Craft (Int)
You are trained in a craft, trade, or art, such as alchemy, armor-smithing, basketweaving, bookbinding, bowmaking, blacksmithing, calligraphy, carpentry, cobbling, gemcutting, leatherworking, locksmithing, painting, pottery, sculpting, shipmaking, stonemasonry, trapmaking, weaponsmithing, or weaving.
Like Knowledge, Perform, and Profession, Craft is actually a number of separate skills. For instance, you could have the skill Craft (carpentry). Your ranks in that skill don't affect any Craft (pottery) or Craft (leatherworking) checks you might make. You could have several Craft skills, each with its own ranks, each purchased as a separate skill.
A Craft skill is specifically focused on creating something. If nothing is created by the endeavor, it probably falls under the heading of a Profession skill.
Check: You can practice your trade and make a decent living earning about half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the craft's daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. (Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day).
The basic function of the Craft skill, however, is to allow you to make an item of the appropriate type. The DC depends on the complexity of the item to be created. The DC, your check results, and the price of the item determine how long it takes to make a particular item. The item's finished price also determines the cost of raw materials. (In the game world, it is the skill level required, the time required, and the raw materials required that determine an item's price. That's why the item's price and the Craft DC are used to determine how long it cakes to make the item and the cost of the raw materials.)
In some cases, the fabricate spell can be used to achieve the results of a Craft check with no actual check involved. However, you must make an appropriate Craft check when using the spell to make articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship (jewelry, swords, glass, crystal, and so forth).
A successful Craft check related to woodworking in conjunction with the casting of the ironwood spell enables you to make wooden items that have the strength of steel.
When casting the spell minor creation, you must succeed on an appropriate Craft check to make a complex item. For instance, a successful Craft (bowmaking) check might be required to make straight arrow shafts.
All crafts require artisan's tools (page 129, Player's Handbook) to give the best chance of success. If improvised tools are used, the check is made with a -2 circumstance penalty. On the other hand, masterwork artisan's tools provide a +2 circumstance bonus on the check.
To determine how much time and money it takes to make an item, follow these steps.
1. Find the item's price in Goods or Special Items, or have the DM set the price for an item not otherwise described. Put the price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp).
2. Find the DC from the table below, or have the DM set one.
3. Pay one-third of the item's price for the cost of raw materials.
4. Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week's work. If the check succeeds, multiply your check result by the DC. If the result x the DC equals the price of the item in sp, then you have completed the item. (If the result x the DC equals double or triple the price of the item in silver pieces, then you've completed the task in one-half or one-third of the time. Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner.) If the result x the DC doesn't equal the price, then it represents the progress you've made this week. Record the result and make a new Craft check for the next week. Each week, you make more progress until your total reaches the price of the item in silver pieces.
If you fail a check by 4 or less, you make no progress this week. If you fail by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials and have to pay half the original raw material cost again.
Progress by the Day: You can make checks by the day instead of by the week. In this case your progress (check result x DC) is in copper pieces instead of silver pieces.
Creating Masterwork Items: You can make a masterwork item - a weapon, suit of armor, shield, or tool that conveys a bonus in its use through its exceptional craftsmanship, not through being magical. To create a masterwork item, you create the masterwork component as if it were a separate item in addition to the standard item. The masterwork component has its own price (300 gp for a weapon or 150 gp for a suit of armor or a shield) and a Craft DC of 20. Once both the standard component and the masterwork component are completed, the masterwork item is finished. Note: The cost you pay for the masterwork component is one-third of the given amount, just as it is for the cost in raw materials.
Repairing Items: Generally, you can repair an item by making checks against the same DC that it took to make the item in the first place. The cost of repairing an item is one-fifth of the item's price. When you use the Craft skill to make a particular sort of item, the DC for checks involving the creation of that item are typically given on the following table.
| Item | Craft Skill | Craft DC |
| Acid | Alchemy¹ | 15 |
| Alchemist's fire, smokestick, or tindertwig | Alchemy¹ | 20 |
| Antitoxin, sunrod, tanglefoot bag, or thunderstone | Alchemy¹ | 25 |
| Armor or shield | Armorsmithing | 10 + AC bonus |
| Longbow or shortbow | Bowmaking | 12 |
| Composite longbow or composite shortbow | Bowmaking | 15 |
| Composite longbow or composite shortbow with high strength rating | Bowmaking | 15 + (2 x rating) |
| Crossbow | Weaponsmithing | 15 |
| Simple melee or thrown weapon | Weaponsmithing | 12 |
| Martial melee or thrown weapon | Weaponsmithing | 15 |
| Exotic melee or thrown weapon | Weaponsmithing | 18 |
| Mechanical trap | Trapmaking | Varies² |
| Very simple item (wooden spoon) | Varies | 5 |
| Typical item (iron pot) | Varies | 10 |
| High quality item (bell) | Varies | 15 |
| Complex or superior item (lock) | Varies | 20 |
| ¹ You must be a spellcaster to craft any of these items. ² Traps (DMG) contains a set of rules for how to construct traps. | ||
Action: Does not apply. Craft checks are made by the day or week (see above).
Try Again: Yes, but each time you miss by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials and have to pay half the original raw material cost again.
Special: A dwarf has a +2 racial bonus on Craft checks that are related to stone or metal, because dwarves are especially capable with stonework and metalwork.
A gnome has a +2 racial bonus on Craft (alchemy) checks because gnomes have sensitive noses.
You may voluntarily add +10 to the indicated DC to craft an item. This allows you to create the item more quickly (since you'll be multiplying this higher DC by your Craft check result to determine progress). You must decide whether to increase the DC before you make each weekly or daily check.
To make an item using Craft (alchemy), you must have alchemical equipment and be a spellcaster. If you are working in a city, you can buy what you need as part of the raw materials cost to make the item, but alchemical equipment is difficult or impossible to come by in some places. Purchasing and maintaining an alchemist's lab grants a +2 circumstance bonus on Craft (alchemy) checks because you have the perfect tools for the job, but it does not affect the cost of any items made using the skill.
Synergy: If you have 5 ranks in a Craft skill, you get a +2 bonus on Appraise checks related to items made with that Craft skill.
Art
Use of the Craft skill is intended to represent trades and arts ranging from alchemy to gemcutting, painting to weaponsmithing. Anything you make or use has its basis in the Craft skill. In addition to concrete goods, Craft covers artistic endeavors such as writing and musical composition.
Check: The basic function of the Craft skill is to allow you to create items of the type appropriate to that skill. The DC for this check depends on the complexity of the item created. As with the standard use of the Craft skill, the DC, your check results, and the value of the composition determine how long it takes to compose a musical or written work. The table below summarizes DCs and values for common types of compositions. All the values are expressed as ranges. You can choose your target value for your composition.
Raw Materials: The only raw materials required for a written composition are pen, ink, and parchment. In the course of one week's work, you spend about 2 gp on materials. Use this cost rather than the cost of the normal materials (a total of one-third of the item's price). If you are making checks by the day, you spend about 3 sp per day.
| Composition Type | Value | Craft DC |
| Poem | 5 sp - 2 gp | 12 |
| Novel | 5 gp - 15 gp | 15 |
| Reference book | 25 gp - 100 gp | 18 |
| Epic | 50 gp - 500 gp | 20 |
| Song | 5 sp - 5 gp | 12 |
| Quartet or quintet composition | 5 gp - 15 gp | 15 |
| Symphony | 25 gp - 100 gp | 20 |
| Dramatic monologue | 1 gp - 5 gp | 15 |
| Comedic play | 10 gp - 30 gp | 15 |
| Dramatic play | 15 gp - 50 gp | 15 |
Action: Does not apply. Craft checks are made by the day or week (see above).
Try Again: Yes, but each time you fail a check by 5 or more, you must start over from the beginning of the creation process.
Special: You can voluntarily add 10 to your Craft DC to create an item more quickly, as with the normal skill use.
Expanded Description - Complete Adventurer
By voluntarily raising the difficulty of the task before you, you can craft items more quickly than normal. This option first appeared in the Epic Level Handbook, but this use of the Craft skill is open to characters of any level provided that they are willing to accept the appropriate penalty.
| Task | DC |
| Quick creation | +10 or more to DC |
Quick Creation: You can voluntarily increase the DC of crafting an item by any multiple of 10. This tactic allows you to create an item more quickly (since you'll be multiplying this higher DC by your check result to determine progress). You must decide the increase before you make the check.
Craft (Poisonmaking): The fine art of refining raw materials into effective poisons requires both patience and care (not to mention discretion, in areas where poisons are outlawed). Making poisons with the Craft (poisonmaking) skill follows the rules in the Player's Handbook for all Craft skills, with the following exceptions.
Price: The cost of raw materials varies widely depending on whether the character has access to the active ingredient - that is, the venom or plant that actually provides the toxin. If a supply is readily available, the raw materials cost one-sixth of the market price, not one-third. Otherwise, the raw materials cost at least three-quarters of the market price-assuming the substance in question is for sale at all.
Amount: To figure out how much poison you are able to create in a week, make a Craft (poisonmaking) check at the end of the week. If the check is successful, multiply the check result by the DC for the check. That result is how many gp worth of poison you created that week. When your total gp created equals or exceeds the market price of one dose of the poison, that dose is finished. (You may sometimes be able to create more than one dose in a week, depending on your check result and the market price of the poison.) If you fail the check by 4 or less, you make no progress that week. If you fail the check by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials and have to buy them again.
| Craft (Poisonmaking) DCs | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poison | DC to Create | Price | Type | DC to Resist | Initial Damage | Secondary Damage |
| Arsenic | 15 | 120 gp | Ingested | 13 | 1 Con | 1d8 Con |
| Black adder venom | 15 | 120 gp | Injury | 12 | 1d6 Con | 1d6 Con |
| Black lotus extract | 35 | 4,500 gp | Contact | 20 | 3d6 Con | 3d6 Con |
| Bloodroot | 15 | 100 gp | Injury | 12 | 0 | 1d4 Con + 1d3 Wis |
| Blue whinnis | 15 | 120 gp | Injury | 14 | 1 Con | Unconsciousness |
| Burnt othur fumes | 25 | 2,100 gp | Inhaled | 18 | 1 Con* | 3d6 Con |
| Carrion crawler brain juice | 15 | 200 gp | Contact | 13 | Paralysis | 0 |
| Dark reaver powder | 25 | 300 gp | Ingested | 18 | 2d6 Con | 1d6 Con +1d6 Str |
| Deathblade | 25 | 1,800 gp | Injury | 20 | 1d6 Con | 2d6 Con |
| Dragon bile | 30 | 1,500 gp | Contact | 26 | 3d6 Str | 0 |
| Drow poison | 15 | 75 gp | Injury | 13 | Unconsciousness | Unconsciousness 2d4 hr. |
| Giant wasp poison | 20 | 210 gp | Injury | 14 | 1d6 Dex | 1d6 Dex |
| Greenblood oil | 15 | 100 gp | Injury | 13 | 1 Con | 1d2 Con |
| Id moss | 15 | 125 gp | Ingested | 14 | 1d4 Int | 2d6 Int |
| Insanity mist | 20 | 1,500 gp | Inhaled | 15 | 1d4 Wis | 2d6 Wis |
| Large scorpion venom | 20 | 200 gp | Injury | 14 | 1d4 Con | 1d4 Con |
| Lich dust | 20 | 250 gp | Ingested | 17 | 2d6 Str | 1d6 Str |
| Malyss root paste | 20 | 500 gp | Contact | 16 | 1 Dex | 2d4 Dex |
| Medium spider venom | 15 | 150 gp | Injury | 12 | 1d4 Str | 1d4 Str |
| Nitharit | 20 | 650 gp | Contact | 13 | 0 | 3d6 Con |
| Oil of taggit | 15 | 90 gp | Ingested | 15 | 0 | Unconsciousness |
| Purple worm poison | 20 | 700 gp | Injury | 25 | 1d6 Str | 2d6 Str |
| Sassone leaf residue | 20 | 300 gp | Contact | 16 | 2d12 hp | 1d6 Con |
| Shadow essence | 20 | 250 gp | Injury | 17 | 1 Str* | 2d6 Str |
| Small centipede poison | 15 | 90 gp | Injury | 10 | 1d2 Dex | 1d2 Dex |
| Striped toadstool | 15 | 180 gp | Ingested | 11 | 1 Wis | 2d6 Wis + 1d4 Int |
| Terinav root | 25 | 750 gp | Contact | 16 | 1d6 Dex | 2d6 Dex |
| Ungol dust | 20 | 1,000 gp | Inhaled | 15 | 1 Cha | 1d6 Cha, +1 Cha* |
| Wyvern poison | 25 | 3,000 gp | Injury | 17 | 2d6 Con | 2d6 Con |
| *Ability drain, not ability damage. | ||||||
Expanded Description - Stormwrack
Many craft skills are required to fabricate various parts of a ship - carpentry for the hull and masts, blacksmithing for the iron fittings and nails, sailmaking for the sails, even ropemaking for the thousands of feet of hawsers, stays, and line necessary to rig the ship correctly. However, small craft such as canoes, rafts, and skiffs are all covered under Craft (boatbuilding).
A boatbuilder can handle any vessel of Huge size or smaller, although a single boatbuilder working on a ketch or launch of Huge size might take six months or more to finish the work. Building a larger ship requires the skills of a shipwright (see Knowledge). The chief difference between a shipwright and a boatbuilder is that the boatbuilder rarely works off of any sort of plans, instead using various rules-of-thumb and his own skilled eye to build a serviceable vessel.
Some sample Craft DCs for rafts and boats that can be created with the Craft (boatbuilding) skill appear below.
| Item | Craft DC |
| Crude raft | DC 5 |
| Dugout canoe | DC 8 |
| Coracle | DC 10 |
| Well-made raft | DC 10 |
| Skiff | DC 12 |
| Launch | DC 15 |
| Warcanoe | DC 15 |
| Pinnace | DC 20 |
Expanded Description - Races of the Dragon
The crafting talents of kobolds run toward mining and trapmaking. However, they have also made, or at least claim to be responsible for, many alchemical advances. Bitterleaf oil is used throughout kobold society to keep everyone's scales shiny. Some kobold communities use fire beetle lamps, while sundark goggles are standard issue for those engaging in daytime raids on the surface. Ditherbombs represent an inexact advance in the science of demolitions, but the kobolds see them as a huge step in both mining and defense.
| Item | Craft (alchemy) DC |
| Bitterleaf oil | 15 |
| Ditherbomb, weak | 15* |
| Ditherbomb, strong | 20* |
| Ditherbomb, wyrm | 25* |
| Fire beetle lamp | 10 |
| Sundark goggles | 15 |
| *You can't take 10 on a Craft (alchemy) check made to create a ditherbomb. | |
Try Again: In addition to the normal parameters of the Craft skill, if you fail a Craft (alchemy) check to create a ditherbomb by 5 or more, the partially created ditherbomb explodes, dealing damage as if it were a completed ditherbomb. The explosion destroys the alchemical lab being used for the ditherbomb's creation.
Expanded Description - Artisan Craftsman
From Dragon #358
The system of custom item creation presented in the article Master's Forge by Rodney Thompson revolved around adding new special item qualities to weapons and armor produced by a particular craftsman by putting ranks into a specific Craft skill and taking the Artisan Craftsman feat.
In order to apply a special item quality to a crafted item, the item must be crafted with the masterwork component. Each item quality modifies the cost and the Craft DC of the masterwork component in some way. Whenever a craftsman creates a masterwork item, he may select any number of item qualities to add, each one modifying the cost and craft DC of the masterwork component in turn. The chosen item qualities are imbued when the masterwork item is crafted.
| Quality | Cost | DC | Restriction | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light | Medium | Large | Weapon | |||
| Acid washed | +100 gp | +200 gp | +200 gp | +100 gp | +5 | - |
| Basket hilt | - | - | - | +50 gp | +3 | Swords |
| Blood groove | - | - | +100 gp | +5 | Swords | |
| Caster armor | +400 gp | +800 gp | +1,000 gp | - | +7 | Armor |
| Deceptive | - | - | - | +800 gp | +7 | Weapons |
| Enhanced bracing | - | - | - | +100 gp | +3 | Spears, polearms |
| Environmentally designed | +100 gp | +100 gp | +100 gp | - | +5 | Armor |
| Folded metal | - | - | - | +200 gp | +7 | Metal weapons |
| Lightweight | +200 gp | +200 gp | +500 gp | - | +7 | Armor |
| Long-range | - | - | - | +100 gp | +3 | Bows, crossbows |
| Ornate | +400 gp | +600 gp | +600 gp | +500 gp | +5 | - |
| Perfect balance | - | - | - | +100 gp | +5 | Melee |
| Razor sharp | - | - | - | +1,000 gp | +6 | Bladed slashing |
| Reinforced | +800 gp | +1,000 gp | +1,200 gp | - | +10 | Armor |
| Resilient | +200 gp | +200 gp | +200 gp | +200 gp | +5 | - |
| Segmented | +200 gp | +200 gp | +300 gp | - | +5 | Armor |
| Serrated | - | - | - | +600 gp | +5 | Piercing, slashing |
| Vital coverage | +200 gp | +400 gp | +1,000 gp | - | +7 | Armor |