equipment, unusual interference, or experimental work.

Working Together

More than one character can contribute to the same project when the work can reasonably be divided.

Each participating character must have proficiency with the required tool. The total Crafting Time is divided among the characters contributing to the project, though additional workers do not reduce its Material Cost or remove any of its other requirements.

Most projects normally involve no more than one additional crafter unless their scale makes a larger workforce practical.

Conventional Materials

Most crafting uses Conventional Materials.

These are the ordinary materials and supplies expected for a craft, such as timber, metal, leather, cloth, glass, pigments, oils, common herbs, charcoal, fittings, adhesives, and other routine workshop stock.

Conventional Materials are usually represented by their GP cost rather than tracked individually. A character does not need to maintain an inventory of every nail, solvent, strip of leather, or pinch of pigment used during ordinary crafting.

Unless a specific Recipe says otherwise, Conventional Materials can provide the entire Material Cost of a project.

Special Materials

Some resources in Eldareth are important enough to be tracked individually. These Special Materials include unusual plants, creature materials, rare minerals, magical substances, and specialist manufactured materials.

A Special Material can contribute toward a craft when it is appropriate to the item being made. Its Value can then provide Ingredient Credit toward the project's Material Cost.

Using Special Materials is optional unless the Recipe specifically requires one.

Their value alone does not make them interchangeable. A valuable Fiber cannot replace the Metal needed for a sword simply because both are worth the same amount, and a Recipe that names a particular material still requires that material.

Material Types, Properties, Affinities, Tracked Quantity, and the full rules for Ingredient Credit are covered in Crafting with Special Materials.

Recipes and Special Procedures

A Recipe Entry describes how a particular item or process is made.

For ordinary items, the Recipe usually does little more than identify the appropriate tool, Material Cost, and Crafting Time. Other projects can have additional requirements.

Some items also use their own dedicated crafting procedures instead of the normal rules. Potion of Healing and Spell Scrolls are examples from the D&D 2024 rules.

When a specific Recipe establishes a different cost, time, material requirement, tool, or other procedure, that Recipe takes precedence for that project.

A Recipe does not automatically require specialized knowledge. When a character must know a particular crafting method before attempting the work, the Recipe explicitly identifies a Formula.

Beyond Basic Crafting

Some projects involve more than ordinary tool-based crafting.

Crafting with Special Materials explains how individually tracked materials interact with Recipes and how Material Types, Properties, Affinities, and specific material requirements are used.

Advanced & Magical Crafting covers Formulae, material processing and refinement, Treatments, Components, advanced construction, and magic-item crafting.

Gathering & Recovery covers finding, harvesting, salvaging, transporting, and preserving materials.

The Recipes section contains the actual crafting entries used when choosing and completing a project.