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<blockquote data-quote="Delta" data-source="post: 3631965" data-attributes="member: 40269">Wow, what I'm amazed to find out is that there was no golem manual in the 3.0 rules! (At least not the core rules DMG, maybe they slipped it in a later supplement).In 1E, you'd make the body, and the &quot;sprinkle ashes of book&quot; was all you needed to activate it. In 3.5, there seems to be confusion in the design about what spells are doing in the book, or what is getting activated how, or what exactly the ash-sprinkling accomplishes. It's like the 3.5 designer halfway thought they just needed to supply a casting of prerequisite spells, and forgot that most of the cost of a golem is costs for some unnamed ritual (or something).Per rules-as-written, my reading is definitely:- Body costs 10,000 gp.- Manual costs 35,000 gp.- Manual is very underpriced compared to golem.- Time spent is undetermined.To be balanced, I think you might need to ad-hoc judge that:- Body costs 80,000 gp.- Manual costs 35,000 gp.- Manual basically serves up all prerequisites (skills, feats, spells you may not have).- Time spent is normal for golem construction.As a complete aside, in 1E making an iron golem from scratch cost 80,000 gp. Making one with a golem manual cost 100,000 gp + 30,000 gp for the manual, and 4 months time. That's remarkably close to the second interpretation above. I think the problem was where 3E broke out a separate small cost for &quot;the body&quot; versus some unnamed other larger cost, which was then overlooked in the 3.5 item design, and created the breakdown here.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Delta, post: 3631965, member: 40269"] Wow, what I'm amazed to find out is that there was no golem manual in the 3.0 rules! (At least not the core rules DMG, maybe they slipped it in a later supplement). In 1E, you'd make the body, and the "sprinkle ashes of book" was all you needed to activate it. In 3.5, there seems to be confusion in the design about what spells are doing in the book, or what is getting activated how, or what exactly the ash-sprinkling accomplishes. It's like the 3.5 designer halfway thought they just needed to supply a casting of prerequisite spells, and forgot that most of the cost of a golem is costs for some unnamed ritual (or something). Per rules-as-written, my reading is definitely: - Body costs 10,000 gp. - Manual costs 35,000 gp. - Manual is very underpriced compared to golem. - Time spent is undetermined. To be balanced, I think you might need to ad-hoc judge that: - Body costs 80,000 gp. - Manual costs 35,000 gp. - Manual basically serves up all prerequisites (skills, feats, spells you may not have). - Time spent is normal for golem construction. As a complete aside, in 1E making an iron golem from scratch cost 80,000 gp. Making one with a golem manual cost 100,000 gp + 30,000 gp for the manual, and 4 months time. That's remarkably close to the second interpretation above. I think the problem was where 3E broke out a separate small cost for "the body" versus some unnamed other larger cost, which was then overlooked in the 3.5 item design, and created the breakdown here. [/QUOTE]

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