Craft Construct shenanigans


Rules Questions


Long time lurker, first time poster.

I want to preface this by saying I want a strict as possible RAW answer. I'm more interested in the word of the law, not the spirit of the law.

There are a number of abilities that decrease either the cost or the crafting time of magic items, however it isn't clear how these abilities stack.

Say we have a 10th level gestalt character, Dwarf Alchemist 1 / Evangelist 9 | Wizard 10. This is a character a player in my campaign wants to run, and he wants to focus on crafting Constructs (mostly golems). (I am aware that normally one cannot retrain base class levels into prestige class levels due to this FAQ, however I have waived this in my game in order to encourage more flavourful builds, since I rarely see any prestige classes in my games).

Reducing Cost
(Another house-rule among our group is you can take multiple traits from the same category)
Relevant abilities are: Hedge Magician, Spark of Creation, Eldritch Smith, and the third Evangelist boon from Torag's Deific Obedience, Sacred Crafting. He has 3 traits rather than 2 because he also took a drawback.
All of these abilities reduce the cost of crafting by a percentage, however it is not clear whether these percentages stack additively or multiplicatively.

Additive Stacking
100% base cost of the item
90% Sacred Crafting (worth noting that Sacred Crafting reduces the base cost, not the crafting cost)
45% crafting cost (half base cost)
42.75% Hedge Magician (5% of 45% is 2.25%)
40.5% Spark of Creation
38.25% Eldritch Smith (assuming the item is made of metal or stone)
So with additive stacking, a metal/stone magic item could be crafted for 38.25% of its market price.

Multiplicative Stacking
100% base cost of the item
90% Sacred Crafting
45% crafting cost
42.75% Hedge Magician (5% of 45% is 2.25%)
40.6125% Spark of Creation (5% of 42.75% is 2.1375%)
38.581875% Eldritch Smith (5% of 40.6125% is 2.030625%)
So with multiplicative stacking, a metal/stone magic item could be crafted for 38.581875% of its market price.

The difference isn't much, but I'd still like to know the answer to this.

Reducing Time
Relevant abilities/items are: the Dwarf Wizard Favoured Class Bonus, Arcane Builder, Cooperative Crafting with both his Valet familiar and his cohort Dwarf Wizard from the Leadership feat, and Amazing Tools of Manufacture.
The big questions here are:


  • Do multiple instances of Cooperative Crafting stack, and if so, how? (My inclination is yes, and the crafting time is divided by (1+the number of people with Cooperative Crafting assisting).
  • How does the Amazing Tools of Manufacture interact with other abilities that reduce time? If you had one person helping with Cooperative Crafting, would the user be able to do 2000 gp of work in 30 minutes rather than an hour? Does the helper also need a set of Amazing Tools in order to do this, or is one shared between them sufficient? Does the Dwarf Wizard FCB or Arcane Builder interact with this?
  • If someone assisting with Cooperative Crafting also has ways to reduce the cost or time of crafting(for example, the cohort may get Spark of Creation, Hedge Magician, or Eldritch Smith (through the Additional Traits feat), the Dwarf FCB, Arcane Builder, or Amazing Tools of Manufacture), does it further reduce the cost/price of the magic item? If so, by how much?

My initial inclination is as follows:
1000 gp/8 hours default crafting speed
875 gp/7 hours +2000 gp/1 hour=2875 gp/8 hours subtract 1 hour normal crafting, add 1 hour of crafting with Amazing Tools
4875 gp/8 hours +2000 gp/8 hours from 10 Dwarf FCBs
6093.75 gp/8 hours 25% increase from Arcane Builder
18281.25 gp/8 hours Triple speed from 2 helpers with Cooperative Crafting
36562.5 gp/8 hours rushing (which adds +5 to DC)
The cohort having additional abilities probably doesn't speed things along any further, however I am unsure about this.

Bonus Round: Caster Level shenanigans
Ignoring a requirement for a magic item is just a trivial +5 to the DC for the crafter. Normally the caster level requirement can be ignored in this way, however constructs specifically have a caveat which states:

Building and Modifying Constructs wrote:
Like when crafting magic items, a creator with a sufficiently high skill bonus may ignore these requirements. Each missing requirement increases the Craft DC by 5. Regardless, the creator must meet all item creation feats and minimum caster level requirements.

That quote is found here: Link.

So the only way to craft a construct with a caster level requirement is to meet that requirement. However, a character's caster level can be pumped above their character level. Relevant abilities/items are: Orange Prism Ioun Stone, Aether, Alchemical Affinity, Allied Spellcaster, Gifted Adept, Lore Seeker, Mage's/Varisian Tattoo, and Spell Specialization. Additionally, the construct can be made of Irespan Basalt, which I cannot find on the pfsrd or Archive of Nethys, so I'll supply a quote:

Magnimar, City of Monuments wrote:

Physical Properties: Irespan basalt is as hard as iron, while retaining its other stony features for carving and building. It has hardness 10 and typically fetches a price of about 5 sp per pound. However, since few buyers are interested in stones of less than 1,000 pounds, the Irespan basalt trade is relatively limited to specialists capable of harvesting and transporting such heavy blocks.

Building Constructs: When a construct's materials consist entirely of Irespan stone, its Craft DC increases by + 5 , but the required Caster Level decreases by 1. In addition, stone constructs crafted from Irespan stone gain a +2 bonus to Strength and gain twice as many bonus hit points as normal from the construct type.

Which of the above apply for meeting the construct's caster level requirement? My feeling is all of them, as the requirements don't specify that the caster level has to be for a particular class or spell, so pumping up the caster level of a single spell would be sufficient for satisfying requirements, as long as you can maintain it for the entire crafting process.


Zollqir wrote:
All of these abilities reduce the cost of crafting by a percentage, however it is not clear whether these percentages stack additively or multiplicatively.
Additive - that's the basic rule of Pathfinder.
Quote:
Do multiple instances of Cooperative Crafting stack, and if so, how?
Possibly, it's the GM's call to make. I'm fairly sure the fifty-seventh cooperator isn't going to be adding much...
Quote:
How does the Amazing Tools of Manufacture interact with other abilities that reduce time?
The description of their functioning suggest the "main" crafter gets the time bonus, while any additional crafter just gets the skill check plusses.
Quote:
If someone assisting with Cooperative Crafting also has ways to reduce the cost or time of crafting(for example, the cohort may get Spark of Creation, Hedge Magician, or Eldritch Smith (through the Additional Traits feat), the Dwarf FCB, Arcane Builder, or Amazing Tools of Manufacture), does it further reduce the cost/price of the magic item?
Depends on the exact wording of the abilities. For instance:
Hedge Wizard wrote:
Whenever you craft a magic item
So this trait only functions for the actual crafter, not for any assistants.
Quote:
So the only way to craft a construct with a caster level requirement is to meet that requirement. However, a character's caster level can be pumped above their character level. Relevant abilities/items are: Orange Prism Ioun Stone, Aether, Alchemical Affinity, Allied Spellcaster, Gifted Adept, Lore Seeker, Mage's/Varisian Tattoo, and Spell Specialization.

Several of those only increase the Caster Level when casting a spell, not while crafting. Just because you can cast a single spell at a crazy high CL, doesn't mean that's your Caster Level for every other application too.


VRMH wrote:
Additive - that's the basic rule of Pathfinder.

Where are you getting that from? I don't think that applies when it's subtraction.

As far as I've heard, multipliers (greater than zero) may stack additively sure, but percentage reductions would not simply subtract from the base.


Joesi wrote:
VRMH wrote:
Additive - that's the basic rule of Pathfinder.
Where are you getting that from? I don't think that applies when it's subtraction.

Truth be told, I have no quote to back me up on this. But multipliers stack additively, and divisors are never explicitly mentioned. So logically, they should act in the same way multipliers do.

Liberty's Edge

You are likely thinking of;

Multiplying: When you are asked to apply more than one multiplier to a roll, the multipliers are not multiplied by one another. Instead, you combine them into a single multiplier, with each extra multiple adding 1 less than its value to the first multiple. For example, if you are asked to apply a ×2 multiplier twice, the result would be ×3, not ×4.

Note however, that this is only said to apply to "rolls".

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