Crafting Core (DnD 5e)

Crafting Core is a GM-authoritative crafting, harvesting, and material framework for Foundry Virtual Tabletop, built specifically for D&D 5e.

The module connects four parts of the game loop:

1. Materials and Products - ingredients, harvested resources, trade goods, and curated finished items.

2. Recipes and Knowledge - GM-authored crafting definitions published as learnable Items.

3. Player Crafting - timed crafts and persistent Crafting Projects directly from the Character sheet.

4. Harvesting and Generation - creature profiles, environment gathering, game hunting, and optional Item Piles output.

Crafting Core uses native D&D 5e Items throughout. Any Item can be an ingredient or an output, so the system can support ordinary materials, equipment, consumables, custom Item Creator content, or another crafted Product as part of a later Recipe.

Compatibility

• Crafting Core: v0.2.4

• Foundry VTT: minimum 14, verified 14.365

• D&D 5e: 5.3.3

• Item Piles: optional integration for Item Pile generation and Token Harvest

• DnD 5e Item Creator: optional for the core module; 0.7.1+ is required for the official Curated Culinary Products

Crafting Core is intentionally version-bound to the D&D 5e system version it was built and tested against.

Core Workflow

1. Prepare Materials and Products

The private Crafting Core - Materials Compendium contains the built-in material catalog used by harvesting, gathering, generation, and Recipe building.

The catalog currently contains 229 curated materials covering:

• Creature Harvest materials;

• magical Essences;

• Flora, Roots, Fungi, Wood & Resin, and Minerals & Geological resources;

• Food & Cooking, Metalworking, Leatherworking, Alchemy, and General Materials.

The Materials interface also exposes the official Curated Products library when DnD 5e Item Creator 0.7.1+ is active.

2. Create a Recipe Draft

Open Crafting Core from the Item Directory as GM and create a new Recipe Draft.

A Recipe can define:

• Timed crafting or a persistent Crafting Project;

• who may attempt the craft and which proficiencies are relevant;

• progress checks, failure behavior, Extra Effort, and Final Crafting Checks;

• Player Visibility rules;

• any D&D 5e Items as ingredients;

• a complete Item snapshot as the crafted output;

• a Knowledge Source type: Recipe, Formula, Blueprint, or Manual.

Save Draft only saves the private GM workbench state. It never changes the published Recipe used by players.

3. Publish the Knowledge Source

Use Publish to Private Compendium or Update Published Source from the Recipe Builder footer.

Published Knowledge Sources live in the private Crafting Core - Learn Sources Compendium. The Compendium Item is the authoritative published definition.

The Knowledge Base is a management view of those real Compendium Items. It can:

• open a published source;

• create or continue a Builder Draft from the published definition;

• show whether a Draft has unpublished changes;

• Unpublish a Recipe with a strong confirmation safeguard.

Deleting a Builder Draft does not delete or Unpublish the corresponding Knowledge Source.

4. Teach the Recipe

Distribute a published Knowledge Source through any normal Foundry workflow:

• Compendium -> Actor;

• Compendium -> Item Directory -> Actor;

• loot or chests;

• NPC inventories;

• vendors and Supplier-style stock workflows.

The Item's Learn Recipe Activity teaches the stable Recipe identity to the Character. A Character cannot learn the same Recipe twice from different physical copies.

Characters may Unlearn a Recipe from the Crafting tab. Unpublish is different: it removes the authoritative source globally and reconciles Character knowledge.

5. Craft from the Character Sheet

Known Recipes appear in the Character sheet Crafting tab.

Crafting Core supports two workflows:

Timed Crafting

• validates Recipe access and inventory;

• consumes the required ingredients;

• uses synchronized server time for the configured duration;

• creates the frozen output Item when the craft completes.

Crafting Projects

Projects are persistent and designed for work across rests.

A Project can use:

• Required Work Periods;

• Short Rest or Long Rest cadence;

• Progress Checks every Work Period or at the midpoint;

• Ability, Skill, Tool, or Saving Throw checks;

• No Progress, Regress, or Fail Project consequences;

• optional material loss on Project failure;

• Extra Effort as an optional second attempt in a work cycle;

• an optional Final Crafting Check with configurable failure behavior.

Starting a Project reserves its materials and immediately performs the first normal Work Attempt. A compatible rest unlocks the next normal Work Attempt; a rest does not add progress by itself.

An active Project stores a frozen Recipe snapshot. Later Recipe edits, Unlearn, or Unpublish do not rewrite work already in progress.

Knowledge Lifecycle

Crafting Core deliberately separates authoring, publication, Character knowledge, and active work.

• Builder Draft: private GM editing state.

• Save Draft: saves only that private state.

• Learn Sources Compendium: authoritative published Knowledge Sources.

• Knowledge Base: management UI for the actual Learn Sources Compendium.

• Learn Recipe: adds a stable Recipe to one Character.

• Unlearn: removes the Recipe from that Character only.

• Unpublish: removes the global published authority and makes Characters forget it.

• Project Snapshot: frozen definition used by an already-started Project.

If a player is viewing an older Recipe revision when the GM publishes an update, Crafting Core refreshes the view before allowing a new Craft or Project transaction. No materials, reservations, rolls, or progress are changed by that refresh.

Materials and Material Economy

Built-in Materials are native D&D 5e loot Items with Trade Good type and stable Crafting Core metadata.

Default rarity economy:

The GM can override built-in material presentation and values. Curated defaults can be restored without affecting unrelated custom Items.

Any D&D 5e Item can still be used directly in a Recipe even if it is not registered in the Materials catalog.

Curated Culinary Library

With DnD 5e Item Creator 0.7.1+ active, Crafting Core maintains an official Culinary library:

• 15 Curated Products in Crafting Core - Products;

• 15 Recipe Knowledge Sources in Crafting Core - Learn Sources;

• 5 Dwarven, 5 Elven, and 5 Common dishes;

• three selectable Foundry Core icon candidates per Product.

Meal types:

• Hearty: 5 Temporary Hit Points;

• Energizing: +5 ft Walking Speed until the next Long Rest;

• Complete: both benefits.

The movement benefit is managed by Item Creator and uses replacement stacking, so multiple Culinary movement bonuses do not accumulate.

All official Culinary Recipes use 10 seconds of crafting time. The prepared Product price is calculated as 2x the current value of its ingredients, making crafting economically preferable to buying the finished meal.

Use Restore Curated Culinary Defaults to repair missing official Products or Recipe Sources and restore their managed organization while preserving unrelated GM content.

Creature Scanner and Harvest Profiles

The Creature Scanner analyzes configured D&D 5e Actor Compendiums without modifying source Actors or source packs.

Scanner source selection and priority are configured in Game Settings -> Crafting Core -> Configure Crafting Core.

Stored Harvest Profiles can contain:

• inferred anatomy and structural tags;

• four automatic rarity pools;

• multiple candidate materials per pool;

• a separate fifth Essence Pool;

• per-pool chance and quantity rules;

• GM-authored Pinpoint Overrides for boss, quest, or guaranteed special materials.

Pinpoint Overrides are extra rolls and never consume one of the four normal rarity-pool results.

Essence Pool

Essence is separate from the four physical/thematic rarity pools.

Profiles with valid non-physical affinity can generate Arcane Essence or a specific Essence associated with the source Actor. Profiles without a supported affinity use the Arcane/no-Essence fallback behavior defined by the analyzer.

Generate Materials

The GM-only Generate Materials tool uses the shared material generation engine and supports:

• Creature Harvest;

• Environment Gathering;

• Game Hunt.

Generation is preview-first. The GM sees the rolled result before choosing a destination.

Accepted results can become:

• a timestamped World Item folder under Crafting Core - Generated Loot;

• an optional Hidden Item Pile when Item Piles is active.

The preview is the exact result that gets materialized; choosing a destination does not reroll it.

Token Harvest and Item Piles

When Item Piles is active, Crafting Core can harvest eligible dead Tokens using their stored Harvest Profile.

Crafting Core owns the harvest rules and generated materials. Item Piles is used as the physical loot-container integration.

The Token Harvest settings include four existing-NPC-loot modes:

• Normalize from Compendiums - recommended; physical gear is replaced with safe base matches from configured Item Compendiums;

• Remove All Existing Items;

• Keep Physical Gear / Remove Natural & Features;

• Keep All Existing Items.

Normalization sources are prioritized and exact/safe matching is used rather than fuzzy replacement of unique monster gear. An optional homebrew setting can convert firearm gear to a random Hand, Light, or Heavy Crossbow during normalization.

Managed Compendiums

Crafting Core uses private world Compendiums as durable content stores and interoperability boundaries.

Crafting Core - Materials

229 curated crafting materials plus GM-registered material content.

Crafting Core - Learn Sources

Published Recipe, Formula, Blueprint, and Manual Items. This is the authoritative published Knowledge database.

The official Culinary Recipes are organized under:

Crafting Core Curated -> Culinary -> Dwarven / Elven / Common Cuisine

Crafting Core - Products

Created and maintained when the Curated Culinary library is available. Contains ready-to-buy/use official Culinary Products and provides a clean source for vendor or Supplier-style stock generation.

Game Settings

The Crafting Core Game Settings area contains:

• Support the Creator and Buy Me a Coffee;

• Configure Crafting Core;

• More from Hammer-PvP.

Configure Crafting Core currently manages:

• Creature Scanner Actor sources and source priority;

• Token Harvest existing-loot handling;

• Gear Normalization Item Compendiums and priority;

• optional Firearms-to-Crossbows normalization.

Documentation

The repository keeps one current manual in docs/:

Open the Complete Crafting Core Manual

Release history belongs in CHANGELOG.md. The README is intentionally maintained as a current overview of the module rather than as a second changelog.

More from Hammer-PvP

Crafting Core is part of a set of Foundry VTT tools designed to complement one another:

• DnD 5e Character Builder

• DnD 5e Item Creator

• DnD 5e Currency Manager

• Enhanced Audio Player

Support the Creator

If Crafting Core helps your table and you would like to support continued development:

Buy Me a Coffee

Bugs and Feature Requests

Use GitHub Issues for bug reports and feature requests.

For bug reports, include the Crafting Core, Foundry VTT, and D&D 5e versions, reproduction steps, relevant console errors, and screenshots when useful.

AI-Assisted Development

Crafting Core is an original project designed and directed by its creator. AI tools were used to assist with code, documentation, review, and debugging. The module's concepts, mechanics, design decisions, testing, and final implementation choices remain under the creator's responsibility.

License

See LICENSE.