Here's how Fabricate will work in my campaign. Comments in italics are Brad's.
"You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material."
So the result is one product per casting. A bridge, A rope (although it could be a darn big rope), A weapon. No mass production. I don't like magical industrial revolutions (there's nothing wrong with campaigns that have those, they're just not something I'm interested in running, and the idea of one spell creating a million gp of masterwork daggers is a non-starter for me). If creating ammunition, you can create 50 of the same kind. (So yes, you can scrape up all the lead and make some sling bullets. You can make 50 arrow shafts that are straight and true, but you'll still need to attach the heads and feathers manually.)
The item fabricated can wind up in a different location from the raw materials so long as all the materials and the entire object created are within the short range of the spell.
You can create a masterwork item with a good enough skill roll and the appropriate materials. Note that in my campaign that masterwork weapons and armor are made of iron (or something more exotic, like mithril or adamantine), and non-masterwork weapons and armor are bronze, so you can't turn one into the other.
The source material has to be either in your possession or unattended; you can't use it as an attack spell against people's things. Spells that do affect things in people's possession give saves, and Fabricate doesn't have a will save or a paragraph mentioning such. (I don't want it serving as a mass disarm spell.) If you disarm someone or get them to drop their weapon, it counts as unattended, naturally.
Anything with no Charisma (and therefore no Wisdom) score is an object, not a creature. Thus, it works on trees (although not if they're awakened, because then they're a creature, or if they're a dryad's, because then they're magical) but not constructs or undead, which are creatures. (Undead aren't living creatures, but they're creatures.)
Dead creatures are objects, so it should work on them, but only on material of one sort (hide, meat, bone, but only one sort at a time). I don't think you could use it to cook, since that's a profession, not a craft, but 1) it's not like starting a fire is a problem for Annest anyway, and 2) like Annest would ever cook something with no seasoning or sauce or anything to make it tasty anyway. Your beloved mother would die, then roll over in her grave.
It can't do anything with writing, since in the campaign setting all writing is magical.
Make Whole will repair broken things, but can't be used to assemble.
I can't REFINE anything with this spell, nor can I ALLOY anything. I can however do any amount of thing that CAN be done with time, such as unraveling a stack of wool socks and reweaving them into a sweater.
Agreed.
Waste vanishes.
I don't see this in the description. I think any waste just piles up, same as if you were crafting by hand, but is unusable (like burning the carbon out of steel by getting it too hot).
If you miss the craft check by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials, just as in the craft skill.
Make one craft roll for the entire item (making a roll per round would be ultra-tedious). Make a roll for anything you might fail on; easy is defined as things you have enough skill to make on a roll of 1. Mithril is probably 5 higher DC, Adamantine 10 higher, but those may change after I review 3.5.
You have to declare masterwork before you roll, and difficulty is 20.
You also need appropriate materials.
You can coin money with this spell by tripling the value of raw materials, but there must be a market for the goods made, of course.
Given the collapsed economy I wouldn't count on making much this way. And it might make enemies among the local craftsman. But you could use it to make a statue very quickly, for instance. Make that "jealous enemies."
This makes it a poor tunneling spell (as a rock wall would have a thin layer scraped off to provide the material) but quite effective on smaller things such as doors.
Hmm, it would take rock from a 45' radius (at 9th) level) which would be (for 9 cubic feet) about 1/16" deep. You could make a dressed stone cube, but note that the spell only moves things within its range (short).
It should work fine for a 5' by 4' door up to 5 inches thick or so, for instance turning it into a smaller thicker door so there's a gap around its frame. (The iron door is 2" thick, by the way, so unless it's hollow, should weigh about 1600 pounds.)
Leather: This includes animal skins on dead animals, since getting it off and curing it is all craftskill and tools. You could rule that hard leather needs urine and thus can't be made from raw skins, but all soft leather producst can.
I'd allow both hard and soft leather; I'm not *that* picky.
Similarly pottery is clay and water (and possibly additives) but I'd allow it. The water's not so much an ingredient as a tool for shaping the clay.
Simple bows can be done (except for the string), but not composite bows (and therefore not mighty bows), since they're glued together from different kinds of wood and horn and maybe bone.
I think that covers everything. Let me know if you have any questions. If you decide you don't want Fabricate, you can take something else at 9th level, or I'll let you swap it out when we switch to 3.5 after trying it a bit.