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Crafting ammunition using the Gunsmithing feat always requires a minimum of one day of work:

Crafting bullets, black powder, or cartridges takes 1 day of work for every 1,000 gp of ammunition (minimum 1 day).

1,000 gp gets me 1,000 bullets. However sometimes I just want to craft 20 bullets because that's all I need.

Can I craft less than 1000 bullets in a day with Gunsmithing? And is there any option at all for spending less than a whole day to do it, so that I can craft those 20 bullets in just an hour or something?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Thanks for updating your question. Reopened. I've further edited your question based on your original version to help clarify your situation, and I've also added a request for if there's any option to spend less than the whole day doing the crafting like you expressed desire for in your original version. Please take a look and see if you're happy with this version of the question. If it doesn't capture what you want to ask, please feel free to edit further. \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    May 16, 2019 at 13:56

2 Answers 2

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Seeing that the Feat specifically says

(minimum 1 day)

You will have to spend a full day to create the bullets. To my knowledge & research nothing exists that modifies this minimum.

Since RAW gives you a minimum time, but not a minimum cost, it strongly implies that you can create fewer than 1000 bullets but it will still take you a full day to do it.

However, an alternate reading of this feat ties 1000 GP to 1 day of work so the minimum 1 day of work also includes 1000gp forcing you to create 1000 bullets as well. That's a strict reading and requires an assumption that I don't think holds merit but the argument can be made.

This will have to be ruled on by your DM as the RAW ruling isn't clear on the minimum GP requirement, only the minimum time requirement, thus leaving the quantity made in that one day unclear as well.

In my games I've modified this feat to allow the gunslinger to create 1000 bullets per day(spending 1000gp) or 100gp and 1 hour to create 100 bullets(capping this at 8 times per day so a max of 800 bullets if using this method). This is solely a homebrew rule that I've found to work in my game so it's only here as an example.

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    \$\begingroup\$ To add a point, just because you're doing one cupcake instead of 10 doesn't change the time you have to wait for it in the oven. It might be the same for the bullets that may have a process that involve waiting (usually chemical reactions). \$\endgroup\$
    – Aguinaldo Silvestre
    May 18, 2019 at 19:02
  • \$\begingroup\$ I thought of this as well but the logic falls apart when you're looking at 1 bullet vs 1000 bullets. Even if you're spending most of the day waiting for a chemical reaction to occur, adding that mix of things into the bullet casings will take drastically different amounts of time from 1 to 1000. Not to mention the amount of material you'd need to mix is so drastically different for 1 to 1000. I could see it being true if we're talking 1 to 10 or even 1 to 20, but 1000 makes the logistical differences to great unless there is a machine involved that can do 1 - 1000 in the same amount of time. \$\endgroup\$
    – TheRPGFoundry
    May 18, 2019 at 19:10
  • \$\begingroup\$ Not really. The cupcake example is practically the same. You make some mix in 30 minutes for five cupcakes but making the same mix for a hundred wouldn't take even double the time. And cupcakes are larger than bullets. Not much difference cooking for two or a hundred, assuming you have the material and adequate equipment. \$\endgroup\$
    – Aguinaldo Silvestre
    May 18, 2019 at 23:18
  • \$\begingroup\$ I feel like this answer should mention using the skill Craft (gunsmith) to make firearm bullets without the poor fool trying to reap any benefit from the Gunsmithing feat. I mean, sure, it'll take him with a Craft (gunsmith) skill modifier of +10 something like 6 hours to make 1 firearm bullet, but—hey!—that is less than a day! :-) \$\endgroup\$
    – Hey I Can Chan
    May 19, 2019 at 14:36
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Crafting bullets, black powder, or cartridges takes 1 day of work for every 1,000 gp of ammunition (minimum 1 day).

The sentence above tells us how much we need to spend (in days) for a given quantity of bullets, but it does not specify the number of bullets anywhere.

Suppose I want to make 2,000 gp of bullets. It takes me one day for every 1,000 gp of bullets, so it takes me 2 days.

Now, suppose I want to craft 20 gp of bullets. It takes me one day of work for every 1,000 gp of bullets, so it would take me less than one day wasn't it for the "(minimum 1 day)" specification. It takes me 1 day.

I wonder what would happen if I wanted to craft 1125 gp of bullets (in a 8-hour workday, that's enough bullets for one day and one hour). The wording of the class feature says nothing about days past the first so, by RAW, it's doable to stop working after the first hour on day 2. (I don't believe, given how crafting has always worked since D&D 3.5e, that this is intentional, but that's what is written.)

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