Psychic Question: Can a psychic craft their own spell components?

[Levism84]

The Psychic Magic section states:

"When a spell calls for an expensive material component, a psychic spellcaster can instead use any item with both significant meaning and a value greater than or equal to the spell's component cost. For example, if a spiritualist wanted to cast raise dead to bring her dead husband back from the grave, she could use her 5,000 gp wedding ring as the spell's material component."

I was wondering, could a psychic craft their own spell components? That is to say, could a psychic spellcaster with the appropriate Craft skill create an item at 1/3 cost and use it for a spell's material component at its full cost?

Obviously, this has potential for abuse with a player character crafting items simply to gain access to cheap material components. However, I believe this has a lot of role-playing potential and could be balanced so long as the finished work had a deep personal significance to the psychic spellcaster doing the crafting.

For example, if a character had ranks in Craft (carpentry) or Craft (sculptures) they could be expected to be able to craft detailed figurines out of wood, perfect for keeping in a pocket or pouch as a handy material component. Under normal crafting rules, if such a figurine was to have a final market value of 250 gp (yeah, expensive for a small wooden trinket) and the craftsmanship of the object had a DC of 20 (great work of art) and you could reliably achieve a check result of 25, you could craft a 250 gp item in 5 days and only have to pay 1/3 the cost.

At face value, this is literally trading time for money. Some DMs might see this as a fair exchange, giving up downtime to work on a potential material component for a spell. However, does this component have "significant meaning" to the person who crafted it? That could be subjective, but what if the wooden figurine is of an NPC the person doing the crafting personally helped or significantly harmed during the course of their adventures? Does the item then take on more significant meaning to the psychic spellcaster?

[Psyren]

The big problem I see would be selling your GM on the concept that items you're creating just to be burned up as spell components have "significant meaning." The wedding ring example seems to suggest that the ring's applicability comes both from its monetary value (the easy part) and from the sentiment of their long union that it represents (not so easy.) Any item you want to use in place of a material component needs both.

Put another way - there is no RAW definition of "significant meaning" so it falls to your GM to decide whether and how a given object gets that quality.

[Giddonihah]

A Gnome sacrificing a piece of his Collection would hopefully qualify, and would allow you to justify having a significant collection of mundane valuable things that are precious to you, even if they are things you made yourself. Or a Nongnome Rped that way of course.
But you might get some looks if you start sacrificing precious things with little concern or thought.

[Levism84]

Those are both very good points, and I had never considered bringing a gnome's collection into it. Interesting idea! Also, I couldn't have stated it any better myself, that there is no RAW definition of "significant meaning" in the game. I suppose a character who crafts an item knowing it could be used in the future as a material component would have a difficult time attaching any "significant meaning" to such an item. Perhaps if the materials used to craft an item also held significant meaning, that would transfer over to the item itself.

For example, instead of using Craft (sculpture) to carve a figurine out of wood, the character could use Craft (sculpture) to carve a figuring out of a bone belonging to a significant defeated enemy (HD equal to at least 1/2 the character's level) or a significant fallen ally (party member or NPC with backstory connection). Yeah, little grizzly, but if treated with sacred oils (hence the higher price) and shown respect during the crafting process, you could still end up with a item worth 250 gp that you could craft in 5 days and pay only 1/3 the price. However, the DM should limit how many such pieces can be claimed per significant enemy or ally (I would argue for 1 piece of workable material to reflect picking the highest quality materials as well as the significance of the selected piece). Also, such an item could provide the necessary components themselves for a reincarnation or resurrection spell, a potential boon or threat depending on who the piece comes from and who is doing the raising.

[CasualViking]

I was wondering, could a psychic craft their own spell components? That is to say, could a psychic spellcaster with the appropriate Craft skill create an item at 1/3 cost and use it for a spell's material component at its full cost?

Absolutely yes. Items you have hand-crafted yourself tend to be pretty damn significant.


For example, if a character had ranks in Craft (carpentry) or Craft (sculptures) they could be expected to be able to craft detailed figurines out of wood, perfect for keeping in a pocket or pouch as a handy material component. Under normal crafting rules, if such a figurine was to have a final market value of 250 gp (yeah, expensive for a small wooden trinket) and the craftsmanship of the object had a DC of 20 (great work of art) and you could reliably achieve a check result of 25, you could craft a 250 gp item in 5 days and only have to pay 1/3 the cost.


Ah...no. That would be five weeks.

[Psyren]

Absolutely yes. Items you have hand-crafted yourself tend to be pretty damn significant.

I disagree - not if the only reason you made them was to set them on fire.

[Levism84]

I disagree - not if the only reason you made them was to set them on fire.

What if you handcrafted the Olympic torch? Significant, set it on fire... Okay, maybe a bad example.

Also, yeah, forgot about the crafting time being so long... spending 5 weeks crafting something, it better have significance to me after that long! lol

[Extra Anchovies]

Could a fighter craft their own armor? That is to say, could a martial character with the appropriate Craft skill create a suit of armor at 1/3 cost and use it for the same AC bonus as the armor at full cost?

I don't get the beef some people have with PC crafting. The crafter invests a strictly limited build resource (skill points) and pays two character resources (money for raw materials and time for crafting) in exchange for a character resource (items of one type at 1/3 cost). Spending five weeks crafting a statue so you can use your class features isn't "abuse" of anything except the other PCs' patience.

[Shackel]

I could understand it working a couple times or in specific circumstances(such as a spiritualist painstakingly painting a grand picture of their fallen ally in order to revive them), but, after a certain point, it would not really be of significant meaning to them.

[Psyren]

Could a fighter craft their own armor? That is to say, could a martial character with the appropriate Craft skill create a suit of armor at 1/3 cost and use it for the same AC bonus as the armor at full cost?

I don't get the beef some people have with PC crafting. The crafter invests a strictly limited build resource (skill points) and pays two character resources (money for raw materials and time for crafting) in exchange for a character resource (items of one type at 1/3 cost). Spending five weeks crafting a statue so you can use your class features isn't "abuse" of anything except the other PCs' patience.

I'm fine with skill points and time being used as resources to exceed WBL, but at the very least, feats should play a role as well. They do so with magic items (even consumable ones, our nearest analogue to this), and expensive spell components can get at least as costly as potions and scrolls. Expensive spell components, especially in Pathfinder, are intended to be part of a caster's budget the way magic weapons and armor are intended to be part of the Fighter's.

The problem is that spell components are technically mundane items and so only require skill points and time. So a psychic caster using this gets a leg up, not just on other mundanes, but on other casters as well. At least, they do if the GM takes an extremely liberal interpretation of "significant meaning."

[meemaas]

I think it could make a good roleplay concept if done well, but when done solely for bonuses would probably look down on it.

Like, the guy crafts everything he does with all his heart, and when he needs to sacrifice it, he only does so because the alternative would be losing his entire collection (justification for, for example, Stoneskin)

[CasualViking]

Crafting an art object, DC 20, +10 DC for fast crafting, assuming he makes his check at DC 30 exactly that's 900 sp a week; in a year, that's slightly less than the 5,000 needed to Raise someone. Make his skill check 32 and say it's a leap year, then he can do it in a year, saving 3,333 gp.

Meanwhile, a caster with just Craft Wondrous and a year to spare outfits an entire 6 man party with +6 stat items and 5 cloaks of resistance, saving 183,000 gp in the process.

I don't even know what kind of numbers you can get out of the "running a business" rules with a year of downtime, because I have no faith that they are not completely terrible.

[Snow-blind]

I'm fine with skill points and time being used as resources to exceed WBL, but at the very least, feats should play a role as well. They do so with magic items (even consumable ones, our nearest analogue to this), and expensive spell components can get at least as costly as potions and scrolls. Expensive spell components, especially in Pathfinder, are intended to be part of a caster's budget the way magic weapons and armor are intended to be part of the Fighter's.

The problem is that spell components are technically mundane items and so only require skill points and time. So a psychic caster using this gets a leg up, not just on other mundanes, but on other casters as well. At least, they do if the GM takes an extremely liberal interpretation of "significant meaning."
Its not really much of a leg up if they require stupidly large amounts of time in order to get even a slight edge.

Lets take a psychic character with 21 int at level 5, going up to 22 at level 8, 24 at level 10 and 27 at level 12. They have max ranks in craft(jewelry or something) and pump out "deeply significant" rings all day to let them "freely" spam...***checks spell list***...True Seeing, maybe? Maybe. Perhaps the Planar Ally line if we are really generous and permit significant items to be used as payment. I don't see anything else that is good to spam before Limited Wish at level 14(!!!). They will have to pull stuff off another list to get anything else. Don't know the psychic well enough to say how. Anyway, they craft lots of item bound significance to spam something. That item bound significance has a listed crafting DC of 15 or 20 (as a Superior Item), but I will be a generous hypothetical GM and permit Very, Very SignificantTM rings with higher DCs in increments of 5. I am also going to assume that they are putting some effort in and getting +8 worth of miscellaneous bonuses from here and there.

Here's what their bonus look like from levels 5-15, along with the amount of crafting in GP per week and the amount of weeks necessary to convert 5% of their WBL to significant items, rounded up (for a 10% increase of effective WBL). Bear in mind that this is only providing a slight (but noticible) bump to their WBL, and any character can gain wealth at about 1/4 of the same rate with mundane crafting, which can be spent on anything (including magical crafting) and depends on neither of the two very generous rules interpretations that I am assuming (arbitrarily higher crafting DCs, and silly meaningless significance).

Level 05 - +21, 093.0gp, 6 weeks
Level 06 - +22, 096.0gp, 9 weeks
Level 07 - +23, 099.0gp, 12 weeks
Level 08 - +25, 122.5gp, 14 weeks
Level 09 - +26, 126.0gp, 19 weeks
Level 10 - +28, 133.0gp, 24 weeks
Level 11 - +29, 136.5gp, 31 weeks
Level 12 - +31, 164.0gp, 33 weeks
Level 13 - +32, 168.0gp, 42 weeks
Level 14 - +33, 172.0gp, 54 weeks
Level 15 - +34, 176.0gp, 69 weeks

Outside of early levels, it takes months of downtime to get meaningful amounts of cheap materials - not even huge amounts, just enough to bump up a character's wealth by a bit. How many campaigns have years of downtime between each level up so the psychic caster can really milk this?

[Zanos]

The problem is that spell components are technically mundane items and so only require skill points and time. So a psychic caster using this gets a leg up, not just on other mundanes, but on other casters as well. At least, they do if the GM takes an extremely liberal interpretation of "significant meaning."
Is there a rule in PF preventing a caster from taking, say, Craft(Gemcutting) and crafting diamond dust for use in their spells?

Also for the time arguments, remember that Fabricate still exists in PF, and was largely unchanged.

[CasualViking]

Is there a rule in PF preventing a caster from taking, say, Craft(Gemcutting) and crafting diamond dust for use in their spells?

Also for the time arguments, remember that Fabricate still exists in PF, and was largely unchanged.

I don't think anyone is going to let a Fabricated item count as "significant".

[Zanos]

I don't think anyone is going to let a Fabricated item count as "significant".
I'd imagine it would depend on the source material. What if i fabricated the wood from my fathers coffin into an engraving of his face?

And of course normal casters would have no issue with fabricated spell components.

[Extra Anchovies]

Also for the time arguments, remember that Fabricate still exists in PF, and was largely unchanged.

And Fabricate is, as we all know, perfectly balanced except for this specific case.

[Ashtagon]

I disagree - not if the only reason you made them was to set them on fire.

I, too, disagree. An item that you can replace by yourself with small monetary cost and little emotional investment (certainly, no emotional investment beyond making the same object specifically for the purpose of selling it) can't help but have little emotional meaning.

If you're going to craft your own under this rule, I'd at a minimum require a RP explanation of how this trinket marks a specific event in your character's life (and I'd disallow multiple trinkets crafted for the same event granting any mechanical benefit). I'd also require that it be kept for a significant length of time in order to form the psychic connection, and part of that keeping must involve showing it to others, so that the wider society, or at least your loved ones, are aware of it and its significance.

In the ur-example of the wedding ring, the PC should certainly expect in-character questions about what happened to the ring (and perhaps an adventure or side-quest). Similar RP opportunities should arise for any other item consumed in this way, whether or not the PC crafted it themselves.