CL requirements, UMD, and item crafting

[Benedict42]

Alright, so it seems entirely unclear whether the caster level of an item in 3.5 is a prerequisite for crafting it. Sometimes a "caster must be at least x level" appears in the prereqs section of an item's description, which is quite clear. For other items, well... you've got what Sean K Reynolds thinks, Monte Cook's take on it, and what Skip Williams said in a blog post, here.

In any case, according to the Item Creation section of the Artificer class in ECS, "[The crafter] must meet the caster level prerequisite, including the minimum level to cast a spell he stores in a scroll, potion, or wand." Notably absent, however, is any mention of whether the same caster level requirement is necessary for crafting wondrous items, or arms and armor.

This could be just an oversight, but compounding the issue is the matter of the DC for UMD emulation of spell prerequisites. From the same section in ECS on page 32, we have this example, "To create a bottle of air (caster level 7), he would need a check result of 27 or higher to emulate the water breathing prerequisite." As has been pointed out before, water breathing is a third level spell, so it seems that the UMD DC for spell prereqs is based on the item's CL, not the spell's. However, what does this mean for required caster level for items that do not directly replicate spell effects (non spell trigger or completion items)?

Specifically, this came up when trying to work out requirements for crafting a Dedicated Wright homunculus. Though Craft Homunculus is an Artificer class feature at level 4, if caster level prereqs are used for the UMD check to emulate the necessary spells (arcane eye and fabricate), an artificer can't create one until level 7, minimum (fabricate is a fifth level spell, artificers have +2 to CL for spell emulation purposes), unless he gets someone else to cast it for him (which may have to be my solution). Something about that seems... askew.

So, tl;dr version: how do you handle CL prereqs for item crafting in your game(s)? The same way as with spell replication items? Using the CL of the item? Something else I'm totally missing?

[Mystify]

When you look at the magic item descriptions, caster level and prerequisites are two separate sections. it also includes the line "The minimum caster level is that which is needed to meet the prerequisites given." Meaning that if you can meet the pre-reqs with a lower caster level than is listed, it can be lower. The pre-reqs also say "The prerequisites for creation of an item are given immediately following the item’s caster level.", also indicating that the caster level is not part of the pre-reqs.

So it seems pretty clear to me that the caster level is simply a default value, and is not the minimum it could be for an item, nor a pre-req.