Just checking the rules and the creation rules for items such as alchemist's fire, thunderstones and the like seem overly long. I know Alchemists can bang out things much quicker and you can adjust DCs but a week for an average roll is so inefficient that most people will just hit up an NPC alchemist and take the higher price. So why the long time?
Just checking the rules and the creation rules for items such as alchemist's fire, thunderstones and the like seem overly long. I know Alchemists can bang out things much quicker and you can adjust DCs but a week for an average roll is so inefficient that most people will just hit up an NPC alchemist and take the higher price. So why the long time?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/master-alchemist
Can boost your alchemy speeds by quite alot.Also keep in mind that sometimes NPCs dont have what you need. Of course if you play DnD like a videogame merchants always have everything you want.
Right, but PCs quite often(unless they go Ultimate Campaign) don't have a lot of down-time(Race against the clock adventures and other situations)
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Right, but PCs quite often(unless they go Ultimate Campaign) don't have a lot of down-time(Race against the clock adventures and other situations)
Well if you're looking for the reason why and not a method of doing it quickly outside of being an Alchemist..
Its because downtime is lame. All crafting takes time and its supposed to. However theres a lapse when one or two people have crafting skills and the rest of the party has to wait for them instead of pushing onward in the adventure.
Lets assume an intelligent crafter who has invested a bit in Craft(Alchemy)
5th Level
5 Ranks
+5 Int Bonus
+2 from Master Alchemist
+3 Skill Focus (Alchemy)
We're making a vial of Acid so he can't fail at a DC of 15.
We're going to assume he rolls a 15 for a total of 30 craft alchemy.
30 X 15 is 450. Divide by 7 to check how much GP progress we made (We use GP because of Master Alchemist) in a single day. We get 64.(rounded down)
So we made our vial in a day. But lets see if we can go farther.
64/10 is 6. (rounded down) Therefore we accomplished the task in 1/6th of a day. Which is 4 hours.
I was pretty sure a day meant a normal day of crafting, which is 8 hours. Wouldn't dividing that by 10 make it forty-eight minutes?
Yes, but I think in practice crafting has a lower bound of about a half-day block. But! It gets better.
Master alchemist means he gets five vials of acid because of his +5 int mod. And you can take 10 on crafting, which would get you 53gp of progress in a day, and then you get the multiplier. So.... Basically, 25 flasks of acid from an 8-hour day of crafting. I think.
I messed up in my math and was thinking about the 8 hour workday, but decided not to edit it but yeah 48 minutes to whip up a vial of acid. Also Master Alchemist only applies to poison doses, though I would houserule it to apply to other alchemical items as well since poisons can be much more benficial and costly.
In general crafting is only limited by the time. A few days of work for items with a -50% discount sounds fair.
Keep in mind that PF is not a crafting/business simulation. Why should an adventure go hunting dragons when he can create/sell items without danger and a lot of profit? A profit of 50% is incredible high and not realistic.
Actually it's a 66.66667 % discount.
Problem is if say I'm a wizard I can make scrolls much quicker and they will often be cheaper and have similar effects.
If someone mentioned this, forgive me, but you can make Craft checks by the day instead of by the week. You can get it done quicker that way if your skill is overkill.
I factored it in my math. The divide by 7 part is assuming a seven day week.
Another important thing to remember is if the DC is higher but the cost of the item is still relatively low, the higher DC actually progresses you more quickly.
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Actually it's a 66.66667 % discount.
Problem is if say I'm a wizard I can make scrolls much quicker and they will often be cheaper and have similar effects.
He produce a high value of scroll at a fast pace, but he sell them at the production price, not the purchase price.
Good for getting a few cheap scrolls, but you can exhaust your founds very quickly if you prepare a lot of scrolls.
And remember, you can scribe a single spell in a day, regardless of the scroll value.
Scribing a scroll requires 1 day per 1,000 gp of the base price. Although an individual scroll might contain more than one spell, each spell must be scribed as a separate effort, meaning that no more than 1 spell can be scribed in a day.
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I would like to point out one thing if is an Alchemist making at lvl 3.
Swift Alchemy (Ex): At 3rd level, an alchemist can create alchemical items with astounding speed. It takes an alchemist half the normal amount of time to create alchemical items, and he can apply poison to a weapon as
a move action.
The crafting rules are not great, sadly. They are generalized to cover all crafts with a single set of rules, and some don't make much sense.