| 2 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
How do the multipliers interact with the additional costs of special materials?
Does an adamantine breastplate made for a Tiny fey creature cost 10,100gp or 5,100gp? Does a mithral full plate made for an ogre weigh 50 pounds?
How much does a cold iron dagger for a Tiny fey cost?
Has this ever been succinctly clarified, and officially to boot? I'm just now looking around for answers to this very question for PFS and so far mum's the word...
I believe unless the item is based on weight the prices wouldn't change (IE adamantine). For items that that do rely on weight (mithril), you'd figure out the 'base' item and then work the material cost from there.
So is it (base+special)x multiplier or (base x multiplier)+ special?
Is mithral full plate for my medium animal companion 21,000 gp or 12,000 gp?
Either way, it still weighs half that of normal full plate, 25 lbs.
|
Same question. If this has been answered elsewhere in the meantime I apologize, but would appreciate a link. My character's arrow-magnet wolf thanks you.
No Developer has ever clarified how to price out special material armors of unusual size or shape, but the general consensus I've seen over the years is that you figure out multipliers first, and then additions second, just as you would using regular mathematical formulas.
So, in most cases, figure out the size/shape multiplier first, and then add on any non-multiplier special material costs.
Using the OP's examples, this would mean:
1) tiny-sized humanoid-shaped adamantine breastplate
A breastplate is 200gp. A tiny-sized breastplate is 100gp. Adamantine medium armor is +10,000gp. So a tiny-sized humanoid-shaped adamantine breastplate costs 10,100gp.
2) what is the weight of a set of large-sized humanoid-shaped mithral full plate?
Full plate weighs 50 lbs. Large-sized full plate weighs 100 lbs. Mithral halves the weight of the item it's made of, so large-sized mithral full plate weighs 50 lbs.
3) How much does a cold iron dagger for a Tiny fey cost?
You cannot purchase such an item under the rules for Pathfinder, as there are no rules written for determining the price of a tiny-sized weapon. It is easy to houserule, though, assuming the cost modifiers for armor are consistent with those of weapons. In this case, a tiny-sized dagger would cost 1gp, and cold iron would double the cost back up to 2gp.
Yes, this can result in some silly costs, and in a home game it means you could theoretically melt down gargantuan-sized mithral chain shirts for an obscene profit, but Pathfinder isn't a game of economics, and GMs are encouraged to curtail such behavior from their PCs.
I generally find that multiplying for size after additions makes a great deal more sense. Why should the cost of adamantine in a Large suit of full plate cost as much as the amount used in a Small set?
As such I use (base+special)*size.
|
|
Except that mithral armor for a halfling costs the same as mithral armor for a half-orc, so clearly the amount of metal used doesn't truly matter when determining a price.
To complicate things further, there are really several ways you can price out some materials.
From a post I wrote 6 months ago:
Here's an example I had to figure out regarding my pet Spinosaurus:
A Breastplate costs 200gp.
A MWK Breastplate costs 350gp.
A Dragonhide Breastplate costs 700gp.So I figured...
Breastplate Barding for a large-sized, non-humanoid creature costs 800gp.
MWK Breastplate Barding for the same creature costs 950gp.
So you'd think that Dragonhide Breastplate Barding would cost 1900gp, and that's what I went with for my Animal Companion.But there are other ways to calculate this cost (that I didn't discover until later):
You could multiply the 700gp cost of a Dragonhide Breastplate by 4, to get 2800gp (yikes!), or...
You could find the cost of a large-sized Breastplate (400gp), make it masterwork (550gp), make it Dragonhide (1100gp), and multiply that by 2 for non-humanoid, to get 2200gp.
Another player once tried to tell me it only cost 1400gp, because that's what he spent for his horse, which was tantalizing, but I can't recall his math now, and I must not have thought it made sense then or else I would have changed it on my sheet.
Other special materials have their quirks, too.
I believe SKR (or one of the designers) once said that Pathfinder is not a game of economics. Some players want to melt down huge-sized mithral chain shirts and sell the mithral by the pound and make a profit. Barring those players, IIRC, his thoughts were to just go with whatever cost the least, and move on with the game.