I put together this short guide on reverse engineering for formulas earlier this evening for some friends of mine in PFS who were struggling to wrap their heads around it. Thought it would prove generally useful to others as well. Enjoy!
Feel free to let me know if you have any ideas for improving it!
Can you actually get the Formula for free by investing additional days? I always kind of assumed you'd still ahve to pay half the price, just like with normal Crafting. Though the Reverse Engineer rules do seem to allow after careful re-reading. I wonder if that's intentional or not.
Can you actually get the Formula for free by investing additional days? I always kind of assumed you'd still ahve to pay half the price, just like with normal Crafting. Though the Reverse Engineer rules do seem to allow after careful re-reading. I wonder if that's intentional or not.
Yes, it appears so.
When reverse engineering for a formula rather than reducing the necessary expenditure for half an item's worth in raw crafting materials, you are reducing the full price of the formula.
It clearly says full price, and that it's the price that you are reducing. There are no caveats saying you need to stop earlier than 0gp.
Closest I could find are the ambiguous words "as normal." I figure it's referring to the process of checking the same tables and values as the Craft activity, but I suppose others could interpret it in other ways.
Normal, as applies to "keep working to reduce the price" would be to reduce the price to 50%. That's normal for reducing the price of crafting something.
Normal, as applies to "keep working to reduce the price" would be to reduce the price to 50%. That's normal for reducing the price of crafting something.
Except there is no rule (under Reverse Engineering or under the Craft activity) that says you can only knock it down to 50%. The normal rule is you can knock it down to 0%.
The only question is what is it that you are knocking down? Luckily, the answer to that is quite clear.
With normal Crafting, you pay 50% of up front in materials, and are knocking down the potential cost of the remaining 50% of materials (possibly all the way down to 0%).
With reverse engineering, you pay 100% of the formula price up front and are knocking down that price (possibly all the way down to 0%).
If that was not the intent, then reverse engineering requires errata as written, as that is what it literally says. You reduce the price of the formula, with no caveats that you have to stop before 0gp.
What I think you're missing is this:
This uses the Craft activity
So, according to the Craft activity, you have to provide 50% of cost in raw materials of what you're crafting... which in this case is a formula.
So, you provide 50% of the formula cost at the beginning. At the end, you can finish it for 100% of the cost, or keep working to reduce the cost as normal.
This keeps reverse engineering consistent with everything else including, especially, the Inventor feat.
What I think you're missing is this:
This uses the Craft activitySo, according to the Craft activity, you have to provide 50% of cost in raw materials of what you're crafting... which in this case is a formula.
So, you provide 50% of the formula cost at the beginning. At the end, you can finish it for 100% of the cost, or keep working to reduce the cost as normal.
This keeps reverse engineering consistent with everything else including, especially, the Inventor feat.
The reverse engineering rules override that 50% with the full price though. It's a specifically called out departure from the normal crafting rules.
There's nothing in either rule set that indicates reverse engineering functions in the way you describe.
If you're going to petsist in your claim, you may want to start citing some rules sources.