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If you're worried about society play, I'd suggest following along on the thread I started last week on this over in the PFS section of the forums:
There was a forked copy here:
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42sg5?1-weapon-1-striking-weapon#5
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You could also pay someone to do it.... but the only hirelings you can hire are at best +4 in a skill, which isn't going to get the job done.
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Snipped out most since I think there are two existing threads exploring this in detail.
However the CRB hirelings can get to +8 (they are _expert_ in their skill, with a plus +4 ability modifier, but zero level) which is fine for the low item-level rune transfers.
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You can always just hire a crafter in a town a city to do the transfer for you. Money always gets the job done.
OK, I think your reading is correct (otherwise they should have some total modifiers of 0, some of 4, and 1 of 8, since some skills share ability). Which does mean your talking worse than 50% chance for a hireling to do the rune transfer.
OK, I think your reading is correct (otherwise they should have some total modifiers of 0, some of 4, and 1 of 8, since some skills share ability). Which does mean your talking worse than 50% chance for a hireling to do the rune transfer.
You could pay a second skilled hireling to Aid them, though you can't stack it beyond that as you could in PF1.
But the second hireling is more likely to crit fail than succeed on the aid check, making matters worse :)
(+4, aiming for 20, needs a 16 or better on the die to aid, 6 or lower to crit fail. 30% chance of crit fail, 20% chance of success, 5% chance of crit success)
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So at least given RAW, all of the ways to make a weapon beyond a +1 weapon require explicit crafting checks. This includes transferring runes. If your party doesn't have someone with the Craft skill, how exactly would you get these items?
Sure, you can potentially sell your +2 sword and then buy a +3 sword in its place, but the rules around runes seem to be structured so as to avoid this cost overhead. You could also pay someone to do it.... but the only hirelings you can hire are at best +4 in a skill, which isn't going to get the job done.
Seems like more concrete rules for this are needed. For a home game, it's fine to rule that there's some base cost for a blacksmith to transfer a rune. For Society play, it seems like this is going to create big headaches...
Did I miss something here?
How did you end up with noone having Crafting? In a standard party of four, you have 2 trained characters per skill on average. And that's without any kind of skill monkey. Having all skills around a table is now the basic situation that most balanced parties should achieve.
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Title is a little misleading. You aren't stuck, it's just that if you don't have crafting you can't... craft things on your own.
That seems WAI.
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Most characters get a skill increase every other level, so gaining the ability to craft is a heck of a lot easier in PF2 than in PF1. You don't even need to be a spell caster any more.
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Did I miss something here?There is a vocal minority here that believes you need to roll some sort of check in order to upgrade your weapons and armor.
You don't. You just pay the difference.
Fundamental Runes
Four fundamental runes produce the most essential magic of protection and destruction: armor potency and resilient runes for armor, and weapon potency and striking runes for weapons. A potency rune is what makes a weapon a magic weapon (page 599) or armor magic armor (page 556).
An item can have only one fundamental rune of each type, though etching a stronger rune can upgrade an existing rune to the more powerful version (as described in each rune’s entry). As you level up, you typically alternate between increasing an item’s potency rune and its striking or resilient rune when you can afford to.
Etching a stronger rune can upgrade an existing one by paying the difference. Etching runes is a Craft check (also on the same page).
I think the issue the OP is highlighting is that we don't have settlement rules yet, essentially. There's no reason to think you won't be able to find someone who can enchant your rune to its next tier in a large enough settlement. We just don't have the rules for it yet.
That being said, you MIGHT need to pay the cost of the rune plus a transfer cost. With how crafting currently works, the only way to turn a profit is to take longer on the project, which means making an item to order for a rush job doesn't seem like a good business model. (Plus even the minimum time is 4 days.)
So a good business owner would keep a stock of runestones and charge people for the cost of both the rune and transferring it onto the weapon brought in by the customer.
Never mind, just confirmed that transferring from a runestone is free. So just paying the cost of the upgrade then.
Etching is clearly detailed just before. There is nothing to suggest etching does not take a Crafting check if you are upgrading a Fundamental Rune.
Etching a rune on an item follows the same process as using the Craft activity to make an item. You must have the formula for the rune, the item you’re adding the rune to must be in your possession throughout the etching process, and you must meet any special Craft Requirements of the rune. The rune has no effect until you complete the Craft activity. You can etch only one rune at a time.
What makes you think there is an exception here?
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I think my favourite thing so far about Pathfinder 2 is that nearly every time there's a post with someone pointing out some rules issue they think they discovered, it's just that either didn't read it correctly or they decided to interpret the written rules in as obtuse a manner as possible. It shows how great a job the design team did, that the vast majority of "mistakes" are actually non-issues.
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In the stream Jason Bulmahn GMs with Paizo staff, they just had shop where runes could be transferred and upgraded.
Whoever is able to craft high level runes in first place, can do the upgrade work just as well.
So unless you're playing in a world where all knowledge of crafting and magic is lost, and magic weapons are only rarely found, not a problem IMHO.
And if you are playing in that world, well I think that's kind of the point.
Additional question because I have not been able to determine it from the CRB: Does transfering a rune has the same craft requirements as etching a rune?
E.g. can I transfer a +2 armor potency rune from one armor to another even if I am only trained in crafting?
Etching is clearly detailed just before. There is nothing to suggest etching does not take a Crafting check if you are upgrading a Fundamental Rune.It does. If you are doing it. If you are paying someone to do it for you, they do the check off-camera (and it succeeds because you didn't hire an intern)
That's fine. I didn't think high level crafters are always assumed to be available and willing to work at-cost for some random adventurer who shows up, but if that's the assumption, cool I guess.
(edit: the at-cost bit was about posts up-thread suggesting you can just use the rune price difference without some kind of fee or a Crafting check).
In the most generous interpretation, where the crafting check happens off screen, at no additional fee, it still takes at least one day, right?
The potency runes upgrades happen at levels 10-18. How big does a settlement have to be to be churning out +3 weapons every 4 days, where they can easily accommodate you dropping your weapon off and picking it up 4 days later fully upgraded? How many crafters exist who can do that? I guess these are questions for the GMG, if it has settlement rules/statblocks. I know that NPC crafters don't share the same rules that players do, but I assumed the weapons wielded by characters of legendary power wouldn't be for sale at Ye Olde Legendary Weapon Shoppe (unless we're in like Nex or Absalom maybe).
Is this just a case where we handwave to make the game more fun? I'm fine if it is, but I don't feel like this expectation matches the setting too well. At least not the "old Golarion" anyways.
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Where does the idea this is done "at cost" come from?
How is this different from going to an auto or bicycle mechanic and having them instal high performance part?
In which case they are making profit on the high performance part and labor proportionate to installing it,
even though you aren't being charged to full cost of a new vehicle which already has that high performance part installed by default.
Sorry yall, I ninja edited that bit to explain.
Where does the idea this is done "at cost" come from?
How is this different from going to an auto or bicycle mechanic and having them instal high performance part?
In which case they are making profit on the high performance part and labor proportionate to installing it,
even though you aren't being charged to full cost of a new vehicle which already has that high performance part installed by default.
The Crafter's pays the difference between runes, or if they work for longer to reduce cost that's still the value they are adding for you. So you should pay more than that.
Isn't it cheaper for a PC Crafter to upgrade Runes than buying an upgrade from a shop?
The latter is "just the difference", but the difference between market price, not Crafter's own "at cost" expense...?
In the most generous interpretation, where the crafting check happens off screen, at no additional fee, it still takes at least one day, right?It's not a Downtime activity, either, if that's what you're getting at.
No, that's not what I'm getting. It wouldn't cost the PC a day of downtime, but it would cost them a day of time in terms of any ticking clock. It would cost them a day w/o their item that's being upgraded.
Isn't it cheaper for a PC Crafter to upgrade Runes than buying an upgrade from a shop?
The latter is "just the difference", but the difference between market price, not Crafter's own "at cost" expense...?
The crafter can have the rune made ahead of time thll sitting on a stone, so they've already saved money by taking time to craft it at below market value.
However, you're correct that unlike buying a new item upgrading the rune on an existing one will still take the day for the transfer. So it does seem likely the crafter will charge for their time. Not sure how that plays out, butbit might offset the cost of just buying the formula and doing it yourself.
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I'd also like to consider the fact you are giving a crappy hireling stuff worth thousand of golds.
- A crafter get 5s per day
- A year, not sure if on pf world is different, is compose by 365 days
- Our crafter gets 182.5 golds per year
- A weapon potency rune +3 is worth 8935g
- He will be able to get that sum in 50 years of work. Assuming he works every day and doesn't spend anything.
If left alone, I'd roll, with a generous chance of success, for the possibility of fleeing from the city with the item, to start a new life somewhere else.
If he can make the Craft checks for a +3 rune consistently, he's making more than 5 sp a day.
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Somehow I suspect that the Equipment chapter's section on hirelings is misleadingly incomplete and covers only hirelings so common that you can always find them in any settlement, while leaving out that in a higher-level settlement you can often hire NPCs with higher proficiency and great modifiers to do specific things, like Crafting upgrades. (I say "specific things" because such NPCs may well not be amenable to following you around all day doing whatever you ask as petty hirelings apparently do.)
Too bad I can't prove it without the GMG....
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Somehow I suspect that the Equipment chapter's section on hirelings is misleadingly incomplete and covers only hirelings so common that you can always find them in any settlement, while leaving out that in a higher-level settlement you can often hire NPCs with higher proficiency and great modifiers to do specific things, like Crafting upgrades. (I say "specific things" because such NPCs may well not be amenable to following you around all day doing whatever you ask as petty hirelings apparently do.)
Too bad I can't prove it without the GMG....
You're correct. James Jacobs confirmed over in the Hellknight Hill forum that they hadn't finalized settlement rules and magic market access by the time the launch day books had to go to the printer.
Yeah, I don't know why we're assuming I'm entrusting my several-thousand gp rune to the fantasy equivalent of a first-year college student. A +4 bonus is peanuts compared to someone who's assumed to have been doing this job long enough to properly handle and craft expensive magical items.
I think we can get the 'crafting check required' camp closer to the 'just pay the difference camp' on cost, and maybe somewhat on time. By invoking the acknowledgement from the devs that NPCs crafters use different rules than PCs. For people that caveat, I think the difference in cost in small-change enough to ignore, even without seeing (if we ever do in the GMG/later) the NPC crafting rules.
The NPC rule differences would also have to allow an NPC crafter to instantaneously create/transfer a rune to get rid of the 1 day crafting time. I think that's going to be a harder sell, while a reduction in time to a couple of hours rather than a day seems likely to be accepted.
I think we can get the 'crafting check required' camp closer to the 'just pay the difference camp' on cost, and maybe somewhat on time. By invoking the acknowledgement from the devs that NPCs crafters use different rules than PCs. For people that caveat, I think the difference in cost in small-change enough to ignore, even without seeing (if we ever do in the GMG/later) the NPC crafting rules.
The NPC rule differences would also have to allow an NPC crafter to instantaneously create/transfer a rune to get rid of the 1 day crafting time. I think that's going to be a harder sell, while a reduction in time to a couple of hours rather than a day seems likely to be accepted.
All an NPC (or a PC for that matter) would need is the Assurance feat and a high enough proficiency modifier to bypass having to roll. I think it is safe to say that most people who craft as a full time job (as opposed to just in the downtime between much more lucrative adventuring) have taken Assurance.
So I think the settlement rules will probably have a market stat for the maximum item level a Craftsman (or the store they supply) can reliably produce.
That still doesn't address the time requirement (or the no-fortune effects on downtime rule implied by the ritual chapter, assurance is a fortune effect. But I don't see the roll/lack of roll a key point in the current difference of interpretations so this is less important).