How to speed up Magic Item creation?

[Diachronos]

I know that item crafting isn't "the best way to play a character" or "the optimized build." Frankly, I don't care. This is what I want to do with this character.

If the only thing you have to say in regards to this thread is that I'm "not playing the character right" or anything like that, kindly leave the thread instead of cluttering it with pointless posts.


For a new campaign I'm going to be building a Human Arcanist. I wanted to try something that I've never done before: crafting magic items. It's annoying having to either spend the majority of your money on a single +2 ability score buff or wait for something useful to appear in random loot, so I'd like to try my hand at making things for the party myself. Most likely it will just be Wondrous Items, since other items would likely be easier to obtain from a merchant or loot.

Now, the only thing I've ever crafted before is Potions with my Alchemist, so I've never had to put up with the "8 hours per 1000g" crafting time. I'd love to be able to do this for the party, but I also don't want to force everybody to stay in town for several weeks or to take four times as long to craft something on the road.

I do know that there are a few things that would help to reduce the cost and time of crafting the items (namely the Hedge Wizard trait and the Arcane Builder arcane discovery for Wizards), but I'm looking for more ways to reduce the crafting time and/or cost. I'm planning on asking the DM if he'll allow me to take arcane discoveries in place of a feat or Arcanist exploit (it's technically a Wizard-only ability, but considering Wizard is a parent class he might allow it).

If there's not a practical way to do it, I might switch to Wizard, though more likely I'll drop the idea altogether.

Any advice?

[Raven777]

Look up familiar archetypes and have your familiar take the "valet" one. It will cut crafting times in half, stacking on top of the regular "taking +5 to half craft time", for a total of 1/4th the original crafting time. Arcanists can acquire familiars through their exploits if I remember correctly.

Also, I'm not sure where you fished up that crafting ain't an optimized decision for a caster, because it totally is. :smalltongue:

[Diachronos]

I'm assuming that the familiar's master needs to have the Cooperative Crafting feat, right?


Also, I'm not sure where you fished up that crafting ain't an optimized decision for a caster, because it totally is. :smalltongue:

I heard it from one of my friends who's a lot more experienced with tabletop RPGs than I am. At least, he said that minmaxers tend to compare it to healing in terms of how "good" it is... and from everything I've heard the more dickish minmaxers consider someone to be playing their class "wrong" if they're using anything other than Vigor-esque spells and effects for healing.

[Zanos]

I heard it from one of my friends who's a lot more experienced with tabletop RPGs than I am. At least, he said that minmaxers tend to compare it to healing in terms of how "good" it is... and from everything I've heard the more dickish minmaxers consider someone to be playing their class "wrong" if they're using anything other than Vigor-esque spells and effects for healing.
I had a thread up here about it awhile ago. In 3.5 it isn't as good because it will probably put you at least a level behind, and losing spells is a big nono for casters when it comes to optimization. In pathfinder though it just costs time and half the cost of the item in gold, so it depends a lot on your DM. Apparently many DMs will thin out your loot elsewhere to reduce the amount of gear the party actually has, which may cause the feat to do little more than be a timesink. Speaking of timesinks, if your DM doesn't actually give you any time to craft, the feat is useless. At higher levels you could be spending upwards of three months on a single item.

If you have time to craft and your DM doesn't screw you on treasure, item crafting in Pathfinder is actually an amazing thing to do that makes the entire party much more powerful.

Oh, and http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/magic-traits/spark-of-creation-magic does the same thing as hedge magician and also gives a +1 bonus to craft checks. Maybe ask your DM if you can use Craft(Jewlery) to reduce the price of all those amulets and headbands a bit? :smalltongue:

[TeslaJr]

If you're not set on Arcanist or Wizard, I'd suggest the Artificer. It's sort of a complicated class, but they're amazing magic item crafters and they get some great feats for item crafting (IIRC there's one that drops the crafting time by 25%).

[Raven777]

No, the master does not need cooperative crafting himself. The valet has it as its main schtick, and is considered as sharing any craft feat its master has when using it. See there (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard/familiar/familiar-archetypes/valet-familiar-archetype).

[Diachronos]

I'll probably go with Spark of Creation, then, and Craft (jewelry) to actually make the things.


If you're not set on Arcanist or Wizard, I'd suggest the Artificer. It's sort of a complicated class, but they're amazing magic item crafters and they get some great feats for item crafting (IIRC there's one that drops the crafting time by 25%).

I want to be able to do things other than craft magic items, and the only ones I'm interested in are Wondrous Items.
Also, there's no feats listed for that class that reduce the crafting time.


No, the master does not need cooperative crafting himself. The valet has it as its main schtick, and is considered as sharing any craft feat its master has when using it. See there (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard/familiar/familiar-archetypes/valet-familiar-archetype).

I looked at it, but from the wording it didn't sound like the master counted as having the feat just from having the familiar.

[Zanos]

Artificer and the feats TeslaJr are referring to are 3.5 material. I don't believe they ever made a 1st party artificer for PF, but they're might be a third party one.

[TeslaJr]

I want to be able to do things other than craft magic items, and the only ones I'm interested in are Wondrous Items.
Also, there's no feats listed for that class that reduce the crafting time.

My favorite type of Artificer is the Blastificer, which uses wands to fight, and with some work you can do a buttload of damage in one turn. And the feat I was talking about is Exceptional Artisan (http://dndtools.eu/feats/eberron-campaign-setting--12/exceptional-artisan--973/).

[TeslaJr]

Artificer and the feats TeslaJr are referring to are 3.5 material. I don't believe they ever made a 1st party artificer for PF, but they're might be a third party one.

Whoops, did I miss that this was PF? My bad.

[MightyPirate]

You don't need to have Cooperative Crafting to gain the benefit from having an assistant who has the feat. You just both need to have the item creation feat (such as Craft Wondrous Item) for them to use Cooperative Crafting while assisting you. The familiar gets it free and if you can swing Leadership then your familiar and cohort can team up to become the Q to your Bond. It's pretty cheesy but if you play nicely with the rest of the group and use your crafting in ways that pleases your team while still fitting into and benefiting the story then the DM will probably let it go.

[Diachronos]

For some reason I thought Cooperative Crafting was a Teamwork feat, that's where I was getting confused!

Thanks for all the help, I'll need to talk to the DM when I see him to finalize everything.

Any recommendations for feats as an Arcanist? The character's a human, so I used the bonus feat to get Extra Exploit to start with the familiar and with Consume Magic Item, and I'm tempted to take it a second time to get one of the offensive exploits...

[MightyPirate]

On a squishy low level character it's probably a good idea to not give any enemies a reason to attack you. For that reason alone I'd stick to dimension slide or counterspell for exploits, maybe even just going with Improved Initiative or some other staple spell. Other than that you eventually want to break into some solid metamagic, spell penetration, school focus, work toward spell perfection, all the normal wizard stuff. Obviously you need your item creation feats when they become available.

[Manyasone]

Artificer and the feats TeslaJr are referring to are 3.5 material. I don't believe they ever made a 1st party artificer for PF, but they're might be a third party one.

Drop dead studios has one, it's on the srd/third party classes

[Necromancy]

Dwarf wizard favored class bonus is worth a look of you can squeeze it out of your DM

[Flesh_Engine]

Dreamscarred has the Vizier from Akashic Mysteries which can play a great Artificer, tou should check it out.

[Endarire]

Some of this is campaign-specific, but look at this Primer on Crafting (http://bladeandbow.boards.net/thread/1045/primer-on-crafting).