I was trying to have an 'everyone can craft something' party. In doing that I figured out how to get characters crafting, but I cannot figure out how the bonuses are calculated - there are no consistent formulae based on the available information.
Barriers to having the ability:
- You must have one of the listed skills (kit proficiency or the other listed skills).
- A character can craft without kit proficiency!
- You must have one of the appropriate kits in the party inventory.
- A character can use a kit in someone else's inventory.
- Two or more characters can use a single kit at one time. (This is probably an unintended feature.)
What the above means is that, if each character has Medicine and Arcana, they can each craft any category. Arcana alone gives you three out of four options.
Barriers to crafting a specific item:
- You must know the recipe.
- One recipe works for the entire party.
- You must have the ingredients.
- The ingredients can be in someone else's inventory.
- If the recipe requires a spell, you must have the spell in your spellbook.
- You do not have to have the spell memorized.
- You do not have to have any spell slots left.
- There seems to be a (probable) bug that prevents clerics from crafting Potions of Healing until level 3.
- The crafting screen shows them as not having the spell memorized even if they do.
All that matches everything I have seen and tested. And then we get to the crafting plusses and they are all over the place:
- The plusses listed in the crafting screen are NOT the sum, average, maximum, or minimum of the proficiency bonuses they have (based on the numbers listed in the Proficiencies screen).
- The categories listed in the crafting screen do not have flat plusses or minuses based on the skill, e.g. -4 flat for enchanting.
- The character can have proficiency in a kit at +0 or at their current general proficiency bonus. The reason some have zero and some have full proficiency is unknown.
All of this is not obvious until you have a party with multiple crafters and can flip through character screens quickly. My current run has everyone able to craft potions and poisons and two able to enchant and scribe scrolls.
Irritating bugs:
- If you read a recipe you already know, you lose the recipe instead of getting a 'you already know this recipe' message. That is either money wasted or time wasted flipping through screens to check every time you get a recipe book.
- My Loremaster keeps showing things like "7/4 success" for crafting a scroll, with -3 hours needed. In other words, crafting scrolls and potions still takes full time, despite it supposedly taking half. The screen shows 4 pips, but the actual time is 8.
I cannot tell if Master Enchanter works to decrease enchanting times. I probably won't get it again (for now) because there simply isn't enough enchanting work that needs doing - slower enchanting still works. Maybe it is more useful once you can teleport around and don't have lots of crafting time using overland travel.
The point:
Can anyone please figure out how the plusses for crafting are calculated? Help?