Crafting Mithral Plate as a player - only one realistic non-magical option?

[Skrayper]

As we were discussing crafting Adamantine as a player, I noted a combo where a single person has a relatively decent shot at making the armor in a "not terrible" amount of time.

Dwarven Mage (All skills below are presumed to be attached to armorsmith)
Level 15
Trait: Eldritch Smith (Dwarf) - reduce the cost by 5%
Trait: Artisan (+2 craft checks)
Racial Trait: Craftsman (+2 craft)
Racial Trait: Industrious Urbanite (double progress towards crafting)
Feat: Signature Skill: Crafting
5 Ranks - Double your check result before multiplying by DC
15 ranks - All progress is attributed daily instead of weekly (essentially 7x progress)
Skill Focus: Crafting (+6)
Prodigy (+4)
Masterwork Tools (+2)
Presuming 18 INT to start, at least 2 boosts to INT, and a +6 INT headband - 26 INT (+8 to check)
Class skill (+3)

Bonus to Craft Check: +42
Average craft check roll: 52
Apply Signature feat (5 rank mark): 104
Multiply by DC (presume 29 - normally 19, but we're increasing the DC to make it faster) - 3016 sp per week
Apply Industrious Urbanite - 6032 per week
Apply Signature feat (15 rank mark): 6032 per day
Cost of item: 105,000 sp
Time to create: 17.4 days (so essentially 18 days)

If they have an apprentice that grants cooperative crafting (perhaps through Leadership feat), then we're looking 9 days to craft a suit of mithral full plate. If they are a dwarven mage with Caster's Luck, then 8 days.

Compared to this thread:
Mithral Plate thread

Where a whole army of crafters at 20th level takes 5 months to craft a suit of armor. All while saving a few hundred gold on each suit to make that much more profit off of it. Might be a reasonable solution for GMs who don't want a prominent blacksmith being treated like a useless commodity because of Fabricate (or simply make Fabricate more restricted or not exist in the game).

[Name Violation]

You forgot valet familiar and cooperative crafting

[avr]

A phantom thief rogue can get the signature skill benefits faster. Not any better, but if you want the same general idea on a 10th level character rather than a 15th the class is there.

[Skrayper]

Name Violation wrote:

You forgot valet familiar and cooperative crafting

I used Cooperative crafting with the apprentice - forgot to specify, but that's how the time is cut in half.

But yeah, with the valet familiar, they don't even need cooperative crafting. Though it says Cooperative Crafting doubles the amount of gp value in items that can be crafted in a day - I'm guessing that effectively means they double the production.

Considering that's not technically a bonus (like the +2 circumstance bonus is), couldn't you simply have several apprentices with this feat and do it in no time at all?

[Scavion]

One Round. One craft check, 9th level Wizard.

[Meirril]

Why not a Forgemaster?

[LordKailas]

The following build is a 5th level NPC that gets it done in 25 to 26 days. Sure, it's not as fast as the 15th level character, but it's well before fabricate is available.

Twinned Crafter

Spoiler:

Key concepts: A character that can make mithral full plate fast
Primary Stat: Intelligence (18)
Deity: Shelyn
Key Traits: (Artisan or Clan Artisan or Adopted -> Tattooed Focus) and Patient Calm
Race: Dwarf
Racial Traits: Craftsman & Industrious Urbanite(dwarf)
Class: Summoner(1), Vigilante(3), Wizard(1)
Favored Class: Vigilante
Archetype: Twinned Summoner(Summoner)
Eidolon Traits: Skilled (Craft), Shared Evolution
Social Talents: Double Time, Social Grace[Craft]
Familiar Archetype: Valet
Key Feats: Skill Focus (1st), Deific Obedience (3rd), Signature Skill (5th)
Spells: Crafter’s Fortune
NPC Wealth: 1,655/2,400
Key Gear: Masterwork Artisan’s Tools[55gp], Portable Masterwork Altar (Gorum)[400gp], Tinker’s Cap[200gp], Cracked Scarlet and Blue Sphere[200], Cracked Magenta Prism[800]
Key Features: +2 Racial Trait (racial), +8 skilled (racial), +4 (stat), +2 trait (trait), +3 prof bonus(untyped), +5 ranks(untyped), +4 obedience (sacred), +3 skill focus(untyped), +5 Social Grace (Circum), +2 Coop Craft (Circum), +2 tools (Circum), +2 altar (Circum), +2 tink cap, (Circm), +1 Ioun (untyped), +2 Ioun (Comp), +5 C. Fortne(Luck), Take 12 trait (untyped) , x2 Sig Skill, x2 Coop Craft, x2 Ind. Urbanite, x2 Double Time = Total of 64x16x29 check takes 25 days to craft
Notes:The above build assumes that the mithral armor being constructed has a lot of filigree and/or other details that would constitute a "Craft check involving an item that is highly detailed" Otherwise the check is 2 points lower as the tinker's cap bonus wouldn't apply and it takes an additional day to construct. Also, the altar only has 10 uses. Since Double time lets us make 2 checks per week this means the entire process takes 8 skill checks, so the materials in it will need to be replenished during the creation of another set of armor.

[Lelomenia]

Aphorites with Eternal Smith can make it in a reasonable timeframe (basically 10x craft speed); a lot of your other stuff would be usable to help speed it up.

[LordKailas]

Lelomenia wrote:

Aphorites with Eternal Smith can make it in a reasonable timeframe (basically 10x craft speed); a lot of your other stuff would be usable to help speed it up.

wow, taking my build above and swapping Dwarf(Industrious Urbanite) for Aphorite(Eternal Smith) drops the time to 10 days to craft 2 sets of mithral plate. Assuming that they are using Double Time to work on two projects simultaneously.

Edit: These calculations of course are all assuming that the x2 from cooperative crafting when combined with the x2 from Signature skill results in a x4 multipler. In pathfinder typically combining two x2 multipliers results in a x3 multipler. Taking this apporach the math becomes

Spoiler:

+2 Racial Trait (racial), +8 skilled (racial), +5 (stat), +2 trait (trait), +3 prof bonus(untyped), +5 ranks(untyped), +4 obedience (sacred), +3 skill focus(untyped), +4 Social Grace (Circum), +2 Coop Craft (Circum), +2 tools (Circum), +2 altar (Circum), +2 tink cap, (Circm), +1 Ioun (untyped), +2 Ioun (Comp), +5 C. Fortne(Luck), Take 12 trait (untyped), gp instead of sp (untyped), x2 Sig Skill, x2 Coop Craft, x2 Double Time = Total of 64x3x29 check vs gp.

The result of which is that it takes 14 days to craft 2 sets of Mithral Full Plate.