| Mark Hoover 330 |
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Lady Asharah wrote:
Quote:or can order the golem to obey the commands of another,Of course if the secondary commander is killed, the problem of a golem on auto pilot remains, but at least then the creator can reclaim control. I see no problem with creating a squadron of golems and magic ring then commanding the golems to "obey the orders of the bearer of this ring" to create a military unit.
You just have to make sure your golem crafter is REALLY REALLY loyal.
And prevent the enemies from taking the rings through theft or from the dead body of the wearer.
Actually, it seems a perfect job for some murderhobo adventurer: "Kill the Golem Guards and take their amulets, then order the golems to kill everyone they see."The ring idea is almost exactly how a shield guardian work. The amulet of a shield guardian designates someone as its master even after the creator dies, and that is useful if the creator has a limited lifespan. But after the death of the creator, no one can contest the control of the amulet wearer.
"A golem’s creator can command it if the golem is within 60 feet and can see and hear its creator.", so if the creator wants to take back the control he needs to be in the danger zone, and I am not sure if he can tacke the control back from more than 1 golem every round.
So, maybe to avoid someone easily able to just take control of the rings after the secondary commander dies, perhaps you slap a little magic on the rings. Perhaps, some kind of Geas before the ring can be worn - you have to prove yourself worthy of the mantle.
The mantle, of course, is tied to a specific color, which in turn is tied to a specific golem mech. I'd suggest making the golems in a unique shape, perhaps a Gargantuan sized lion.
For added fun at Mythic levels of spellcasting, add some extra magic to the golems. When all the rings have been appropriately acquired by worthies... let's call them "knights," and all of the mechs in a particular squadron are then active at once, these knights can use the rings to effect an amazing Transmutation affect where all of the mechs in the squadron unite into some kind of mega-golem. I'd suggest one of Colossal size and humanoid form, but it should be able to fly. Oh, and it should be able to summon a Gargantuan Adamnite greatsword with Mythic-level Fire effects emanating from the blade.
I'd say a squadron like that should be limited to say... five members to keep costs down and such.
| Shinoskay |
So, maybe to avoid someone easily able to just take control of the rings after the secondary commander dies, perhaps you slap a little magic on the rings. Perhaps, some kind of Geas before the ring can be worn - you have to prove yourself worthy of the mantle.The mantle, of course, is tied to a specific color, which in turn is tied to a specific golem mech. I'd suggest making the golems in a unique shape, perhaps a Gargantuan sized lion.
For added fun at Mythic levels of spellcasting, add some extra magic to the golems. When all the rings have been appropriately acquired by worthies... let's call them "knights," and all of the mechs in a particular squadron are then active at once, these knights can use the rings to effect an amazing Transmutation affect where all of the mechs in the squadron unite into some kind of mega-golem. I'd suggest one of Colossal size and humanoid form, but it should be able to fly.
"MIGHTY MORPHING POWER-R.... wait what?"
| Cevah |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@Shinoskay: Crafter's Fortune applies to Craft(X), not Spellcraft.
Here are a bunch of bonuses you could get:
+2 trait Propitiation
+2 circ Masterwork Artisan’s Tools
+5 luck Crafter's Fortune
+2 Competence Magenta Prism (cracked) Ioun Stone
+10 Insight Azlant Pendant
+2/5/10 Enhancement Tears to Wine [2 at CL5, need 10 spells] (8 w/power component).
Add to this character:
5th level int caster:
Stat: 15+2(race)+1(level)+2(headband) = 20 = +5 mod
Craft(X) = 5(ranks)+5(stat)+3(class) = 13 before bonuses
Total 36+10(Take10) = 46
Bump the CL to 9, and get +6 more skill and use 8 spells (7 w/power component).
/cevah
| Shinoskay |
@Shinoskay: Crafter's Fortune applies to Craft(X), not Spellcraft.
Here are a bunch of bonuses you could get:
+2 trait Propitiation
+2 circ Masterwork Artisan’s Tools
+5 luck Crafter's Fortune
+2 Competence Magenta Prism (cracked) Ioun Stone
+10 Insight Azlant Pendant
+2/5/10 Enhancement Tears to Wine [2 at CL5, need 10 spells] (8 w/power component).Add to this character:
5th level int caster:
Stat: 15+2(race)+1(level)+2(headband) = 20 = +5 mod
Craft(X) = 5(ranks)+5(stat)+3(class) = 13 before bonusesTotal 36+10(Take10) = 46
Bump the CL to 9, and get +6 more skill and use 8 spells (7 w/power component).
/cevah
you crossed wires a bit my good sir, I did not put crafters fortune in the spellcraft list, that was for the crafting dc 'problem'.
however, I understand why you say that because I too crossed wires a little. I was thinking crafting but the op was talking about spellcraft to make golems. I apologize for that mild confusion and appreciate your crafting list. Still, please do not take this with any amount of hostility because none is intended, its still a mute point for the conversation in large.
superb list though, thank you again.
| JP Morgan |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So does this mean that the DC is increased by +5 for every spell level abe what can be used by the crafter, or just a one n done +5 no matter the gap from crafters highest spell lvl to the spell put in the item?
With magic item creation there is no increase in the DC in relation to spell level, there would only be an increase in the DC for not knowing the spell, not having another PC to cast the spell each day, not paying for the requisite scrolls, or not paying for an NPC to cast the spell each day (with Scrolls and NPCs being prohibitively expensive on higher level magic items since you have to pay the associate cost for every day of magic item construction).
Same question for CL is the +5 DC for each CL above the crafters, or just a one n done?
There is no increase in the DC for creating a magic item if the character in question has a lower caster level than the magic item's listed caster level, unless the Caster Level is listed as part of the Construction Requirements.
If the caster level is listed in the Construction Requirements (such as with a Pearl of Power or an Iron Golem) then there would be an increase of 5 in the DC for crafting the item.If both are one n dones, what is stopping every kingdom from golem armies?
Are you talking about PC run kingdoms or NPC kingdoms? As had been stated previously, gold withdrawals by PCs on a scale that allows for the creation of a Golem army would quickly result in unrest and the PCs being kicked out of power. If you're talking about NPC run kingdoms then this question is a gross oversimplification regarding magic item creation and ignores issues related to multiple other factors in the creation and running of a Golem army (with military tactics being one of the issue others have already covered previously).
So any intelligent kingdom starts re-training it's smart people to craft magic items, on a kingdom scale the time n money to re-train low lvl people is dismal so ignoring that. Ideal re-train. Smart 5th lvl humans
This seems like a large assumption that a kingdom just has a pile of 5th level NPCs kicking around that don't have responsibilities related to their current level 5 status. I believe a safe assumption would be that any level 5 NPCs that do exist in a kingdom most likely have important jobs related to their current level 5 class, otherwise how would an NPC manage to get to level 5? So does that mean the kingdom is just grabbing every high level craftsman, soldier, noble, farmer, etc. and forcing them to become a magic casting class? If so, that sounds like a relatively corrupt Kingdom that will quickly face unrest due to press-ganging citizens into new roles/jobs.
Based on downtime rules, the kingdom would need to have at least one level 6 magic caster kicking around, that has nothing else they're doing, that could start retraining these other NPCs one at a time into level 5 casters. Unless the kingdom is holding the level 6 magic caster as a slave, they're going to have to pay for the time it takes to retrain all the NPCs at rate of 1,750 gold per NPC based on downtime retraining rules (10 gold * Level 5 * 35 days -> 7 days per level for 5 levels), and considering that these NPCs are expected to crank out a Golem army then most likely 10+ would have to be retrained so that the Golem army could be achieved in a reasonable amount of time. For the sake of simple math we'll assume that 10 NPCs are retrained from scratch into magic casters (from classes that have no magic casting synergy that could reduce time and costs) resulting in an overall cost of 17,500 gold for all the retraining, which isn't an insignificant amount of money (even for a kingdom).Feats: Defiant Luck, Inexplicable Luck,
Crafts Wondrous Item, and Craft Construct
Since Defiant Luck doesn't have any relation to item crafting, I can only assume that it is being taken to meet the prerequisites for Inexplicable Luck. Defiant Luck rules text: "Once per day, after you roll a natural 1 on a saving throw or a critical hit is confirmed against you, you can either reroll that saving throw, or force the creature that confirmed the critical hit against you to reroll the critical confirmation roll. This does not stack with other effects that allow you to reroll a saving throw or an attack roll. You may only make one reroll." So this feat would not be usable for re-rolling any failed Spellcraft or other Crafting checks.
Craft Wondrous Item would need to be replaced by Craft Poppet, otherwise a level 5 NPC (or PC) would be unable to take Craft Construct, as the requirements for that feat include Craft Wondrous Item and Craft Magic Arms and Armor. Craft Poppet would allow you to meet those prerequisites as the rules text includes: "...You are treated as having both Craft Magic Arms and Armor and Craft Wondrous Item for the purpose of fulfilling the prerequisites for Craft Construct."Costs for retraining 4 feats would be 1000 gold per NPC (10 gold * level 5 * 20 days -> 5 days per feat for 4 feats) giving a total of 10,000 gold to train the aforementioned 10 NPCs, which gives us a total cost so far of 27,500 gold in retraining costs.
Max Skill points as a class skill
The costs for this retraining is a bit harder to calculate since the rules for retraining skills is as follows: "You can retrain skill ranks you have assigned to skills. Retraining skill ranks takes 5 days. When the training period ends, reassign a number of skill ranks up to your Intelligence bonus (minimum 1), removing them from your existing skill (or skills) and adding them to a different skill (or skills)." Based on the assumption that the highest Intelligence score an NPC would have is 16, granting a +3 Intelligence bonus (allowing 3 skill points to be retrained in 5 days) and the lowest number of skills that could be retrained is 1, then the average number of skill points that could be trained in a 5 day period would be 2 points. This results in an average number of retraining sessions equal to 3 sessions to retrain 5 points into Spellcraft, giving an average retraining cost of 750 gold per NPC (10 gold * level 5 * 15 days -> 5 days per skill session for 3 iterations), this would be 7500 gold for the 10 NPCs and a new grand total of 35,000 gold.
Intelligence score of 16
This is another large assumption that all of the NPCs will have a high intelligence score, as downtime retraining only allows changes to Ability Score Increases and does not allow for retraining the base ability scores. Each of the level 5 NPCs being retrained would need to have an Intelligence of at least 15 to retrain the one Ability Score Increase into Intelligence to get the 16 you reference. The logical assumption would be that each of the NPCs have varying Intelligence scores that most likely won't be able to be upgraded to a 16, and there may only be 1 of the 10 that has that high of an Intelligence score.
1 trait into spellcraft
The downtime retraining rules only allow for retraining Racial Traits and there are currently no Human Racial Traits that give a bonus to Spellcraft for the purpose of magic item crafting (at least not that I could find).
1 apprentice for the aid bonus
If there is going to be an Apprentice to help with the Spellcraft checks, that means that another 10 NPCs will need to be retrained (1 for each of the 10 NPCs that are also being retrained) resulting in additional retraining costs. Assuming the kingdom will attempt to save on costs by only level 1 NPCs, costs would be as following: Retraining 1 class level would be 70 gold (10 gold * level 1 * 7 days), two useful feats to help with crafting would be 100 gold (10 gold * level 1 * 10 days -> 2 feats at 5 days each), and 50 gold to train Spellcraft (10 gold * level 1 * 5 days), for a total of 220 gold per each Apprentice. This would give a total cost of 2200 gold for 10 Apprentices and a new cost total of 37,200 gold invested by the kingdom in retraining NPCs.
An important thing to keep in mind with Aid Another: "If you roll a 10 or higher on your check, the character you’re helping gets a +2 bonus on his or her check. (You can’t take 10 on a skill check to aid another.)" This means that the Apprentices can't be assumed to grant a +2 bonus 100% of the time, however it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the Apprentices will be helpful at least half of the time.Now considering that these crafters Craft Wondrous Item and a kingdom to foot the bill... Why wouldn't they have magic items that increase there Intelligence and skills.
As was stated above in order for a level 5 NPC to have Craft Construct (and keep the two Luck feats), Craft Wondrous Item would have to be replaced by Craft Poppet, meaning that the NPCs would not be able to Craft Wondrous Item. If the two Luck feats were to be replaced by Skill Focus (Spellcraft) and Craft Wondrous Item then the NPC crafters would be able to craft Wondrous Items.
In regards to the kingdom footing the bill, the kingdom would have to cover the material costs as well as the labor of the NPCs constructing these Wondrous Items, as the NPCs are going to be crafting Golems for the kingdom as their new job (unless all of the NPCs are being treated as slaves, which would most likely result in unrest within the kingdom). Since the NPC crafters will be making these Wondrous Items to assist in their work for the kingdom and not because they get to keep these magic items, it makes much more sense to assume that the kingdom is paying full price for the creation of each Wondrous Item rather than just material costs.Now add;
+15 spellcraft magic item (Craft DC=30)
And +4 Intelligence headband (DC=28)
Since the kingdom is paying full price for these two items there would be a collective cost of 38,500 gold and 39 days to construct the two items. To construct 10 copies of each item so each crafting NPC gets a set, this results in a total cost of 385,000 gold and new grand total of 422,200 gold for the kingdom.
Add these to the 32 on a 10 roll and...
BOOM 49!
Suddenly u have lvl 5 crafters making DC 49 spellcraft checks on a roll of a 10, that also reroll one Nat '1' a day.
Total time and money for build is under 20000gp and right around a month to 1.5 months (includes re-train time) then on to popping out an Iron Golem every 80days
The NPCs would not have the ability to reroll a critical fail (a Nat '1') each day, as to get to this point both Luck feats would have to be dropped, and neither of those feats granted the ability to reroll a critical failure on a Skill related check.
Ignoring the totals since there were several flaws in the logic leading up to the final total of 49 and just assuming that after all these investitures the kingdom has 10 trained NPCs outfitted with Wondrous Items that allow them to easily make Iron Golems at level, we have final cost of 42,220 gold invested in each of the NPCs rather than only 20,000 gold as was originally estimated. The training time of 1 month to 1.5 months to allow for retraining and creation of the aforementioned Wondrous Items is also vastly underestimated as the total retraining time for each NPC plus their Apprentice assistant would be approximately 82 days with the wondrous items adding another 39 days, meaning that a single NPC crafter requires 121 days of time to "create", or just over 4 months.So after 4 months of training and investing 42,440 gold for 1 NPC crafter and 1 Apprentice assistant, the kingdom would now be able to have Iron Golems created at a rate of 1 Golem every 150 days rather than every 80 days as "Creating an item requires 8 hours of work per 1,000 gp in the item’s base price (or fraction thereof), with a minimum of at least 8 hours" (emphasis mine in bold).
If the kingdom isn't treating the NPC crafters and their Apprentices as slaves, the kingdom would also be paying full price (or very close to full price) for each of the Iron Golems that are manufactured since the NPC crafters and their Apprentices will require wages to cover their work for the kingdom (wages for a highly specialized skill set).
Why the kingdom? Well because it's still crazy expensive to make a golem army. But when each settlement of town size or larger should b able to out put 1 golem with BP to spare, and a kingdom is usually made of at least 10 town size or larger settlements any kingdom that survives a year or two should have iron golem armies.
Based on the assumption that it takes 4 months for a level 6 magic caster to train a single level 5 NPC caster/crafter (60 days), the level 5 NPC caster/crafter then trains their Apprentice (22 days), and once the Apprentice is trained the duo immediately gets to work making the two Wondrous Items needed for making Golems (39 days), the first Iron Golem will be made in around 271 days (no breaks, work every day, and no weekends off like is referenced in the downtime rules). Also assuming that the level 6 magic caster who is training the level 5 NPCs starts training the next NPC immediately after the last is finished, it would take the level 6 magic caster 600 days to train 10 level 5 NPCs into casters, and a final total of 661 days before every NPC pair is up and running making Golems. At the point where every NPC Crafter and Apprentice is trained, during those 661 nonstop days of work (approximately 22 months), only 14 Iron Golems will have been completed (there will be other Iron Golems in various stages of completion, and assuming I'm not too far off on my math). This means that after almost 2 years (the previous 661 days/22 months) a kingdom will have 10 fully trained NPC caster/crafter and Apprentice pairs able to manufacture 10 Iron Golems every 150 days, 14 Iron Golems have already been completed, and the kingdom has spent right around 2,522,200 gold to get to this point.
Once the kingdom has these 10 trained teams prepped, they will be able to manufacture 10 Iron Golems every 150 days, giving the kingdom 20 new Iron Golems every year. This would also result in kingdom expenditures of 3,000,000 gold each year to create those 20 new Iron Golems, which is not an insignificant amount of money for a kingdom to spend on just the 1 sector of their economy. Assuming that an Army of Iron Golems were composed of 1000 Iron Golems, it would take quite a few years before a kingdom would have that many Golems constructed (assuming no other NPC caster/crafters were trained/retrained).**Please note that all of the time and cost calculations are based on the assumption that all of the Iron Golems are being crafted at standard speed and accelerated crafting is not achieved via the standard +5 DC or through any other method. NPC caster/crafters are also assumed to work 7 days a week without rest despite downtime rules having a note indicating that a normal crafting work week would be only 5 days and the Golem crafting would be considered a job working for the kingdom. Costs to the kingdom for retraining of NPC caster/crafters and Apprentice assistants is based on the kingdom not treating all NPCs involved as Slave Labor in order to reduce costs. Costs to craft the Iron Golem army is based on the kingdom not treating all of the NPCs involved as Slave Labor and paying wages based on the work accomplished by the NPCs. Time and cost calculations also do not follow the kingdom building template or address actual build point costs and instead are based on raw gold costs (based on the build point value of 4000 gold per BP, costs would be approximately 37,606 build points to achieve the 1000 Iron Golem army).**
Sorry not trying to argue the tactics or effectiveness of the golem army, just how easy, with kingdom finances and longevity, it is to do stupid crazy stuff with magic crafting, and wondering why none of the pathfinder official games don't have crazy amounts of magic items around, especially sense a few +5s to the DC later, which is what i'm questioning, and a level 3 can start pumping out wondrous items with wish on them?
While a kingdom may have sufficient coffers to finance a Golem army over a long period of time (most likely 50+ years of construction and retraining), the finances of a level 3 PC are significantly more limited. Taking your example of crafting Wondrous Items with the Wish spell and completely ignoring the DC for creating the item (and all the extra costs and magic items needed to meet that DC), under the assumption that the item being crafted would be usable once per day (unlimited use), command word activated, and put into an item that used a body slot (to avoid the price doubling for being slot-less), the item price (assuming my math is correct) would be 2,558,320 gold, meaning that a PC would have to come up with 2,529,160 gold to manufacture the item (the material component of a 25,000 gold diamond can't be divided in half), and it would take 2559 days to create (just over 7 years). These crafting costs are based only on the material component costs and the based Magic Item Creation formulas, it doesn't cover any additional material costs involved in crafting a sturdy enough item that can hold the power necessary for being able to cast Wish every single day for the rest of time (or until magically dispelled). Going to the cheaper/easier end of the spectrum, a PC could instead attempt to craft a Luck Blade with only 1 wish charge in the sword, which would still cost 43,385 gold to create (and 63 days of work based on the price of 62,360 gold), which should still be far out of the reach of a group of level 3 PCs.
I'm not sure what kind of campaign you're accustomed to playing in, but for a level 3 PC to have that much gold available to create a Wish capable item seems to be more of a problem with the DM and not with the Magic Item Crafting system.Another thing to keep in mind is that while crafting a Wondrous Item with Wish installed can be mechanically achieved via the Magic Item Creation rules, should a level 3 PC somehow come up with 2.5 Million gold to create the item (which I can't think of any logical reason how that would happen at level 3), the DM can simply tell the player they just can't make the item at their current level. A DM that is actually concerned about level 3 characters creating that sort of game breaking item that early in the game would have to be a brand new DM to think that it's normal for level 3 characters to have access to more than two million gold, when the basic wealth tables list 3000 gold as being the average for level 3. Also, any DM with more than a year of experience should know that the way you prevent level 3 characters from creating Wondrous Items with Wish built in is to limit their wealth and simply not allow them to get that sort of absurd wealth at such a low level (a level 20 character is expected to have a wealth level of 880,000 gold, there's no logical reason for a group of level 3 PCs to be able to exceed that amount).
The magic item creation system functions on the premise of four important details: 1) Can the PCs afford the costs of construction for the magic item in question? 2) Do the PCs have enough available time to craft the magic item in question? 3) Is there Magic Item Precedence that needs to be consulted for the creation of the new magic item (magic item creation rules state that established magic items from the rule book should be used a reference for creating new magic item in order to prevent players from gaming the system based on straight math formulas). 4) Would a sane or intelligent DM allow for the creation of the new magic item in that campaign? If the PCs are able to meet the requirements for the first 3 questions and not the 4th, then the PCs will need to find something else to spend their gold on. If the PCs aren't able to meet all of the first 3 requirements then the 4th requirement is moot and the PCs again will need to find something else to spend their gold on (or make modifications to the magic item they want to create so that it does meet the first 3 requirements).
| Cevah |
Wow. Wall of Text. Didn't read all of it.
The spells needed for the golem are 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th level wizard spells. If you retain a 9th level wizard, you no longer need the +5 for the lack of the first spell, and the spell Tears to Wine goes up from +2 to +5. This reduces the need for the check by 7. Additionally, that spell produces so much wine that a huge number of people can benefit from that +5. This includes those providing Aid Another, making it a lot easier for a Take-1 to automatically get 10+ in the skill.
If you retain a 15th level wizard, you don't need +5 for any of the spells, and there are a number of ways to finesse CL16 with either a +1 CL Ioun Stone or a bonus to CL for a school or even a single spell. That reduces the DC by another 20 while upping the skill by another 6.
As to the luck feats, you are spending two feats to get 1/day +8. You could instead invest 3,100 gp in an Azlant Pendant for a 1/day +10 insight bonus.
/cevah
| JiCi |
I had this idea of a Celedon city, where they practice construct crafting... and soul binding (using the Soulbound Construct template). Many aspire to be have their souls transfered into much stronger constructs, and there are rumors of criminals (be them or other organic creatures) which had their souls bound to stationnary or repetitive constructs as punishment.