Can the karma prayer bead be used to increase caster level to meet magic arms and armor preqs?

[TheGuyOverThere9888]

A mandatory pre-req for crafting magic arms and armor is caster level must be at least three times the enhancement bonus.

The karma bead increases caster level by +4 for 10min.

Can a cleric lv 8 use the karma bead to bump their caster level to 12 for crafting magic arms and armor with an enhancement bonus of +4?

Side note: Why does crafting magic arms and armor uses CL rather than a spell? Mechanically why is there a need for such differing requirements?

[TheGuyOverThere9888]

My thought is the enhancement bonus CL requirement works like spell requirements. If the spell is currently accessible on the spell list its good to go for crafting. Likewise if caster level meets the requirement for crafting magic arms and armor then its good to go for crafting.

I haven't found anything specific in the rules thus far. With that, I suspect the answer to my questions may require enlightenment from the Paizo crew as to their intentions regarding mechanical design elements of crafting magic arms and armor.

[Robb Smith]

Not really addressed. If you had enough Karma Beads to persist through 8 hours per day of crafting (48 of them), I'd allow it. But odds are if you have 48 karma beads you're probably over 12th level anyway.

[Maezer]

Just take the +5 penalty to spellcraft DC and craft it without the required caster level. You'd need to maintain any caster level bonus for the duration of the creation process to take advantage of it on the roll.

Why doesn't it require a spell? Primarily because they copied it from 3.x srd.

Why was it that way in 3.x? Because in 3.x you couldn't bypass the pre-reqs. I assume they didn't want level 5 craftsman making +5 weapons just because they knew the 1st level spell Magic Weapon. Instead they could have gone with greater magic weapon but they probably wanted the level 5 craftsman to be able to make a +1 magic weapon at level 5. So instead they wrote a scaling requirement.

In my opinion. It really should require a caster that can generate the desired enhancement bonus via a spell. Thus a 1:4 enhancement bonus to caster level ratio.

[stringburka]

Afaik you cant bypass the cl requirement of weapon and armor crafting.

[TheGuyOverThere9888]

I seems like CL is a requirement because an appropriate spell does not exist. This leads me to think that the process is the same as if casting a spell. In such a case a caster crafting a magic item does not continuously cast the required spell as that would require many spell slots. Rather, since all required materials are expended initially (including spell components) and the spell slot is expended as if casting the required spell each day, it follows that the required spell is expended initially as well. This is to say, the spell slot would be expended just after activating the karma bead (unless the casting time is more than 10min.

So if the requirement works like casting a spell simply meeting the CL during said proxy casting each day should work.

If the CL is actually associated with a corresponding spell level then it follows that a spell slot of the appropriate level would be expended in place of an actual spell. Thus a second level spell would be expended to create a +1 enhancement a third level spell for a +2 (corresponding to the highest spell slot of a CL 6 caster.

I'm sure there are many more possibilities, however, other than the rule seems to have been carried over from previous versions the text gives few clues as to the creators intentions mechanically.

[TheGuyOverThere9888]

Now talking about game balance, I don't think crafting requirements (feats aside) were put in place for game balance. It seems like craft DC and gp/level constraints preform that task adequately. The DC's scale just fine with difficulty and wealth presents variable difficulty in game play as it determines the quality/quantity of equipment.

Simply, what will stop a low level player from creating high level equipment? GP limits should do the trick.

Why could a low level caster make boots of haste but not armor of haste?

Once again this refers us back to the original question.

Why Paizo? Why?

[TheGuyOverThere9888]

Anyone else care to chime in?

[Ughbash]

Robb Smith wrote:

Not really addressed. If you had enough Karma Beads to persist through 8 hours per day of crafting (48 of them), I'd allow it. But odds are if you have 48 karma beads you're probably over 12th level anyway.

Being a kind and generous DM who is always willing to give my players the benefit of the doubt, I would allow them to do it with only 24 Karma beads assuming they took the -5 on spellcraft to do the days crafting in 4 hours instead of 8.

With that said, an Orange Ioun stone SHOULD work for crafting 1 level higher.

[Mergy]

As others have said, it's the 10 minute duration that kills this. Crafting is an hours long, possibly weeks long experience. No 10 minute "I made my check and it's good for the rest of the week" play here.

Permanent bonuses like an ioun stone are different once they've been in place for 24 hours.

[TheGuyOverThere9888]

Granted, if the bonus was active for the entire duration it would simplify matters greatly.

Think about this. If a caster was to cast a spell that lasted 1min/CL using a karma bead, would the duration of the spell be shortened post fact?

I'm not convinced that any spell required for crafting would need to be continuously cast repeatedly for crafting to take place. Otherwise I would expect many spell slots to be expended and not just one.

Now if said caster would be unable to work, what i presume to be the essence of a single spell, without the necessary CL. That saying, even though the caster could cast the correct spell the caster could no longer craft with a spell the caster could no longer cast. However, this can not be the case since a caster can have another caster cast the required spell for an item instead of doing it him/herself. Besides the difficulty of crafting is represented by the craft DC not the difficulty of any individual component process.

I think the key to understanding this question has to do with modeling what is actually taking place. Is a magic item like a mass of magic energy stuffed inside a physical shell by the caster drop by drop or rather spell by spell?