Gwaihir Scout's page

Uses the Craft skill. Can be used untrained, but you'd better be pretty smart if you don't want to waste a bunch of raw materials. Requires artisan tools to avoid a -2 circumstance bonus, except for alchemy. Alchemy requires an alchemist's kit, but you don't need to worry about it if you're in a city. Still nice for the +2 bonus once you can afford it.

I'm taking Craft(alchemy). I want to make some Alchemist's Fire (AF from now on) on the cheap, because who doesn't like burning things?

1) Find the item's price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp). AF costs 20 gp, or 200 sp.

2) Find the item's DC from Table: Craft Skills. AF is DC 20.

3) Pay 1/3 of the item's price for the raw material cost. AF costs the crafter 66 or 67 sp.

4) Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week's worth of work. If the check succeeds, multiply your check result by the DC. If the result × the DC equals the price of the item in sp, then you have completed the item. (If the result × the DC equals double or triple the price of the item in silver pieces, then you've completed the task in one-half or one-third of the time. Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner.) If the result × the DC doesn't equal the price, then it represents the progress you've made this week. Record the result and make a new Craft check for the next week. Each week, you make more progress until your total reaches the price of the item in silver pieces.

OK, so getting a 20 to craft AF gives a result of 20 x 20 = 400 sp. Therefore, you can create 1 AF in half a week, or 2 AFs in a week (paying 134 sp), presumeably working 8 hours a day. Does this follow the magic item rules about crafting while adventuring? If you get a 30, that's 600 sp, or 3 AFs, you can make in a week. Now, do you have to make items one at a time, or can you just say how many you're making this week based on the result? Easier for everyone if it's the latter.

You can also decide in advance to raise a DC by ten in order to work faster by raising your multiplier. Now getting your 30 to craft AF gives 30 x 30 = 900 sp, which is 4.5 AFs in one week, or one in two days.

If you fail a check by 4 or less, you make no progress this week. If you fail by 5 or more, you ruin half the raw materials and have to pay half the original raw material cost again.

If you get a 19 to craft AF, you make no progress, and if you get a 15, you lose 33 or 34 sp worth of materials.

Making an antitoxin is DC 25, is worth 500 sp and costs 167 sp. Making the 25 gives 25 x 25 = 625 sp. This is ugly, but essentially you can make an antitoxin in 6 days. You need to get a 35 on your craft check at DC 35 before you can make 2 antitoxins in a week (6 days again, actually).

Now, let's say I was crazy enough to make a masterwork weapon for my fighter pal without using the Masterwork Transformation spell. Let's pick a longsword, because it's worth 15 gp which is divisible by 3. The normal longsword costs 150 sp (crafter pays 50 sp), and is DC 15. Easy enough. Bare minimum is 15 x 15 = 225 sp and you've got your longsword in 5 days. Get your craft check up to 25 to get the sword done in 2 days.

Once you go for masterwork, you're in trouble. 315 gp becomes 3150 sp. You pay 1050 sp or 105 gp, and the DC is now 20. 20 x 20 = 400 sp, and it takes 8 weeks to make that thing. Getting your craft skill up to 30 means it still takes you 3.5 weeks.

If you only care about the bare minimum for crafting, you only need to get your craft bonus up to +13, because your alchemist's kit/mwk artisan's tools will give you a +2 to get you to the hardest DC (25) by taking 10 (this is ignoring traps and high strength composite bows). If you're only making weapons and armor, you only need a 20 for mwk stuff, or a +8 bonus on your own. Even lower if you just want to make your own arrows or something. But the extra speed is worth it, so craft is worth maxing if you're going to do any real amount of it.

Now here's where it's really happening. This requires feats, caster levels, some spell, and the only skill you need is Spellcraft (you can substitute others), which is why everyone looks at the wizard first for this. Magical Tattos are the exception, requiring a related Craft skill.

This is somewhat simpler than mundane crafting, I suppose to make up for the extra cost and requirements. You have to pay half of the base price of the item in raw materials, and you can make an item in 1 day per 1000 gp of its base price, irrespective of the DC. This is working 8 hours per day. If you rush, you can complete this in only 4 hours by increasing the DC by 5, but you cannot exceed the 1000 gp/day limit. If you work while adventuring, you can squeeze in 4 hours of work to get 2 hours (or 250 gp) worth of progress. If you get a portable artificer's lab (costs 300 gp), you get 3 hours of progress (375 gp) for those 4 hours of work, but the DC goes up by 5. You also need the required spell prepared (or known, if you're a spontaneous caster) each day you're working on the item, and it must be cast during the process.

Potions and scrolls are an exception to this rule; they can take as little as 2 hours to create (if their base price is 250 gp or less). Scrolls and potions whose base price is more than 250 gp, but less than 1,000 gp, take 8 hours to create, just like any other magic item. [...]Regardless of the time needed for construction, a caster can create no more than one magic item per day.

While mundane crafting lets you make rolls per day of work if you so desire, magical crafting requires full commitment. You make one Spellcraft roll at the end of the required amount of time based on the base price of the item you want to make. Fail this roll by 4 or less and the item doesn't work, and you've wasted all that time and money. Fail by 5 or more, and it's cursed, which the GM gets to have fun with. At least if it's cursed you can sell it to some schmuck if you're chaotic and/or evil, or find a weird collector.

For this reason, you shouldn't spend the resources to craft something unless you can finish it by taking 10 on your check. Exceeding the DC by any amount gives you nothing extra; no faster speed or cheaper cost. But if you fail, you're screwed. Nothing like wasting days of work and thousands of gold because you didn't roll high on the die. On the other hand, maybe you're the gambling type and you've got a lot of extra money from crafting already, right? Right?

Let's spice this up with some examples, hey? Let's say I'm taking Craft Wonderous Item at level 3. The first thing I want to make is a Handy Haversack, because I'm a weakling and the fighter's getting sick of carrying my crafting gear. It's base price is 2000 gp, so I know it'll take 2 days of full effort and cost 1000 gp. What else do I need? Craft Wonderous Item and the spell Secret Chest. Well, dang. Secret chest is a 5th level spell, so I can't cast it until I'm level 9. Not to worry, as I can simply substitue requirements by increasing the DC of the Spellcraft check to show how much harder I have to work at it! The crafting feat is always required, though, and you can't substitute requirements when crafting potions, spell-trigger items (wands and staves), and spell-completion items (scrolls).

OK, the base DC for crafting magical items is 5 plus CL. Handy Haversack is a 9th CL item (because of Secret Chest), so the base DC is 14. I don't know Secret Chest, so I have to increase the DC by 5 to ignore that requirement, making it a DC 19. At level 3, I've got a 20 int (+5) and max ranks (+3) in Spellcraft, a class skill for me (+3), giving me a +11 in Spellcraft. Taking 10 gives me a 21, meaning I have no problem making this item! If I wanted to work only 4 hours per day, however, that would push the DC to 24, and I'd have to roll a 13 on the die; not worth the risk. If I'm making this while I'm out adventuring, I can get it done in 8 days. Using a portable artificer's lab shortens this time to 6 days, but the DC is 24 again and I'm not ready for that yet. With my luck, the GM would say I made a Bag of Devouring by accident.

Now, let's say I didn't have that high a Spellcraft bonus, couldn't be sure of making the DC 19 and didn't want to chance it on the dice. There's a couple of ways around this. First, I can get some friendly caster who can cast Secret Chest to stand over my shoulder and cast it when I need it. Maybe. You could read it so that this isn't allowed. I'd probably have to pay him, though. I could also go buy two scrolls of Secret Chest (one for each day I'll need to craft the item), and make a caster level check to cast the spell from the scroll. That costs more than the market price of the Haversack, though, and would be pretty stupid.

Now, with items where the spell required doesn't line up so nicely with the item's caster level, how does that work? Does the higher CL only adjust the base DC, or have I gotten this all wrong and need to increase the DC by 5 for the lack of the CL, as well?

These basically follow the rules for other magical items, except the caster level here is enforced and can't be replaced by raising the DC of the Spellcraft check. You also need the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat and a masterwork weapon or armor, of course. There are two things you can do do a weapon or armor: give it an enhancement bonus, or give it a special ability. An enhancement bonus is easy: the caster level required is three times the enhancement bonus, so a +2 longsword requires a 6th level caster, and the base DC is 11. No fancy spells required. The market price is 8315 gp (8000 for the +2 and 315 for the mwk longsword), but you only worry about the 8000 gp the magical part takes, since you're starting with a mwk longsword. So it'll take you 8 days and 4000 (+ 315) gp to make. That's less time than it took the blacksmith to make the mwk sword in the first place. Working 4 hours a day raises the DC to 16, while working while adventuring takes 32 days (22 at DC 16 with a portable artificer's lab).

If you want a special ability, you'll need to check for the caster level of the ability you're adding. These also require spells, which can be skipped by raising the DC by 5. Now, since special abilities can't be added to weapons without enhancements, there's the question of how the required CLs interact. You simply take the higher of the two as the requirement. For example, I want to make my fighter pal a +2 frost longsword. Starting with a masterwork longsword (already paid for), I need to be 6th level for the +2, and 8th level for the frost ability, so I need to be 8th level. I also need the spell Ice Storm (or Chill Metal if I were a druid), which isn't a problem since it's only a 4th level spell. The frost ability costs the same as a +1 bonus, so this weapon is priced as if it were a +3 weapon, or 18000 gp. This takes 9000 gp and 18 days of work from me, and I need to make a DC 13 check. If I wanted to only work 4 hours a day AND I didn't have Ice Storm, the DC is still only 23, which a wizard has no problem making by taking 10 at level 8.

Now, I want to take that +2 frost longsword and make it a +3 frost longsword. The caster level is now determined by the +3 bonus, which gives 9th CL, and that beats the 8th CL from the frost ability. As for the cost, a +4 bonus costs 32000 gp, but you've already got 18000 gp of it, so you need to work with the difference, or 14000 gp. That's 14 days of work at DC 14, costing 7000 gp. I'm pretty sure you don't need Ice Storm now, since you already have the frost property. If you started from scratch at this point, you would still need Ice Storm even though the +3 bonus is what determines the caster level. Upgrading the frost ability to the icy burst ability is probably allowed, since the latter is a clear upgrade to the former and they require the same spell. This raises the caster level to 10th, beating the 9th CL from the +3, and so on and so forth.

Armor is just like weapons, except with costs, and therefore time commitment, halved. There are also a lot of magic items (such as rings of protection) that follow the x3 caster level rule for each level of bonus they provide.

1) Learn the bleeping rules. Especially for common stuff and things you plan to do.

2) Know what your players want.

2a) Talk to your players about what everyone expects from the game.

3) Know what your PCs can do.

4) Don't take control of the PCs away from your players, barring enchantment spells.

4a) Don't tell your PCs what they're thinking, unless it's conclusions they draw through knowledge checks. Even then, try to let the players draw the conclusions themselves if they can.

5) You're an enabler, not a tyrant (interestingly, this fits with the classical liberal view of government). That said, grow a spine.

6) If your story is so bleeping important that you insist it has to go a certain way, write a crappy novel instead.

7) Talk to a girl. Once. Alternatively, read a book.

8) Not all things fit all games, or all players.

9) Expect the PCs to break your cool stuff. Don't get attached.

10)Be prepared for game time.

OK, let's say that the white parents are super-pasty and the black parents are darker than Frank Miller's Batman. In other words, they're homogenous for their skin color.

The number I've seen for the number of genes controlling the amount of melanin in your skin is six. There may be more, but this accounts for most of it. Some have more effect than others, but it doesn't matter, since you wanted all or nothing.

Capital: darker skin, lower-case: lighter skin, assuming Medelian distribution (big assumption).

G1: AABBCCDDEEFF x aabbccddeeff -> AaBbCcDdEeFf for all offspring

G2: AaBbCcDdEeFf x AaBbCcDdEeFf

This is a nightmare of a Punnett Square, but we only care about the AABBCCDDEEFF and aabbccddeeff results. And there is only 1 way to get each of them.

There are six genes, two copies of each to distribute. Each allele has a 50% chance of being picked. So it's pretty simply .5^12 = 0.000244, which is 0.0244% or 1/4096 to get either one-sided result.

There's all sorts of things wrong here, since I'm simplifying and not looking things up, but this gives you an idea.