raging_swan

In last week’s session, the PCs were in effect trapped in the frontier town of Piren’s Bluff while winter blanketed the surrounding land. They rested in the town for several months and several of the group spent time using their Craft and Profession skills to keep busy and to offset their upkeep costs.

One of the PCs, Kemmo, is a weaponsmith and armourer and spent some time making weapons for the party. I’ve got to say, I had no idea how long this would take! Kemmo crafted an alchemical silver morningstar for Klara which if memory serves took three weeks to complete! The party ran out of time to make it a masterwork weapon as this could potentially take another six week (if my maths is right!)

We also talked briefly about how long it would take to make a masterwork set of full plate (the most expensive non-magical piece of weapon or armour in the game). Again, if my maths is right such a suit of armour could take 40 weeks to make! That’s a hell of investment in time and assumes a skilled labourer does nothing but work on the item while losing no weeks for botched checks.

I’d love someone to check my maths as this changes my whole view of the availability of nonmagical equipment. Given that a suit of masterwork full plate could take almost a year to  make, I doubt many armourers have multiple sets for sale. This makes finding a set on the battlefield easily as important as finding a permanent minor magical item. It also potentially slows down advancement and the speed of the campaign. If a PC has to wait 10 months for his shiny suit of armour (obviously this is an extreme case) he is unlikely to go adventuring during that time unless he absolutely has to do so.

The knock on effect is that PCs are unlikely to find shops stuffed full of masterwork items – as they simply take too long (adding six weeks to the crafting item for a weapon and three weeks for a suit of armour) to make on the off chance they’ll sell. The supply situation may become even worse if a PC wants a masterwork weapon made of cold iron, alchemical silver or even adamantine (consider that the same suit of masterwork full plate made of adamantine could take literally years to make depending on the skill of the armourer involved).

I can’t decide if this is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, I love injecting some realism into my game, but on the other it makes running dynamic, event-driven campaigns like Paizo’s adventure paths rather tricky.

What do you think?