# How do I craft nonmagical items?

I made a 1st level ranger that wants to make his own bow and arrows. If I buy a rank in craft bow my bonus is 6, 1 from the rank 2 from stat bonus and 3 from being trained

arrows have a DC of 12 and if I take take 10 I have a skill check of 16 which is success so I multiply 12 times 16 and divide by the cost of arrows in silver pieces which is 10 which gives a result of 19.2.

With that result I be done if less then half a day. Is that correct? I did the same process with a long bow and it take bout 4 weeks. Is that correct?

I can add 10 to the DC to speed things up but if I do that then arrows have a DC of 22 and if I take 10 I have a result of 16. As 16 is less then 22 I wont make any progress so I need more bonus. Is this correct? I think I clearly understand this if I see some examples step by step

• This question would really benefit from some interpunction and paragraphs :) – Erik Apr 25 '18 at 12:50

Mostly right.

The key thing you’re missing is that $DC \times Check$ gives you your progress, in silver, for each week. So after 1 week, your 16 check against a DC 12 makes 192 sp worth of progress on the arrows. Since 20 arrows cost 1 gp—that is, 10 sp—you easily complete them in that week.

If you want to measure progress by the day, you have to do things in terms of the item’s silver multiplied by the number of days in a week, instead: $DC \times Check$ becomes your progress in (typically) sevenths of silver. Thus, one day makes 192 worth of progress—greater than the 70 that you get multiplying 10 sp by 7 days in a week. So you can actually complete 20 arrows in one day.

It’s well worth asking your GM if you can work on more than 20 arrows in a day. Usually, you can only work on one item in a day, no matter how quickly you finish it, but since ammunition comes in bundles, it makes sense that you could do more. At 1 gp for 20, that’s 0.5 sp each—multiply by 7 for a target of 3.5. 192 worth of progress each day implies you can make 54 arrows in a day (a target of 189).

As for the longbow, assuming you aren’t trying for a masterwork or composite longbow, that’s 75 gp—750 sp. Since this is a more expensive item, it is best to measure progress by the week. So you make 192 sp worth of progress per week. Thus after week 1, you have 558 sp worth of longbow left to make. Another week, another 192 sp, now you have 366 sp worth left. A third week gets it down to 174 sp. So on the fourth week, your 192 sp of progress is enough to finish off the longbow.

So in the end, you can make a longbow in 4 weeks, and you can easily make 20 arrows a day—if allowed, you can actually make 54 a day.

Please note that once you get into expensive materials, masterwork or composite items, and so on, mundane crafting gets prohibitively time-consuming. A wyroot composite (+5) longbow costs 4600 gp—a staggering 46,000 sp. Even with rather high checks, and taking advantage of the rule that lets you increase the DC by 10 in order to progress faster—for example say you manage a DC 32 check perfectly, for 1024 sp worth of progress per week, that’s 45 weeks to complete. An adamantine full-plate costs much more, and so takes far longer.

• There is the one part about if DC×Check is double or triple the price in silver the time is reduced in one half or one third the time and "Other multiples of the DC reduce the time in the same manner" In my example of the arrows the DC×Check is 19 times the price in silver. When the DC×Check is that many times greater then the price doesnt that mean i finish it in mere hours or is there some rule thats states it always take 1 day – huginn Apr 26 '18 at 5:44