How to speed up Armor Crafting?

[pabelfly]

I was wanting to know how to speed up armor crafting to something of a reasonable speed.

Let's say I want Masterwork Fullplate Armor, and costs 1650 gold, or 16500 silver. The DC for successfully crafting is 20.

Now, let's say I take 10 and can manage a check roll of 21. 20*21 = 420. 16500 / 420 = about 40 weeks to craft. I can voluntarily raise the DC of the check to 21 to slightly speed it up, but I'm still spending nearly 40 weeks crafting one piece of armor.

Obviously spending forty weeks making one items is impractical. What can I do to speed this up to something much more reasonable?

[Telonius]

The absolute quickest way to get it is (unsurprisingly) magic: the Fabricate (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm)spell.

If you're using mundane means (or otherwise don't have access to the spell), the best way to speed it up is to bump up what you can get automatically. Depending on what level you are (and how you got it to 21), that could be easier or harder. Having assistants (who have a high enough bonus that they hit 10 automatically) to aid you in the skill check (+2 per) is a commonly-overlooked one. So, having a few skilled blacksmith hirelings could really speed things up.

[Bayar]

This thread might help. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?575703-3-5-Mundane-crafter-optimization) Even using that build, it would take you 14 weeks to make a masterwork fullplate.

Not sure what build you are looking for, if it's a mundane expert or a PC that wants to craft his armor before he can afford buying it.

The thing is, 40 weeks for a masterwork suit of armor sounds realistic. Heard there were platemail that could be churned out in a day but it wasn't anything special, more like bargain basement level (at least compared to other suits of full plate).

[pabelfly]

This thread might help. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?575703-3-5-Mundane-crafter-optimization) Even using that build, it would take you 14 weeks to make a masterwork fullplate.

Not sure what build you are looking for, if it's a mundane expert or a PC that wants to craft his armor before he can afford buying it.

The thing is, 40 weeks for a masterwork suit of armor sounds realistic. Heard there were platemail that could be churned out in a day but it wasn't anything special, more like bargain basement level (at least compared to other suits of full plate).

I want to find a few options to speed up mundane crafting. Not to the extent that I'd cripple myself outside of crafting armor though.

40 weeks might be realistic, but finding 40 weeks in a DnD game to craft an item is not an assumption I'd want to make for a character build.

[Maat Mons]

You can only voluntarily increase the Craft DC in increments of 10.


I never thought about it before, but if a spellcaster can Fabricate and sell 2 suits of MW full plate per day, they’re making better money than they would be from crafting and selling magic items.

[Jay R]

I never thought about it before, but if a spellcaster can Fabricate and sell 2 suits of MW full plate per day, they’re making better money than they would be from crafting and selling magic items.

Masterwork armor is quite expensive. Most people can't afford it. I can't imagine how big the city would have to be before you could find two customers for masterwork armor per day for several weeks in a row.

Lots of D&D (& other game) assumptions work fine, until you start trying to scale them up. Just because you can sell one masterwork suit of armor when you make it doesn't mean you can find over 700 people in a year with the money to buy masterwork armor.

[Bayar]

In that case, it would be faster and more efficient to find someone wearing masterwork full plate and killing him for the armor.

But I'll try giving a stab at this.

So, the craft DC to make a masterwork fullplate in 1 week would be 16500/20 = 825 . That's not doable barring extreme cheese. So let's see what we can do by throwing gold around instead. The cost to craft a masterwork fullplate in raw materials is 1650/3 = 550 gold. That gives us 1100 gold to work with. Masterwork Artisan Tools are 55 gp. Normal Artisan Tools are 5 gp. An Untrained Hireling is 1sp per day (1 gp per week). Each hireling will take 10 on an aid another check to grant +2 to your check and the normal artisan tools will make sure they don't have a penalty to the check even if untrained.

Assuming you have a +11 to craft (armorsmithing) with artisan tools as per your example, let's see how much time reduction you can get until it exceeds the budged. We'll assume 40 weeks is with 0 hirelings.

With 1 hireling, it would take 36 weeks and 41 gold.

With 2 hirelings, it would take 33 weeks and 76 gold.

With 3 hirelings, it would take 31 weeks and 108 gold.

With 4 hirelings, it would take 29 weeks and 136 gold.

With 5 hirelings, it would take 27 weeks and 160 gold.

With 6 hirelings, it would take 25 weeks and 180 gold.

With 7 hirelings, it would take 24 weeks and 203 gold.

With 8 hirelings, it would take 23 weeks and 224 gold.

With 9 hirelings, it would take 22 weeks and 243 gold.

With 10 hirelings, it would take 21 weeks and 260 gold.

Ok, what we see from there is that the best reduction would be with 3 or 4 hirelings since it drops the duration by about 25%. And since the progression slows down significantly, I'll just calculate the highest number of hirelings you can afford for 1045 gold.

For 93 hirelings it would take 4 weeks and 837 gold.

For 127 hirelings, it would take 3 weeks and 1016 gold.

For 196 hirelings, it would take 2 weeks and 1372 gold.

For 402 hirelings, it would take 1 week and 2412 gold.

So at most, you'd be able to drop the time to 3 weeks. You'd be able to sell 127 Artisan Tools to recuperate 317,5 gold of your investment and have 29 more gold leftover.

Of course, no sane DM would let you have an army of peasants working on a single suit of armor so this is more of a thought experiment. If he is ok with aid another stacking, then 3 or 4 hirelings for about a quarter of time less is the best tradeoff.


Edit: Since you can only increase the DC by increments of 10, just use 5 or 10 hirelings and disregard all my other ramblings.

[darkdragoon]

Forge of Sustenance: basically at 3x speed (in description, it basically lets you craft without needing to stop for food, sleep etc.)

[pabelfly]

Forge of Sustenance: basically at 3x speed (in description, it basically lets you craft without needing to stop for food, sleep etc.)

Oh that's helpful. I've added it to some other helpful ideas suggested in this thread and linked threads to see what I can come up with.

Still using the Masterwork Fullplate Armor for 1650 gold with a crafting DC of 20.

Forge of Sustenance
16500 / (20 DC * 21 Roll) / 3 = 13 weeks to craft.

Forge of Armorsmith
16500 / (40 DC * 41 Roll) = 10 weeks to craft

Forge of Sustenance + Guidance of Avatar Potions (300GP per potion, per week)
16500 / (40 DC * 41 Roll) / 3 = 4 weeks to craft.

The last might be a bit cheesy, but definitely much more workable for a campaign.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

[Maat Mons]

You know, if you use Tongs of the Armorer (Races of Faerun, p173), you only get a +10 competence bonus, but unlike Forge of the Armorsmith, it’s compatible with Forge of Sustenance, and unlike Guidance of the Avatar potions, it’s a one-time cost.

Does it seem weird to anyone else that Tongs of the Armorer provide a competence bonus, but Hammer of the Weaponsmith (Races of Faerun, p173) provides a circumstance bonus?

[the_tick_rules]

You know, if you use Tongs of the Armorer (Races of Faerun, p173), you only get a +10 competence bonus, but unlike Forge of the Armorsmith, it’s compatible with Forge of Sustenance, and unlike Guidance of the Avatar potions, it’s a one-time cost.

Does it seem weird to anyone else that Tongs of the Armorer provide a competence bonus, but Hammer of the Weaponsmith (Races of Faerun, p173) provides a circumstance bonus?

Could using the Multi enchanting rules to combine forges be an option?

[Crake]

Each hireling will take 10 on an aid another check

You cant take 10 on aid another, so you need at least +9 to your check to guarantee a success on your aid another check, which means you need to either assume each hireling only provides an average bonus of +1, or you need to hire trained labourers.

[ShurikVch]

Forge of Sustenance: basically at 3x speed (in description, it basically lets you craft without needing to stop for food, sleep etc.)
Note: since the Forge is fluffed as "you don't need to drink, eat, rest, or sleep - thus you can work x3 as fast" - it means creatures who're don't need to drink, eat, rest, or sleep at all - like Construct, Elan with psionic Repletion, or Undead of non-hunting variety - should be able to do it even without the Forge!

Exceptional Artisan feat (Eberron Campaign Setting) -25% crafting time

Craft Expertise feat (Dragon #339): doubles both daily cp and weekly sp from your Craft - thus, halves time of your Craft

Master base class (War of the Lance): the Item of Distinction CF halves the "masterwork" cost - and you can get it at the very 1st level (thus, 1-level dip :smallwink:)

Dwarven Chanter (https://web.archive.org/web/20160212094048/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20061128a) PrC: Timing Chant gives untyped +2 bonus per class level (thus, +20 for 10th-level Dwarven Chanter!) You don't even need to take the class yourself - you can just hire a Dwarven Chanter...

[pabelfly]

So calculated with a few extra bonuses

Forge of Sustenance + Tongs of Armorer
16500 / (30 DC * 31 Roll) / 3 = 7 weeks to craft.

Forge of Sustenance + Exceptional Artisan + Tongs of Armorer
16500 * 0.75 / (30 DC * 31 Roll) / 3 = 5 weeks to craft.

Forge of Sustenance + Craft Expertise + Tongs of Armorer
16500 / (30 DC * 31 Roll x 2) / 3 = 2.95 weeks to craft

Forge of Sustenance + Craft Expertise + Exceptional Artisan + Tongs of Armorer
16500 * 0.75 / (30 DC * 31 Roll x 2) / 3 = 2.21 weeks to craft

Dwarven Chanter is great but I am not sure how to calculate that one, since whether its effects are active or not would change hourly.

Thanks again for the suggestions, everyone.