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AFAIK, no. There was a discussion about that recently, but then we digressed in how collaborating when you make a magic item works.
The "simplest" way to do that is to get the leadership feat and get a cohort with the skills.
If you don't want to do that, a rule of thumb I could use is to pay the hired help on the basis of the cost fo a hired spellcaster, paying every day of work the highest pay he would be receiving by casting the highest spell he could cast if he was a pure spellcaster.
To make it clearer (English isn't my first language, so sometimes my phrases are contorted):
- your hired help normally must be at least level 7, as he must take Craft Magic Arms and Armor at level 5 and Cooperative Crafting at level 7. A wizard could do that at level 5 if he uses his bonus feat for Craft Magic Arms and Armor.
- a level 7 pure spellcaster can cast 4th level spells;
- the normal cost for spellcasting services is 10gp x spell level x caster level;
- the NPC would require for his services a minimum of 10 x 4 x 7 = 280 gp every day. If he is a wizard it could go down to 10 x 3 x 5 = 150 gp every day.
The price is high, but you are essentially asking a specialist to work for you for the whole day. It will include the cost of the workplace (probably the hired help workplace) but not the spell components nor the magic item components.
A long term hire, especially if you leave the crafter some day free every week, so that he can still work as his normal business (supposedly as a hired spellcaster) can get a serious discount.
Taking a look at how much hirelings cost, the most expensive of them is the Sage at 15g/day as a starting price and the Fence takes a 10% commission on the goods. I think those are good references. I'd go with either, depending on whether it is a one-off hire for just a few items crafted, in which case I'd rule it like a commission, same principle as the Fence, or a permanent hire, at least a month, in which case I'd rule it like the Sage.
10% is probably too high, I'd go with 5% of the cost, which makes it 25gp per day of work.
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I don't think you are missing any of the rules. Commissioning a magic item or paying for assistance is not covered by any rules I know of. Mind you, I did not know of the cooperative crafting feat until just recently. They should have covered the costs of a NPC helper there.
Paying 25% of the base price to the assistant might be fair. In other circumstances, they would be getting 50% of the base price if they were making magic items themself. Mind you, there's probably not a line of people waiting outside who can afford magic items. The assistant crafter might have to take any work they can get.
- the NPC would require for his services a minimum of 10 x 4 x 7 = 280 gp every day. If he is a wizard it could go down to 10 x 3 x 5 = 150 gp every day.I'm not sure what you are saying here. Any pure caster could do this at 5th level. You get feats at 1st, 3rd, and 5th level. You could get scribe scroll at 1st level, cooperative crafting at 3rd, and then craft magic arms and armor at 5th.
I am saying that those NPC would charge that much for the spellcasting services, and that can be used as a rule of thumb to see what they expect to make in a day of work.
Naturally, that is the cost of their highest spell and they can't expect to have every day someone that needs it, but on the other hand, people could ask for lower level spells too. So the NPC is making a reasonable request when he says "I can make X in a day with my services, so, if you want to have me work for you for 8 hours a day, you should pay X."|
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Taking a look at how much hirelings cost, the most expensive of them is the Sage at 15g/day as a starting price and the Fence takes a 10% commission on the goods. I think those are good references. I'd go with either, depending on whether it is a one-off hire for just a few items crafted, in which case I'd rule it like a commission, same principle as the Fence, or a permanent hire, at least a month, in which case I'd rule it like the Sage.
10% is probably too high, I'd go with 5% of the cost, which makes it 25gp per day of work.
The example sage of the GMG is a Human abjurer 5/expert 7, so he could easily represent a magical swordsmith if you change a bit the feats and skills. At the same time, I find it difficult to accept that a guy with that skill set and level would work for so little.
To make a comparison with another specialist, we can look at the doctor in Ultimate Equipment:
DOCTOR
PRICE 1 GP
A doctor is a person skilled in nonmagical healing and medicine. A typical doctor is a 3rd-level expert with 3 ranks in Heal, the Skill Focus (Heal) feat, and ranks in other valuable skills such as Knowledge (nature) and Knowledge (religion). An experienced doctor is up to 5th level, has additional ranks in appropriate skills, and is paid five to 10 times as much; however, these doctors are in high demand and are usually employed full-time by royalty. A doctor generally knows a little bit about what local magical healing can do and where to find it. The listed price is per day.
In this example going up by two levels multiplies the cost by x5-x10.
The problem is that the cost of services isn't standardized but instead set in a way to be affordable at low levels, when (probably) the PCs need them. At higher levels, generally, the PCs have better skills than NPCs.
So, maybe the best way to evaluate the cost is to look at what are the intended benefits of the crafting feats for the WBL of the characters.
Taking the crafting feat:
However, game balance for the default campaign experience expects you and all other PCs to be close to the listed wealth values, so the GM shouldn’t just let you craft double the normal amount of gear. As a guideline, allowing a crafting PC to exceed the Character Wealth by Level guidelines by about 25% is fair, or even up to 50% if the PC has multiple crafting feats.
What are the PCs trying to do? Bypassing the need to take the feats while benefitting from them. Clever but hardly advisable for game balance, so it needs to be reigned in. If a party that has a single crafting feat between the whole group is limited to +25% of the WBL of a single character, a group with 0 crafting feats and a clever way to bypass the limitation should be limited to even less, maybe 10% or less.
That means the service of the hired crafter should be about 40% of the sale price of the item, plus the cost of the crafting materials.
Any pure caster could do this at 5th level. You get feats at 1st, 3rd, and 5th level. You could get scribe scroll at 1st level, cooperative crafting at 3rd, and then craft magic arms and armor at 5th.
Even a 5th level (Human) Commoner would suffice: Harvest Parts needs no Caster Level yet qualifies a character for Cooperative Crafting, and Master Craftman qualifies you for Craft Magical Arms and Armor. You'd need to retrain a feat though.
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Any pure caster could do this at 5th level. You get feats at 1st, 3rd, and 5th level. You could get scribe scroll at 1st level, cooperative crafting at 3rd, and then craft magic arms and armor at 5th.Even a 5th level (Human) Commoner would suffice: Harvest Parts needs no Caster Level yet qualifies a character for Cooperative Crafting, and Master Craftman qualifies you for Craft Magical Arms and Armor. You'd need to retrain a feat though.
To take master Master Craftman you need 5 ranks in a crafting skill, so it can't be taken before level 5. And then you need to take Craft Magical Arms and Armor as Master Craftman gives you the needed qualification, but not the feat.
So a commoner needs to be level 7, as the commoner doesn't get any bonus feat at level 5.
To take master Master Craftman you need 5 ranks in a crafting skill, so it can't be taken before level 5.
Hence the need for retraining. Take a "dummy" feat at 3rd level, Master Craftsman at 5th and then retrain the dummy for Magical Arms & Armor, for which you now qualify.
Though all of this still not answers the original question: what would the NPC's paycheck be?|
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Cooperative Crafting If you need another character to supply one of an item’s requirements (such as if you’re a wizard creating an item with a divine spell), both you and the other character must be present for the entire duration of the crafting process. If the GM is using the downtime system from Chapter 2, both you and the other character must use downtime at the same time for this purpose. Only you make the skill check to complete the item—or, if there is a chance of creating a cursed item, the GM makes the check in secret.
If the second character is providing a spell effect, that character’s spell is expended for the day, just as if you were using one of your own spells for a requirement. If the second character is a hired NPC, you must pay for the NPC’s spellcasting service (Core Rulebook 163) for each day of the item creation.
I even cited it in a thread a couple of weeks ago and never noticed it. :-)
In this situation, the guy is using 2 feats for you, not a spell, but I think he would ask at last as much as for casting a spell appropriate for a caster of the minimum level needed to get the feats, i.e. what a 5th level caster using a 3rd level spell would ask: 150 gp/day.
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It seems like the only benefit here is to be able to craft magical items more quickly than normal using the cooperative crafter.
The players, probably don't want to take crafting feats, or, at least, they don't want to take Craft Arms and Armors. So the benefit is circumventing the need for the feat.
The item is made by the NPC, with the player's help, so it would be a property of the NPC, while the player's work will only get some form of compensation. But if the player is paid as someone that casts a spell while making a magic item, there are ways to game the system, getting a large discount. As an example, one of the possible spells used to make a flaming weapon is Flame strike, so a PC could say "I help using flame strike every day, so my compensation is 450 gp/day, i. e. a 45% discount on the final price. If you make an Efficient quiver, the discount for casting Secret chest is 900 gp out of a 1,800 gp item, essentially getting the item a production cost.