Thaumaturge : Do temporary scrolls cost anything to make?

Question

A Thamumaturge with the scroll esoterica feat chain gets to make temporary scrolls daily.

A: Do you need to pay the usual GP cost to do so, under crafting scrolls . Considering the effects are to give you more versatile but lower level spells per day than a spellcrafter dedication and the fluff says the parts come out of your esoterica scrap, I doubt this is it, but then that leads to followup question:

B: If the spell would normally have an expensive component cost, do you need to provide it or do you get that for free (too)? Normally that's paid at the time of the crafting of the scroll, not sure how it works if they are making free scrolls.

Answer 1

No Cost - You're Not Crafting

Scroll Esoterica doesn't reference the Crafting action in any way; neither do similar "make an item" feats like the Rogue's Poison Weapon (which is a terrible feat that I don't recommend in 99% of builds), Scroll Trickster's Basic Scroll Cache, nor the Talisman Dabbler Dedication. The Alchemist's Advanced Alchemy and Quick Alchemy don't mention Crafting nor purchasing - they also use generic words like "create", "make", or "prepare". Given that the text in the Alchemy description above reinforces that these are "at no cost", I think it's clear enough to say that the rules say that these do not cost.

About Extra Spell Costs

Per RAW, since the costs of any material components are a part of the scroll, and the scroll is made for free through Scroll Esoterica, you could make something like a 6th level Restoration scroll for free, saving yourself 100 gold. Of the 7 spells that have "gp" in the text (so spells that require something with a certain gold value), the only one I'd be worried about losing the gold cost is Raise Dead. I'd simply rule as a GM that you must still pay for Raise Dead. Even then, if you don't mind making death cheap (which some campaigns will be totally fine with!), then it's not that big a deal.

Answer 2

The rules don't say

As I'm sure you noticed, the rules don't say one way or the other. There is no general rule about temporary item costs; you're not using the Craft activity, so there is no general rule that you pay the cost, but you are getting an 'item' and there isn't really a specific statement that you can get them for free.

But probably not

I can't imagine a GM making you pay for items that

• you took a feat (or more than one feat for)
• only last one day, used or not
• when near cities, you could get a permanent version of it for the same price
• no value is noted in the source
• cannot be sold*

As far as I can tell, it is heavily implied that, as long as you have the resources (pen and paper, access to the spell), you can make such an item at no cost. You can see hints of the implications in the archetype temporary item rules, and the wizard Scroll Savant feat.

Temporary items are clearly not up to the same quality as other items, so they typically can't be sold.

A temporary scroll has no value.

*Technically, the Scroll Esoterica feat(s) do not specify that they could not be sold, but other instances of temporary items do, so I'd consider that another unstated but heavily implied rule