Conceptually, that's been the standard approach with crafting systems. Skill/feat allocation determines chance of success. I'm not opposed to it, and in fact I have fond recollections of such systems from my playing days, but it's not the direction we wanted to go with this.

Still, I'm curious about what you've done. Do you have a demo mod? Was it designed with NWN2 in mind (ie works with GUIs)? Is your system published on the vault?

Glad to see you sinking your teeth into this VcD. I'll share my thoughts below as a starting point for discussion.

Via Con Diablos wrote:

I'm also a large fan of actual character investment for anything that they want.  Being a great smith will limit your ability to be a great swordsman, you just don't have the time to practice both jobs enough to be great at them both.

Couple thoughts on this. On the one hand, this fits perfectly with a hardcore role play environment, something I think AGOT will be. With a large player base, this would be something I would favor. However, these kinds of limits will force players to choose between pursuing a trade or getting involved in politics, which is the emphasis of AGOT. With a small player base, it's almost assured that nobody will elect to play the craftsman if forced to choose, which negates both the benefits and the rewards of having such a system in place. We may need to be flexible to accommodate whichever reality emerges.

Via Con Diablos wrote:

I like the idea of something like the old ATS system back in the day, however we could keep those numbers hidden to the database, and the user just gets a feel of gradual improvement.  So Joe the smith makes 1000 swords, his swordsmithing skill has improved 75% (making numbers up, don't hold me to these ones).  He is now going to get a success rate of 75% for a normal sword when using the purest ingots.

Something we could also consider is durability.  Sure Joe can make a really sharp sword, but they break really easy.  Frank makes an average sword, but you could pry jail doors open with the thing.

Rather than a straight-up success/fail based on skill, the implementation could attempt to simulate the process of making a sword and assessing a combination of the players accuracy (timing, amount of ingots, # of folds, etc) and skill rank to determine success. Skill would increase with time and repetition whereas accuracy would not. A player will need to learn what it takes to actually make a sword, a process that starts with smelting ore and ends with shaping and cooling heated ingots, and execute that process either through trial and error or through an apprenticeship with PC or NPC. The processes themselves can have the tolerances you talked about, but the key here is the player learning and not just dumping points into their character to get the desired results.

The end result can range from a "crappy sword", which can be brittle (breaks easily) and unwieldy (penalties to hit and damage), to an "exceptional sword", which is unbreakable with bonuses to hit and damage. Something like that anyway.

Via Con Diablos wrote:

Skills
Skill investment into Craft Weapon/Armor etc should help your chances of successfully making an effective weapon, but not be a make or break.  I like the feel of something in between 1 and 5% increased chance of success per 10 skill points.  This won't make or break, but will help someone that wants to make a serious hobby of crafting.

Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Via Con Diablos wrote:

Feats
Feats I think should be a decent boost as they're generally a fairly significant investment in terms of overall character powers.  Especially if it's a tiered feat system such as:

Un-feated: Highly unlikely to produce anything useful at all.  If you manage to make something that does look like a sword, it's most likely going to be very brittle and break shortly after using it.  I could see items like this getting negative bonuses in game.  If you were exceptionally lucky, you might make something decent, but chances are very slim.

Basic Smithing: You understand the workings of metal and the importance of heating and cooling.  You can make some damn fine horseshoes and once in awhile a useful sword or axe-head of mediocre quality.  Sometimes (5%?) you might make a sword that actually holds an edge really well (+1 dmg or something)

At this point we could branch off to Weapon Smithing, Armor Smithing etc, or just go along the general route or Basic, Apprentice, Journeyman, Advanced.

Yeah I agree that a feat should award a good boost, if taken.

Via Con Diablos wrote:

Classes
Taking the feats above to a level further we could offer custom classes that allow someone to be almost nothing but a crafter.  This could be 5 level classes that are added on to your current class, or possibly even a full class set that offered the above feats every few levels.  If we wanted specializaion, we could have a starting class called Crafter, which is a prerequisite to Smith, Leatherworker etc, which could be further specialized into swordsmith etc.  These classes could gain XP from crafting, where others would not.  While a level 20 fighter might be able to make an ok sword, only a level 20 smith could make the best swords.  This could also be tied in to weapon and armor models.  Only the masters can make the really good looking models.

Very interesting concept and I like the idea. But depending on size of player base, we may need to forgo limits on non-crafter classes to accommodate reality.

Via Con Diablos wrote:

Recipes
I generally dislike the idea of "recipes" to make items, either as a requirement to make one, or as an exact science (breastplates need 5 ingots of steel).  However they do make sense to a degree.  You can't make a sword with one ingot, and 10 is too many.  But maybe 3 or 4 is fine.  Maybe it needs 5 folds in the steel, maybe it needs 8.  I think a recipe system, but with a certain fuzziness built in would be amazing.  As well it could be part of the "Art" side. 

Let's say we've created our sword blank already.  We present a UI that has buttons such as Heat in forge, Cool in water, Hammer edges out, Hammer and fold.  We set tolerance levels on the blank when it was made depending on the ore quality, and then if we exceed one of those tolerances too far, our quality goes down, to a point of the sword in progress being ruined.  If we stay within those tolerances the whole time, we have a greater chance of making a wonderful item.

I totally agree with this approach.

One other thing regarding recipes. There should be more than one way to skin a cat. If we can permit player's to discover their own approach to success, the system would provide a more unique experience for those who take up a trade. I think this comes down to the combination of tolerances we build into each step of the process.

At the moment, 1 character per player (for a variety of reasons), but we have discussed other possibilities like a time based system that requires players to switch to another character after so many hours of play (to encourage role playing character concepts while allowing more freedom).

The interfaces can be customized to the specific crafting activity, for usability purposes, so it might be a good exercise for us to start with the list of activities we identified in this thread and try to flesh out the details of what an appropriate interface would look like. I'll take a stab at it this afternoon.

Good luck in Vegas!

Now, about the fun factor in crafting and other non-fighting activities. I have already posted about it.

Fighting foes is fun. You move, swing your sword, send arrows into bellies, you use different feats, check constantly your HP and pray you will be the last man standing. There is danger, there are quick choices to be made and your life is in jeopardy. We all like to feel adrenaline pumping in our veins. Fighting is fun.

But what about crafting ? You have gathered the components, you put them in a placable and click on it. You see the result of your skill check and it's over. Where is my adrenaline ?

I agree it's not possible to make crafting as cool as fighting, there is a few ways to make it more fun. Let's make it crafting some kind of mini-game using specific GUI.

For example, you want to craft a sword. You know the base recipe : I need 5 in my Craft : Weapons skill, I need five chunks of steel, I need some leather, a hilt, a burning forge, some tools of the trade. Now I'm in front of the forge with everything I need. Maybe I can add some extra optional components to modify the weight or the sharpness of my blade. I can choose to let it burn a little bit longer to get a different effect. Maybe If I'm skilled enough, I can make a sword with only four chunks of steel.

Now I have choices to make, I can choose to add or remove optional / mandatory components, to work longer or shorter on my item, to bet I'm skilled enough to make a better sword using certain techniques. Instead of saying that you need to have 10 in your craft skill to make a sharp sword (+2 to damage), it's better to make it fuzzy and says you need 8 - 12 in your craft skill to make it.

With a nice GUI, you will need a minute or two to craft an item, waiting and looking for what happens when you make you sword hotter, you cool it down in water then put it back in the forge, etc...

Surely, you won't get hurt or killed making a sword but it's definitely going to be a little more interesting.

And the same methods can be used for other activities. Social "conflicts" are most of the time a simple skill check. You either win or loose with this simple check ! Not really fun !

The new A Song of Ice and Fire RPG book has a social system as complex and time consuming as the fight system. Maybe it's something that can be used in conversations in NWN2. More on that later.

In D&D 4°, there is a new way to use skills - the skills challenge. Players have to succeed a lot of different skills checks to succed in a non fighting challenge. Something interesting to look into to adapt to NWN2. More on that later.

Everything that can make non-fighting activities fun are worth looking into and adapting to NWN2.