Crafting Alchemical items, what the ****?/Pathfinder

[Griffin]

So, we had a discussion on how much time doesnt an alchemical like an antitoxin takes to be done, we are quite confused on how this works, so we would appreciate any insight on this

So, the question is: How much time will it take to make an antitoxin for example?

[Larpus]

Well, as far as I can tell, by straight RAW, it's technically one week.

Yup.

But yeah, that does seem complete bogus, so whenever I plan to make any use of crafting skills (or know anyone will), I propose to the DM a price = time needed chart, similar to the one that does exist for magical items, which is 2 hours for every 250g worth of items, except I cut all the values by five, so the time needed is 2 hours for every 50g worth of items.

So far, it seems to work pretty well as I can make a bunch of items easily but it still takes enough time so I don't get stinking rich out of doing just that and nothing else.

[Crasical]

Progress by the Day: You can make checks by the day instead of by the week. In this case your progress (check result × DC) should be divided by the number of days in a week.

So it's possible to make an antitoxin in just a single day, but you have to have your check result * DC result equal seven times the price of the item in silver.

[Larpus]

So, supposing a natural 20 you only need a total skill bonus of 120 to succeed on making an antitoxin in 8 hours, which sure is much more intricate than making a man grow magically through a Potion of Enlarge Person which only takes 2 hours to be made.

[Benly]

So, supposing a natural 20 you only need a total skill bonus of 120 to succeed on making an antitoxin in 8 hours, which sure is much more intricate than making a man grow magically through a Potion of Enlarge Person which only takes 2 hours to be made.

You can do it much more easily than that, since Craft lets you deliberately boost the DC in increments of 10. At a DC of 60 or higher, any successful check will make the antitoxin in one day.

More useful, perhaps, is the Master Alchemist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/master-alchemist) feat. With that you'll be making antitoxins in one day with any successful check against the normal DC.

[Answerer]

Frankly, all mundane crafting takes ludicrously long amounts of time. It's basically untenable.

[Crasical]

You can do it much more easily than that, since Craft lets you deliberately boost the DC in increments of 10. At a DC of 60 or higher, any successful check will make the antitoxin in one day.

More useful, perhaps, is the Master Alchemist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/master-alchemist) feat. With that you'll be making antitoxins in one day with any successful check against the normal DC.

Wouldn't you be making 12 antitoxins a day with that feat? 25 * 25 = 625/50 = 12.5?

[Benly]

Wouldn't you be making 12 antitoxins a day with that feat? 25 * 25 = 625/50 = 12.5?

If you feel like making 12 antitoxins, sure. :smallsmile: Unfortunately, crafting rules don't have any official grounding for working in units less than a "work day", so technically you can't officially just pop out an antitoxin in half an hour despite being able to make 12 in six hours. (I seem to recall reading somewhere that the "work day" was intended to be six hours, anyway.)

edit: assuming that "a dozen-sized batch of antitoxin" is considered a legitimate single article to craft, anyway. If not, it's one work day per dose regardless.

[DaedalusMkV]

Frankly, all mundane crafting takes ludicrously long amounts of time. It's basically untenable.

This. The best a 4th level (AKA very skilled by any D&D recknoning, but not legendary) Expert focused on, say, Armoursmithing can do without magic items or help is +19 (5 Int (assuming a Race that boosts Int), 7 Ranks, 3 Skill Focus, 2 Prodigy or equivalent, 2 Masterwork Item). Add in a pair of helpers using Aid Another for +4 more, and you get +23. Not shabby at all as Skill Checks go for a 4th level character, really. Now, let's have him make a set of Masterwork Full Plate (in other words, what a very skilled armoursmith would probably be getting orders for). The cost of the Full Plate is 15000 at a base DC of 19, and the Masterwork component adds 1500 at a base DC of 20. We can take 10 on this, and might as well to guarantee that we don't ruin it, so we have a Craft result of 33. Add 10 to both DCs, and we make 957 SP worth of progress on the Full Plate each and every week, completing it in a mere 15 and a half weeks. The Masterwork component takes another week and a half, for a total of 17 weeks to craft the item, or just shy of four months. Four. Months. That's over eight times as long as such an item should take. A Masterwork Longsword is probably not going to take less than two weeks to make, despite it being literally impossible that any practical (IE non-decorative) element of the blade takes more than an hour or so to complete. A simple two-foot length of Chain, at 10 GP, will likely take the relatively unskilled smith who would have made it in an hour in real life a full week to make.

When I use item Crafting in my games, I have a simple way to calculate crafting time: The time it takes to make an item is equal to the smallest amount of time you can convince me would be reasonable given your tools and skill. So far, it has never caused anything approximating a problem in my games, and has actually resulted in my players taking Crafting skills, which never happens in any games that actually use the Crafting rules. On the other hand, Master Alchemist brings crafting times for Alchemical Items down to something around that level, so if you absolutely cannot live without hard rules maybe just let everyone have the time-related benefits of that Feat for free?

I also think that a lot of Magic Items take way, way too long to make (something tells me Sauron didn't spend two months Forging each of his Rings of Power...), but that may just be me.

[Cieyrin]

I'd generally agree that craft durations are on the longer side but on the other hand, crafting isn't aimed at adventurers, it's definitely a downtime thing, which varies significantly by campaign how much of that you have.

As for full plate or plate in general, it's generally personalized to the wielder and involves more than just making each plate and riveting it together, you have to fit it to the person it's designed for. The chain mail that's to cover non-plate covered areas is time consuming when mass production techniques aren't available or even known. Getting the furnace to the proper heat isn't as simple as turning your stove on, you have to get it to the proper temperature and then maintain it (apprentice work!). So yes, armor and weapon making isn't a quick process if you want quality work or something that isn't brittle or gonna break after one battle, you need to invest time and effort into it, like most anything.

Do the Craft rules reflect that? No, not really. It's something that should be handwaved or remade, as it's not a strong part of the system. If you need something made yesterday, as always tends to be the solution, you need a Wizard with Fabricate to do the work for you.

[Shadow18000]

I have a way better system I developed for all mundane crafting. It changes the times for all items to a believable amount of time. SO instead of crafting a Full Plate Armor piece in 37 weeks with a Check of 19, you would do it in 7.5 days or 60 hours.

Proposed Crafting System

1. Find the item's DC from* Table: Craft Skills.

2. Find the Total time needed to make the item. For every 25gp an item costs, it takes 1 hour to create.

3. Pay 1/3 of the item's price for the raw material cost.

4. Make an appropriate Craft check representing one day's/week's worth of work. (Depends on GM and Circumstance) If the check equals the DC, then you successfully completed the amount of time you set out to work on the item. (8 hours max per day)
1. If your check is greater than the DC of the item being made, then you have gotten more work done in the
hours you took to craft your item. So if the DC is 20, and you roll a 21, you get an extra hour's worth of work
done in the time you used to craft. (You can only gain as much as 2x the work you put into it. So if you
spend 4 hours working, you can only gain an extra 4 hours worth of work.)
2. If you fail the check by 3 or less, you may attempt one more time to do a craft check. If you fail by 4 or
more, you have made no progress at all, and your time is wasted. If you fail by 5 or more, you lose half of
your raw materials used to make the item. See Chart Below for specifics

5. Only 1 Item can be made per craft per day unless approved by the GM otherwise. And only a maximum of 8 hours of crafting can be attempted per day in total.

SURPASSING OR FAILING CRAFT CHECK
DC Check
(+ or -)
Affects
-5
Make no progress, loose half of materials used to make item.
-4
Make no progress.
-1 to -3
Try again. (Only once more)
0
You succeed at crafting. The amount of hours spent crafting are subtracted from the total time it takes to make the item.
1
You complete 1 additional hour worth of work
2
You completed an additional 2 hour's worth of work. (If you work more than 1 hour)
3
You completed an additional 3 hour's worth of work. (If you work more than 2 hours)
4
You completed an additional 4 hour's worth of work. (If you work more than 3 hours)
5
You completed an additional 5 hour's worth of work. (If you work more than 4 hours)
6
You completed an additional 6 hour's worth of work. (If you work more than 5 hours)
7
You completed an additional 7 hour's worth of work. (If you work more than 6 hours)
8 or more
You completed an additional 8 hour's worth of work. (If you work more than 7 hours)

So how does this work? Lets take Full Plate.
Full Plate = 1500gp DC19
1. DC 19
2. 1500/25 = 60 hours
3. Pay 500gp
4. How much time do you have to craft? Let's assume we are working for a week straight at 8 hours per day. Now make a check.
1. Let's assume that with an auto 10 your Check is 19.
2. You succeed at crafting for this week at 8 hours per day. 8*7=56. You have 4 hours of crafting left on your
Full Plate.
3. What if the DC was 20? 20-19=1. You complete an extra hours worth of work every day this week. 9*7=63.
The Full Plate takes 60 hours to make. You completed the armor in just under 7 days.
4. What if you're level 20, and you have 25 points in Craft Armor. Wouldn't I finish the armor in an impossibly
short amount of time? Nope. Just half the time. See the chart above. You can only complete up to 2x the
amount of work you put into something per day (GM can change this obviously). Let's test this. Let's take 10
and add 25. You have a Check of 35. DC is 19. 35-19 = 16. 8 is the max bonus you can take. So now,
working 8 hours a day, you complete an extra 8 hours worth of time each day, totaling 16 hours worth of
work each day. 60/16=3.75. You completed the Armor in just under 4 days. You sure are good at working
with Metal to complete Full Plate in 4 days.

This system is nice because all you have to change to adjust the time to make things is change the 25gp per hour to say 10gp per hour. This will more than double the time needed to craft anything. Or make it 50gp per hour to cut the craft time in half.

The rest of the system follows Pathfinder. You can only work 8 hours per day. If traveling, you can work up to 4 hours a day, but only actually complete 2 hours worth of work....etc.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder Unchained has faster mundane crafting rules, though I confess I haven't read them in-depth myself.

[Mendicant]

Crafting in 3.X is fully borked and ridiculous. Per RAW, tt takes far longer to craft a sphere made out of gold than a sphere made out of steel, even though the former is much more malleable and easy to work. I use Making Craft Work (http://paizo.com/products/btpy8ffg?Making-Craft-Work) by Spes Magna, with a slight modification to make armor crafting take a bit longer. The PDF is only a buck, and it gives you a workable system to replace the silly one in core.

[Mehangel]

I am surprised that no-one mentioned spontaneous alchemy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/craft). It allows an antitoxin to be crafted in 10 minutes time, or if you have the feat instant alchemy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/instant-alchemy) it will be crafted in a standard action instead.

[Mendicant]

Frankly, paying a feat to perform basic tasks in a reasonable timeframe is ridiculous.

[Shadow18000]

I am surprised that no-one mentioned spontaneous alchemy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/craft). It allows an antitoxin to be crafted in 10 minutes time, or if you have the feat instant alchemy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/instant-alchemy) it will be crafted in a standard action instead.

That's only if you have access to the Pathfinder Player Companion: Alchemy Manual, which i tried to find that Feat without your link, and I couldn't. And still, even with that feat, the crafting system i praposed works with EVERY craft type, and does a decent job at making the time for crafting more acceptable. I mean you can craft a Alchemists Fire in 2 hours with a Check of 20, and with a Check of 28, you can do it in 1 hour. So it wouldn't make that feat useless.

[Castaras]

Mod of the Apocalypse: Thread closed due to Thread Necromancy.