Can you make technological items with fabricate?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


1 person marked this as a favorite.

It says you can't make magic items, but doesn't say anything about technological, so I would guess you can if you have all the raw materials.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm unfamiliar with technological items in pathfinder, so I can't help you much there.

I'm under the impression that you can only make things using fabricate that you can make using craft skills. The material component for fabricate is the raw material (which costs the same amount as the raw materials needed for the craft skill). So the spell follow some crafting rules.

Magic items need special magic item crafting feats. You can't even try it untrained like you could with craft skills. Fabricate can't make magic items, so maybe fabricate can't duplicate anything that you need crafting feats for.

So craft skills yes, craft feats no.

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

1) Making technological items require a laboratory, Fabricate isn't a laboratory.

2) Fabricate: "You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material."
Technological items generally aren't made from a single material.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Obligatory "What do you mean by 'technological'?" query. Technically a sharpened stick is technology, so that should be easy.

IF you have all the materials needed
and IF you cast enough Fabricates to handle each individual material
and IF you have the knowledge and skills necessary to make the individual parts precisely enough
THEN yes I would allow it to a certain degree. Assembly of multiple parts would be beyond the scope of the spell.

Something simple like insulated copper wire should be easy enough to do as long as you have a pile of copper, a pile of rubber, and use two spells - one to shape the copper and one to shape the rubber.
Making a top shelf modern integrated circuit is going to be beyond most casters, however clever they are.
You could, if you were skilled enough, make all the parts to, say, a WWII tank but Fabricate won't put the parts together.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

i would only add that technology in pathfinder has a side rule:

"You treat all skill checks made against technology as if they were untrained skill checks. This may mean that you cannot attempt certain skill checks, even if you possess ranks in the skill in question."

you can find it mentioned in the "Technologist" feat which is what you normally need in order to use your skills with high tech matters.

so using fabricate beside all that was mentioned above would most likely also need that feat as well.

you might be able to use craft untrained, but the knowledge check to know what the heck you are doing can't be done untrained. when you normally craft something. unless it's something rare and obscure most gm wouldn't ask you to roll knowledge to know what it is you are making ('it's a door. i know what a door is. it's like dc 1 to know') but if you want your character to make a pulse gun? he first need to be able to know what it is and how it is constructed. GM should ask you for knowledge check then. and for that you'll need the feat.

----
EDIT
looking more into this (since i never actually went down that rabbit hole -i leave my cyberpunk games to shadowrun) it seem that crafting a tech item is more akin to crafting magic item (both in process and cost wise) and it require a feat (or more) to even be able to do it.
(so you'd need that as well if you want to use fabricate. not even sure fabricate would help as it doesn't use the craft skill the same way as when you make, say a bow.)

Crafting High-Tech Items:

The process of building technological items has much in common with magic item creation, though it uses different feats, skills, and facilities. As with magic items, the creator invests time and money in the creation process and at the end attempts a single skill check to complete construction. Since technological items do not have caster levels, the DC of this check is defined in the description of each technological item. Failing this check means that the item does not function and the materials are wasted. Failing this check by 5 or more may result in a catastrophic failure, such as electrocution or an explosion, at the GM’s discretion.

Unlike magic items, which often require spells as prerequisites for construction, high-tech items require a specialized laboratory with the necessary tools for fabrication. Using a crafting lab to build a high-tech item consumes an amount of power each day. Days when the crafting lab is without power effectively delay continued construction of a high-tech item, but time already spent building the item is not lost. In addition, crafting an item requires an expenditure of time (from a character with the appropriate crafting feat) and an expenditure of money used to secure the technological components and expendable resources needed for the work.

Creating a technological item requires 8 hours of work per 1,000 gp in the item’s base price (or fraction thereof ). The creator must spend the gold at the beginning of the construction process. The process can be accelerated to 4 hours of work per 1,000 gp by increasing the DC to create the item by 5. When determining the required time, ignore any fixed costs such as the weapon portion of implanted weaponry.

The creator can work for a maximum of 8 hours per day, even if she doesn’t require sleep or rest. These days need not be consecutive. Ideally, the creator can work for at least 4 hours at a time uninterrupted, but if this is not possible (such as while adventuring), the creator can devote 4 hours of work broken up over the day, accomplishing a net of 2 hours of progress. Work under distracting or dangerous conditions nets only half the progress as well. If the creator can’t dedicate at least 4 hours of work during a day (even if broken up or under distracting conditions), any work performed that day is wasted.

A character can work on multiple technological items at a time, or even in the same day as long as at least 2 hours net labor can be spent on each item. This doesn’t let a creator exceed the limits on work accomplished in a single day, but does require separate power expenditures for each item (working on multiple projects at a time is not particularly energy efficient).

Technological items can be repaired using the appropriate crafting feats in the same way magical items can be repaired, but such methods cannot repair the more fundamental ravages of time that afflict timeworn technological items.

(from the "Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Technology Guide")


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Can you make the technological item without Fabricate? Fabricate only allows you to create an item you can already create without the spell. There are other restrictions like having the proper raw material and not being able to create magic items. So, if the item requires a skill, you cannot use untrained Fabricate will not work.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Diego Rossi wrote:

1) Making technological items require a laboratory, Fabricate isn't a laboratory.

Well you normally need a forge to make metal weapons/armor, correct? Yet the spell allows you to make them without that.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Mysterious Stranger wrote:
Can you make the technological item without Fabricate? Fabricate only allows you to create an item you can already create without the spell. There are other restrictions like having the proper raw material and not being able to create magic items. So, if the item requires a skill, you cannot use untrained Fabricate will not work.

I'm well aware of this. I mean if you have the right feats and a high enough skill (what skill is used to make technological items, anyway?) The main benefit of Fabricate is it doesn't take weeks or months to make the item.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

your missing the point.

craft (x) skill make items in a whole different way than craft magic item. one goes by silver pieces per week and cost 1/3 of the base price. the other by around 1000 gp per day and cost 1/2 of base price. the DC to make the items is calculated in different matter as well. these are two non connecting crafting systems.

creating tech items (as i posted above in the spoiler) work almost like crafting magical items and not at all like using the craft skill.

fabricate only make stuff that normally are made with the craft skill faster. you can not use it for magic item creation and for that same reason not for high tech item creation.

the 1st sentence in the spoiler above read "The process of building technological items has much in common with magic item creation, though it uses different feats, skills, and facilities"


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Rule-of-thumb for Fabricate: If you can't do it without Fabricate, you can't do it with Fabricate. The spell saves time, and lets you form thigns without having the normally necessary tools (e.g. a forge to create something out of steel), but that's it. The spell is called "Fabricate" not "cheat item cost"!

As Diego Rossi pointed out, "You convert material of one sort". There are no technological items (as the term is used in PF) made out of a single material. You could maybe make some of the individual parts, but not necessarily all of them, and the spell certainly doesn't put them together.

Yqatuba wrote:
Well you normally need a forge to make metal weapons/armor, correct? Yet the spell allows you to make them without that.

I'm not even sure about that. You could certainly form a sword, but does the spell do the heat treatment for you? Also, there isn't much armor made out of a single material. A chain shirt should work, but most armor has a combination of metal, leather, and cloth. Similarly, few weapons are actually made out of a single material, so while you can make the individual parts, you still have to put them together.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Diego Rossi wrote:

1) Making technological items require a laboratory, Fabricate isn't a laboratory.

2) Fabricate: "You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material."
Technological items generally aren't made from a single material.

1: Op already disproved this.

2: Most weapons, armor, shields, hell even ordinary tools, are made out of multiple materials (leather or wood for handles, steel for the main part, padding for armor, etc). So according to you, you can't make most weapons armor, shields, and tools with Fabricate. According to the spell, you can. Which means you are wrong on this point as well.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Reksew_Trebla wrote:
So according to you, you can't make most weapons armor, shields, and tools with Fabricate. According to the spell, you can. Which means you are wrong on this point as well.

Where does it say that? I don't see the words "weapon", armor", shield" or "tool" in the spell description. Or any description of what you can create beyond "a product that is of the same material." (note the singular "material").


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Derklord wrote:
Reksew_Trebla wrote:
So according to you, you can't make most weapons armor, shields, and tools with Fabricate. According to the spell, you can. Which means you are wrong on this point as well.
Where does it say that? I don't see the words "weapon", armor", shield" or "tool" in the spell description. Or any description of what you can create beyond "a product that is of the same material." (note the singular "material").
Fabricate wrote:
You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship.

Whether you like it or not, such items are going to be made of multiple materials, otherwise they wouldn't require a "high degree of craftsmanship".


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I submit Michelangelo's David as an item containing only one material and exhibiting a "high degree of craftsmanship."


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Reksew_Trebla wrote:
Whether you like it or not, such items are going to be made of multiple materials, otherwise they wouldn't require a "high degree of craftsmanship".

Not only is this objectively wrong, as e.g. the blade (with tang) of a sword very much does require a "high degree of craftsmanship" to make, even if your statement was true it would not in any way prove or even indicate that such items can be made with Fabricate.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I don't think we'll ever be sure if fabricate only works with one material or if it can handle multiple materials. We'd need paizo to rewrite parts of the spell.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Obligatory "What do you mean by 'technological'?" query. Technically a sharpened stick is technology, so that should be easy.

IF you have all the materials needed
and IF you cast enough Fabricates to handle each individual material
and IF you have the knowledge and skills necessary to make the individual parts precisely enough
THEN yes I would allow it to a certain degree. Assembly of multiple parts would be beyond the scope of the spell.

Something simple like insulated copper wire should be easy enough to do as long as you have a pile of copper, a pile of rubber, and use two spells - one to shape the copper and one to shape the rubber.

Disagree--I would allow one spell to take a pile of copper plus a pile of rubber and make a pile of insulated wire. Disallowing this would also mean disallowing a composite bow.

Quote:

Making a top shelf modern integrated circuit is going to be beyond most casters, however clever they are.

You could, if you were skilled enough, make all the parts to, say, a WWII tank but Fabricate won't put the parts together.

Agreed here.

But what happens when you cast Make Whole on a piece of machinery. What exactly can you repair? Can you recharge it's batteries? Can I Make Whole on one of the Apollo rovers and drive off?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Loren Pechtel wrote:
But what happens when you cast Make Whole on a piece of machinery. What exactly can you repair? Can you recharge it's batteries? Can I Make Whole on one of the Apollo rovers and drive off?

It will repair the machinery, assuming no parts are missing. It will not recharge the battery, it will not refill the gas tank. If you break a bottle of wine and then cast mending or make whole, the bottle might become perfectly repaired and good-as-new, but it's not going to fill it back up with wine. Just like if your wand of magic missiles is down to 5 charges and you 'break' it, make whole isn't going to fix it and put it back at 50 charges. So your empty jetpack or dead flashlight (assuming it's the battery) won't be refilled or charged either.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I believe that the spell of manufacturing its function would be in the technology part.

nevertheless
must be
to raise 3 points for this to work:

1) knowledge: no
it is the same that we have knowledge of medieval technology than modern technology, much
minus future technology like laser swords, force fields, or spaceships.
2) materials: not all materials are easy to obtain, at the beginning of our technology, copper was the most used metal for electrical components, today some conductors have been replaced by gold and use silicon cards to withstand high temperatures.
3) degree of size of the components: creating a cart or a catapult does not require much effort since its degree of complexity is simple, however it cannot be applied to the technological components that many of the components (such as micro chips) They are practically very small (less than 1mm) that are not within the reach of the complexity of the view and another spell is required that can help this effect.

if you have these 3 principles if you can say that it would work otherwise in my opinion it will always be a failure


1 person marked this as a favorite.

this discussion went way off track.

there is a point i keep making and some here just ignore.

crafting an item with a craft skill, which fabricate works by, only it make it a lot faster( "You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship."), uses a DIFFERENT SYSTEM OF RULES then magic items creation and by that definition also high tech item creation (which as i pointed out above work very similar to magic item creation).

you need feats to make magic\high tech items. no so for using the craft skill.
you need material worth 50% of the base magic\high tech item. not so with the craft skill which uses material worth 1/3 of the base item.
the normal crafting progression is 1000 gp/day for base magic\high tech item worth for the 1st case. it's calculated by SP progress of (dc)X(craft roll) per week using the craft skill.
you can accelerate the crafting process of the magic\high tech item creation by increasing the craft dc by 5. you can not accelerate the crafting of items made with craft skill -that's the whole selling point of the fabricate spell. making items with the craft skill a LOT faster!

you are trying to use a spell meant for one rule system for a different rule system. it's like trying to heal ability damage with a spell that heal hit points by saying it heal 'damage' and this also say 'damage'.

consider this:
you need spells to craft magic items, you need 'power' to make high tech items (uses the lab's power that day or what not, a lab out of power for a day can't be used to craft for that same day etc). having the base item material for a high tech item and using fabricate on it would not supply the needed 'power' and having a lab with ability to use said 'power' would still not work with the fabricate as it doesn't use it in the process of it's crafting method. (it's like expecting fabricate to supply the spells for magic item creation. or use the spell you have on a scroll by itself)

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

For the main question:

Technology guide wrote:
Without the Technologist feat, Craft (mechanical) can still be used to craft less advanced forms of technology such as gears, hinges, and pulleys.

Without the feat, you can't use fabricate to produce anything more complex than "gears, hinges, and pulleys".

Yqatuba wrote:
Diego Rossi wrote:

1) Making technological items require a laboratory, Fabricate isn't a laboratory.

Well you normally need a forge to make metal weapons/armor, correct? Yet the spell allows you to make them without that.
CRB wrote:
All crafts require artisan’s tools to give the best chance of success. If improvised tools are used, the check is made with a –2 penalty. On the other hand, masterwork artisan’s tools provide a +2 circumstance bonus on the check.
Technology guide wrote:
Unlike magic items, which often require spells as prerequisites for construction, high-tech items require a specialized laboratory with the necessary tools for fabrication. Using a crafting lab to build a high-tech item consumes an amount of power each day. Days when the crafting lab is without power effectively delay continued construction of a high-tech item, but time already spent building the item is not lost. In addition, crafting an item requires an expenditure of time (from a character with the appropriate crafting feat) and an expenditure of money used to secure the technological components and expendable resources needed for the work.

The laboratory is a prerequisite, and the laboratory charges are part of the cost of making high-tech items. You need to pay the charges cost of the item, but you don't have them without the laboratory.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pizza Lord wrote:
Loren Pechtel wrote:
But what happens when you cast Make Whole on a piece of machinery. What exactly can you repair? Can you recharge it's batteries? Can I Make Whole on one of the Apollo rovers and drive off?
It will repair the machinery, assuming no parts are missing. It will not recharge the battery, it will not refill the gas tank. If you break a bottle of wine and then cast mending or make whole, the bottle might become perfectly repaired and good-as-new, but it's not going to fill it back up with wine. Just like if your wand of magic missiles is down to 5 charges and you 'break' it, make whole isn't going to fix it and put it back at 50 charges. So your empty jetpack or dead flashlight (assuming it's the battery) won't be refilled or charged either.

But batteries store power by chemical means. The like-new state is the battery has a charge.

Your example of the bottle is different--bottles aren't manufactured full. Primary batteries are. Some secondary batteries are but I do not know if all types are. (Your car battery, for example, is fully charged when you pour the acid in. At least in the past they were typically shipped with the acid separate as once the acid is added they will degrade if not kept charged. Modern sealed units I'm not sure of what they are doing.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Zepheri wrote:


3) degree of size of the components: creating a cart or a catapult does not require much effort since its degree of complexity is simple, however it cannot be applied to the technological components that many of the components (such as micro chips) They are practically very small (less than 1mm) that are not within the reach of the complexity of the view and another spell is required that can help this effect.

I don't see that scale should matter. However, I don't believe you can fabricate most tech stuff because our tech gadgets are such an assembly of parts that it's pretty much impossible to have the skill to do all of them and I would require different parts to be fabricated separately. Items which are simply advanced mechanical devices I would permit--but you need all the relevant skills and you'll have to assemble them. (On the other hand, I think an "Assemble" spell would be a reasonable thing to exist. Turn a collection of parts into a finished object.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Loren Pechtel wrote:
But batteries store power by chemical means. The like-new state [from make whole] is the battery has a charge.

Because that's not what make whole does. It repairs damage. It doesn't charge things. It doesn't return erased writing from a page. It doesn't clean ink off a page if you spill ink on your book and make it like new when you bought it and can read the page again. It restores it to working order, but not necessarily recharging or resetting it to a working or functional state. Casting make whole on your hourglass will not cause the sand to return to the top and casting it on a dead battery will just give you a repaired dead battery, one that is in a functional state, but still needs to be primed to be functional. Like a broken watch, you can make whole on it, but you'll still need to wind it and set it to the correct time afterwards.

Also, there's the 3rd-level recharge spell, which specifically recharges batteries and technological items. Allowing mending and make whole (lower level spells) to fully charge a battery as well as repairing any damage would be inconsistent. Especially when recharge costs 500 gp in diamond dust to do it and, especially especially, when using recharge has a 20% chance of destroying the battery flat out. Now... if that happens, then mend or make whole could be used to repair it... but it still wouldn't be charged.

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Loren Pechtel wrote:
But batteries store power by chemical means. The like-new state [from make whole] is the battery has a charge.

The degrading of the battery because of the chemical reaction doesn't damage it at all. Restoring 1d4 hit points will not recharge it.

What happens when a lead-acid battery produces electricity is a transmutation, where lead+sulfuric acid becomes lead sulfate+hydrogen and the hydrogen is released into the atmosphere.
0 hit point of damage.

Mending/Make whole "repairs damaged objects, restoring 1d4 hit points to the object." Nothing about making the object "like-new".
The object has been bent? Mending/Make whole does nothing.
The object has burned? Mending/Make whole does nothing.

Mending/Make whole doesn't turn back chemical reactions.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Loren Pechtel wrote:
Zepheri wrote:


3) degree of size of the components: creating a cart or a catapult does not require much effort since its degree of complexity is simple, however it cannot be applied to the technological components that many of the components (such as micro chips) They are practically very small (less than 1mm) that are not within the reach of the complexity of the view and another spell is required that can help this effect.
I don't see that scale should matter. However, I don't believe you can fabricate most tech stuff because our tech gadgets are such an assembly of parts that it's pretty much impossible to have the skill to do all of them and I would require different parts to be fabricated separately. Items which are simply advanced mechanical devices I would permit--but you need all the relevant skills and you'll have to assemble them. (On the other hand, I think an "Assemble" spell would be a reasonable thing to exist. Turn a collection of parts into a finished object.)

If you had a video of how things are done, you will realize that computer chips are created by machines and, since they require a degree of precision, their size is very small, so the human eye cannot discern the pattern of the scheme with the naked eye. of elaboration.

Of course many pieces of a computer are created separately but in the end the assembly is done by people,

Let's take the case of cars: before Ford introduced the assembly system where all the parts were created separately and then assembled on the production line, the cars were created by hand (in other words, the work of all the parts was done in the moment of the creation of the car and not separately which gave to have a car every 6 to 8 months maybe more) is what practically does the manufacturing spell he does not create the parts and then assembles them (ford system) the spell practically creates the pieces while assembling them at the same time (handcrafted system)

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / General Discussion / Can you make technological items with fabricate? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in General Discussion