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Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide

Treasure Vault / Secrets of Crafting

Source Treasure Vault pg. 170 ^1.1

Crafting by Questing

Source Treasure Vault pg. 170 ^1.1
A young farmer's village is destroyed by a ferocious red dragon, and they set off to forge a sword imbued with the power of ice to lay the dragon low. An elven scout's companions are slain by a fearsome, ancient bulette, and she seeks a suit of armor capable of resisting the beast's claws so she can claim vengeance for her lost friends. A wizard sets out to forge a staff that will enhance their magical power. Story-based crafting is a system by which every major magic item a PC might want is gained through a narrative and may or may not involve the Crafting skill at all. The goal of story-based crafting is to let players seek out the equipment they want for their PCs in a fun and satisfying way that can make every significant, permanent item they use part of an epic and memorable story.

Note that the crafting by questing rules are intended for permanent magical items that will be part of a PCs story for at least the better part of a level, possibly more. Having your PCs quest for simple consumables is liable to get a boring over time and isn't meaningfully different from just getting treasure for completing an encounter as normal (since most level-appropriate consumables won't require more than a single encounter to cover their entire cost anyways). Of course, a rare and powerful consumable item might still make for an interesting quest, but this should be an exception, not the rule.

Treasure by Encounter

Source Treasure Vault pg. 171 ^1.1
The crafting by questing rules work best when used in conjunction with the treasure by encounter guidelines, reprinted here for your convenience. The rules presented in this section assume that you, as the GM, have the treasure by encounter guidelines in play.

The standard rules count treasure over the course of a level, rather than dividing it up by encounter. If you need to select treasure for a single encounter, such as in a sandbox game, you can use the table above. It takes the treasure budget for each level from Table 10–9 of the Core Rulebook and breaks that down per encounter based on the encounter threat, similar to how XP varies by threat. The final column shows extra treasure you should award if you build an entire level this way. Unlike the standard table, this doesn't include items by item level, as the value doesn't cleanly break down for most single encounters. It's recommended you still give out those permanent items, but you'll need to borrow from other encounters' treasure to account for their value. Include encounters against creatures without treasure to account for this.

Table 5-3: Treasure by Encounter

Level	Total Treasure per Level	Low	Moderate	Severe	Extreme	Extra Treasure
1	175 gp	13 gp	18 gp	26 gp	35 gp	35 gp
2	300 gp	23 gp	30 gp	45 gp	60 gp	60 gp
3	500 gp	38 gp	50 gp	75 gp	100 gp	100 gp
4	850 gp	65 gp	85 gp	130 gp	170 gp	170 gp
5	1,350 gp	100 gp	135 gp	200 gp	270 gp	270 gp
6	2,000 gp	150 gp	200 gp	300 gp	400 gp	400 gp
7	2,900 gp	220 gp	290 gp	440 gp	580 gp	580 gp
8	4,000 gp	300 gp	400 gp	600 gp	800 gp	800 gp
9	5,700 gp	430 gp	570 gp	860 gp	1,140 gp	1,140 gp
10	8,000 gp	600 gp	800 gp	1,200 gp	1,600 gp	1,600 gp
11	11,500 gp	865 gp	1,150 gp	1,725 gp	2,300 gp	2,300 gp
12	16,500 gp	1,250 gp	1,650 gp	2,475 gp	3,300 gp	3,300 gp
13	25,000 gp	1,875 gp	2,500 gp	3,750 gp	5,000 gp	5,000 gp
14	36,500 gp	2,750 gp	3,650 gp	5,500 gp	7,300 gp	7,300 gp
15	54,500 gp	4,100 gp	5,450 gp	8,200 gp	10,900 gp	10,900 gp
16	82,500 gp	6,200 gp	8,250 gp	12,400 gp	16,500 gp	16,500 gp
17	128,000 gp	9,600 gp	12,800 gp	19,200 gp	25,600 gp	25,600 gp
18	208,000 gp	15,600 gp	20,800 gp	31,200 gp	41,600 gp	41,600 gp
19	355,000 gp	26,600 gp	35,500 gp	53,250 gp	71,000 gp	71,000 gp
20	490,000 gp	36,800 gp	49,000 gp	73,500 gp	98,000 gp	98,000 gp

Crafting Quests

Source Treasure Vault pg. 171 ^1.1
As in normal crafting, the first step in initiating a crafting quest is for the player to decide what they want to craft, or for you as the GM to present them with a handful of possible things they can quest to create. You might also plan out a few crafting quests during your session zero so that they can be built directly into the narrative of the campaign and worked into the PCs' backstories. One of the simplest ways to do this is to have each of the players give you a wish list of items during your session zero, listing key items their characters would like to acquire during the course of the campaign. These could be as general as “a magic sword” or “a magic staff,” or as specific as “a suit of devil's bargain armor for my Asmodean cleric.”

Crafting quests should always be significant events for the players and their characters. Don't send the PCs questing to create a simple dagger. Instead consider what items could become iconic parts of the character's story, like a magic bow for an archer, a powerful staff for a wizard, or lucky boots for a rogue. The nature of crafting quests as events that will permanently inform the characters' stories and shape their builds means that there should always be a high level of collaboration between the players and GM. When using crafting quests, you typically won't need to use the Extra Treasure values from Table 5–3: Treasure by Encounter, as those values are to compensate for the PCs finding loot that they won't use or for missing some of the loot entirely. Since the PCs are always set up to get the loot they want when using story-based crafting, and because the value of these items is subtracted from their total treasure, these additional values are superfluous and could give the party too much treasure for their level. If you prefer a campaign where the PCs have a bit more treasure on hand as a way to encourage the use of consumables or “non-essential” equipment, you can use the treasure values as presented.

The items you select for the PCs should all be items that are of a level appropriate to the characters (typically the same as their current level) or appropriate to the level they will be when they complete the crafting quests. For complete examples of crafting quests, see Example Quests.

Building a Narrative

Source Treasure Vault pg. 172 ^1.1
Once you know what item the characters are questing to create, it's time to build a narrative around that journey. Think of this like a subplot to the main story, with key moments and pivotal scenes that occur alongside the overarching plot of your campaign. If the entire group is searching for crafting quest components, then some parts of this story can take the spotlight and be the focus of an entire part of your campaign. In any event, you should give this story the same consideration you give any other part of your campaign narrative, balancing player desires with appropriate narrative decisions and combat challenges. Make sure that no one character's crafting quests take the spotlight for too long, and always watch for opportunities to align the interests of the various party members.

Start by determining how many encounters you want the PCs to complete before the item is finished. For each required encounter, reduce the required cost of the story-crafted item by 10% of its total value. These cost reductions should never reduce the equivalent cost of the item below 50% of its base cost. This ensures the PCs don't end up with significantly more wealth than they should have and makes sure that their crafting quests don't stretch across too many levels of play. Next, take the remaining price of the item and divide that by the number of encounters. Reduce the reward for these encounters by that amount, to balance it against any other rewards you might include.

Crafting quest encounters should generally be between low and severe difficulty; trivial encounters are too easy to justify the reduction in cost of the story-crafted item and generally won't be narratively satisfying for the players, while extreme encounters are simply too dangerous and may feel unfair to the player trying to story craft.

Low-difficulty encounters are appropriate for a single crafting quest component, while moderate and severe encounters should provide crafting quest components for multiple characters. A severe-difficulty fight against a powerful monster with a treasure hoard, like a dragon, might provide crafting quest components for the entire party. Having the entire party's crafting quests intersect in encounters like this also helps bind the PCs together through shared goals and accomplishments.

Finally, map these encounters and their narratives to your overall campaign or adventure, giving plenty of space between each to allow them to feel like earned pieces of a growing story.

Beginning the Quest

Source Treasure Vault pg. 172 ^1.1
Starting a crafting quest begins like any other story in your campaign. The PCs might learn of the item and how it can be made through one of any number of sources, from an old formula in a book to a cryptic prophesy that came to them in a dream. The key is to give the PCs an idea about the journey they must undertake and an idea of the reward that awaits them at the end.

Next, give the PCs an opportunity to learn about the locations of the first crafting quest component for their item. They could gain this information through Recall Knowledge checks, Research at a local library, or by Gathering Information. Again, this first piece might also be part of their initial discovery of the quest, but later components should certainly require research or exploration to uncover.

You don't need to give the PCs the locations of all their crafting components up front; as long as they know where to find the first piece, you can leave clues and opportunities to uncover the location of the next crafting quest component at key points in the campaign for PCs to discover naturally during the course of play. Alternatively, you can give the PCs the location of all the crafting quest components up front, though giving them such information all at once works best in a campaign intended to be more of a player-directed sandbox than one trying to follow a central narrative through line.

Once the PCs have learned the location of their first crafting quest components, it's time to begin the adventure!

Gathering the Components

Source Treasure Vault pg. 172 ^1.1
Locating the individual crafting quest components for a single story-crafted item should occur in separate and distinct areas, even if they're all in one larger location (like a dungeon or one large forest). This makes the item feel like it was earned, rather than given, and prevents the characters from exceeding the normal time limits that are a part of the crafting process.

Each component should be either a part of the final item or something used during the creation process itself. For example, if you were trying to create a powerful bow that calls upon storms, you might need to find the heart of a tree burned by lightning, the scale of a blue dragon, or even the breath of a powerful air elemental. Alternatively, the component might be a person or place necessary for the crafting, like a woodcarver who survived a shipwreck, or a workshop located atop a mountain. In any event, each component should feel like it's building toward a completed item as part of the well-rounded story that tells of its creation.

Forging the Treasure

Source Treasure Vault pg. 172 ^1.1
Once the PC has gathered together all of the crafting quest components for their item, it's time to assemble the pieces. Depending on the nature of the crafting quests, this might not require a skill check. For a longer crafting quest that included at least three encounters spread across different locations, the simple act of bringing the components together can be enough for their magic to do the rest of the work, uniting the components into a single, completed item the PC can immediately put to use. For a shorter crafting quest taking place in a single location, you can instead require a skill check (likely a Crafting check, but possibly using a different skill depending on the item and circumstances).

When requiring a skill check to assemble a story-crafted item, you should make the check itself something appropriately exciting and epic, a fitting capstone for the completed crafting quest. For example, if the player's dwarf fighter completed a crafting quest that required them to assemble the materials for the haft, head, and grip of a magic hammer, their check could take place at an ancient dwarven forge blessed by Torag, God of the Forge. The DC of this check should be based on the item's level, rarity, and other circumstances. If successful, the item works as intended. If the check fails, it may have a quirk of some sort. If the check is a critical failure, it might be destroyed or even result in a cursed item!

Story-Based Crafting as the Baseline

Source Treasure Vault pg. 173 ^1.1
There are many reasons you might consider making story-based crafting the base assumption for your game. This system results in items that feel more special and integral to the narrative, which the players have more agency in helping to create. Story-based crafting can make an item feel unique and less like something they just bought down at the local shop.

It's important to note that this style of crafting works best in sandbox campaigns and other adventures where the players are expected to inform a lot of the story's direction and progress, and is less compatible with campaigns seeking to tell a very specific and involved story. The encounters dedicated to crafting just the right weapon still give experience, and since each player should have the opportunity for a roughly equal number of crafting quests, you'll find that a campaign that uses story-based crafting as the baseline won't leave a lot of time open for other encounters and side quests.

An important element of using story-based crafting as PCs' primary method of acquiring new key permanent items in a campaign is ensuring that one player's crafting quests don't overwhelm the narrative and put the other players in the “back seat” for too long. Here are a few general tips for managing this game experience.

Don't feel pressured to do an entire PC's crafting quest through to completion before starting another PC's quests. You should intermix their adventures as much as possible, so that pursuing one character's crafting quest can naturally position the party to tackle another character's quest along the way. For example, if the fighter is crafting a flaming sword that requires traveling into a volcano, and the wizard is crafting a magic staff, you should try and place one of the encounters for acquiring staff components (or perhaps forging them together) inside that same volcano. This both reinforces the party's mutual goals, giving them strong story reasons to adventure together, and keeps the campaign feeling organic and connected.

When weaving multiple characters' crafting quests together, look for key opportunities to align their goals. A single dragon's hoard could easily hold components for an entire adventuring party, along with other treasures. Using powerful monsters with large treasure hoards or notable access to rare materials is a great way to both keep the party's goals united and layer in deeper story threads and some altruistic motivations for the party.

Example Quests

Source Treasure Vault pg. 173 ^1.1
Included below are an array of sample quests showcasing story-based crafting in action. Story-based crafting works best when individually tailored to each group, but the quests below can serve as examples of how to assemble and run a crafting quest. They can even be modified and dropped directly into a level-appropriate game to help fill out a session or allow your group to try out story-based crafting before committing to a longer-term campaign centered around the system.

Quest 1: Forging the Holy Sword (Level 13–14)

Source Treasure Vault pg. 173 ^1.1
James is running a game that includes Logan's character, a champion of Iomedae. The party is getting close to reaching 14th level, and Logan has expressed a desire for his character to gain a holy avenger. James has decided that in order for Logan to forge his holy avenger, he'll need to recover the sword's hilt, blade, and pommel stone, for a total of 3 encounters. James takes the cost of the holy avenger, 4,500 gp, and reduces it by 10% for each of the three encounters (for a total reduction of 30%), arriving at a final total of 3,150 gp. James decides that each piece of the sword is worth the same amount, or 1,050 gp per component.

James plans the following three encounters out for Logan.

Retrieving the Hilt: The first encounter James has planned for this crafting quest is a mission to retrieve the holy avenger's hilt from the clutches of a pair of liches. As 12th-level creatures, the liches are worth 30 XP each for a 13th-level party and collectively comprise a low-difficulty encounter worth 1,875 gp. James subtracts the value of the pommel from the encounter's loot and adds in some consumables and other minor treasures for the rest of the group.

Liberating the Pommel Stone: The second encounter James has planned for the crafting quest is a mission to retrieve the holy avenger's pommel stone from an abandoned dwarven vault. While no monsters guard the vault, it's located behind a maze of twisting tunnels. When the party eventually finds the room and Logan's champion retrieves the pommel stone, they find out that the other treasures along all four walls are actually telekinetic swarm traps! Four 12th-level complex hazards constitute a severe encounter for a 13th-level party, so James deducts another 1,050 gp from the encounter's treasure for the pommel stone. Since there's over 2,000 gp remaining in the encounter's treasure value, this would also be an excellent location for James to leave items for other party members' crafting quests, along with some consumables and other treasure like art and coins.

Since this was a severe encounter and the champion's crafting quest is nearing completion, this would also be a good time for the party to level up to 14th level, which is what we assume happens going into the final encounter of the holy avenger crafting quest.

Restoring the Blade: The final piece of the holy avenger is its blade, which it turns out is still lodged between the scales of the ancient black dragon Sharzathinek. As an ancient black dragon, Sharzathinek is a 16th-level creature—a Moderate encounter for the 14th-level party. James deducts 1,050 gp from the 3,650 gp Sharzathinek is worth. This also leaves room for James to include a couple other crafting quest components for other party members in the dragon's loot. With the dragon slain, Logan's champion claims the holy avenger's blade as his piece of the treasure for the encounter and rejoins it with the hilt and pommel stone. The magic of the blade's components, awakened by the champion's holy quest, causes the pieces of the sundered blade to fuse with each other, and the champion's holy avenger is complete.

Quest 2: Weaving the Wizard’s Robes (Level 7)

Source Treasure Vault pg. 174 ^1.1
Jessica's character is an evoker wizard who has just reached 7th level and wants to celebrate her ascension by creating a set of fire energy robes. Jessica's wizard has trained with a prestigious archmage as one of the archmage's many apprentices; the robes will serve not just as protection for her wizard on future adventures but as a symbol of the completion of her apprenticeship. Her GM, James, has decided that to create these robes, Jessica's wizard will need to collect spider silk, a gemstone imbued with the power of elemental fire, and a scale from a white dragon to protect the robe's wearer from the gemstone's flames. All three of these materials can be harvested from within the magical demiplane where the evoker's archmage master trains his apprentices, and the final step for Jessica's wizard will be to weave all the components together at the archmage's magical loom. James takes the 320 gp base cost of the fire energy robes and reduces it by 10% for each of the three encounters, arriving at a final total of 224 gp. James has decided that the encounters will consist of one low-difficulty encounter and two moderate-difficulty encounters, with the value of the spider silk set at 50 gp and the value of the other two crafting quest components each set at 87 gp.

James plans the following three encounters out for Jessica's wizard.

Bargaining for Silk: The first encounter Jessica's wizard will need to navigate is retrieving the silk for her robe from a trio of ether spiders. As 5th-level creatures, the three spiders collectively are worth 60 XP for a 7th-level party and constitute a low-difficulty encounter worth 220 gp. James deducts 50 gp from the value of the encounter for the silk and distributes the rest in the form of various consumables the archmage left behind for his successful apprentices to find. While the ether spiders are deadly threats, Jessica's wizard recognizes that killing the spiders would destroy her master's silk supply, so she instead bargains with the ether spiders and trades them food and treasures from her earlier adventures in exchange for the silk she needs, completing the encounter nonlethally.

Retrieving the Fiery Gemstone: The second encounter awaiting Jessica's wizard requires her to travel to the magical furnace powering the archmage's tower and retrieve a gemstone imbued with the power of elemental flame. When Jessica's wizard arrives at the furnace, she discovers that the archmage has prepared a surprise for her and has left the furnace gate open, allowing a pair of salamanders to slip in from the Plane of Fire! As 7th-level creatures, the two salamanders collectively represent a moderate encounter worth 290 gp for a 7th-level party. James deducts 87 gp from the value of the encounter to account for the value of the gemstone and gives the rest of the treasure to the party as consumables that will help them resist the icy breath of the elite young white dragons the PCs will have to face in the final encounter.

Claiming a Scale: Singed but undeterred, Jessica's wizard and her party face their final challenge: a pair of elite young white dragon guard the magical loom on which the wizard must weave her magical robes. As 7th-level creatures, the dragons collectively represent a moderate encounter worth 290 gp for a 7th-level party. James deducts 87 gp from the value of the encounter for the dragon scale and provides the rest as treasures for the wizard's party members. Once the wizard has fought, bargained, or tricked her way into retrieving a scale and accessing the archmage's loom, she attempts a DC 23 Crafting check at the loom (the standard DC for a 7th-level item) to weave the crafting quest components together into her completed fire energy robes.

Quest 3: Shaping the Armor of Yggdrasil (Level 5)

Source Treasure Vault pg. 175 ^1.1
Ianara's character is a druid seeking to craft a +1 wooden breastplate for herself. Having just reached 5th level, Ianara's druid will soon be leaving the relative safety of her grove and the surrounding woodlands to venture out into the wider world as a champion of nature, an endeavor which will call for greater protection than she has had need of so far. Her GM, James, has decided that for Ianara's druid to create this armor, she'll need to gather four essential materials from the woodlands around her grove: fur collected from grizzly bears to line the armor, darkwood bark collected from trees protected by arboreal warden, a section of wood freely gifted by an awakened tree for the main plate, and sticky sap from a grove guarded by a dryad and her pet basilisk to bind it all together. James has decided that this crafting quest will require Ianara's druid to complete four Low difficulty encounters, so he has reduced the 160 gp cost of the +1 wooden breastplate by 40% for a final crafting cost of 96 gp, with each component having a value of 24 gp each. He deducts the 24 gp from the 100 gp value of each of the encounters and assigns the remaining 76 gp from each encounter to consumables and crafting quest components for the other characters.

James plans the following four encounters out for Ianara.

Shaving the Grizzly: Ianara's first task is to collect the grizzly bear fur, and fortunately, three large grizzlies with fur to spare can be found fishing salmon from a nearby stream. While the bears do constitute a potentially engaging, or even deadly, combat encounter, Ianara's character is a druid and unwilling to harm the creatures just to line her armor. By leveraging a combination of primal magic and Nature-oriented skill feats, she's able to calm the bears and convince them to donate some of their fur to her.

Working Around the Wardens: Next, Ianara's druid must convince a pair of arboreal wardens to allow her to collect fallen scraps of darkwood bark from the grove of darkwood trees they're dedicated to protecting. Whether through combat, stealth, bargaining, or fleetness of foot, the druid manages to retrieve the necessary bark and completes the encounter before seeking out the next component for her armor.

You're Not Using That, Are You?: Next, Ianara's druid needs to convince a mighty awakened tree to gift her a section of its living body to form the main plate of her +1 wooden breastplate. Combat isn't an option here; not only would attacking an otherwise-peaceful awakened tree potentially be anathema for the druid, but the wood has to be freely gifted or the armor will be ruined. Guile, diplomacy, and magic are Ianara's only options, but fortunately, if anyone can convince a tree to give up a part of itself, it's probably a druid.

Sticky Situation: Having collected most of the components to create her armor, the druid just needs the sticky sap to bind everything together. The dryad and basilisk protecting the sap are cantankerous, cruel, and unwilling to share, and their grove is littered with evidence that the basilisk isn't too picky about who or what it petrifies and eats, either. While the party has thus far attempted nonviolent solutions wherever possible, the clearly evil nature of the dryad and basilisk likely mean that Ianara's party might just choose to fight this one out for the good of the forest, though it's also possible that they will choose to try and redeem the dryad and her pet. Regardless of the resolution they choose, once the dryad and basilisk are dealt with, Ianara's druid has all the crafting quest components she needs to Craft her armor, and she can begin the process of assembling them.

Since the encounters were all contained within the same woodland, James requires Ianara's druid to attempt a Crafting check inside the druid grove to complete the armor. Ianara's druid successfully completes a DC 20 Crafting check (the standard DC for a 5th-level item) and can now don her +1 wooden breastplate.

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Story-Based Crafting