Making Tools Useful in 5e: Carpenter's Tools
Have you ever thought to yourself… I’m going to make some wood.
Well, I have, and let me tell you… I do not enjoy sawdust up my nose, and I’m not great at making sure things are level and aligned. I like programs like Photoshop, where I can just press Ctrl-Z and undo any wrong moves I make. Wood isn’t so forgiving. I can’t count the number of times when I’ve had to go back to the store to get more lumber because I don’t know how to measure an angle.
In case you couldn’t tell from the title, today we are going over the Carpenter’s Tools!
Carpenter’s Tools
I enjoy creating these tools, mostly because it allows me to think more about how they would work in my own world, and I always research a few things about whatever tool I’m working on, which gives me a lot more information to work with when my players ask me questions. Though, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has some basic information we can also work off of, page 80 states:
Skill at carpentry enables a character to construct wooden structures. A carpenter can build a house, a shack, a wooden cabinet, or similar items.
Components. Carpenter's tools include a saw, a hammer, nails, a hatchet, a square, a ruler, an adze, a plane, and a chisel.
History. This tool proficiency aids you in identifying the use and the origin of wooden buildings and other large wooden objects.
Investigation. You gain additional insight when inspecting areas within wooden structures, because you know tricks of construction that can conceal areas from discovery.
Perception. You can spot irregularities in wooden walls or floors, making it easier to find trap doors and secret passages.
Stealth. You can quickly assess the weak spots in a wooden floor, making it easier to avoid the places that creak and groan when they're stepped on.
Fortify. With 1 minute of work and raw materials, you can make a door or window harder to force open. Increase the DC needed to open it by 5.
Temporary Shelter. As part of a long rest, you can construct a lean-to or a similar shelter to keep your group dry and in the shade for the duration of the rest. Because it was fashioned quickly from whatever wood was available , the shelter collapses 1d3 days after being assembled.
I think I’m becoming desensitized to the tool descriptions in Xanathar’s. Not only does this seem perfectly fine, in a boring sort of way, but it does have a few things in there, like building furniture. I could rant for a few paragraphs about this tool like I usually do, and I really should if I want to pad out this article a little bit but…
Maybe I’m growing soft in my old age. It’s been almost a year since I talked with Chris about starting up Dump Stat, and I’ve learned some important things… like Smith’s Tools was way more popular than I thought it would be or that if I keep up the pace of doing a tool every other week, I’m not going to finish until February. Sigh, I blame myself for not jumping on tools faster this year when I wrote the first one on Cook’s Utensils back in January. Well, enough navel gazing let’s jump to it!
For those that don’t care about the how of my tool:
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Carpentry
Carpentry is a skill that requires working with saws, chisels, and, you might have guessed, wood. I’m not very good at it, which is a shame as I really can’t afford one of those fancy gaming tables!
This tool works a lot like Mason’s Tools as you are building structures with both of them, though the big difference is that Mason’s Tool requires stone, and this bad boy works on wood… which makes me wonder, what character would get you the most tools? I will probably take Warforged and an Artificer build, but after that, I’m not sure.
When building your structure, you must secure where you are going to build it, and this might mean you need some sort of deed to the parcel of land… or maybe you can get lucky and find a nice haunted forest that nobody claims. Once you have the land, you need supplies delivered to you. If you are in a haunted forest, it may be far harder to get those supplies to you.
Once you get those supplies, you must spend a day working on your structure, and you make progress on your structure in 25 gp increments. This means if you want to build a small farmhouse, that is going to cost you 1,000 gp for a brand new one. For a single worker, that means it is going to take you 40 days to complete the build.
But, you can always hire workers. Each project has a maximum number of workers that can work on it at one time, for a project can only have so many people on it before work begins slowing down or no progress is made. Our small farmhouse can only handle up to three workers per day working away.
Now, because we have more workers, our time building the farm is going to be a lot faster, but we are going to have to spend more and more money each day. Workers aren’t cheap, if you aren’t taking part then each worker, who is a skilled laborer, must be paid 2 gp per day, plus you must spend 25 gp to pay for the supplies for each worker. This means that if you aren’t working and hire three workers, you will need 75 gp for the materials and 6 gp for the labor costs.
Building Objects
While it’s awesome that you can build a fancy house, you need to stock your farmhouse with some furniture! When building furniture, you, of course, need your typical supplies but the amount you can work on per day is a lot lower. Furniture, normally, requires a bit finer eye and you can work in 5 gp increments per day. So a normal table without a lot of fanciness involved can be built in 3 days and by spending 15 gp. For fancy filigrees and heavy aesthetics, the DM may decide it will take more days to do the fancy work but not require any excess gold, or require more gold as you want to inlay actual gold into the table.
Spells
As with all tools, sometimes magic can help speed up the process. Fabricate is a great spell. If you can cast a 4th-level spell, it's a great way to do a day of work in 20 minutes.
Finishing Up
That’s our beautiful Carpenter’s Tools! They're a great way to spend your excess gold, spend your downtime days, and relax with a hammer and some nails. Now go out and build your favorite farmhouse, outpost, or palisade! Maybe the invading orc army will find it difficult to destroy your home if you make it out of ironwood or palm!
If you want a printer-friendly PDF of this tool or any other tool, consider supporting us at the $1 tier on our Patreon! All tools that I’ve created or will create in the future will be uploaded to our Patreon in printer-friendly versions. We appreciate any and all support!
Other tools: Forgery Kit, Disguise Kit, Herbalism Kit, Glassblower’s Tools, Navigator’s Tools, Leatherworker’s Tools, Cobbler’s Tools, Poisoner’s Kit, Cartographer’s Tools, Alchemist’s Supplies, Mason’s Tools, Gaming Sets, Tinker’s Tools, Healer’s Kit, Brewer’s Supplies, Smith’s Tools & Cook’s Utensils.
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