Post by Gidonihah on Apr 9, 2016 1:04:10 GMT
I have decided to make a bit of a Primer on crafting, as it has many common questions and misunderstandings.
This has been researched by me and Oneyou, via looking closely at the rules and wording, and extensive forum diving.
Mundane Crafting: Get a Tools of Amazing Manufacture and proceed to ignore the mundane crafting rules. Or use Fabricate.
Note: There are two things that may be worth using the normal crafting rules for, poisons and Alchemical supplies. For the most part Alchemists are the most effective at crafting these.
I will give one tip for Alchemical supplies. Often PFSRD will lack a Crafting DC, this doesnt mean it cant be crafted, just that PFSRD didnt put it in. In these cases check Archive Of Nethys, it often has the missing craft DC. If it doesnt have it, then its probably a raw material type situation.
Magic Crafting: Used by getting one of the various Magic Item Creation Feats. Master Craftsman may be used to qualify for these feats for Noncasters.
Crafting DC: The base DC to craft is 5+Caster Level of the item being crafted. This check is made at the end of the process which you can take 10 on (and should), failure results in materials and time being wasted. The check may use either the Spellcraft skill or an Appropriate Craft Skill. The DC will often be increased willingly by a Crafter to speed up the process or ignore crafting requirements.
Crafting Cost: The crafting cost is always listed at the bottom of an item under construction requirements, if its not there it probably can't actually be crafted. This is not half the cost of the item, though for many items it makes for an easy shorthand. A clear example of where half the cost doesnt work is for Tomes, which have an extremely costly material component, and barely get reduced in cost by crafting.
Crafting Time: At Base you craft 1000gold for every 1 downtime day spent. You have to craft an amount of gold equal to the items Base Price. This Is not Market Price, but typically its equal to Market Price. Basically Material Components and Preexisting Components are not Included in time needed to craft. So crafting Tomes while they don't give much cost reduction, are also surprisingly fast to craft.
Magic Items a Day: You can only make 1 item a day, and only work on 1 at a time. An exception has been extended to Potions and Scrolls. Other cheap items will end up with a lot of wasted downtime because of this rule.
Spell Trigger/Spell Completion: You cannot ignore the requirement of having the spell. These are usually Scrolls/Potions/Wands/Staves. Material Components of spells have to be paid, once for Scrolls/Potions and x50 for Wands and Staves. There is a bit of complexity to Stave pricing and creation which I will not go into here.
Rings/Wondrous/Weapons/Armor/Rods: You can ignore a requirement listed under Construction Requirements by increasing the DC of crafting by 5. You cannot ignore the requirement of having a suitable Crafting Feat, nor the Cost of Crafting itself. This works for magic items in general, as long as its not Spell Trigger/Spell Completion.
Increasing Gold efficiency
Earned Magic Capital: Bought Magic capital effectively does nothing, but one can use Magic Capital to pay for Magic item creation equal to the magic capitals worth (100 gold). Notably this includes Material Components. If one had an effective enough set of magic capital generation, one would effectively be paying only a quarter gold to craft instead of half. This never really happens, as generating Magic Capital requires extensive downtime or a large number of rooms which is not presently allowed.
Tip: Use alchemy labs +furnishings to get a sizable amount of Magic Capital generation. Best for a Noncrafter who wishes to buy from a crafter, as they can generate near base crafting gold gains from their downtime days, and crafters should instead be crafting with their downtime.
Keep in mind that buildings have a free tick after each session, so if you are slow down your character progression and have many sessions the tick will add up.
Trick: There exist methods to obtain a large amount of Magic capital, making this a powerful gold reducer.
Traits (Spark of Creation, Hedge Magician, Dwarf): "the cost of creating magic items is reduced by 5%." This doesn't reduce the cost by 5% in the way you think. It reduces the CRAFTING cost by 5%, which will usually be 2.5% of the Market Price. Notably this does decrease Material Components, making it have more of an impact on things like Tomes.
Increasing Downtime Efficiency
Rush Job:Work takes 8 hours, one can increase DC by 5 to do it in 4 hours, leaving 4 more hours of crafting.
Effect: 2000gold per downtime day.
Tools of Amazing Manufacture: This is a awkward item in how it interacts. As far as we can tell there isn't really a clear RAW for its interaction with near anything on this list, including duplicates of itself and even the normal crafting rules. Several GMs have spoken towards it not being as useful as it may seem, and indeed the RAW leaves it a bit questionable. Requires a specific craft skill (not spellcraft), is one of the best ways to craft mundane items.
Cooperative Crafting: "your assistance doubles the gp value of items that can be crafted each day." One of the main things to use as a crafter, often with a Valet familiar. Probably doesn't function with multiple valet familiars, but may function with a Player Ally and a valet familiar.
With this and sped up crafting one can craft 4000 gold of items for one day of downtime. With a familiars+ally it would go up to 6000.
Trick: Pay an NPC caster for the transfer familiar spell. Remember that you will also need to pay for the familiars time using hireling rules, and if you want to take it with you for other stuff you need to prove that you will pay the costs of familiar resurrection.
Wizard Discovery Arcane Builder: "You create items of this type 25% faster than normal". Multiple amount crafted per day by 1.25, including Tools. Bit of a headache I know. Requires dedication to one kind of crafting feat (well one kind of Magic item to be specific).
Dwarf Wizard Favoured Class bonus:"Select one item creation feat known by the wizard. Whenever crafting an item using that feat, the amount of progress made in an 8-hour period increases by 200 gp (50 gp if crafting while adventuring). This does not reduce the cost of the item; it just increases the rate at which the item is crafted."
Ugh exact wording makes this one more annoying than it has to be. You add it before Cooperative crafting, but after the DC increase for rushing.
This is eventually one of the biggest bonuses available, especially with Cooperative Crafting Doubling and if you are crazy Forgemaster (Dwarf Mystic Theurge I guess?).
Blackwick Cauldron: Allows creation of up to 1200gold of potions per day. Allows for multiple potions in a single day, was rendered irrelevant by recent rulings that allow for this kind of effect without the item.
Dwarven Cleric Forgemaster: "At 5th level, a forgemaster can craft mundane metal items quickly, using half their gp value to determine progress, and can craft magical metal items in half the normal amount of time."
Look at how long it would take to craft normally, then half it (round up). One of the strongest increases as it stacks fairly well with everything.
Magus Soul Forger: "At 7th level, a soul forger uses the 1/10 gp value of armor, shields, and weapons to determine how much time it takes to craft mundane items, and he requires only half the normal amount of time to enchant magical arms and armor."
Similar effect as the Forgemaster but with a different restriction as to what it applies to.
Scroll/Potions HouseRule: You may craft any number of different scrolls and potions per day, though you are still limited by the maximum GP value allowed per the magic item crafting rules.
Note: Be aware that making multiple potions may have restrictions as it requires the expending of a spell. From FAQ->"When creating potions, the crafter must prepare and expend the spell used by the potion as part of its creation." Effectively meaning you will be limited by the amount of spell slots you have.
I am less sure if this also applies to Scrolls.
Side Note: Might be nice to remember that one can scribe multiple spells on a single scroll, will save you from being buried in scrolls.
Records keeping
Please keep proper Records of any crafting you do in your character thread, it is incredibly easy to cheat by accidentally
1. Not meeting DCs at the level it was crafted.
2. Crafting faster than your build allows (miscounting downtime)
3. Using things that boost craft skills to boost Spellcraft (such as tools, Crafters Fortune).
-Despite its name, Spellcraft is not considered a Craft skill.
4. Improperly Crafting items with Material Components for cheap.
-No you cant craft a tome for half its price, and no you cant craft Adamantine Breastplate with Magic Weapons and Armor feat, I dont care that its in the Magic Armor section.
5. Improperly crafting Items with Charges (not fully covered here).
-Some of the Formulas for Staves can be confusing, ask for help as its easy to make a mistake.
6. Crafting without proper feats (Notably for Mythic crafting, and Amulet of Mighty Fists weapon properties).
And there you have a basic overview of crafting. Have any comments,questions, or a strong argument against my research, post below.
This has been researched by me and Oneyou, via looking closely at the rules and wording, and extensive forum diving.
Mundane Crafting: Get a Tools of Amazing Manufacture and proceed to ignore the mundane crafting rules. Or use Fabricate.
Note: There are two things that may be worth using the normal crafting rules for, poisons and Alchemical supplies. For the most part Alchemists are the most effective at crafting these.
I will give one tip for Alchemical supplies. Often PFSRD will lack a Crafting DC, this doesnt mean it cant be crafted, just that PFSRD didnt put it in. In these cases check Archive Of Nethys, it often has the missing craft DC. If it doesnt have it, then its probably a raw material type situation.
Magic Crafting: Used by getting one of the various Magic Item Creation Feats. Master Craftsman may be used to qualify for these feats for Noncasters.
Crafting DC: The base DC to craft is 5+Caster Level of the item being crafted. This check is made at the end of the process which you can take 10 on (and should), failure results in materials and time being wasted. The check may use either the Spellcraft skill or an Appropriate Craft Skill. The DC will often be increased willingly by a Crafter to speed up the process or ignore crafting requirements.
Crafting Cost: The crafting cost is always listed at the bottom of an item under construction requirements, if its not there it probably can't actually be crafted. This is not half the cost of the item, though for many items it makes for an easy shorthand. A clear example of where half the cost doesnt work is for Tomes, which have an extremely costly material component, and barely get reduced in cost by crafting.
Crafting Time: At Base you craft 1000gold for every 1 downtime day spent. You have to craft an amount of gold equal to the items Base Price. This Is not Market Price, but typically its equal to Market Price. Basically Material Components and Preexisting Components are not Included in time needed to craft. So crafting Tomes while they don't give much cost reduction, are also surprisingly fast to craft.
Magic Items a Day: You can only make 1 item a day, and only work on 1 at a time. An exception has been extended to Potions and Scrolls. Other cheap items will end up with a lot of wasted downtime because of this rule.
Spell Trigger/Spell Completion: You cannot ignore the requirement of having the spell. These are usually Scrolls/Potions/Wands/Staves. Material Components of spells have to be paid, once for Scrolls/Potions and x50 for Wands and Staves. There is a bit of complexity to Stave pricing and creation which I will not go into here.
Rings/Wondrous/Weapons/Armor/Rods: You can ignore a requirement listed under Construction Requirements by increasing the DC of crafting by 5. You cannot ignore the requirement of having a suitable Crafting Feat, nor the Cost of Crafting itself. This works for magic items in general, as long as its not Spell Trigger/Spell Completion.
Increasing Gold efficiency
Earned Magic Capital: Bought Magic capital effectively does nothing, but one can use Magic Capital to pay for Magic item creation equal to the magic capitals worth (100 gold). Notably this includes Material Components. If one had an effective enough set of magic capital generation, one would effectively be paying only a quarter gold to craft instead of half. This never really happens, as generating Magic Capital requires extensive downtime or a large number of rooms which is not presently allowed.
Tip: Use alchemy labs +furnishings to get a sizable amount of Magic Capital generation. Best for a Noncrafter who wishes to buy from a crafter, as they can generate near base crafting gold gains from their downtime days, and crafters should instead be crafting with their downtime.
Keep in mind that buildings have a free tick after each session, so if you are slow down your character progression and have many sessions the tick will add up.
Trick: There exist methods to obtain a large amount of Magic capital, making this a powerful gold reducer.
Traits (Spark of Creation, Hedge Magician, Dwarf): "the cost of creating magic items is reduced by 5%." This doesn't reduce the cost by 5% in the way you think. It reduces the CRAFTING cost by 5%, which will usually be 2.5% of the Market Price. Notably this does decrease Material Components, making it have more of an impact on things like Tomes.
Increasing Downtime Efficiency
Rush Job:Work takes 8 hours, one can increase DC by 5 to do it in 4 hours, leaving 4 more hours of crafting.
Effect: 2000gold per downtime day.
Tools of Amazing Manufacture: This is a awkward item in how it interacts. As far as we can tell there isn't really a clear RAW for its interaction with near anything on this list, including duplicates of itself and even the normal crafting rules. Several GMs have spoken towards it not being as useful as it may seem, and indeed the RAW leaves it a bit questionable. Requires a specific craft skill (not spellcraft), is one of the best ways to craft mundane items.
Cooperative Crafting: "your assistance doubles the gp value of items that can be crafted each day." One of the main things to use as a crafter, often with a Valet familiar. Probably doesn't function with multiple valet familiars, but may function with a Player Ally and a valet familiar.
With this and sped up crafting one can craft 4000 gold of items for one day of downtime. With a familiars+ally it would go up to 6000.
Trick: Pay an NPC caster for the transfer familiar spell. Remember that you will also need to pay for the familiars time using hireling rules, and if you want to take it with you for other stuff you need to prove that you will pay the costs of familiar resurrection.
Wizard Discovery Arcane Builder: "You create items of this type 25% faster than normal". Multiple amount crafted per day by 1.25, including Tools. Bit of a headache I know. Requires dedication to one kind of crafting feat (well one kind of Magic item to be specific).
Dwarf Wizard Favoured Class bonus:"Select one item creation feat known by the wizard. Whenever crafting an item using that feat, the amount of progress made in an 8-hour period increases by 200 gp (50 gp if crafting while adventuring). This does not reduce the cost of the item; it just increases the rate at which the item is crafted."
Ugh exact wording makes this one more annoying than it has to be. You add it before Cooperative crafting, but after the DC increase for rushing.
This is eventually one of the biggest bonuses available, especially with Cooperative Crafting Doubling and if you are crazy Forgemaster (Dwarf Mystic Theurge I guess?).
Blackwick Cauldron: Allows creation of up to 1200gold of potions per day. Allows for multiple potions in a single day, was rendered irrelevant by recent rulings that allow for this kind of effect without the item.
Dwarven Cleric Forgemaster: "At 5th level, a forgemaster can craft mundane metal items quickly, using half their gp value to determine progress, and can craft magical metal items in half the normal amount of time."
Look at how long it would take to craft normally, then half it (round up). One of the strongest increases as it stacks fairly well with everything.
Magus Soul Forger: "At 7th level, a soul forger uses the 1/10 gp value of armor, shields, and weapons to determine how much time it takes to craft mundane items, and he requires only half the normal amount of time to enchant magical arms and armor."
Similar effect as the Forgemaster but with a different restriction as to what it applies to.
Scroll/Potions HouseRule: You may craft any number of different scrolls and potions per day, though you are still limited by the maximum GP value allowed per the magic item crafting rules.
Note: Be aware that making multiple potions may have restrictions as it requires the expending of a spell. From FAQ->"When creating potions, the crafter must prepare and expend the spell used by the potion as part of its creation." Effectively meaning you will be limited by the amount of spell slots you have.
I am less sure if this also applies to Scrolls.
Side Note: Might be nice to remember that one can scribe multiple spells on a single scroll, will save you from being buried in scrolls.
Records keeping
Please keep proper Records of any crafting you do in your character thread, it is incredibly easy to cheat by accidentally
1. Not meeting DCs at the level it was crafted.
2. Crafting faster than your build allows (miscounting downtime)
3. Using things that boost craft skills to boost Spellcraft (such as tools, Crafters Fortune).
-Despite its name, Spellcraft is not considered a Craft skill.
4. Improperly Crafting items with Material Components for cheap.
-No you cant craft a tome for half its price, and no you cant craft Adamantine Breastplate with Magic Weapons and Armor feat, I dont care that its in the Magic Armor section.
5. Improperly crafting Items with Charges (not fully covered here).
-Some of the Formulas for Staves can be confusing, ask for help as its easy to make a mistake.
6. Crafting without proper feats (Notably for Mythic crafting, and Amulet of Mighty Fists weapon properties).
And there you have a basic overview of crafting. Have any comments,questions, or a strong argument against my research, post below.