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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Treasure Vault / Secrets of Crafting / Nature Crafting

Growing Items

Source Treasure Vault pg. 164 1.1
In an ancient forest, an elf plays a haunting melody on a flute among the trees, growing entire buildings seamlessly from still-living wood. Elsewhere, a fungus leshy holds a conversation with the mushrooms of an underground cavern, convincing them to twine together into a latticed armor to defend the cavern against a new threat encroaching from the Darklands. The traditional methods of crafting items tell the story of a crafter retrieving the necessary raw materials and then working those materials via forging, woodworking, tailoring, or other such means; however, this is but one of many ways to create magic items. In a primal setting or adventure, or in a campaign taking place in a natural region like the fey forests of the First World, it might fit your story better to grow an item from a living thing instead. While most such stories take place in a natural environment, they can just as easily occur in a hidden laboratory, where an alchemist might form magical oozes into specific shapes before curing them with magical reagents, producing a sword as durable as any steel.

Mechanically, the process of growing an item uses the same principles as Crafting it normally, though the details and the story differ. Use the Grow activity, a variant of the Craft activity. This activity has the rare trait; it's only available if you've decided to use this variant in your campaign.

Grow

Rare Downtime Manipulate 
Source Treasure Vault pg. 165 1.1
You can grow an item from a living thing, most commonly a plant. You need the Alchemical Crafting skill feat to Grow an alchemical item, the Magical Crafting skill feat to Grow a magic item, and the Snare Crafting feat to Grow a snare. To Grow an item, you must meet the following requirements.
  • The item is your level or lower. An item that doesn't list a level is level 0. If the item is 9th level or higher, you must be a master in Crafting, and if it's 16th or higher, you must be legendary.
  • You have the formula for the item; see Getting Formulas for more information.
  • You have an appropriate set of tools for growing the item. While cultivation and gardening tools are typical for plants, you might also use a different technique that requires a different set of tools. For instance, if you play music to help your plants grow, you might use a musical instrument instead.
  • You must supply special fertilizers or other magical nutrients worth at least half the item's Price. You always expend at least that quantity of fertilizers and magical nutrients when you Grow successfully. If you're in a settlement, you can usually spend currency to get the amount of magical nutrients you need, except in the case of rarer precious materials. You can also bring them with you in advance or forage for them with a skill like Herbalism Lore, gaining an amount of value based on the rules for Earn Income.
You must spend 4 days at work, at which point you attempt a Crafting check. The GM determines the DC to Grow the item based on its level, rarity, and other circumstances. Depending on the specifics of the type of item, it might be easier to Grow than it is to Craft, or vice versa; typically, the GM can represent that by making an easy or hard DC adjustment.

If your attempt to create the item is successful, you expend the fertilizers and other magical nutrients you supplied. You can pay the remaining portion of the item's Price in additional growth accelerants to complete the item immediately, or you can spend additional downtime days cultivating the item. For each additional day taken, reduce the value of the accelerants you need to complete the item. This amount is determined using Core Rulebook Table 4–2: Income Earned, based on your proficiency rank in Crafting and using your own level instead of a task level. After any of these downtime days, you can complete the item by spending the remaining portion of its Price in accelerants. If the downtime days you spend are interrupted, you can return to finish the item later, continuing where you left off.

You also have the option to allow the item to grow mostly untended, only stopping to supervise it occasionally, though the pace is much slower without your direct intervention. At the end of each season in which you spent at least 1 day of downtime to Grow the item, roll an additional Crafting check and reduce the value of accelerants you need to expend to complete the item by the corresponding amount.

Critical Success Your attempt is successful. Each additional day spent Growing reduces the materials needed to complete the item by an amount based on your level + 1 and your proficiency rank in Crafting.
Success Your attempt is successful. Each additional day spent Growing reduces the materials needed to complete the item by an amount based on your level and your proficiency rank.
Failure You fail to complete the item. You can salvage the raw materials you supplied for their full value. If you want to try again, you must start over.
Critical Failure You fail to complete the item. You ruin 10% of the fertilizers and nutrients you supplied, but you can salvage the rest. If you want to try again, you must start over.

Example

Source Treasure Vault pg. 165 1.1
If Lini wanted to Grow a suit of leaf weave armor, she would spend 2 gp on initial fertilizers and nutrients and allow four days for the armor to grow, attempting a DC 14 Crafting check. At the end of the fourth day, if she succeeds, Lini can choose to either use accelerants to complete the growth right away or to instead spend more downtime to cultivate the armor over the course of a few weeks. She has time to spare and finds this kind of task soothing, so even though a level-0 task doesn't provide profit at an especially fast rate, she decides to spend 5 additional days growing the armor. She's quite fortunate and rolls a critical success on her Crafting check, allowing her to make 2 sp of progress per additional day, for a total of 10 sp (or 1 gp). This reduces the remaining amount she needs to pay to 1 gp, so she spends that amount on a magical additive that promotes plant growth, at which point she is finished growing her new armor. This new armor, which Lini grew herself and is in accordance with her principles as a druid, provides much greater satisfaction than anything she could buy in a shop.

Adjusting Skills

Source Treasure Vault pg. 165 1.1
In a game or setting where the act of creating new items happens primarily or exclusively through careful cultivation of living organisms, GMs can choose to have Grow use Nature instead of Crafting. In worlds or settings where this ruling is in play, inventors are likely nonexistent, or at least rare, while druids serve an even more central role in their communities, going beyond spiritual guidance roles to also serve as innovators and economic leaders. Such a change should be made carefully and intentionally, with an eye toward the type of story being told. There's little point in allowing a hybrid system where you can choose between Crafting or Nature to craft items, since Nature has many other uses and thus can easily make Crafting obsolete by comparison. Instead, consider a hybrid version where players use Nature to Grow items and Arcana to craft items the normal way, cutting the Crafting skill entirely.