Crafting in D&D 3.5e at high levels.

[Carden-Gix'oth]

So, those of us 3.5e veterans know the crafting rules of 3.5e. here's the link for those of you who don't know. It's SRD, or it's all open access and on the up and up. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm

Now, what if a Epic Level Wizard, A Wizard using Speak High Draconic, or, say, a Time Domain Cleric using Diving Metamagic, cast Persistent Spell: Time Stop to freeze time for 24 hours. They could make the items in what is literally no time at all cause you stop time, take the day to make progress, rest, and repeat, having only a few seconds pass between each casting.

Assuming Wizard, Level 21 and using SHD, or a Metamagic Rod of Persistent Spell to aid him:
24 max ranks, +10 to it from Skill Focus, Improved and Epic Skill Focus
+ INT mod, he's a Wizard, and level 21, so he's probably sitting at a conservative 6-7 INT mod, before items, with, well, lets cap it at +10 to make the math simple
Then, cause this Wizard wants to make a ****ing mint, he's bought an item that adds +20 to his Craft skill
SO: 24+10 (Skill Focus feats) +10 (INT Mod) +20 (Skill Item) = 64 Crafting modifier.

We're making standard Full Plate (1,500GP, 15,000SP), so DC is 10+AC bonus, so 10+8=DC18.
You literally cannot fail this roll.
1+64=65. 65*18= 1,170Sp. 15,000-1170=13,830SP left to chip away. At this minimum rate it would take you 12.8, so 13 weeks to make it.

Nat 20, so now it's 20+64=84 84*18=1,512 15,000-1,512=13,488 at this rate, it'll take you 10 weeks to make it.

So, that's 70 casting of Persistent Spell: Time Stop, each casting is 3 seconds long (1 Standard Action), so 3secondsX70 castings=210 real time seconds pass for everyone else. That's 3.5 minutes. And since you're taking the 8 hours to sleep, and we're going off the 8 hour work day, 5 days a week rules, you can craft a suit Full Plate in 3.5 minutes real time, if you've the way to keep the Adjusted Spell Level low from the Metamagic being applied.

Now, yes, you could just use the Fabricate spell. Sure. But this is a base line for all the high level enchanting that costs millions of gold. You could do that in days real time, instead of years.

"Yeah, but won't you age and take negatives if you're using Time Stop and you continue to age?"

Well, yes. But that's where you dip into Chronomancy to take rewind your clock, or failing that, there are Feats that you can take to lengthen your lifespan, or you can play an Elf (or both!) or become a Lich (or all three!!).


Congratulations, you now have a RAW legal way to craft powerful Magic Weapons/Armor/Boots/Rings/etc, and even Epic Magic Weapons/Armor/Boots/Rings/etc in days, instead of years.

Level 20-21, 4 Feats (3 General, 1 Epic), 1 (technically) Third Party Skill (Speak High Draconic) (Optional), 1 Item (though several copies of the item may be needed), 1 (Technically) 3rd Party Chronomancy Spell (of which I do not know the name off the top of my head) and lots of lots patience.

You're welcome, and happy crafting.

NOTE: I'm running on 3 hours of sleep for the past 4 days, please, feel free to check my math and numbers and correct me where I'm wrong, if I am. I don't know, I might be. I'm pretty damn tired.

[Khedrac]

Crafting mundate items is a waste of the wizard's time - he can earn better money selling spell slots.

As for magic items, ignoring the question of whether persistent time stop works that way, what it would nto do s get round the limitation that it takes N days to create the item. The wizard might be able to contribute 8 hours effort in 1 round rather than 8 hours, but the limit of 8 hours/day still applies - a wizard with no need to eat or sleep or pause doesn't craft items any quicker than a normal wizard so the contribution/day is unchanged.

All this allows the wizard to spell a full day doing other things at the same time, but it does not resuce magic item creation time meaningfully.

[Crichton]

Crafting mundate items is a waste of the wizard's time - he can earn better money selling spell slots.

As for magic items, ignoring the question of whether persistent time stop works that way, what it would nto do s get round the limitation that it takes N days to create the item. The wizard might be able to contribute 8 hours effort in 1 round rather than 8 hours, but the limit of 8 hours/day still applies - a wizard with no need to eat or sleep or pause doesn't craft items any quicker than a normal wizard so the contribution/day is unchanged.

All this allows the wizard to spell a full day doing other things at the same time, but it does not resuce magic item creation time meaningfully.

How sure are you of that? 8 hrs/ day, but a day from whose perspective? Time being actually relative (even in D&D, with planar trait rules), if he spends 8 hours crafting in his 24hr time stop, then rests for 8 hours, still in his time stop, he has 8 more hours to do something else before his time stop wears off, at which point he casts it again, and it has been a day, for him, so he can contribute another 8 hours to crafting.

Yes, to the outside observer, only moments have passed, but that's no different than if he'd traveled to a fast time plane/demiplane, did his crafting and resting there, then returned a round later. In principle, it's the same trick, but with a different method of execution.

Having said that, I haven't gone and specifically looked into the minutia of the time stop and crafting rules to verify that the 8 hrs/day rule can/cannot be affected by time being relative, so that 'in principle' above may or may not be valid upon further scrutiny, but it certainly makes sense from an overview perspective, and when compared to the fast time plane trick.

[DwarvenWarCorgi]

Forge of Sustenance plus the Efficient Item Creation feat can bump it 30k a day in progress for magic arms and armor, think that's about as high as you can get.

[Crichton]

Forge of Sustenance plus the Efficient Item Creation feat can bump it 30k a day in progress for magic arms and armor, think that's about as high as you can get.

But again, a day from whose perspective?

[Telonius]

You could do that; or you could just Plane Shift to a Timeless (or Time Flowing very slowly) plane and handle it there, then pop back over when it's done.

[Biggus]

Now, what if a Epic Level Wizard, A Wizard using Speak High Draconic, or, say, a Time Domain Cleric using Diving Metamagic, cast Persistent Spell: Time Stop to freeze time for 24 hours. They could make the items in what is literally no time at all cause you stop time, take the day to make progress, rest, and repeat, having only a few seconds pass between each casting.


Note that despite its name, Time Stop in 3.5 doesn't actually stop time, unlike in earlier editions. What it does is speed the caster up by an enormous but unspecified amount:


This spell seems to make time cease to flow for everyone but you. In fact, you speed up so greatly that all other creatures seem frozen, though they are actually still moving at their normal speeds.

So while Time Stop could greatly speed up crafting if the DM allowed it to work with Persistent Spell, it wouldn't actually be in no time at all.

[Menzath]

Or using the wish spell and this article

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060526a

You can craft most items in a standard action, for mostly/almost free.

[DwarvenWarCorgi]

But again, a day from whose perspective?

Everyone in the plane you're on.....

[Crichton]

Everyone in the plane you're on.....

Fair point, though given the premise of the OP, one would presume that the crafter is attempting to exploit a timescale differential to craft things in a manner that is 'quick' from the perspective of those he's leaving behind elsewhere.

[Carden-Gix'oth]

Crafting mundate items is a waste of the wizard's time - he can earn better money selling spell slots.

As for magic items, ignoring the question of whether persistent time stop works that way, what it would nto do s get round the limitation that it takes N days to create the item. The wizard might be able to contribute 8 hours effort in 1 round rather than 8 hours, but the limit of 8 hours/day still applies - a wizard with no need to eat or sleep or pause doesn't craft items any quicker than a normal wizard so the contribution/day is unchanged.

All this allows the wizard to spell a full day doing other things at the same time, but it does not resuce magic item creation time meaningfully.

I'm well aware of this. Hence the red text pointing out this is just a base line, using one of the most expensive mundane items. If'n ya like, I can run the numbers on a +10 Epic set of Full Plate which has a 2 million gold market value, since you apparently missed the fact that this is a proof of concept for crafting stupidly powerful things in, relatively speaking, no time at all.

[Carden-Gix'oth]

Fair point, though given the premise of the OP, one would presume that the crafter is attempting to exploit a timescale differential to craft things in a manner that is 'quick' from the perspective of those he's leaving behind elsewhere.

You're on the same plane, the crafting Wizard is just using a Time Stop spell. Time stop doesn't alter what plane you're on, it stops the flow of time for everyone but the caster. Lets say the Party is just a Paladin and a Wizard. From the Paladin's perspective, the Wizards casts Time Stop, then immediately casts it over and over and over again, until *poof*. Now, after (insert time frame of downtime here), the Wizard has created a very, very powerful magic item, and has done it faster than seems possible to the Paladin. But for the Wizard, days, months, even years have passed for him while he labors on the item. This is where playing an elf, or a Dragonborn, or a lich, or having some Chronomancy spells in your back pocket to undo your aging comes in handy.

[Crichton]

You're on the same plane, the crafting Wizard is just using a Time Stop spell. Time stop doesn't alter what plane you're on, it stops the flow of time for everyone but the caster. Lets say the Party is just a Paladin and a Wizard. From the Paladin's perspective, the Wizards casts Time Stop, then immediately casts it over and over and over again, until *poof*. Now, after (insert time frame of downtime here), the Wizard has created a very, very powerful magic item, and has done it faster than seems possible to the Paladin. But for the Wizard, days, months, even years have passed for him while he labors on the item. This is where playing an elf, or a Dragonborn, or a lich, or having some Chronomancy spells in your back pocket to undo your aging comes in handy.

Yeah, I get it, but it's as I posted earlier, the Time Stop trick is functionally equivalent to the Wizard poof-ing over to a fast time plane while he does his crafting and resting, then poof-ing back, a very short amount of time later, from the Paladin's perspective. The point is that they both exploit timescale differentials.

[Carden-Gix'oth]

Yeah, I get it, but it's as I posted earlier, the Time Stop trick is functionally equivalent to the Wizard poof-ing over to a fast time plane while he does his crafting and resting, then poof-ing back, a very short amount of time later, from the Paladin's perspective. The point is that they both exploit timescale differentials.

True. But not most people know what planes operate with a different time-flow. Yeah, you can homebrew one, but that's another issue in and of itself... Every Wizard gets the choice to use the Time Stop spell, and no homebrewing, or knowing obscure lore.

[Kalkra]

Where's Speak High Draconic from?

[AvatarVecna]

Congratulations, you now have a RAW legal way to craft powerful Magic Weapons/Armor/Boots/Rings/etc, and even Epic Magic Weapons/Armor/Boots/Rings/etc in days, instead of years.

>Be me, casty boi
>Want cool items, Can't make cool items
>Merchants won't trade with me, afraid they'll get fireballed. That only happened ten times!
>Get big-brain idea. Summon up virgin genie
>Use casty-boi big-brain to make ironclad contract with genie
>"Tell me a wish you want for yourself, as long as it doesn't make trouble for me"
>"But then you have to grant me a wish that doesn't make trouble for you"
>Easy trade, everyone who matters wins
>Wish for whatever dumb thing virgin-genie wants
>Wish for Ring Of Infinite Wishes with some enormous XP limit
>Walk away forever wishing for my own uber-powerful items or whatever else I want

EDIT: Even if you wanna be a crafter the old-fashioned way, it's probably just easier to find/make a Timeless plane (or at least one with a Narnia-comparable time lapse). Spend years inside, come out minutes later. There's resource issues when you wanna craft, but time isn't really one of them.

[Melcar]

Forge of Sustenance plus the Efficient Item Creation feat can bump it 30k a day in progress for magic arms and armor, think that's about as high as you can get.

Could you explain this in more detail?

[AvatarVecna]

Could you explain this in more detail?

A quick google leads me to this (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20040807a&page=6):


Forge of Sustenance: A dwarf using this forge for any purpose need not eat, sleep, or even breathe while he continues to work at the forge, and he can work indefinitely without tiring. When using the forge to craft an item, the user multiplies his check result by the item's DC and then by 3 to determine his progress on a weekly (in sp) or daily (in cp) basis.

Strong conjuration; CL 15th; Craft Wondrous Item, create food and water, regenerate, creator must be a dwarf; Price 8,000 gp.

If you decide that the first sentence is mechanics instead of fluff, and that the second sentence is an example of the mechanical result rather than the entirety of the mechanics, then you could read this item as applying to magic item creation despite not explicitly mentioning magic items. However, the person who purported that this was "as good as you can get" probably hasn't done much research into item creation, or they would've found many many more things that increase how quickly you can craft magic items. Here's a bunch (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1000.0) for time, but also for gp/XP costs.

[magic9mushroom]

Time stop doesn't alter what plane you're on, it stops the flow of time for everyone but the caster.

Nope, it speeds you up. You're thinking of 2e Time Stop.

Also, Persistent Time Stop is rather dubious. The obvious ways to rule it are that either it doesn't work because pseudo-instantaneous duration, or that the duration becomes "24 hours" which means you died of old age.

[Menzath]

I would also have to agree that persisting time stop doesn't function that way. The "see text" and "rounds of apparent time" means that the duration in real time is instantaneous.

Or if not then you would still get the 1d4+1 rounds to act, but they would take place over a 24hr time frame. So a reverse time stop so to speak.

I mean it's a great way to hide from detection I guess.
Edit: although if both the apparent time and real time are both part of the duration components, and both are set to 24hrs.... Then nothing happens?

[Crake]

If you decide that the first sentence is mechanics instead of fluff, and that the second sentence is an example of the mechanical result rather than the entirety of the mechanics, then you could read this item as applying to magic item creation despite not explicitly mentioning magic items. However, the person who purported that this was "as good as you can get" probably hasn't done much research into item creation, or they would've found many many more things that increase how quickly you can craft magic items. Here's a bunch (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1000.0) for time, but also for gp/XP costs.

They would have likely also known that magic item crafting is hard capped at 8 hours per day, wheras regular craft checks are not, so not having to eat or sleep while crafting would be irrelevant.

[skunk3]

So, those of us 3.5e veterans know the crafting rules of 3.5e. here's the link for those of you who don't know. It's SRD, or it's all open access and on the up and up. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm

Now, what if a Epic Level Wizard, A Wizard using Speak High Draconic, or, say, a Time Domain Cleric using Diving Metamagic, cast Persistent Spell: Time Stop to freeze time for 24 hours. They could make the items in what is literally no time at all cause you stop time, take the day to make progress, rest, and repeat, having only a few seconds pass between each casting.

Assuming Wizard, Level 21 and using SHD, or a Metamagic Rod of Persistent Spell to aid him:
24 max ranks, +10 to it from Skill Focus, Improved and Epic Skill Focus
+ INT mod, he's a Wizard, and level 21, so he's probably sitting at a conservative 6-7 INT mod, before items, with, well, lets cap it at +10 to make the math simple
Then, cause this Wizard wants to make a ****ing mint, he's bought an item that adds +20 to his Craft skill
SO: 24+10 (Skill Focus feats) +10 (INT Mod) +20 (Skill Item) = 64 Crafting modifier.

We're making standard Full Plate (1,500GP, 15,000SP), so DC is 10+AC bonus, so 10+8=DC18.
You literally cannot fail this roll.
1+64=65. 65*18= 1,170Sp. 15,000-1170=13,830SP left to chip away. At this minimum rate it would take you 12.8, so 13 weeks to make it.

Nat 20, so now it's 20+64=84 84*18=1,512 15,000-1,512=13,488 at this rate, it'll take you 10 weeks to make it.

So, that's 70 casting of Persistent Spell: Time Stop, each casting is 3 seconds long (1 Standard Action), so 3secondsX70 castings=210 real time seconds pass for everyone else. That's 3.5 minutes. And since you're taking the 8 hours to sleep, and we're going off the 8 hour work day, 5 days a week rules, you can craft a suit Full Plate in 3.5 minutes real time, if you've the way to keep the Adjusted Spell Level low from the Metamagic being applied.

Now, yes, you could just use the Fabricate spell. Sure. But this is a base line for all the high level enchanting that costs millions of gold. You could do that in days real time, instead of years.

"Yeah, but won't you age and take negatives if you're using Time Stop and you continue to age?"

Well, yes. But that's where you dip into Chronomancy to take rewind your clock, or failing that, there are Feats that you can take to lengthen your lifespan, or you can play an Elf (or both!) or become a Lich (or all three!!).


Congratulations, you now have a RAW legal way to craft powerful Magic Weapons/Armor/Boots/Rings/etc, and even Epic Magic Weapons/Armor/Boots/Rings/etc in days, instead of years.

Level 20-21, 4 Feats (3 General, 1 Epic), 1 (technically) Third Party Skill (Speak High Draconic) (Optional), 1 Item (though several copies of the item may be needed), 1 (Technically) 3rd Party Chronomancy Spell (of which I do not know the name off the top of my head) and lots of lots patience.

You're welcome, and happy crafting.

NOTE: I'm running on 3 hours of sleep for the past 4 days, please, feel free to check my math and numbers and correct me where I'm wrong, if I am. I don't know, I might be. I'm pretty damn tired.

If you want to get stupid fast at crafting without any shenanigans just look into the Master Arcane Artisan epic PrC. That combined with some of the "artisan" feats (legendary, exceptional, etc) means that you can craft SO fast and SO cheap. No more waiting months just to craft something decent or trying to find time loopholes!