Right now I'm trying to craft a set of Dwarvencraft Mountainplate. Cost 3550gp, DC 20 craft check on the plate and DC 22 craft check on the masterwork component. Calculating out taking a 10 on every craft check from the DAY I meet the DC it would take 1.7 YEARS to create this item in game.
Without the use of Fabricate or True Creation, is there a way to accelerate this process so I have a shot at creating these items in a fair amount of time? I don't have access to those spells (though through some optimizing I'm sure I could force it out of Artificer) and I'd like to not resort to using them.
Any help would be appreciated.
That doesn't affect the crafting time of just using the Craft skill for the base item though.
Or, if for some reason you really have to make 'em yourself, hire assistants for aid another, use masterwork tools and magical items - anything to boost the DC you can make consistently. Then voluntarily increase the DC as high as you can to raise your multiplier. Don't make your checks by day - your progress is measured in copper instead of silver, and there are only 7 days in a week, so more cost-effective to make expensive items by the week. If you can make a DC 40 and masterwork dwarvencraft mountainplate costs 35500 sp, that's about half a year. If you own an armory, have an apprentice or partner who can make his own checks on the item when you're not working on it, etc., you can drive that down.
For instance: You take two voluntary +10 to DC on this armor, raising it to DC 40. You take 10, have six assistants aiding, 10 skill ranks, 2 Int bonus (headband if necessary), and a +6 craft armor magical item, allowing you to make DC 40. Add an assistant to make the masterwork checks. Each day you work 8 hours, then trade off to your apprentice, who takes a voluntary +10 to DC 30. He takes 10, has 7 skill ranks, has the Skill focus (craft armor) feat, uses the +6 magical item and the +2 Int bonus (headband if necessary, although probably not for a dedicated crafter) and has one assistant aiding him. Together, you make 2800 sp progress each week. 3 months. You're paying more for it, since you have to pay 6 sp per day for assistants, plus pay your apprentice/partner - probably around 70 gold more - but you get done way faster. If you're really desperate, get two crafters to help you and work around the clock. If they can both make a DC 30, you're making progress at 400 gp per week. Two months, and it'll cost you an extra 100 gp.
And note that DC 40 is easily doable by level 10. If you're higher level and have skill focus and money for a really solid +craft armor magical item and a good +Int item, you should be able to hit DC 60 with ease. That puts you at 3600 sp per day, or two and a half months by yourself. If you employ two more crafters, using your magical items to boost their skill as well, getting under a month is fairly easy.
EDIT: I forgot +2 for masterwork tools and another +2 for your armory. Sorry. Knock a couple of those assistants off the cost.
The real problem comes in that I want to make a set of Adamantine Mountain Plate - the total cost comes out to be 18550, or 185500 silver pieces. Even assuming that one were to raise the DC by 10 (not assuming it can be done multiple times for now) it actually comes out to about 3.7 years, assuming done by the week, and by beating the DC of 30 by 10 consistantly. This also assumes having 10 assistance adding a +20 to my craft check (of +15 at level 6).
The problem isn't making the DC 40 check, the problem is that at maximum capacity I can forsee producing maybe 3500 sp / week, which is still 1.1 years of crafting.
The whole reason behind all of this is because of this character concept that I'm trying out - a Dwarven Artificer / Forgemaster / Battlesmith. The class abilities that it gains allow it to provide bonuses to the items that it creates itself - so creating the item myself is essencial. If not for that I wouldn't bother asking how to craft it, I'd go slay a dragon and buy it with gold.
It would be of notable worth to continually add 10 to the DC to increase the multiplier, though. If that's the case then I'll do that too and potentially be able to craft things faster, even if it only cuts off a couple of months anything would be great.
So far I think that the BEST solution is a combination of that fast time plane and 40 dwarfs who need copper to assist me while I bang it out over 3 years.
That was actually a rules question that I was going to bring up - it doesn't say that you can voluntarily raise the DC by +10 more than once, it simply states that you can add +10 to the DC. It can be assumed you can do it multiple times, but this is one of those cases where it doesn't explicitly say that it can be done over and over.
I tend to DM on a practical level in situations that RAW leaves ambiguous, so my approach to that rule has been that if you're a good enough crafter to consistently make a much higher DC, you're good enough to craft faster. There are some practical limitations - I probably wouldn't let someone craft armor at a DC 120 unless it was armor made from the hardened blood of Asmodeus or something, since there are actually some time restrictions to crafting armor - but a DC 40 or DC 60 for Adamantine Mountain Plate shouldn't be a big deal. Higher value means a higher DC cap, since you're going through the same actions, just with more valuable materials.
That said... what level are you, and how much wealth do you have to invest here? These are fairly critical questions for this situation. If you can afford to pay someone to create a small plane for you and you don't object to aging, this is an easy question. Likewise, if you can afford to pay for a one-time use item of fabricate, this is also not an issue. (I would try really hard to do this.
)Another question you may want to consider with your DM is extra crafting in a week. It's not specified, but PHB seems to assume a week's work = 40 hours. I would consider permitting Endurance checks to work 80 hours a week for 2x the output, with the risk of having to take two weeks off to recover if you fail, or something similar. Of course, that's a call for your DM.
Just out of curiosity, what's the exact wording of the ability that specifies you have to craft something yourself?
Flesh of my flesh: No armor fits so well as that created by a battlesmith for her own use. When wearing heavy armor that she has crated herself, a battlesmith of 2nd level or higher gains a +1 sacred bonus to armor class. This bonus increases to +2 at 4th level.
Shield Bond: At 1st level, you create a special bond with any shield that you craft. This bond allows you to invest essenctia in the shield as if it were a soulmeld. Doing so grants you resistance 5 per point of invested essencia against acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic damage.
Armor Bond: At 5th level, you can create a special bond with any suit of armor that you craft. This bond allows you to invest essentia in the armor as if it were a soulmeld. Doing so grants you DR n/-, where n is equal to the points of essencia invested. This damage reduction stacks with any damage reduction of the same kind granted by the armor. For example, if you invest 1 point of essentia into your self-created adamantine fullplate armor, you would have DR 4/- (3 from the armor, +1 from essentia).
As to answer your question about how much money this char has, I'm asssuming character wealth by level, and should be capable of crafting the dwarven mountain plate by the time he's capable of wearing it (through exotic weapon prof) which is, in the build I have, at level 6ish. I have no problems hiring people as they're cheap and every one that I pay for is coppers on the gold piece, and I "thought" that it could be a project my character would work on over time and have ready by 6th, but that's little more than a ferverous dream of a syphilitic mind at this point.
So, I figure I might use my artificer to crap a scroll of fabricate and just use it to insta-craft my armor - thereby defeating the theme of the characater, but making creating of the item in an amount of time that is concievable possible.
I might suggest gently bringing up the failure of the Craft skill rules in such situations as this one- perhaps bringing forward the evidence that it takes a crack team of dwarves months to build a suit of armor. That just seems wrong. Heck, it takes a team of dwarves weeks to build a simple pit trap RAW.