situation: we have a Zen Archer in the party that uses a fair number of arrows. I am an Oracle of Wood with Minor Creation (wood items only) as a bonus spell (level 6).
Minor Creation
Effect unattended, nonmagical object of nonliving plant matter, up to 1 cu. ft./level
Duration 1 hour/level (D)
You create a nonmagical, unattended object of nonliving vegetable matter. The volume of the item created cannot exceed 1 cubic foot per caster level. You must succeed on an appropriate Craft skill check to make a complex item.
what would the volume of an individual arrow be? Moreover, can arrows be crafted with Minor creation?
would the singular nature of "a nonmagical, unattended object" mean I could only create one arrow?
The singular nature of the wording of the spell would, by RAW, limit you to creating a single arrow.
If it were at my table, I'd probably allow the oracle to create 20 arrows per cubic foot of wood they have at hand. They'd need to make the craft check as arrows aren't simply just sticks with pointy ends, but rather actually rather difficult items to make correctly.
Assuming the spell could create multiple arrows at all, one cubic foot should be enough to get you about 50 arrow shafts or so.
People often underestimate just how much volume a given amount of cubic footage really is. A human being is (roughly) only about 5 cubic feet in volume.
Determining the actual cubic footage of something is really simple. Grind up or melt down the object in question, and see how much space the resulting dust/fluid takes up. That will get you a much more accurate estimate of its actual volume. Too many GMs and players like to include the empty spaces in and around objects for some reason.
no wood at hand would be needed, this is minor creation. Too bad Shape wood is too crude to make arrows.
I did do some rough calculations, figuring a 36 inch arrow and a nice round (for the math) cross section of 1 square inch yields 48 arrows per cubic foot.
another hitch might be that the arrows would have to have wooden heads and wooden fletching.
Well, it's a 6th-level spell. Creating arrows isn't exactly gamebreaking. This is how I'd handle it at my table.
You're making 1 cubic foot of wood, then crafting it to be arrows made completely of wood (no metal heads) based on a craft check.
So rather than considering what volume of wood do that many arrows take up, I'd consider what volume of wood would be necessary to craft that many arrows.
1" is rather narrow for fletching; let's go with 2".
36" seems reasonable for a length.
So three cubic feet (easier to deal with) of wood nets you one arrow long by 6 arrows by 6 arrows; so you're crafting 36 arrows out of each 3-cubic-foot block.
I'd also make the crafting check a bit higher than a standard check; you're not making an arrow, you're trying to create a chunk of wood in the shape of an arrow that will suffice as an arrow.
So consider it as having to masterwork if it's going to work at all, with an ad-hoc -4 penalty for the difficulty of making an all-wood arrow, and possibly another -2 for lack of tools, and you're at DC26.
With the failure rules (fail by 5 or more, waste half), I'd allow creation of half (or half/half, etc.) with each 5. So a 12th-level oracle would ordinarily create 12 cubic feet (4 x 36 arrows) with a craft check of 26 or higher, or 72 arrows on a 21+, or 36 arrows on a 16+, or 18 arrows on an 11+.
Not to overthink it or anything :)
For whatever reason, I tend to cluster ammunition in 20s. I think it might have to do with my 1e roots, where arrows were sold in quivers of 20. I chose 20, not because it perfectly fits the volume of 1 cubic foot, but because 20 was the standard unit of measure for ammunition in my head. 50 is the Pathfinder standard for ammunition, so that's probably a better number.