Craft checks and special materials

[Delemental]

One of my co-players wants to make mithral full plate.

The price of full plate in the PHB is 1500 gp. The cost to make heavy armor out of mithral adds 9000 gp to the price.

So if you have to spend one-third the base price for raw materials, that means he's got to come up with 3500 gp worth of mithral, right? (10500/3=3500)

For the purposes of the Craft (armorsmithing) checks in determining how long it takes, do you use the full cost (10500 gp), or just the cost for making full plate (1500 gp)? At the player's current skill level, using the first number means it would take four years of game time, the second means just over six months.

 

[Tatsukun]

Sadly enough, the RAW say it takes years. I think this is silly and have changed it in my game. I don’t see a 20th level smith toiling away for years and years to make one suit of armor. He just can’t make enough money.

So, we use the base cost for masterwork armor of the type (1650Gp in this case). For course, if he’s just making the DC 20, it’s going to take him 41 weeks or so to do it. It’s still way too slow, but we are still working on a good way to fix it.

-Tatsu

 

[jodyjohnson]

In 3.0 the special materials especially listed the creation time as same as a MW weapon of that type (use the MW component cost instead of the material cost for crafting time).

The 3.5 material write-ups remove this reference. But then they don't mention how long it takes anywhere, leaving you with the default (craft up to item cost).


Personally I would will in the blanks and treat it the same time as a MW weapon but then only give a material discount of -100gp (the cost discount for a MW armor component). The crafter makes 100+2/3 base cost in gp for his work.

So the mithril armor would have a real cost of 9450gp and a value of 10650gp. Time to create would be based on 1650gp (same as a MW full plate).

If you think that's too fast, use the RAW and it will take a very long time.

Any item made from precious materials I would do this way. It's not like the miners give you a big 67% discount just because you say you're a crafter - either the material is worth say 50gp/lb or it isn't. Gold per lb. doesn't trade to jewelers for 16.67gp/lb and for everyone else it is 50gp/lb (they might get a small discount). The only people who get precious materials at a 2/3 discount are the people who mine them and that's how they make their living.

In this case he'd probably need to supply 8900gp in mithril for the armor (or an even 9000). The time cost is the base item cost and the MW component together.