A Short Review of the PF2e Remaster Crafting Rules
Crafting! Every Intelligence spellcaster's (and Alchemist, Munitions Crafter Gunslinger, Inventor, and Alchemical Sciences Investigator) favorite skill. In Pathfinder 2e pre-remaster, the Crafting skill and its Craft activity were generally... underused. The Craft activity asked of you 4 days to produce one permanent item or 4 consumables at full price after you also bought the formula for it, and most adventure paths just didn't have the downtime to allow for it to be useful with the real benefit of spending extra time to reduce the price of the items down by your Earn Income amount for your Crafting skill. However, with Player Core 1, that's changed! So, first, let's go over what changed from the CRB.
I Can Make a Spoon in 1 Day Now: The Changes to Crafting
The following are some of the most notable changes to Crafting and the Craft activity:
CRB: Crafting items takes 4 days of downtime, and you must have the formula. You must provide half the materials upfront and pay the rest of the value after the 4 days are finished, but you can spend can spend extra days to reduce the price further, up to half the total value of the item.
PC1: Crafting items takes 1 - 2 days of downtime. 1 day if you have the formula, 2 days if you don't have the formula. Any common item can be crafted without a formula. You must provide half the materials upfront and pay the rest of the value after the 4 days are finished, but you can spend can spend extra days to reduce the price further, up to half the total value of the item.
The following feat was altered with these changes to the rules:
Inventor was moved down from a 7th level skill feat that required Master in Crafting to a 2nd level skill feat that requires Expert in Crafting. Additionally, it now says the GM can allow you to use the Craft activity to make uncommon and rare formulas, which you do need if you want to craft those items.
Spoons are Nice, But How About This Healing Potion: How Crafting Helps Every Party Now
So, with those changes, there is a notable difference with Crafting now: you only need 1 day to make stuff (if you have the formula). 1 day of downtime is stupid easy to come by in a majority of APs and homebrew games, heck 2 isn't a big ask either. The biggest benefit this provides is the savings, however. By reducing the downtime required from 4 days to 1, that gives you 3 days you typically would've spent making a wicked new magic longsword for Seelah as extra days you can spend to get savings you wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. This makes feats like Impeccable Crafter have much more value, since you can take advantage of getting a critical success on your Crafting check a lot more now.
But, let me provide a recent experience. In my current campaign, my GM gave the party a month of downtime before PC1 came out while I ran Malevolence for everyone to give him a break. I wanted to craft the following:
4x Cheetah's Elixirs (Moderate)
4x Elixirs of Life (Lesser)
4x Predator's Claws (Formerly called Owlbear Claws)
My Gunslinger/Inventor has the following skill feats and items to help with Crafting, with her Master Crafting proficiency:
Speciality Crafting (Alchemy)
Overall, I got 4 critical successes, 1 success, and 1 critical failure on my die rolls. In total, I spent 25 days performing the Craft activity to make of all of this, spending lots of extra days to reduce the total cost of the items be crafted by half. In total, I spent 6 days making the items, and 19 days finishing them for the discount.
With the CRB rules, I would've spent a total of 24 days making the items, and then 19 days finishing them for the discount, for a total of 43 days spent Crafting, 13 days over my limit of 1 month.
Simply put, if I used the CRB Crafting rules, I would've had to spend much more gold, but I also likely wouldn't had taken the time to make the Oil of Mending for our Inventor, or the Eye Slash for our Barbarian. The new Crafting rules provide incentive for players to not only make cheaper items, thus spend less gold, but also make more items too since you're spending way less time.
We Only Have 1 Apex Item Between Us All: How the Formula Changes Helps High-Level PF2e
A minor issue high-level PF2e APs have is item droughts. Acquiring the equipment you need can be difficult because it doesn't drop, and unless you have access to a city like Absalom with a high settlement level, it won't be sold either. The issue can mainly be seen in acquiring Apex Items, some of the best magical gear available to high-level PCs that boosts 1 ability score to +4, or increases it by +1 if it's above that already. This is essential for getting a +7 in your primary ability score. The main problem, however, is that most APs (barring a few like Stolen Fate) don't drop apex items for every stat and buying them could be out of the question either due to not having enough gold or just no place to purchase. The solution to this was supposed to be Crafting, but small issue, you needed a formula to craft it, and that was just as hard to get.
However, the recent change makes it so that common items require no formula at all, you just need to spend 2 days on the Craft activity instead! And what are apex items and their rarity at typically? Common. With this, plus the lowered downtime required to finish the initial item, if a party has a crafter, getting cheaper apex items can be simple provided you find time for a little bit of downtime from levels 17 - 20 (which can still be a big ask, but not as big as before). This means, that perhaps everyone can get access to the prestigious magic items and enjoy the benefits of the power they entail.
The PC1 Crafting changes have been a boon to everyone interested in the skill, and everyone who loves playing with them too. The reduced amount of downtime required leads to cheaper items, and/or more items. While the formula changes provide more versatility in what one can craft for their party and themselves.
