Unchained Crafting Special Raw Materials


Rules Questions


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

I'm confused by the special raw material costs from the Unchained alternate crafting rules. I've had a good look and can't find anything that actually answers my question so far.

How much of a raw material do I need for, say, mithral full-plate using easily worked mithral? The normal value of mithral full-plate would be 10500 (1500 + 9000) gp, so it would cost me 2625 gp (1/4 market value as per Unchained rules) to craft it.

However, the special raw materials only give prices in per-pound quantities. For example, easily worked mithral is 800 gp/lb. There are a couple of ways you could work out how much you need.

Weight of Original Equipment
Full-plate armour weighs 50 lbs. so I need 50 lbs. of easily worked mithral to craft it. This means I have to spend 40000 (800 * 50) gp on easily worked mithral, or around 15 times as much as normal, which sounds a bit unreasonable.

Weight of Crafted Equipment
Mithral equipment weighs half as much as normal, so I only need 25 lbs. of easily-worked mithral to make it. Calculations as above, I still have to spend 20000 gp on mithral instead of 2625.

I think this makes more sense than the first option (though still unreasonable), as the various special mithral materials are the most expensive per-pound from all the special materials, even more than adamantine despite normal adamantine being more expensive than normal mithral.

Double the Usual Cost
Mithral full-plate requires 2625 gp of mithral to craft from. I buy it for 2625 gp and it is worth 2625 gp for crafting purposes. Special materials are only worth half their value for crafting purposes. I still need 2625 gp craft-worth of mithral, which means I need to spend 5250 gp on easily-worked mithral to make my full plate.

While this, I think, is more reasonable on a cost-benefit level, it seems to defeat the point of the different special materials having different prices.

Like I've said, I had a good look and couldn't find any satisfactory answers for this, so I'm really interested to hear what people have to say.

Cheers,


I haven't used that subsystem much. That said, I'm looking at it now and AFAICT your "Weight of Crafted Equipment" case is correct. I agree that it is not terribly reasonable, so hopefully someone more experienced can bring up a point we're missing.


Look at it this way...

Mithral Full Plate is 10500gp (1500gp Full Plate + 9000gp Mithral)
Craft cost is 1/4 price 2625gp

Craft cost of normal Mithral is 9000gp
Mithral Full Plate is 25lbs
So 9000gp / 25lbs is 360gp/lbs of normal mithral

Special crafting materials cost more because there Special.

Special Easily Worked Mithral costs 800gp/lbs
Craft cost is 1/2 price 400gp/lbs
Mithral Full Plate is 25lbs
So 400gp X 25lbs is 10000gp (not 9000gp)
Easily Worked Mithral Full Plate is 11500gp
Craft cost is 1/4 price 2875gp

Special Easily Worked Mithral lets you craft 32gp/day instead of 16gp/day

2625gp / 16gp/day = 164 days
2875gp / 32gp/day = 90 days


So then what's the point of having the "easily worked" materials in comparison to standard materials, when it costs over 5 times as much to craft, and by association, takes longer to craft as well?

My understanding? It's broken. It doesn't work the way the developers think it does, or they decided that for Unchained rules, that special material costs were too cheap, so they really beefed them up to make them more "special." It's certainly possible, as Unchained serve as alternate rules-sets. But there's no denying that compared to the original rules-set, it sucks, and makes no sense.

"Don't worry guys, this stuff is 'easily-worked,' so we're going to make it cost 5 times as much, and therefore take 5 times as long to craft!" It's about as "easily-worked" as trying to dig through raw rocks and gravel with a broken shovel. Your bare hands would probably make a better digging tool...


So I'd be tempted to agree mostly with Dr Styx from a design point of view. I don't think Paizo would increase the price of all the materials without putting it in the rules, leaving you to guess based on the cost of more expensive materials.

I was tempted to follow Dr Styx's formula, and obviously you have to pay double for the special raw material because its trade value is double its craft value. I was tempted, but then I found that Mithral has a trade price in Ultimate Equipment; 500gp/lb, so why would I suddenly consider it to be 360gp/lb (also, in the FAQ, it says you use the original weight of the item to determine price).

I'm going to use all the materials that have a normal trade value (Ultimate Equipment, page 93) and a special material trade value as examples.

Adamantine: normal price is 300gp/lb, easily-worked is 600gp/lb.
Cold Iron: normal price is 50gp/lb, easily-worked is 100gp/lb.
Darkwood: normal price is 10gp/lb, easily-worked is 20gp/lb.
Mithral: normal price is 500gp/lb, easily-worked is 800gp/lb.

Apart from mithral, these all follow a pattern; easily-worked material costs twice as much as the standard stuff (and the same craft value). This means that I can pay twice as much, and use the same craft cost to determine time (e.g. for easily-worked adamantine full-plate (market value 16500gp) I would pay (16500/4 * 2 = 8250gp), then complete 16500gp worth for crafting) and complete the item twice as quickly because it's easily worked.

This follows for flawless materials, as they have the same price. You pay twice as much for them, and the benefit (if you can call it that) is that the craft DC doesn't increase (does the base progress increase?) and you craft in the usual time.

This doesn't quite follow for malleable materials. I pay an extra quarter (375 is 1/4 more than 300) of the price and then craft towards.. 5/8 of the price? Which means it takes 5/8 the time to craft? This sounds wrong.

Same for pure materials, you pay an extra half (450gp/lb) and then work towards 3/4 of the normal craft cost, rolling twice, which again means you'll complete the item quicker.

In all cases, you pay more, and you complete the item quicker. It makes some sense, but it doesn't really seem balanced. In any case, I feel like the market value should be the same. After all, once completed, adamantine full-plate is adamantine full-plate. It has the same properties nomatter how it was made. If it was made to order, then you'd probably charge more for the extra materials to get it made faster.

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