Many constructs in the Bestiary hint that you can add hit dice to them during their creation to make for a more powerful construct (one example is the adamantine version of the iron cobra which says you are supposed to add +5 HP per hit die).
Where are the rules for pricing and such when doing this? Surely it takes more investment. I looked at specific creature entries (such as the homunculus and iron cobra), at the Construct type, and in the creature advancement section. Alas, I cannot find anything that seems to cover this.
If I, for example, want a 5 or 10 HD iron cobra, how much extra is it going to cost me?
Creative Director
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Many constructs in the Bestiary hint that you can add hit dice to them during their creation to make for a more powerful construct (one example is the adamantine version of the iron cobra which says you are supposed to add +5 HP per hit die).
Where are the rules for pricing and such when doing this? Surely it takes more investment. I looked at specific creature entries (such as the homunculus and iron cobra), at the Construct type, and in the creature advancement section. Alas, I cannot find anything that seems to cover this.
If I, for example, want a 5 or 10 HD iron cobra, how much extra is it going to cost me?
Advancing constructs is generally something the GM will do to create a monster to threaten the PCs. It's not something that, normally, the PCs will be doing when they build their own constructs, since that's a VERY expensive thing to do. That's part of the reason that the Craft Construct feat isn't included in the Core Rulebook and is instead in the Bestiary.
There aren't any rules for engineering prices for constructs, in other words. The GM has to make them up all on his/her own. Of course, you can use the rules we've provided for the various constructs in the Bestiary as a baseline. That's more or less what we did—chose a few numbers to start with and then did our best to spread things out. There's no handy calculator involved.
Bestiary pg 158 under "Constructing a Golem" has your prices for standard golem advancement.
If you want to translate how much that would cost for a different construct (such as the cobra you mentioned) simply scale down the cost of a golem to the cost of the cobra and figure out some type of percentage of that cost that both you and your DM can live with for additional HD, size changes, or the Shield Guardian upgrade.
Another thought, so what about adding the simple advanced template to a construct? How much would that cost?
Also, if you were using the rebuild rules instead of the quick rules to apply that template, would you still add +2 hp/HD and +2 fort SV to the construct even though it doesn't have a CON score to be boosted by +4?
I would think yes because on pg 307 it says to treat the construct as having a CON of 10 for any DC's or stats that rely on a con score.
(Edit: This should also apply if you change the golem's size, shouldn't it?)
INT would remain at "-" though, unless the DM ruled that by making it advanced you gave it some kind of intelligence.