Craftamancer Build

[dannyG]

My Cunning Plan:
Play a cowardly wizard who bribes the rest of the party into liking him, by showering them with Magical Items.

What that means is, alignment is True Neutral. (Best alignment for spell access LOL). Maybe trending towards Neutral Evil (per PF rules where "Evil" reads as "Selfish", so setting up a mild redemption arc for story purposes).
I've got broad strokes set, but I'm soliciting advice for more specific stuff.

Anyways, character design is:
Item Production = Good
Doing anything in combat = Bad
(Exception is telling other Party Members what to do via Message. Metagaming, this GM has had us fight a lot of humanoids in previous campaigns, so having Message up all the time is a good excuse for why the opponents generally don't listen in on our in-party chatter.)

Fundamentals
Here's where I'm at:
Starting level is 2.

Playing a Dwarf Wizard (Universalist/Arcane Crafter), chasing the Alternate Class Ability for Item Crafting
Arcane Bond is a Familiar with the Valet Archetype (I'm partial to the Raccoon because, you know, it's a Trash Panda, but a Rat is mechanically probably a little better, also a tighter thematic fit with the character concept).

Additional Traits (Various kinds)
Per the Dwarf Alternate Racial Traits:
Build-relevant (mechanically relevant):
Trade in "Greed" for "Craftsman" (+2 for metal, stone Craft checks)
Trade in "Hatred" for "Industrious Urbanite" (Doubles production for Craft, +4 Profession to earn a living)

Thematic (not as mechanically relevant):
Trade in "Defensive Training" for "Desert Delver" (ER 1 for Fire & Cold, plus 1/5th of Endure Elements)
Trade in "Stability" and "Stonecunning" for "Treasure Sense" (Scent, but only for 'Precious Metals')
"Tight-fisted" (+4 bonus to CMD vs. Steal, Disarm) instead of "Treasure Sense" is maybe a better fit, and doesn't have this "2 RP" business attached to it, but I think TS is just... funnier. "There's money to be had here; I can smell it"... just perfect.

So Trait-wise, this is implying a Dwarf that grew up in the lower/working class of some awful desert city instead of a proper subterranean Dwarfhold. This works!

The campaign is not using Traits by default, so I'm blowing my Level 1 Feat on Additional Traits.
Actually, rather than 2 Traits, 3 Traits + Drawback. (Cleared this with DM, both the "taking the feat" part and the "3-minus-1 instead of 2" part).
Or rather,
the Cowardly drawback is a perfect fit for the character concept, so if I'm taking the feat so I can get Hedge Magician, I might as well, right? Tireless Logic as 2nd Trait to prevent screwup while Spellcrafting Magic Items, and might as well take Militant Merchant for the 3rd Trait. (Appropriately paranoid, and making PER a class skill is usually a good idea anyway).

CHA = 7 (for Wizard) and CHA-2 (for Dwarf) means this guy is a catastrophic mess at actually selling his wares, or interacting with the public though.

Skills
Max out Spellcraft (non-negotiable)
Max out Perception (per getting Militant Merchant above)
1 rank in Craft (armor), so I can bribe the party from the get-go by quickly pumping out sweet Build-appropriate armor in like the first week of downtime. Also provides a lot of backstory implication if the working-class-Dwarf family background were armor-builders, preferably in something crummy like Leather instead of something cool like Plate Mail.
Sink the rest into Knowledge(s) 1 point at a time, so I can legally metagame the DM, also that way I can use my combat actions to pontificate at my party members about enemy weaknesses via Message from like 100 feet away, instead of being in danger.

So far so good.

Got some Spells Known to select. (All cantrips, plus ~6+2=8 1st Levels).
I'm leaning towards:
Default Cantrips:
Message per Above
Detect Magic and Prestidigation, because you always need those.
I'm leaning towards Ghost Sound for #4 because I've had success with it in the past.
Mending is maybe more thematic, but a lot more of a downtime-day kind of spell in my particular experience.

1st Level Spells Known:
Mage Armor is an evergreen buff (I mean, I'm planning to have like a dozen Pearls of Power (1), so I'm wanting to just keep it up on the whole party all the time, sooner rather than later).
Mount to carry stuff. Also, our party doesn't have a rogue, and in previous campaigns hasn't always needed Trapfinding, but when you need Trapfinding, you really need "Trapfinding," if you catch my drift.
Grease: Hilarious.
Silent Image: Also Hilarious.
Enlarge Person: Excellent way to "contribute" to combat from Close Range, behind the scrum.
Crafter's Fortune: Never on Adventure Days, always on Downtime Days
Sleep: We're level 2, so it's probably good to short-circuit a few combat encounters still.

So that's my 8 spells known, right?
Well... This build is leaning towards Scroll-dealing for early levels, which pushes me towards Comprehend Languages and Obscuring Mist and Protection from Whatever and (maybe) Identify as the quintessential "don't prepare them, but have scrolls of them" spells; turning those spells over into scrolls, to sell in town, to generate profit, to fund Magic Items party-members actually want, during Downtime; that's how this fool works mechanically. (Also, metagame: sending out my party members with high CHA on reverse-fetch quests to sell this junk? That's handing the DM a way to feed us plot hooks via NPC encounters, thereby bribing him into going along with this dumb scheme, ta-da!).

In that direction, True Strike is a great scroll to hand to someone with UMD when you're ambushing them, and Magic Weapon and Vanish are both extremely on-brand (for different reasons, but still).

This ties into my broader question, of what to do with my Starting Cash (1,000 GP).
I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy some more Spells Known, and if I'm gonna do that, I really feel like I should be generating a plot hook for my DM to use while doing that. (Wizard Guild in town sells for cost-plus-favors? Ganked a rival and stole their Level 1 Spellbook? I'm not sure & I'm open to suggestions.)

Equipment
After that, it's probably some Masterwork Tools (Craft: Armor) and an extremely sweet Scroll Box, made of Darkwood or something. Maybe get a 100-GP Divine Focus Tattoo in anticipation of taking False Focus at Level 3, and basically not worrying about Material Components ever again (the transactional, almost-blasphemy quality of this? That also feels in-character); and spending the Arcane Crafter Level 3 Bonus Feat on Craft Wonderous Item.

Deeper Future
I'm thinking of taking Craft Wand as my level 5 feat and Craft Magic Arms and Armor as my Wizard 5 feat, basically.
Once I have a Wand of Haste, my default plan will be to drop Haste on everyone in Round 1 (even better: in the prep period before we gank them), and turn Invisible in Round 2, and provide valuable leadership (via Message) from there. That, for every combat, for the rest of the game.
With CMA&A, I let the DM send me on fetch quests for magical reagents to increase the rest of the party's Stuff by another incremental +1 of effects, in turns; we humor him that we care about his railroad plot while making that happen.

Conclusion
Basically, I'm looking for feedback on this build, how you think I should make it work. Not just a strict mechanical sense, but also a role-playing, in-party sense.
I'm especially interested in the perspective of people who play, like, Barbarians and Rangers and stuff. If this fool was in your party, what sort of Magic Item bribes would make you like him; that kind of angle.

[Ryze Kuja]

Trompe L'oeil <---- what about this? You can paint your army once and send them all over the gods' creation and they respawn in the painting 24 hours if/when they die, and you never have to leave your comfy arm chair, except if you want to paint new ones.

[zza ni]

dwarf crafter? true N but looking up to NE ? oh boy i want to introduce you to YOUR NEW GOD!! ;) - Droskar

listing things to take once you start worshiping the master of Toil :
traits -
- toilcrafter - this let you make +1 weapons,armor and shields without any feat, and let even non casters pick up the craft arms and armor feat. although items you made before using that feat can't be upgraded. (just sell when ready for half price and use cash to make new items).
-Fortunate - while not a droskar trait this one goes super effective with this next item which is.

magical items:
the one ring! (not real name)
(buy\craft\steal\make\ pick as bounded item so you can craft once you hit 7th level without taking forge ring feat etc).
combined with the above trait you can craft at half cost (with 75% success) as long as you only make one item a day (which per rules is a given anyway) -i actually tried this and for every 4 pears of power i made (at the cost of 2) i got exactly 3 which is basically a 2+1 deal.

don't like to gamble? too bad the next item is for ones who do:
The droskar approved hat (not real name).

other note.
if you are not going for droskar. going with one of the horsemen (or daemon herbringers etc) would open up souldrinker prc.
at 2nd level (around level 9 for the new errata or 7th with old one) you get to craft for free (just use the enervation on your pet cacodaemon for free daily soul pool points. if you don't want to hurt it for some reason Centipede (house) are 1 cp each)
- Droskar also have daemon in his subdomain, maybe if you get lucky you'l convince your gm to let you worship him AND get the prc?

the Cacodaemon familiar is also good for 1/day soul gem off of your dead enemies (which can be used to heal or craft as well) - my gm stopped throwing us high HD enemies once every one of them became a part of my next project..
it's like they want you to craft for free with this prc.

Soul drinker : 'Wealth by level? BWAHAHAHA'
wipes eye
'..oh wait, you were serious!?'

[Meirril]

A few things to consider:

Ask your GM if it is ok for you to start with Blood Money. This is suppose to be a 'rare' spell that is from an artifact found in the Rise of the Runelord's AP and it is way over powered so ask your GM.

You really should take Craft Wonderous Items at 3rd level. Most of the items players want and can't find are in this category.

Tactics: Being 100' from the party is an invitation to have a close personal experience with a wandering encounter. A good coward wants to be in the middle of the party. You do not want to be the last in a line.

Instead of fighting yourself, focus on things to fight for you. First, buffing spells. Not just defensive spells for yourself, if you can take a communal buff spell cast that. Fly is a standard defensive spell for wizards, but honestly if you want to avoid a fight you don't need to stand out. Cast fly on a meat shield. Now the meat shield stands out as a target. Enlarge is a perfect first level spell. Now that other guy is big and impressive, not you!

And then there are summoning spells. Yes, summoning stuff is good. And it is annoying. And it slows down the game. And it makes you look proactive in fights. I don't think summoning fits your character concept.

Actually vanish and invisibility probably fit your character concept better. You could make it a life long goal to craft an invisibility ring. Then cast non-offensive spells so you never become visible. But you still act like a coward because you can't tell what things see invis.