Magic Item Crafting - Are helpers locked out?

[Geramies]

So a crafter of a magic item can have others aid in the crafting, such as providing the needed spells, for example.

We all know the crafter of a magic item can pause their crafting, but they cannot work on a new magic item unless they complete the one they are working on or abandon it.

Does this restriction also apply to the assistants?

I have two PCs, one is crafting a Portal and the other is helping with providing spells needed to keep the DC low. Is the assistant unable to craft their own item while helping?

[Pizza Lord]

I believe that the assistant will not have that (or those) particular spells or spell slots available while the magic item is being created but I don't believe that it counts as them creating an item themselves. So they could be crafting their own item, as long as one of the requirements wasn't a spell or spell-slot they didn't have available currently.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Geramies wrote:

So a crafter of a magic item can have others aid in the crafting, such as providing the needed spells, for example.

We all know the crafter of a magic item can pause their crafting, but they cannot work on a new magic item unless they complete the one they are working on or abandon it.

Does this restriction also apply to the assistants?

I have two PCs, one is crafting a Portal and the other is helping with providing spells needed to keep the DC low. Is the assistant unable to craft their own item while helping?

If the assistant is putting the full time necessary to assist, than they do not have time to additionally craft on their own.

[Pizza Lord]

Well, there are more than 8 hours in a day and, unlike an item's creator who is specifically restricted to how much time they can put into an item per day (regardless of whether they sleep or not, for instance) and from working on more than one item, an assistant may not be subject to that rule.

Magic Item Creation wrote:

A character can work on only one item at a time. If a character starts work on a new item, all materials used on the under-construction item are wasted.

Now, while the above quote just says 'a character' I believe this is intended (in the context of how it's used) to mean the item's creator. Otherwise, imagine your time and effort spent creating an item suddenly wasted for no visible reason because some guy you hired to add one spell into the mix decides to create (or assist someone else) sometime, somewhere, somehow. Just... *poof*. 'While amusing if that was a nemesis messing with the character, I don't think that's intended.

PC: "What do you mean the item I've been working on for 28 days and spent 25,000 gp. in materials is just gone? Was it stolen?"
GM: "No, that one guy you had casting sleep must have forgotten and tried to scribe a scroll or something."