Difference between revisions of "Craft"

Revision as of 17:32, 29 September 2019

Typically used with: Intellect.

In short: make a thing. When you get that creative itch, the Craft skill lets you scratch it. Craft is used when a character wants to make something from raw materials or repair an existing creation. Your creative itch might come in the form of ammunition, knots, medicines, weapons, meals, suits of armor, or works of art. You might even require a a set of tools or a specialized workshop to produce your creation. The ability to find the tools of the trade and a place suitable for making the item is sometimes as difficult as acquiring the knowledge to construct the thing in the first place.

Your GM has the final say on whether you can attempt to create any given thing, but any creation reasonably within the purview your character's Occupations should be fair game.

Creating Objects

Anybody can try their hand at crafting, but it's only the extremely lucky or the very experienced who can make something truly remarkable. The bonus from ranks in an Occupation relevant to the item being made are what separate the amateurs from the masters. The higher the DL, the more complicated or intricate the item is (or its creation process). For every 5 points away from the DL to create the item (either up or down), the quality of the item is affected. Unlike most skill checks, a failed Craft check still results in an item being created — it just sucks. This table demonstrates how the difference between the roll and the DL affect the quality.

Each time you roll a Craft check to create a work, any materials involved in the construction are consumed. As a result, you cannot Take the Best on this check unless you have a stockpile of materials and oodles of time. Afterwards, you'll have lots of attempts of varying quality lying around. Critical Failures are usually pretty comical when creating items (you've dumped the entire pepper shaker into the stew, you've sewn the sleeve on inside-out, or your wooden spoon has a hole in it). Depending on the creation's size and complexity, it could take minutes, hours, days, months, or even years to produce a single item.

Your creations could be sold, gifted, kept in your home, or copied and disseminated throughout the world. Below are some ideas for things to create during your adventures.

Art

You can produce decorative works of art that are painstakingly assembled from raw materials, such as paintings, sculptures, or pottery.

Buildings

You can create structures from an outhouse to a palace, or even the blueprints to do so.

Cloth, Clothing, and Jewelry

You can weave fabric and tapestries, forge jewelry, sew garments, and assemble shoes and hats. After all, it's not who you know, it's how you dress.

Food and Drink

You can assemble any food or beverage, such as preparing meals, baking bread, distilling spirits, brewing ale, or pressing wine.

Gear

You can make anything listed in the Gear section of Chapter 11: Equipment and any other object of a utilitarian nature.

Medicines and Antidotes

Using the ingredients in the natural world, you can craft medicines such as salves, pills, and teas, which combat or cure disease. You can also create an antidote, antitoxin, or antivenom using a chemical countering agent. See both the "Diseases" and "Poisons" entries in the Damage and Death section of Chapter 4: Life and Death.

Hazards

To keep your enemies at bay, you can create obstacles and traps. This works just as well on the battlefield as it does deep in the dungeons.

Trade Goods

You can collect crops and refine them into useful goods, like molasses, sugar, resin, rubber, coffee, leather, or honey.

Vehicles

The voyage is half the fun. You can build wagons, carriages, ships, and anything else that gets you from point A to point B.

Weapons and Armor

Pretty much anything can be used as a weapon or a shield if you're willing to improvise, but when an tool of war is forged with talent, that's something special indeed. When forging weapons and armor, the ornate and well-made modifications both require a Craft check at least 5 points above the DL. The cheap modification results from a Craft check at least 5 points below the DL. See the Modifications section in Chapter 11: Equipment.

Composing Works

You can make a Craft check to express your creativity. It's not about your creation's comprised materials, it's about the idea itself. The bonus from ranks in an Occupation relevant to the composition are what distinguish the masters from the amateurs. The higher your result, the more sophisticated, profound, and admirable your composition. A result of 5 produces a truly horrendous flop. A result of 10 is fair at best. A result of 15 is decent but nothing special. A result of 20 is notable. A result of 25 is awe-inspiring. A result of 30 is the best of its kind, used as an example for others to follow. Here are a few possible categories of ideas to express.

Design

You can arrange things in a pleasing or effective manner. This includes architecture, drawing, and decorating.

Literature

You can produce written works, such as jokes, poems, plays, or books. The pen is sometimes mightier than the sword.

Music

You can weave together arrangements of music. These could be instrumental, vocal, or both.

Strategy

You can formulate plans and tactics for game, sport, or warfare — valued by chess players, quarterbacks, and generals alike.

You can Take the Best on this check, but the time involved to get it "just right" is staggering, plus you'll have lots of balled up drafts in the wastebasket.

A creative work is sometimes the set of instructions for yourself or another character. For instance, a musician can play your song with a Perform check. A carpenter could make a Craft check to build your blueprints.

Fixing Objects

Once broken, many things just can't be fixed. However, for the myriad of things that can be, you can make a Craft check to make them as good as new. If you meet or exceed the original DL required to create the item, you can repair it. If you fail the check, you ruin your materials. A Critical Failure further harms the object. You must have a sufficient amount of the required materials on-hand, which depends on the severity of the damage. The amount of time to make the repair varies as well.

Repairing Degradation

Along the road to adventure, your weapon, shield, or suit of armor could see enough battle that it loses its effectiveness (see the "Degradation" entry in the Defending section of Chapter 10: Combat). To repair the Degradation an item has received, you must make a Craft check at a DL of 15. If you meet or exceed the DL, the item is repaired. A failure uses up your materials, but leaves the item degraded. A Critical Failure incurs an additional level of Degradation.

To calculate the repair cost, divide the purchase price by the equipment bonus. For example, Chapter 11: Equipment lists a longsword for 225𝕤, and its damage bonus is 5. Therefore, you would pay an artisan 45𝕤 to repair a single level of Degradation. If you're doing it yourself, you only pay for materials, which is half the purchase cost, so 22𝕤 50¢ per level of Degradation.

Tying Knots

You can use this skill to tie somebody up, splice ropes together, or secure an object. Make a Craft check, adding in any relevant Occupation bonus. The result of your roll becomes the DL required to escape the bindings (with Thievery) or burst through them (with Might).

If you're tying up a creature, the creature you're tying up has to accept willingly or have gained the paralyzed, immobilized, or unconscious conditions. It takes several rounds to finish binding a creature. So long as you're not in a hurry, and the creature to be bound can't stop you, you can choose to retry as often as you like, or to Take the Best on this check, which requires up to 5 minutes.

You don't need to roll anything to untie knots tied by someone else (so long as you're not bound by them), such as a ship's rigging. It just takes time. A decent rule of thumb is one round per point of the Craft check result.