Fun with Unseen Crafters?

[Jowgen]

So, I was helping make a DFI Bard for a friend, and while picking spells I noticed that there is a bit of incidental synergy with the Unseen Crafter Spell.Now, the important bits of the Unseen Crafter spell are


This spell functions as unseen servant, except that the unseen crafter can be assigned any one task that can be accomplished by the use of the Craft skill. [...] Once the unseen crafter has completed the assigned task, the spell ends as if dismissed

This incidental synergy comes from his words of creation feat, which a) doubles the duration of unseen crafter (now 2 days/level) and b) grants a +4 Sacred Bonus on the crafting (the wording checks out). Combined with this character's +6 Cha bonus, that means each Unseen Crafter has a base modifier of +10 to Craft. An untrained skill. Meaning each Crafter can take 10 to get a crafting result of 20 when crafting anything that the craft skill can craft.

Naturally I want to find a way to abuse the hell out of this. :smallbiggrin:

The first exploitable thing I see here is the wording of the spell about working like Unseen Servant. Yes, it can be assigned any one task that craft can accomplish, but it says nothing about that being the only thing it can do, meaning it should be able to do anything a normal unseen servant can do without being dismissed until you get it to craft stuff. Based on this, you get unseen servant with at minimum an 8-day duration.

So, at the end of the day, you should be able to freely blow your left over 2nd level and higher bard spells to build up a small army of unseen servants. For example, at level 10, minimum 5/day every day, each lasting 20 days nets 100 unseen servants. What fun is to be had here? :smallbiggrin:

The second exploitable thing is obviously the servant's ability to craft just about anything that they have tools for. For one, the servants can work tirelessly, and of course work while you sleep. Even if you just re-cast them every evening before you sleep and have them work at night while tracking progress per day (well, per 8/hour night), by hitting a DC of 20 for e.g. a masterwork component of some item, each servant makes 4 gp of progress. Lastly, the "any one task" clause is just as ambiguous as it is in the Geas line of spells; and open to circumvention, DM permitting (e.g. craft as many of X as you can, or even worse, craft anything I ask you to craft in the next 20 days, could be argued to be single tasks).

Now, the obvious question is what to craft here. I'm not so much focused on profitable things (e.g. Salvo & other poisons), but more on fun/useful things. You have an army of tireless laborers that will start crafting any mundane item for you wherever you go. What do you have them make? :smallbiggrin:

[Ruethgar]

I personally would use them to mine and terraform. Lol, fall asleep in a dungeon and have 50 squares of wall mined away. It is also more cost effective than a lyre of building. It would also be an effective way to produce equipment for an army, which gets expensive if you've ever tried to stock a stronghold. In that same vein, making meals for groups.

[SangoProduction]

I would personally say that the "can" part of the spell is exclusive, rather than inclusive. That's just how I would personally run it.

For what to craft? Probably the best idea would be to get the most expensive thing possible to craft so you get the most use out of it as possible. Castles work. Also, mass productions. A single task could include "making as many x as you can". Congratulations you started the industrial revolution.

[daremetoidareyo]

Trapmaking, obviously.

[Jowgen]

I personally would use them to mine and terraform. Lol, fall asleep in a dungeon and have 50 squares of wall mined away. It is also more cost effective than a lyre of building. It would also be an effective way to produce equipment for an army, which gets expensive if you've ever tried to stock a stronghold. In that same vein, making meals for groups.

I think tunneling/mining would fall under regular unseen servant use, which limits it in some ways but makes it better in others. Being able to only exert 2 lb of force (100 lb of shifted loose rock per minute I think is the regular digging guideline here) makes mining type work difficult... but then again, they can just do swing after swing without tiring and being essentially gaseous in form, they don't have to worry about space constraints.

The Lyre of Building is a lot faster - as in, I believe I once calculated one round of playing equates to one laborer working for one day-, but it does take constant attention/actions to keep using on a large scale, plus it can't do craft-skill things.

Going all war-lord by making battle equipment and siege engines (which are tracked in GP rather than SP) does seem workable. Leather armor and light weapons are rather cheap and low DC to make.


I would personally say that the "can" part of the spell is exclusive, rather than inclusive. That's just how I would personally run it.

Not unreasonable in terms of RAI, but RAW wise I really think it would have needed a "can only" to make it so. Still, DM-territory.


For what to craft? Probably the best idea would be to get the most expensive thing possible to craft so you get the most use out of it as possible. Castles work. Also, mass productions. A single task could include "making as many x as you can". Congratulations you started the industrial revolution.

In terms of expensive stuff, I did start working on a plan to construct an Eberron-type airship for the party. An Airship is pretty similar to a Theurgeme from stormwrack, so the building rules from there ought to apply, with the thing even having a Stormwrack style stablock in the explorer's handbook. We have a knowledge-monkey of epic proportions that can easily find the necessary soar-wood trees via knowledge nature and make the architecture and engineering check to build it in the minimum amount of time. Only tricky part is the bound elemental part. Might make a thread about coming up with a new/different method of propulsion to use instead.

A castle might be fun, if we get to a situation where that might be necessary. The industrial revolution would also be an interesting one, but what kind of stuff can you craft that will always have sufficient demand so the market doesn't get saturated?


Trapmaking, obviously.

Elaborate please?

[Fouredged Sword]

Here is how I would abuse it. Crafting has funny rules. Your starting materials create three times their value as an end result. Nothing stops you from taking the result and using that as base material for crafting something else other than time.

So here is what you do. Purchase 1/27th the value of a airship in raw lumber. Craft that raw lumber into 1/9th the value of an airship in finished lumber. Craft THAT into 1/3rd the value of the ship in ship components. Craft the components into a ship.

Stack enough unseen crafters to speed production into silly ranges (an eternal wand or two maybe?). Remember, you can speed production by increasing the check DC. You can keep spamming more crafters for extra aid other checks.

[daremetoidareyo]

Craft (trapmaking) is a real skill that you can take.

A 4th level bard with an 18 int has 7 ranks in craft (trapmaking) a +4 ability modifier. The unseen servants then can make a CR 1-3 trap by taking 10 to build them. The problem you have is the nasty cost of traps in the DMG (p. 75), but you can fix that depending on your situation: i.e. You charge the minimum to others to build traps for them. Your unseen servants can build one of these CR 1 traps in about 2 days, which you can then sell for about 1000gp. No need to go crazy on disable device DCs, they need to find the trap first, and at this level, a DC 22 Search check is plenty, particularly because you can mass produce these particular bad boys. Buy a set of masterwork tools for each to get a +2. Taking 10 will get you a 23.

CR 1 dart trap
Search DC 22 ---
Disable Device DC 15 or lower -1CR
Reflex Save 16 -24 ---
Attack Bonus +6-+14 ---
Damage +1 per 7 points ave dam +2 (6d3)

Cost: 1000x CR = 1000gp
Manual reset -
Search DC 22 +400 gp
Disable DC 6 -1400 gp
Reflex save DC 20 -
Attack bonus +10 -
Darts (same target) Cost of dart X6 (3 gp)

The minimum cost for a trap is CR X 100gp. This is the cost that you need to pay per trap, although you may only need to pay 1/3 of it, see the crafting rules. Ask the DM.
You can turn around and sell your traps for 1000 gp apiece as the market price.



Also, you can make CR 1/2 traps, called booby traps. These are outlined in DMG2 p. 41: "A DC 20 Craft (trapmaking) check and 1 minute of work is all that’s required to set up a booby trap." These traps only cost 50gp apiece or scrounging in the woods for 10 minutes with a DC 20 survival check.

A 4th level savage bard, with a masterwork survival tool (taking 10 with max ranks in survival and a wisdom of 14-15) can spend 7 days (7 days * 8 hours * 6 survival checks per hour) = supplies for 336 booby traps. You can also hire day laborers to collect specific things for you at 1sp a day (arms and equipment), You'll probably want a foreman, which you can probably pay 1gp. Hire 20 dudes or so and get all your gear for under 10gp in a single day. This will also cost you about 2 gp for a wheelbarrow. Take all of the booby trapping gear and put it in your bag of holding. Keep these supplies on you until your rivals are competing against you to get the macguffin.

Set the unseen servants up overnight to set booby traps, upon which they can take 10. By morning, your opponents will have to spend almost all of their time searching for and disabling the myriad of spear traps. Assuming a 4th level rogue with evasion, a 14 con and 18 dex and max hp of 32. A Reflex save of +8. A disable device of +13. It takes 1d4 rounds to disable a DC 15 thing, this rogue can't activate the trap to spring it on themselves, but they can miss the trap entirely with a failed search check. The whole party would have to search each 5x5 section of trail. You can slow them down considerably over the course of 5 miles. Assume nothing but sticker traps.

1 round (search per 5 feet) * (5280 five foot sections of searchable space - 336 5 foot sections of trapped space) = 6 seconds * 4944 = 8.24 hours to move 5 miles.

+ 2.5 (disabling time for DC 15 thing)*336 (number of traps) randomly dispersed over 5 miles of trail = 1.4 hours of disabling. Assuming that 1 out of 20 traps are missed by the search checks, that means 16.8 (336/20) ~ 16 traps are sprung. That is 16d6 damage distributed amongst the party and its mounts.

That is a full day of travel to move 5 miles. Before anyone has fly. If during that day, you spend an hour on survival checks, you can send an unseen servant to build 6 more traps over the next 5 miles of terrain. Slowing them down even further. Heck, if you're willing to drop 100gp, you can install that 6d3 damage dart trap which only the rogue can even search for. And seeing as how he put so much in dex and con, he probably neglected search as a skill. Honestly though, they would probably turn around and take a different route after a mile of this mess. Thus granting you even more time to get ahead.


You enter a dungeon with 1 known exit. You dump your bag of holding on the entrance and set your unseen trapmakers to work. If anything enters after the next few hours, it will likely be super damaged 336d6, and you guys could travel to the far interior of the dungeon and flush everything towards the exit. If they are significantly scared, they wont search for anything, and will die a pointy death.

[Flickerdart]

He can also just use these guys to make money, if there's nothing else to do. His unseen crafters each make 20*20=400sp of progress per week, which is 53.33gp of pure profit per casting when he's level 7 (for ease of math). At that level with 22 Charisma he can cast 4 2nd level spells and 1 3rd level spell (which can be Extended for double profits), plus 5 1st level spells that he can convert to 2 more 2nd levels with Versatile Spellcaster. So that's effectively 8 crafters per day, producing 426.64 gp.

Basically, never let this bard anywhere near downtime.

[ILM]

You could set up a factory in a portable hole (or other large extradimensional container) since they don't need to breathe, sleep or eat... Ask them to make you 10 of every mundane item ever published and keep them stocked at any time, and enjoy having a Bag of Everything. "Man, I really wish I had a distillation kit right now" *rummages* "Oh there it is!"

[Ruethgar]

I think tunneling/mining would fall under regular unseen servant use, which limits it in some ways but makes it better in others. Being able to only exert 2 lb of force (100 lb of shifted loose rock per minute I think is the regular digging guideline here) makes mining type work difficult... but then again, they can just do swing after swing without tiring and being essentially gaseous in form, they don't have to worry about space constraints.

The Lyre of Building is a lot faster - as in, I believe I once calculated one round of playing equates to one laborer working for one day-, but it does take constant attention/actions to keep using on a large scale, plus it can't do craft-skill things.

Going all war-lord by making battle equipment and siege engines (which are tracked in GP rather than SP) does seem workable. Leather armor and light weapons are rather cheap and low DC to make.

The mining rules are in RotD, they can take 10 and dig 1/2 of a 5ft cube per servant over the 8hr of your sleep. It would fall under the unseen servant available options, though the crafter's duration makes it more favorable.

There is no question that the lyre is faster(without investment), I said that the servants would be more cost effective being only spell slots. If you are actually investing in this method, an Innate War Unseen Crafter cast at CL 20. Spend one day for 7.2 mil crafters for 39 days then the lyre becomes far less appealing.