[RPG] How to murder people and lie about it

Going through the points;

Coup-de-grace

Coup-de-grace does not specify if the victim makes any noise if they fail their Fortitude save of 10+damage dealt (and thus die) however if they make the save then they certainly would wake up.

This then becomes a DM decision. I personally would make a second Fortitude save for the monster against the same DC with a modifier of the characters stealth bonus rather than the +10, which takes into account how good the character is. If this is failed then the victim expires noisily, this then gives others nearby a chance to hear/wake up.

Waking giants

The DC to use perception when asleep is +10, meaning a base DC of 20 to wake if they are asleep, modified - as you say - by noise of the weapon, once battle starts this is -10, which means a DC 0 to wake up.

Note: There is a lot of debate about battle at waking up on the pazio forums

If the giants wake up then they will be effectively flat footed and surprised for a round, the round thereafter they would roll initiative as normal and remain flatfooted until their go.

Stealing from giants

Stealing a small item from a sleeping giants body will be sleight of hand DC 20, the giant gets a penalty to detect this as they're asleep (+10). Stealing larger objects should, as you say, give a bigger penalty (although not covered directly by the rules). If the bag of loot is merely beside the giant then stealth should be used instead and the giant again makes a perception roll vs. this.

The standard coin weighs about a third of an ounce (50 to the pound).

Sizes and weights of monsters are listed here which gives you the weight of an person for small of "8-60 lbs" quite a lot really! But there's no weight modifier for objects as these are related to the size of the creature that is using it - ie a large sized dagger or small sized dagger for the creature wielding. Just a weight modifier for armour. (about three quarters down, "armour for unusual sizes")

This means it's down to your call; I'd scale it up with multiple -2 penalties for every 10 lbs they're trying to lift, which is 500 coins as they're more likely to clink clink clink.

Question: How many people can help one person make a craft armor/weaponry check?

That would depend on the item being crafted. Let's start by looking at the RAW for aiding skill checks.

Aid Another

You can help someone achieve success on a skill check by making the same kind of skill check in a cooperative effort. If you roll a 10 or higher on your check, the character you're helping gets a +2 bonus on his or her check. (You can't take 10 on a skill check to aid another.) In many cases, a character's help won't be beneficial, or only a limited number of characters can help at once.

This clearly states that more than one aid roll can be made at once. So you can have multiple helpers. But how many?

In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can't aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn't achieve alone. The GM might impose further restrictions to aiding another on a case-by-case basis as well.

While a number of folks focus on the "you can't aid another to grant a bonus" section, I don't. As I read that passage it simply states that the +2 aid bonus can only be granted by a person who is able to do the act in question alone. In other words your aids must be competent as crafters in their own right. What is important in this passage, imo, is that it states the GM is free to impose restrictions on aiding another "on a case-by-case basis". This is were the GM can put some logical brakes on the whole affair. You need to work out what is a reasonable number of aids and that would be judged on an item by item basis. As example, crafting a longsword, DC 15, is easier than chainmail, DC 16. Both are doable with only one rank in the appropriate craft skill. But one could say, logically, that the number of aids for a suit of chainmail could be much higher than for a longsword.

I could reasonably see a dozen aids working on patches of chainmail for the main person to assemble into the final product. That is a huge time saver. So, call it twelve aids, imo.

But for the longsword, I could see two aids hammering it at once while the main person holds it and controls where blows fall. I could see this expanded to two teams of two, the first team hammering at a slightly faster rate and rotating out to rest and allow the second team to hammer for a while, also at a faster rate. The resting then rotating would allow them to bang a sword out a bit faster. The same teams would do the same kind of thing on the forge bellows to stoke the fire. It could even be stretched as far as three teams. Beyond that I think the rule of diminishing returns would make it worthless, ie the extra rest time is not needed OR the even faster hammering makes even normal quality difficult to control. So, no more than six aid rolls here, imo.

All this is great but remember that each aid still has to pass a craft roll, DC 10, in order to give the +2 aid bonus. Having to make these rolls (no taking 10) would be motivation enough for some GM's I've known in the past to limit aids more severely than I have in the examples above. Some GM's may even make one roll to cover all the aids making it all or nothing.

So, no easy answer for how many can help. You have to think about the item they are making and how teams would or could affect constructing it. It will work better for some items and not at all for others.