Topic: RMU Treasure Law- Help Please!

[zzMannyzz]

Can someone please help me with a simple worked example: making your own Full Suit of Medium-Size Mail (AT8) using simple iron as the raw materials, and hiring a workshop. For bonus points please also show the same example for a Big version. I've tried to work this out but the entire book seems more geared to enchantment and alchemists. Thanks!

[jdale]

What's your objective? Is it just to figure out how much profit a PC blacksmith can make by doing crafts?

Here's what I would do:
* The sale price and time required are as specified in the equipment table. So that's 60sp and 58 days.
* Make a metalcrafts maneuver. Iron has a workability modifier of +0. AT 8 has a difficulty of VH(-20). So if you have access to an average workshop, you make the maneuver at -20.

You could calculate the cost of the iron based on weight. But then what are the quantities and costs of the other expendable materials, like fuel for the forge? I think it's better to simply assume that, if you are doing a credible job of working as a blacksmith, you should be earning the income of a blacksmith. That's maybe 0.07-0.09sp per day (depending on skill level). If you project that out, it's 4.64sp for 58 days, which is about 8% of the sale value of the armor. The rest of it must be materials, supplies, workspace, etc. You could maybe simplify and assume 10%, on the basis that a blacksmith might not be working on an item every single day.

[jdale]

Oh, and regarding size. I don't know that we have a guideline for how item sizes change the crafting time requirement. I would generally assume that you use the base time for making things of your own size. A giant is going to make giant size armor in the same time as a human makes human armor. Making something larger is going to take more time, but maybe not 4x? Maybe 2x per size increase? Making something smaller is going to save some time, but not necessarily that much time. You still have the same number of parts and now they have to be made more precisely. As it gets even smaller, it gets worse rather than better. Maybe 3/4x for one size smaller, and 1x for smaller than that?

[zzMannyzz]

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated!

A player of mine has metalcraft and wanted to make their own suit of armour as they could not afford to buy it.

I also wasn't sure what to do with large suits, and x4 did seem a really harsh multplier for time. It ended up he would spend a tiny bit more than the sale price, as we had to factor in the workshop rental.

But, as a rule of thumb, 1sp per day of crafting + the material cost (which we calculated as 0.47sp) is correct then ?

[Hurin]

I often let the party members use a 'friend's workshop free of charge. If they are native to the town where they are based, it can be a good hook to invest them in relationships with the townsfolk.

[zzMannyzz]

That seems a solid suggestion, thanks. He is actually working at a smithy right now so I guess I could say they'd allow him to use it in his own time, outside of normal/working hours.

[Hurin]

Yes, and it has been fun in my current campaign to get the players to use the crafting skills on their own to help immerse them in the world. I want to make crafting viable: I want it to be cheaper for them to buy the materials and make the item themselves than to buy it from a vendor. So doing this helps with that.

[jdale]

>But, as a rule of thumb, 1sp per day of crafting + the material cost (which we calculated as 0.47sp) is correct then ?

It doesn't always work out that cleanly. I think mail has a proportionally longer production time than most armors, but close enough.


I have a dwarf in one of my games and the party has borrowed the use of many forges simply because the local blacksmith really wanted to watch a dwarven smith at work. There's a limit how long you can do that at any one location but it has worked while they are traveling. If your character doesn't have any reputation to offer, they could probably trade favors instead, whether that's labor at the forge, scaring off some threat, helping with market business, etc. Doing a personal project during off hours certainly seems reasonable.

[zzMannyzz]

Yes, and it has been fun in my current campaign to get the players to use the crafting skills on their own to help immerse them in the world. I want to make crafting viable: I want it to be cheaper for them to buy the materials and make the item themselves than to buy it from a vendor. So doing this helps with that.

This is exactly what I'm trying to do as well. How are you calculating the crafting costs for mundane items ?

Worst-case scenario I'll just have to make up some house rules for this based on some of the available data.

[rdanhenry]

Maintenance cost of workshop + cost of material should cover it.

[zzMannyzz]

Alright, so for an Iron Mail Full Suit, the cost comes in at PC Weight (405lbs) * Mail Full Suit Weight (21%) * Cost of Iron (0.01 sp per lb) = 85.05 lbs * 0.01 sp = 0.85 sp.

It would take 58 days so the workshop hire cost would be 15.47sp

That would give a total cost of 16.32sp

That obviously compares very favourably to the regular purchase price of 60sp.

[jdale]

That also results in the blacksmith earning 43.68sp in 58 days (0.75sp per day) if they are making it for sale, rather than earning ~0.08sp per day, so I think the cost needs to be higher. To match the earning of a blacksmith, one way or another you should be spending closer to 55sp. Of course if you can get out of some of those costs, for example by getting use of the forge for free, or not paying for fuel, then the costs would be lower.

[MisterK]

I don't know about the RMU prices and standards of living, but an armourer was not a simple blacksmith - they were a specialised craftsman with fairly high wages, and were usually very specialised (several people with different specialties worked on a single suit of armour, each doing a few - or even a single - pieces).
Armourers were high earners among the craftsmen (in other words, after expenses, taxes, guild and church tithes and maintenance of tools and workplace, they still had a fairly comfortable standard of living. Of course, journeymen (which had not reached the degree of expertise required to be part of the guild and earn the title of 'master') earned much less, scarcely more than an apprentice.

I don't know how it translates in the RMU economy, but Harn (which is kind of my game reference of silver-based economies in medieval-like game settings) quotes a weaponcrafter (the armourer above) as earning ~108d per month in wages (i.e., being bonded masters, they do not have to pay for room, board and supplies, but they have to pay for their own tools. This was the most favourable position). By way of comparison, a suit of mail costs more than 1500d.

[jdale]

If mail costs 1500d and yields an income of 108d per month, in RMU mail costs 60sp so 108d would translate as 4.3sp. That's daily earnings of 0.144sp. It's twice as high as RMU's generic "skilled labor journeyman". That could be reasonable for an occupation with a higher level of prestige and probably fewer practitioners. But the above was 10 times as high.