Masterwork?


Rules Questions

Scarab Sages

I am very new to the game and just want to craft a masterwork composite longbow. It says in the rule book "that this feature allows you to add your strength bonus to damage, up to the maximum bonus indicated for the bow". How do you determine maximum bonus for this specific weapon?? I have strength 16(+3), so can i add +3 to the bow to give me +3 damage?? Assuming this is the case, would that make it cost 700g???


You have to craft the composite bow to accept a strength bonus. Crafting a bow with a strength bonus adjustment is more expensive than a basic bow. Each +1 str adjustment adds to the cost of the bow.

I don't have access to the weapon creation rules (I'm at work and those pages are blocked by our internet filters) so you'll have to look it up, but generally it is best to make a weapon that has the same str adjustment as your own str bonus.

If you make a +3 str adjusted bow and you have a +3 str bonus then it would add a +3 to the damage for each arrow that hits. I am not sure about the total cost but 700g sounds in the ballpark.


Yes it would, you got it!


Yes you've got it.
100 gp for the long bow
300 gp to make it masterwork (+1 to hit)
and then
100 gp per + of strength.
So +300 gp for +3 damage with your 16 str.

=700 gp


700gp is entirely correct.

100 for the bow, 300 for masterwork, and 100 per str point increase, 300 total.

Scarab Sages

awesome :D

Sczarni

100 for Composite Bow
300 for Masterwork Quality
300 for 3 'Strength points'

700 total!

Yeah, you can make a composite bow as strong as you like but if you're not strong enough to pull the string properly, you suffer a -2 penalty on attack rolls.

So, assuming you're a medium sized character, you'll be doing 1d8+3 damage. Remember, because it's masterwork, you also get a +1 to your attack rolls!


Don't forget that if you're crafting the item you only pay 1/3 of the cost. So 233 gold 3 silver 4 copper.


Assuming you have a +11 to your Craft check, crafting this bow will take you 17 weeks of continuous work. Better hope you have effectively limitless downtime.


Or that you're making it straight out of the gate with a new character, bang, done. Man, where was that thread where I was all solving RP problems by crafting bows?


My druid crafts bows. It is her constant downtime activity, even while adventuring. There are ways to reduce the time, but yes, it takes a long time. It's a role playing thing with her, she does it because she views herself as a bow-maker. She normally ends up giving the bows away to party members or else using them as leverage in barter situations when in town. Our GM is very good at providing opportunities for her bow crafting to be woven into the narrative.

In one case we were trying to locate an assassin and all we had was the arrow which killed a local noble. She was able to use her connection with other bow and arrow makers to track down who actually made the arrow, and that gave us the initial clue that led us to the assassin.

Love that sort of thing...

Dark Archive

Roberta Yang wrote:
Assuming you have a +11 to your Craft check, crafting this bow will take you 17 weeks of continuous work. Better hope you have effectively limitless downtime.

What kind of crafting roll do you have to make this bow? A 31? Are you saying take a 20 and you need a +11? Why does it take 17 weeks? Do i need to read crafting rules? (hehe)


Mazlith, yes you will need to read the crafting rules. Crafting is frequently a slow and laborious process. You can decrease the time spent crafting by increasing the DC, so if you have a real high craft skill score, you can cut the time dramatically, but at low levels it's very hard to get scores that high, and if you fail the roll, you blow the expense and time you've already spent, so it's a risk vs reward call.

There are ways to improve some of this with magic. Masterwork transformation will help turn non-masterwork items into masterwork items in one round. So if you are a caster, that's a big help.

If there is a PF 2.0 I hope they revise the crafting rules.


Mazlith wrote:
What kind of crafting roll do you have to make this bow? A 31? Are you saying take a 20 and you need a +11? Why does it take 17 weeks? Do i need to read crafting rules? (hehe)

The DC is 21 (20 for the masterwork component), which you can meet by taking 10 once you have a +11 bonus (taking 20 is not allowed).

The reason it takes 17 weeks is that non-magical crafting is obnoxiously slow. Taking 10 with a +11 bonus against a DC of 21 means you'll only be making a bit more than 40gp of progress toward that 700gp base price per week of dedicated work.

Even if you're high-level and have a +21 to Craft (Bows) and use the accelerated crafting rules to speed things up, you'd still be looking at almost two months of work. Using Craft to make anything worth more than pocket change pretty much requires a time-skip.


Adamantine Dragon wrote:
so it's a risk vs reward call.

It might be an actual risk versus reward call if Craft required just a single check for the whole process the way Spellcraft does. Because it requires a separate check for each of the many, many weeks of work, almost no risk is ever worthwhile because you roll enough times that you're bound to roll low at some point.

Liberty's Edge

Roberta Yang wrote:
Mazlith wrote:
What kind of crafting roll do you have to make this bow? A 31? Are you saying take a 20 and you need a +11? Why does it take 17 weeks? Do i need to read crafting rules? (hehe)

The DC is 21 (20 for the masterwork component), which you can meet by taking 10 once you have a +11 bonus (taking 20 is not allowed).

The reason it takes 17 weeks is that non-magical crafting is obnoxiously slow. Taking 10 with a +11 bonus against a DC of 21 means you'll only be making a bit more than 40gp of progress toward that 700gp base price per week of dedicated work.

Even if you're high-level and have a +21 to Craft (Bows) and use the accelerated crafting rules to speed things up, you'd still be looking at almost two months of work. Using Craft to make anything worth more than pocket change pretty much requires a time-skip.

Or you can be a wizard and cheat by casting Fabricate. You still need to make the check for high quality gear (DC20+ definitely counts), but it takes all of a round (6 seconds) instead of 2 months (~5 million seconds). Very nearly a million-to-one ratio, which only goes higher for harder crafts (especially full plate).


So the moral of this story is that he should just pay 700 gold instead


StabbittyDoom wrote:
Or you can be a wizard and cheat by casting Fabricate. You still need to make the check for high quality gear (DC20+ definitely counts), but it takes all of a round (6 seconds) instead of 2 months (~5 million seconds). Very nearly a million-to-one ratio, which only goes higher for harder crafts (especially full plate).

Or you could be a Soul Forger Magus, who gets to craft ten times as fast as normal. I guess Paizo looked at Craft and thought, "Yeah, that's a little slow, let's make its speed a little more reasonable... for one obscure casty archetype. Screw you, Aragorn, can't let you be self-sufficient."

Apparently there's also a magic item buried in the Advanced Race Guide somewhere that makes Craft work as fast as Spellcraft, but you'd have to craft a ridiculous number of bows before that 12000gp price tag even came close to paying for itself.

Basically, fighters need help from wizards just to have mundane nonmagical equipment.

Lamontius wrote:
So the moral of this story is that he should just pay 700 gold instead

Unless he's playing something like Kingmaker where there actually is effectively limitless downtime, yeah, that's pretty much it.


Adamantine Dragon wrote:
There are ways to improve some of this with magic. Masterwork transformation will help turn non-masterwork items into masterwork items in one round. So if you are a caster, that's a big help.

Thats true, the downside of this way is that you don't get the 2/3 cost cut, and have to actually pay the full 300 gp for the masterwork. But you save yourself a good 10 weeks of work.

Alternatively, if you're not a caster (or know none), you can hire one (3rd level cleric or wizard for example) to cast it for you. Will cost you 60gp extra for the caster service.


Man total spoiler now I know that Kingmaker just has all that downtime so I might as well skip it.

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