question about purchasing equipment with pp

[JAF0]

A player in one of my pfs games sent me this email... and I don't know how to answer him, so I'm asking here.

"I want to buy masterwork platemail. I have just over 1500 gp. Enough to buy platemail but not masterwork platemail. Can I spend 2 prestige points to pay the extra cost (150gp) for the masterwork? I guess from a roleplay perspective it would like asking someone from the guild to ask the master craftsman to make the armor rather than a journeyman."

[Eric Clingenpeel]

Nope, it has to be the entire cost. You can't split a purchase that way.

[crashcanuck]

Normally armor and weapons cannot simply be made masterworked after the fact and I don't believe you can split the cost of something between gold and Prestige. That being said he can purchase a casting of Masterwork Transformation with Prestige.

[JAF0]

Thank you both... I was pretty much sure that the answer was no, but the use of pp for the spell was something that never occurred to me... I'll tell him.

[Eric Clingenpeel]

Yep, I forget about that spell. That would work.

[Sir Belmont the Valiant]

You could also tell him to get the armor, and pay the GP to have it transformed into masterwork after his next adventure. That way he keeps the PP. 2PP is worth 750 GP of stuff, why blow off the other 600 GP of value? The masterwork quality will only get him a reduction in the Armor Check penalties... is there a hurry to do that?

[Andrietta Ebonfeather]

"Alternatively, you could let the fledgling know that saving one's coin and restricting purchases until one can afford lightweight plate armor is an option. They can attempt using their other abilities to help the party and let them know straight up at the start that they are saving up for some good armor.

It's what I did to get my mithril plate, and I never heard a complaint from the teams I was assigned to. They all understood all too well."