Crafting Special Materials Takes HOW Long?

[Zurai]

Yes, mithral is rare and expensive. That's reflected in the materials cost. Does a $1,000,000 car take 100 times as long to make as a $10,000 car? No, it doesn't. Mithral equipment costs more because the mithral is hard to get, not because it takes multiple orders of magnitude longer to make something out of it. The rarity of the mithral increases the final price as it should, but it shouldn't have such a drastic effect on the creation time of the suit of armor.

Let's assume you have the 40 skill check that was theorized above. A normal suit of masterwork chain mail would take 5 weeks of work for such a smith (150gp@80gp per week for the MW component, 150gp@60gp per week for the armor). A suit of mithral chain mail would take 36 weeks even if you voluntarily added 10 to the DC (120gp per week, 4,300gp total price). It simply does not make sense that mithral takes 7-8 times the amount of time to craft.

Not that I'm not saying it shouldn't increase the crafting time. I just don't think the full cost should be used, especially since the price of mithral vs armor type is completely arbitrary. Chain mail is much more time consuming to make in reality, but mithral banded mail takes a dramatically longer amount of time than mithral chain mail (or, heaven forbid, a mithral chain shirt). 10 weeks for the chain shirt, 36 for the chain mail, and 78 weeks for the banded mail.

Instead, there should be a flat multiplier for material type. For example, a mithral item should take 150% the time a steel item takes, and adamantine should be 200% or 250% (due to its exceptional hardness). That way makes much more sense.


And, for the record, there are no explicit rules for crafting using nonstandard materials. For example, do you add the mithral price to the masterwork component or the normal component? Is there even technically a masterwork component? If there is, adding the mithral price to the masterwork component rather than the item component actually makes the work go ~33% faster.

 

[Azaar]

Taking the mithral chainmail example I originally mentioned, I would assume a Craft DC of 20 (which is the DC for the masterwork component in the PHB), rather than the 15 for normal chainmail, since mithral automatically makes any armor it's used in a masterwork armor.

I think it should be the masterwork component price (150 gp) to do the masterwork portion of the armor, plus the price of the armor itself. Takes longer to craft, yes -- assuming a consistent check result of 25 against DC 20, you're looking at 6 weeks to craft -- 3 weeks for the chainmail proper, 3 weeks more for the masterwork component. That's twice as long as for normal chainmail, which I think is completely fair -- especially when you factor in the added cost of mithral as a special material.

That, however, is just me. I only wish they had set down something for crafting with special materials in the DMG (if not the PHB). But anyway, I thank you all for your opinions.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

When discussing craft times and skill checks, don't forget to include apprentices and journeymen using aid other. Even an armorsmith crafting ordinary fullplate (masterwork, of course, since there's very little reason to ever make non-masterwork fullplate given the base cost) is good enough that he might expect to have at least a couple apprentices. Assuming first level apprentices using masterwork tools, and the aid other action, that will almost always be a pair of +2 bonuses.

If you use the Complete Adventurer improved Aid Other rules and make the apprentices a pair of journeymen with 5 ranks each (a +1 int bonus, skill focus, and masterwork tools for a total of +11), they will usually manage the +3 aid other which may be enough to boost the DC to 30 and still succeed handily (without the +10 magic tools).

Dwarves, of course, have a significant advantage in this field. If you use a dwarven craftsman:

Taking ten
14 Int +2
Dwarf working with metal +2
Skill Focus +3
Masterwork Tools +2
A pair of dwarven journeyman assistants using Aid Other: +6
You only need 5 ranks to hit DC 30 every time.

Given +10 tools instead of +2 masterwork tools, you can hit DC 40 with 7 ranks--a mere 4th level dwarf expert. That will speed things up considerably.

A human could accomplish that at 6th level.

Now, historically, at least by the mid to late 16th century, fullplate armor was actually manufactured in relatively large workshops in Greenwich, Milan, etc, so it might not be unreasonable to have more assistants. (I imagine guild regulations specified the number of apprentices a master could take on; it would be interesting to find out how many real life guild regulations permitted). If we allow the master amorer four apprentices in addition to the two journeymen, that brings his total check to a 50 by level 6 for the dwarf and level 8 for the human. (With the +10 tools; still DC 42 is still impressive even without those tools)

In case you are wondering about the apprentices always making their aid other checks--they actually can't fail.

1st level commoner: 12 Int +1, Masterwork tools +2, max ranks +4, Skill Focus +3= +10 to the roll.
Even if the master armorer didn't deliberately select promising youths for his apprentices (as represented by the 12 int--it's only slightly above average) and ended up with 10 int apprentices, they are still at +9 which won't fail on a 1.

If the apprentices are dwarves, the bright ones (Int 12+) don't even need skill focus to autosucceed on the aid other.

Even somewhat slow apprentices (int 8) will only be unhelpful on a roll of a 1.

Of course that's all general crafting rules rather than crafting special materials rules but it's interesting none-the-less.

Then again, I'm not certain that there's really a dramatic problem if it takes a workshop full of smiths six months to craft a single adamantine longsword or a year to craft a suit of adamantine fullplate. If it takes a single dwarf smith ten years to craft a single suit of dwarven fullplate, it still makes a good story.