Sledge said:
The thing to remember when looking at "Elven Chain" is that it isn't.
Heh, there's a reason it's still called Elven Chain! Have you looked at the time to create?
DC for Crafting armor is 10 + AC bonus. Chainmail has an AC bonus of 5, so the DC to create is 15. We'll assume that, since you can routinely craft masterwork items, you can hit a DC of 25 when taking 10. Thus, you can increase the DC of the chainmail to 25 in order to craft it faster. You must craft the masterwork component of the armor separately, which is 150gp.
The non-masterwork cost of Elven Chain is 4,000 gp, which is 40,000 sp. You make progress equal to your check times the DC in sp per week. At a check and DC of 25, you are making 625 sp of progress per week. This means that Elven Chain takes 64 weeks to create.
Then, you need to craft the masterwork component - 1,500 sp at DC 20. You make 500 sp of progress per week, so it takes an additional 3 weeks to craft.
Thus, a suit of Elven Chain takes 67 weeks to craft - or roughly one and a quarter
years of 7 days a week, 8 hours a day of labor.
Only elves have that kind of time on their hands!
