Fabricating mithral armor with divine insight

[Frostthehero]

I want to craft a set of mithral full plate. My DM has homebrewed a domain which gives fabricate to users of the domain as a 5th level spell.

Consider:


Masterwork items have a craft DC of 20
Fabricate allows instantaneous crafting with a single craft check
Divine insight buffs skills for a short amount of time


Assuming I can find the raw material, could I cast divine insight and immediately use the +15 bonus to craft a suit of mithral full plate by taking 10 on the check?

[Saintheart]

A snotty DM would say you can't do this because activating Divine Insight's benefit takes an immediate action, but Fabricate takes effect instantaneously, i.e. you could argue there's no space for you to activate Divine Insight before Fabricate calls for the Caster Level check. Comes down to how your DM reads Fabricate and when exactly you make the Craft check. Otherwise the math checks out as you're saying.

[Frostthehero]

A snotty DM would say you can't do this because activating Divine Insight's benefit takes an immediate action, but Fabricate takes effect instantaneously, i.e. you could argue there's no space for you to activate Divine Insight before Fabricate calls for the Caster Level check. Comes down to how your DM reads Fabricate and when exactly you make the Craft check. Otherwise the math checks out as you're saying.

Good point - hopefully my DM doesn't take this view. I don't want to wait on the massively long crafting time it would otherwise take.

Are there even any ways around that? It would seem like no one would ever get mithral armor taking the standard crafting route. Even with insane rolls, it would take years to complete.

[Crake]

A snotty DM would say you can't do this because activating Divine Insight's benefit takes an immediate action, but Fabricate takes effect instantaneously, i.e. you could argue there's no space for you to activate Divine Insight before Fabricate calls for the Caster Level check. Comes down to how your DM reads Fabricate and when exactly you make the Craft check. Otherwise the math checks out as you're saying.

I mean, since the skill check is a part of the fabricate spell, and divine insight is used before the action that prompts the skill, it's simple, you activate divine insight just before you cast the fabricate spell, I don't see why there's anything contentious about it.

[Tzardok]

I think there are class features and magical anvils that speed up crafting, but don't quote me on that. Beyond that, well, making good plate armor on your own could take months IRL; I'm not suprised that working with special materials to make something like that takes a significant portion of a dwarf smith's carreer.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Take 10, 18 int, a masterwork tool and 4 skill ranks = DC 20 craft check for your Fabricate.
Or if you don't have the Int/skill points use one or more of the various skill boosters that don't need an action to activate, like Heroism, Focusing Chant, Prayer, Good Hope, a Luckstone or whatever. There isn't exactly a shortage.

For example you could go Third Eye:Improvisation (MIC, 1k gp, +5 competence), Heroism (+2 morale), Prayer (+1 luck) and a masterwork tool (+2 cir) and there's your DC 20 even if you have no skill ranks and 10 Int.



Are there even any ways around that? It would seem like no one would ever get mithral armor taking the standard crafting route. Even with insane rolls, it would take years to complete.

A skilled crafter can increase the DC to craft faster. An expert who can reliably reach DC 40 when taking 10 (not that difficult if you build for crafting) takes about a year for a suit of mithral full plate, which isn't really out of line for a suit of masterwork plate armor created with pre-industrial tools. There's a reason cheaper armors like banded mail and halfplate exist.
A breastplate would take about half a year, a chain shirt maybe 2 months.

Also there's always Unseen Crafter, so any spellcaster capable of casting that (which is most of them) can easily create multiple mundane items at the same time.

[Crake]

Take 10, 18 int, a masterwork tool and 4 skill ranks = DC 20 craft check for your Fabricate.

I think you might have trouble convincing a DM that a masterwork tool is going to help you with a fabricate check, when you're not actually using the tool in any meaningful way. After all, masterwork tools provide a circumstance bonus, and the circumstance is using the tool. Fabricate bypasses the use of tools, but that means it likewise cannot benefit from them.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I think you might have trouble convincing a DM that a masterwork tool is going to help you with a fabricate check, when you're not actually using the tool in any meaningful way. After all, masterwork tools provide a circumstance bonus, and the circumstance is using the tool. Fabricate bypasses the use of tools, but that means it likewise cannot benefit from them.

Fair enough, just take another skill booster then. Or put some ranks into craft.

[InvisibleBison]

Another issue with this idea is that fabricate can only create items made entirely out of one material, and full plate is not just made of metal. It also includes leather straps, buckles presumably made of less expensive metals, and textile padding. At best you can use fabricate to shape mithral ingots into the various plates, but that would probably require multiple castings of fabricate, and even if your DM ruled it didn't you'd still need to make ordinary Craft checks to assemble the plates into actual armor.

[Chronos]

Well, OK, but the shaped plates of metal are by far the hardest part of making a suit of fullplate armor. And even if you have to make each piece of metal separately, that's still going to be far, far quicker than doing it the mundane way.

[RSGA]

If you're only doing it once or twice and can source one, the Shard psionic item can give you +1 to +10 competence on a skill roll as long as you use it before ten turn pass. And it's cheap because it's a one shot for a skill.

[Crake]

Another issue with this idea is that fabricate can only create items made entirely out of one material

I was initially confused as to how you came to this conclusion, but upon reading the spell, I can see how you might read it like this. However, I don’t believe this is what is meant by the spell when it says “materials of one sort”, because it then goes on to say “into a product that is of the same material”, so the initial statement is more a statement that the quantity of any given material in the fabrication process does not change, and that it is merely transformed in nature.

[InvisibleBison]

I was initially confused as to how you came to this conclusion, but upon reading the spell, I can see how you might read it like this. However, I don’t believe this is what is meant by the spell when it says “materials of one sort”, because it then goes on to say “into a product that is of the same material”, so the initial statement is more a statement that the quantity of any given material in the fabrication process does not change, and that it is merely transformed in nature.

The spell doesn't say "materials of one sort", it says "material of one sort", singular. Similarly, the material component is "The original material", again singular. It seems pretty clear that it only works with a single material.

[Maat Mons]

I'm pretty sure crafting a masterwork item is actually two skill checks. One skill check at the DC of the normal item, and one skill check at the masterwork DC.

On the material/materials debate, definition 1a (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/material) can refer to multiple dissimilar substances without needing an s at the end.

[Darg]

The spell doesn't say "materials of one sort", it says "material of one sort", singular. Similarly, the material component is "The original material", again singular. It seems pretty clear that it only works with a single material.

I can see how you come to that conclusion, but material in the singular can refer to a grouping of like things. The material for building a boat can be expanded into more specific categories of materials for example.


I'm pretty sure crafting a masterwork item is actually two skill checks. One skill check at the DC of the normal item, and one skill check at the masterwork DC.

That is correct. It's probably more beneficial to use the charge on the masterwork component rather than the armor. However, mithral as a material makes the armor masterwork. It'd have to be up to the DM to figure out if that means you need to make the masterwork craft check, or that the item inherits the masterwork quality. Personally, I do the latter because the mithral greatly increases pricing which is already a massive increase in time needed to craft.

[Crake]

I can see how you come to that conclusion, but material in the singular can refer to a grouping of like things. The material for building a boat can be expanded into more specific categories of materials for example.

Yeah, correct, "The material needed to make fullplate consists of a variety of materials" is a legitimate statement.

The definition of material is: the matter from which a thing is or can be made.

So on the one hand, the material needed for a suit of armor is "the matter from which a thing is made", and thus can consist of differnet materials, when defined as "the matter from which a thing is".

[Darg]

We had this argument on the discord which ended up with me leaving because it became less about debate and more about how "I can't possibly be wrong and so what you're doing is arguing how stupid you are." By RAW it can be taken both ways. As the most open interpretation encompasses the more strict interpretation, both can be valid readings at the same time. This means you could make a solid mithral sword, but it also means you could make it have a gold plated fuller with embedded gems and a heavier metal counterweight.

[Vaern]

I think there are class features and magical anvils that speed up crafting, but don't quote me on that. Beyond that, well, making good plate armor on your own could take months IRL; I'm not suprised that working with special materials to make something like that takes a significant portion of a dwarf smith's carreer.

Races of Stone has magic forges which can grant +20 competence bonuses to armorsmithing and weaponsmithing, noting that they can be used in conjunction with voluntarily increasing the craft DC of an item by 20 to dramatically reduce craft times. If you take 10 with 18 int, 4 ranks in craft, and masterwork tools on top of the forge's +20 bonus to consistently roll 40 against a DC of 40, it would take about two months to craft a suit of mithril fullplate.
I don't know of any feats or class features off the top of my head, though, that accelerate the crafting of mundane items (besides extraordinary trapsmith).


Similarly, the material component is "The original material", again singular. It seems pretty clear that it only works with a single material.


Material Component: The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.

The full material components line indicates that it has no problem with consuming a single material to produce a product composed of multiple materials. If you feed a pile of mithril into the spell and ask it to make you a suit of mithril armor, it will provide the minor details like straps and padding for you.

[Crake]

The full material components line indicates that it has no problem with consuming a single material to produce a product composed of multiple materials. If you feed a pile of mithril into the spell and ask it to make you a suit of mithril armor, it will provide the minor details like straps and padding for you.

This was explained before. The component line actually uses both versions of the word material, while the first line of the spell explicitly says that the quantity of any given type of material does not change. The mithril, the steel buckles, the leather straps, the down padding, these are all different materials (an item’s type; plural), but together they comprise the material (the components required to make an item; singular) required to create a suit of mithril fullplate.