Does the Inventor feat require 2 days of upfront downtime?

[Ravingdork]

I'm looking for clarification and community insight regarding the Inventor skill feat and how it interacts with the Crafting rules it references.

Specifically: Does the Inventor feat require you to spend 2 days of downtime upfront, like the standard Crafting process does?

At first glance, I’m inclined to say no. I don't think it is intended that you require a formula for a formula in order to save time, nor do I think it's intended that you are always forced to waste two days. That would just be too bad to be true!

But that’s just my take.
I’d love to hear how others interpret the feat. Do you think it bypasses the usual 2-day preparation requirement? Or does the feat still expect you to follow all the standard steps of the Crafting activity, including those 2 days?

Any RAW interpretations, dev commentary, or examples from your tables would be appreciated!

[NorrKnekten]

The feat works just as the standard crafting process for creating formulas. This includes the two day setup RAW. The copying of it into your formula book is the only thing that explicitly takes 1 hour.

Theres 3 ways to craft formulas.
Copy a formula, Which RAW uses all of the same setup and material costs while needing you to have the formula.

Reverse engineer. Still uses all the same setup, This is further enhanced by the Reverse Engineering feat and explicitly uses 2 day setup while also leaving you with only the base materials of the item would you do it without the feat.

Inventor feat. Same as crafting any other item. 2 days with the material cost being half the cost for a formula.

How it's played have an example of these methods of crafting formulas HERE, Its from before the remaster so just replace 4 days set up with 2 days setup.

[Finoan]

Don't confuse the Crafting process with the copying a Formula process.

Crafting takes days of downtime. Copying a Formula takes an hour. Copying a Formula requires that you already have the Formula that you are copying.

The Inventor skill feat lets you Craft a Formula that you don't have by using the Crafting process.

So yes, it will take days of downtime. Because that is how the Crafting process works.

What justification is there for calling that ruling 'too bad to be true'?

The Inventor feat is letting you create a Formula without already having the Formula. The only other possible way of doing that would be for Common items only - you could craft one of the items using the Crafting process (without the benefit of having a formula for it) and then Reverse Engineer the Formula from the item (which, surprisingly, I am not finding Remastered rules for - just the note here in the Formula rules saying that it should be possible).

[Finoan]

The rules for Reverse Engineering a Formula from an existing item are in the Legacy CRB Formula section.

By importing the Legacy rules for Reverse Engineering into a Remastered game: in addition to the Downtime cost to create the item (or any other way of getting the item you want the Formula for), you would then need to spend additional days of Downtime doing the Crafting activity again to disassemble the item and create the Formula for it (on a successful check), and destroying the item in the process.

So in a Remastered game and without the Formula for the item, you can create the Formula for a Common item with 4 days of downtime (two days to craft the item without a formula, then two days to disassemble the item to create its Formula), and spending full price for one of the items - then you can end up with the Formula for the item and half of your resources recovered from the disassembly process.

Or you could take the Inventor feat and spend 2 days and the cost of the Formula (not the cost of the item) to get the Formula.

[NorrKnekten]

Finoan wrote:

Don't confuse the Crafting process with the copying a Formula process.

Crafting takes days of downtime. Copying a Formula takes an hour. Copying a Formula requires that you already have the Formula that you are copying.

At first this confused me, but I see that there the differing layouts between Player Core and CRB made it seem like crafting a copy either takes 1 hour (like copying it into your book) or 2 days (standard crafting for reverse engineer and craft activity in general).

Also why did they remove the text about having to disassemble an item for reverse engineering?! When the feat that improves on this still mentions the dissasembly, makes no sense.

[Ravingdork]

Do the reverse engineering rules even still exist in Remaster?

The situation with Inventor vs Earn Income isn't as bad as I thought. Got some of my early math wrong by misreading a table.

[NorrKnekten]

Ravingdork wrote:

Do the reverse engineering rules even still exist in Remaster?

The situation with Inventor vs Earn Income isn't as bad as I thought. Got some of my early math wrong by misreading a table.

Yes and no, Like Finoan I can't seem to find any rules that says what happens when you do reverse engineer even when the chapter for formulas telling us that we can reverse engineer an item. Where the previous text told us we would be having raw materials from the item and its itemized formula if we succeeded.

However... the Reverse Engineering feat from Player Core 2 absolutely does exists explains what would happen without the feat as if the old rules were still in place.

[Farien]

Ravingdork wrote:

Do the reverse engineering rules even still exist in Remaster?

It got moved to the same place as the rule allowing Familiars to use the trained-only actions of skills that they have the Skilled ability for.