Research a Spell (Ultimate Campaign) vs Spell Research (Core): GP Costs

[RedDogMT]

I am a little confused on what guidelines to use for a player that wishes to research a spell. Ultimate Campaign says 100gp/level while the Core Rulebook suggests 1000gp/level.

Ultimate Campaign:

Research a Spell:
In the downtime system, the steps for spell research each day are as follows.

- Pay 100 gp × the spell's level for research costs and rare ingredients. You may spend Goods or Magic toward this cost.
- Determine the total days of progress required to complete the research, which is 7 × the spell level.
- Determine the spell research DC, which is 10 + twice the spell's level.
- Attempt a Spellcraft check and a Knowledge check (arcana for an arcane spell, religion for a divine spell) against the spell research DC. You can't take 10 on these checks. You may spend Magic to modify a check result, with 1 point of Magic adding 2 to your total (maximum +10). If both checks succeed, you make 1 day's progress toward completing the spell. When your days of progress equal the total number of days needed, the spell is completed and added to your spellbook or list of spells known.

If either or both spell research checks fail by 4 or less, you make no progress. For each check that fails by 5 or more, your research has led to poor results and you lose a day of progress toward completing the spell.

Core:

Independent Research: A wizard can also research a spell independently, duplicating an existing spell or creating an entirely new one. The cost to research a new spell, and the time required, are left up to GM discretion, but it should probably take at least 1 week and cost at least 1,000 gp per level of the spell to be researched. This should also require a number of Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) checks.

The time varies somewhat as well, but I am more interested in determining what a fair gold value would be. 100gp/level feels way too low...but is 1000gp/level too high?

Anyway, if someone can clarify this for me, I would appreciate it.

[Diego Rossi]

The UCamp cost is per day, the CRB cost is for the entire research period.

100*spell level*day of work, but researching a spell will require 1 week for each spell level

So researching 1 fist level spell (assuming all Knowledge and spellcraft checks are successful) will cost 700 gp and 1 week of work, but researching a 9th level spell will require 900 gp/dayfor 9 weeks, i.e. 56.7000 gp.
If you spend arcana to increase the bonus to the check the cost increase even further.

So the UCamp system is more lenient for low level spells, but at much more costly for high level spells.

[RedDogMT]

Thanks Diego. I totally missed [i]per day[\i] portion from Ultimate Campaign (obviously).

Now I just have to figure out how accessible I want spell research to be.

[Diego Rossi]

I had to re read it, I remembered from another discussion that researching high level spells was very costly, but at first glance I wasn't capable to find way.

"In the downtime system, the steps for spell research each day are as follows."
Bolding that you need to repeat all steps, including paying the research cost, every day, help a lot.
The checks aren't so hard, even if you can't take 10 you will generally succeed when rolling a 1 or 2 if you are a wizard with maximized Knowledge Arcana and Spellcraft researching a spell of the highest level you can cast.
A cleric will have more problems, but the buildings giving a bonus to those rolls will generally resolve the problem.

[Redgar]

Diego Rossi wrote:

I had to re read it, I remembered from another discussion that researching high level spells was very costly, but at first glance I wasn't capable to find way.

"In the downtime system, the steps for spell research each day are as follows."
Bolding that you need to repeat all steps, including paying the research cost, every day, help a lot.
The checks aren't so hard, even if you can't take 10 you will generally succeed when rolling a 1 or 2 if you are a wizard with maximized Knowledge Arcana and Spellcraft researching a spell of the highest level you can cast.
A cleric will have more problems, but the buildings giving a bonus to those rolls will generally resolve the problem.

I hear what you are saying; the "each day" wording would appear to indicate that all the following steps are to take place each day.

To play devil's advocate, though, I read the remainder of section as indicating that it is specifically Step 4 (the research rolls) that are to be repeated.

Step 1 is the contested section. The cost is clear; the frequency of payment is not specified under this heading.

Step 2 is to "determine the total days of progress required to complete the research". This, to me, reads as a 'one off' step rather than a repeatable step. If it was daily, I would expect the formula to calculate the remaining research time, rather than the overall research time.

Step 3, ditto. Why would one "determine the spell's research DC" each day? It's not like this would ever change.

Step 4. The way I read step 4, with the 'finishing' conditions appearing under Step 4 rather than a separate paragraph, suggests that one continues [u]with Step 4[/u] until the spell is researched.

All that said, I hear what you are saying with respect to "each day" in the preceding line. And for the listed 100gp/level price, 100gp per day seems more in line with the CRB's high cost for spell research.

I can't help wondering whether this is all due to a typo: if step 1 was supposed to read "1000 gp" and step 4 was the only repeat (because it would be the only step that needed repetition), then the rules would sync perfectly with the CRB cost... .