DC to Craft Mithral Armor

[jRocket]

What is the DC to craft mithral armor? Should it be treated as a DC20 complex or superior item, the same DC as any other armor, or something else completely?

 

[Pyrex]

Mithral items must be masterwork.

The Masterwork component of items is DC 20.

Therefore, to construct a Mithral Breastplate you need to make two series of Craft(Armorsmithing) checks.

You need to make DC 15 (10+AC) checks until you reach 200gp for the armor and then make DC 20 (Masterwork: DC 20) checks until you accumulate another 4000gp.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

You need to make DC 15 (10+AC) checks until you reach 200gp for the armor and then make DC 20 (Masterwork: DC 20) checks until you accumulate another 4000gp.

I'd rule slightly differently.

First, make the armor. The armor has a DC of 10 + AC, meaning that the general minimum is a DC of 11, for a buckler, and a general maximum DC of 18, for Full Plate. It is *here* that the materials costs apply - 1/3 of the base price of the item. For a standard buckler, that's (15gp / 3 =) 5gp worth of steel, leather, etc. For a mithril buckler, it's ((15gp + 1000gp - 150gp) / 3 =) 288gp, 3sp worth of mithril, leather, etc.

Then, you need to make the Masterwork check, at a DC of 20. For the mithril buckler (or, really, *any* Masterwork armor), that's (150gp / 3 =) 50gp of ... something.

The total raw materials cost, then, is 358gp, 3sp.

A failure on your craft check by 5 or more at any point results in ruining 169gp, 17sp worth of raw materials.

Ruling in this way makes crafting the armor slightly easier - you need generally beat a lower DC for the majority of the mithril portion - but makes it take longer, as your progress is measured in your check result multiplied by the DC in sp per week.

Thus, the larger portion of the cost (8,650sp) progresses at (Craft Check) * 11 and the smaller portion (1500sp) progresses at (Craft Check) * 20, instead of the larger portion of the cost (10,000sp) progressing at (Craft Check) * 20 and the smaller portion (150sp) progressing at (Craft Check) * 11.

The rules are ambiguous on this point, and I find the flavor that mithril items aren't necessarily more difficult to make, but take an increased amount of time (and thus favor the longer-lived races), to "fit" better.

YMMV.

EDIT: To add:

Here's a couple examples, using Bob the Craftsman. Bob's a hard-working Armorsmith, and has a Craft(Armorsmith) bonus of +11. This allows him, for purposes of illustration, to Take 10 (even though, normally, you couldn't due to the penalties for failure - note that this may be important in the long run, but I don't feel like doing more math at the moment).

To make a buckler using my ruling, he must make 8,650sp worth of progress against a DC of 11. This will take him, on average, 38 weeks. He'll then need to make 1,500sp worth of progress against a DC of 20. This will take him, on average, 4 weeks. This results in a grand total of 42 weeks to make a standard mithril buckler.

Using the Pyrex's ruling, he'd need to make 150sp worth of progress against a DC of 11. This would take him, on average, 1 week. He would then need to make 10,000sp worth of progress against a DC of 20. This would take him, on average, 24 weeks. This would result in a grand total of 25 weeks to make a standard mithril buckler.

To make mithril chain mail using my ruling, Bob must make 40,000sp worth of progress against a DC of 15. This will take him, on average, 127 weeks. He would then need to spend 4 weeks, as before, on the MW component, resulting in a grand total of 131 weeks to make mithril chain mail.

Using Pyrex's ruling, Bob must make 1,500sp worth of progress against a DC of 15, which would take him, on average, 5 weeks. He'd then need to make 40,000sp worth of progress against a DC of 20, which would take him, on average, 96 weeks. This would result in a grand total of 101 weeks to make mithril chain mail.

Finally, to make mithril full plate using my ruling, Bob would be stuck in the forge for an average of 274 weeks, as he made 103,500sp worth of progress against a DC of 18. Four weeks later, he'll have finished the masterwork component, for a total of 278 weeks.

Under Pyrex's system, it would take Bob 40 weeks to make 15,000sp worth of progress against a DC of 18, followed by 215 weeks required to make 90,000sp worth of progress against DC 20. This would result in a total 255 weeks spent in craft.

So, as you can see, in all cases, my system is slower - and it is much slower the more simple the items are. I think this makes sense, since a suit of Masterwork Full Plate is an impressive accomplishment all its own - at that point, the materials are something of a sidebar, though they do take enough longer to make a point.

EDIT the Second:

Wow. Okay, I really messed that one up. I was measuring progress against the materials cost, rather than against the actual market price.

Anyone else think that crafting times for expensive items are kinda ... um .. wacky?

I mean, I know I mentioned earlier that I like the slightly longer crafting time, but that's when I as comparing 50 days vs. 30 days. Now that it's 5.15 years vs. 4.72 years (mithril full plate), I'm kinda rethinking that.

Upon further thinking about it, the ability to deliberately add 10 to the DCs in order to craft faster is particularly useful - especially once we start talking about the really impressive items.

For instance, assuming you did this, the comparison between Pyrex's and my system for full plate becomes:

Mine: 124 weeks for Mithril and Plate + 2 Weeks for MW = 126 Weeks = 2.3 years
Pyrex: 18 weeks for Plate + 100 weeks for MW and Mithril = 118 Weeks = 2.19 years

... or a savings of nearly three years' crafting time.

Holy cow.

 

[jRocket]

Correct me if I am wrong, but craft checks are made on a weekly basis, not daily. Regardless of what system is used, it's going to take an insane amount of time to craft mithral heavy armor.

To simplify things, I put the DC at 20 and combined the masterwork and the actual armor into one check. With an average roll of 29, 580sp of work is done per week(20*29). With the price of Mithral Full Plate costing 105,000sp, it would take 181 weeks to complete, or almost 3 and a half years.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Yeah, sorry, JRocket. Thanks for pointing out the days / years thing.

I'm having a really off day today. I swear I'm not usually this bad!

Note that, above, I mentioned not being able to Take 10 on the check because of the risk of failure. *smacks self* This is obviously not the case. You can just about always Take 10, and can in this case. You couldn't, of course, Take *20*. Sheesh!

Anyway, it appears that for anyone wanting to craft anything useful in a useful amount of time, you need to be able to succeed relatively frequently at a check against (Normal DC + 10).

I'd also consider a House Rule that lets you increase the DC by as much as you'd like, rather than only by +10.

Then, at, say, 6th-level, a dedicated smith (9 ranks, +2 Int Bonus, +2 MW Tools, +5 Apron of the Smith, possibly a magecraft spell [Eberron]) could manufacture mithril full plate in just under 2 years.

The world's finest smith (23 ranks, +8 Int bonus, +2 MW Tools, +10 Apron, magecraft, etc.) could manufacture a suit of mithril full plate in 9 months.

Still seems like a long time, to me.