So I built myself a bard who is really good at painting.
At level 2, he already has:
- Skill Focus (Craft[Painting]) (+3)
- Prodigy Feat (+2)
- Inner Beauty Trait (+4 1/day)
So with masterwork tools, he can paint with a bonus of +21 1/day.
What can I do to raise this even further?
He would consider using magic tems or spells (like crafter's fortune) to be cheating, so that's out of the question.
Second, is there anything he can actually do with a high painting skill, except for amaze people with it? Like a feat or anything to use it for benefit? 3PP are welcome, too!
He could make really good art forgery.
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My painter is a witch. Its lots of fun :-).
Deific obedience to Shelyn gets you another +4 (have to wait for level 3)
If its for PFS you can get a +1 with a shop. There are also several boons and chronicle sheets. Not to mention the reroll with GM stars. My witch is level 3 and I've managed one 45+ so far (although I do use crafter's fortune)
If you're NOT in PFS then as a bard you can eventually get Pageants Peacock masterpiece for another +4 and craft becomes your bluff skill. Doesn't work for PFS day jobs since the duration is to short.
Deific obedience to Shelyn gets you another +4 (have to wait for level 3)
If its for PFS you can get a +1 with a shop. There are also several boons and chronicle sheets. Not to mention the reroll with GM stars. My witch is level 3 and I've managed one 45+ so far (although I do use crafter's fortune)
If you're NOT in PFS then as a bard you can eventually get Pageants Peacock masterpiece for another +4 and craft becomes your bluff skill. Doesn't work for PFS day jobs since the duration is to short.
No Shelyn, as we play in a homebrew (obviously non-PFS) setting, but I'm sure we can just transfer that to our artsy deity, so thanks for that.
If I read Pageants Peacock correctly, it just substitutes Bluuf for Int-based skills, and he's way better at painting than bluffing.
paint a road over a wall and have the bad guys run into it?
Seriously though, forgeries and maybe the investigation of magic item paintings that have effects when viewed? Warded magic item stuff maybe?
Consider it a profession skill. Aside from that, it's going to depend on the campaign setting. Find a way to be commissioned to paint the royal portraits - major ins with the royals is always good.
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Consider it a profession skill. Aside from that, it's going to depend on the campaign setting. Find a way to be commissioned to paint the royal portraits - major ins with the royals is always good.
Beware your DM's sense of humor, of course...I played a profligate painter in a game that crashed and burned due to various misfortunes who faced an inordinate amount of downtime and thus a lot of chances to paint. I was once commissioned to paint a portrait of some local noblewoman...who happened to be very ugly (the DM likened her, as point of reference, to "The Trunchbull" from Roald Dahl's Matilda). I was already quite the skilled painter, and made an impressive result on my Craft (Painting) roll - which meant that she got very mad and refused to pay me a copper (her poor husband gave me pocket change as I stormed out the front door). The DM afterwards confided that had I rolled poorly in that case, she would have been very pleased and paid me a good sum of money.
Just saying....If I were DM, I'd reward a PC who was that committed to painting (whether they asked for it or not) by fiating magic into their most impressive works at my discretion: Maybe a really fantastic job on a paint-what-you-see landscape would turn into a permanent portal that enabled people to jump into it and go regardless of where they were at the time (i.e. a refuge spell - there'd probably be limits on range or plane or something). Maybe a pretty-darned-good portrait of a patron would allow you to speak with that person from a distance. Maybe an exquisite still-life of a feast table could translate into a monthly heroes' feast generator. Maybe a truly exceptional painting of a fantastical monster the artist just made up would be able to summon that monster to serve the painter periodically, and would be an excuse for some kind of monster to show up in the campaign world that normally never would, or even compel the DM to make up their own monster just for the occasion. Maybe if, while making a self-portrait, they rolled a natural 20 on their Craft (Painting) check after having already accrued an extraordinary base bonus, I'd tell them to roll again - and if they rolled well enough that time, they'd discover that the resulting work functioned an awful lot like a lich's phylactery....
Actually, he could use the Downtime rules to open one or more art galleries and make some serious bank with that skill modifier.
well, as far as skill based income, the downtime rules are no different than core. You get half your check in gp/week (downtime defines it as your check in gp/day - same thing assuming 5 day work week).
Actual skill has little to do with the way downtime buildings and organizations earn cash. An art gallery owned by a troll would earn about the same as one owned by DaVinci. You could, as a painter, work at the gallery, and increase the gallery's check by 10, but that's far less income than working with your own insanely high check instead.
well, as far as skill based income, the downtime rules are no different than core. You get half your check in gp/week (downtime defines it as your check in gp/day - same thing assuming 5 day work week).
Actual skill has little to do with the way downtime buildings and organizations earn cash. An art gallery owned by a troll would earn about the same as one owned by DaVinci. You could, as a painter, work at the gallery, and increase the gallery's check by 10, but that's far less income than working with your own insanely high check instead.
Actually, you would add your check result to that of the building's +10. So they better you are, the better your business does when you work there.
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Question: how does this play into the Campaign feat of being a master artist (selling 25k and 50k paintings)? Like do you just have to spend the material costs (half) on the work of art and its worth whatever the goal is... then find someone who will pay full price? Or do you have to make something using the full cost to sell it at full cost?
If you're refering to Magnum Opus (Story), you first have to qualify for it, buy selling at least 5 works for >=5,000gp. You can then take that feat (when you have a feat available). This will convert your Take 10 into a Take 15 for that craft skill.
Then, to complete it, you have to sell a single work for 25,000gp. After doing so, you gain an additioned +5 bonus on that skill, and a +2 on all other craft/perform skills that you are trained in.
Mechanically, painting is done like all other mundane crafting. When dealing with paintings of this caliber, I would rule it as a 'Complex or superior item' which would have a DC of 20. So, for the qualifying works:
1. Find the item's price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp).
- 5,000gp = 50,000sp
2. Find the item's DC from Table: Craft Skills.
- Complex or superior item => DC 20
3. Pay 1/3 of the item's price for the raw material cost.
- 5,000gp/3 = 1,667gp
4. Make an appropriate Craft check representing one week's worth of work. If the check succeeds, multiply your check result by the DC. If the result × the DC equals the price of the item in sp, then you have completed the item. (If the result × the DC equals double or triple the price of the item in silver pieces, then you've completed the task in one-half or one-third of the time. Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner.) If the result × the DC doesn't equal the price, then it represents the progress you've made this week. Record the result and make a new Craft check for the next week. Each week, you make more progress until your total reaches the price of the item in silver pieces.
- For each week you work on the painting, make a craft check (with all applicable bonuses).
- if result is >20 (the DC) then your progress is your modified result in sp. Assuming you're taking 10, and the +21 skill in the OP, that's 310sp/week - meaning it would take 161 weeks to craft a 5,000gp painting.
What this shows, is that mundane crafting is ridiculously slow for extreme high-value items, and when compared with the bard performing for a large audience, this feat is nearly impossible to complete. Crafting a magical armor, weapon, wondrous item, etc is much easier for completing this feat, as that progress is done at 1,000gp/day. An animated portrait only costs 500gp, so that's not even a valid route to go.
So, this brings me to the way I'd try to satisfy this feat as a painter.
Intelligent Animated Painting. Think the paintings in Hogwart's, or the Evil Queen's magic mirror. You can very easily come up with >5,000 gp using the intelligent item rules, and even 25,000 gp is no problem.
For the qualifying items, how about paintings that act as guards of a guild hall.
Guard Painting
(Base item Animated Painting 500gp)
Lawful Neutral
STR -; DEX -; CON -; INT 11; WIS 16; CHA 10 (200+2,000gp)
5 ranks in perception (2,500gp)
Darkvision (500gp)
Can cast Ear-Piercing Scream (bard 1) 3/day (1200gp)
Total Cost: 6,700gp
For the magnum opus, you could perhaps create a painting that acts as a tutor/mentor/friend for a young princess. It could even contain some methods of keeping her safe (able to cast Dimension Door (bard 4), to whisk her away to safety). In reality, Bard's Escape would be a much better spell, as it could take itself with her, but a 5th level spell gets VERY expensive (90,000gp). Give the item high int, and knowledge skills.
When it comes to 'outside the explicit rules' stuff like this, the best bet is to always be as creative as possible. The more creative you are, the more likely it is the GM will buy into it. (GM's want to have neat interesting things in their world, and don't always desire to think them all up themselves).
Wow, thanks for all the input so far!
He's not in for the money, he sold souvenir paintings for a few gold pieces before he was "discovered" by a patron. And he was forced into the adventuring business after his airship crashed in the middle of nowhere (long story).
I'll definitely go for the "magic paintings" route, my GM is all for that. And later, he may as well create his Magnum Opus :D.