Crafting
In a pre-industrial society, much of the population will have some form of craft skill, even if only developed as a hobby they enjoy to pass the time. Over the course of character creation, it is very likely your character will invest in one or more crafting-related skills, and perhaps even develop a significant degree of mastery in a crafting-related skill field. With sufficient training in such skills, players will inevitably begin wondering if they can make their own weapons, armour, equipment or even magical items.
The answer is yes.
Crafting Skills
There are a total of 16 crafting skills spread principally across 5 Skill Fields, though arguably, in certain contexts there are other skills that can enable crafting, as determined by the Director. The major crafting skills are; Artist (specific), Baking, Basketry, Blacksmithing, Bowyer/Fletcher, Brewing, Carpentry, Chandler/Soaper, Chef, Jeweler, Leatherworking, Potter/Glazier, Stationer, Tailor (specific), Weaving and Writing. These skills are distributed mostly across the Artisan, Arts, Construction, Hospitality and Trades Skill Fields, though some of them may appear in other Skill Fields also.
These skills can all be used to craft ordinary, as well as finely crafted items.
Special Crafting Skills
In addition to the conventional crafting skills above, there are also three special crafting skills which can be used to craft magical items.
The Alchemy skill allows for the creation of potions, balms, elixirs, aromatics and other magical alchemical mixtures. The Illumination skill allows for the creation of magical scrolls enabling non-spell casters to cast spells. The Enchanting skill allows for the creation of permanently enchanted items, weapons and armour.
Basic Crafting Equations
Players interested in crafting their own gear or in crafting gear to sell will want to know three things: how much does it cost, how long does it take, and how much profit is there to be had. The basic crafting equations give us this information.
In order to calculate costs, time and pofits, we must first check the list price for the item the player is interested in crafting. For example, if the player wants to craft a long sword ($125), find the price on the Weapons and Armour Table, or if they want to craft themselves a pair of fancy shoes, ($120), check the Clothes Table.
The list price for any item is based on a Rule of Quarters, which is that one quarter of the cost of most items is in materials, one quarter is in labour, one quarter is in overhead and one quarter is set aside for profit. It is by using the Rule of Quarters that we can determine the costs and time required to craft an item.
- Material Cost (minimum) = List Price x 0.25
- Overhead Cost (can be paid in labour) = List Price x 0.25
- Crafting Time (in hours) = (List Price x 0.25) / 7.5
- Profit = List Price x 0.25 (or x20% + 1% per point of success in skill roll)
Rule of Quarters:
Material Costs
The material cost of an item is one quarter of its list price. This is the minimum amount that must be spent to acquire the materials needed to craft a specific item. For example if crafting a pair of fancy shoes, the crafter will need to invest a minimum of $30 in leather, waxed linen thread, buckles, and other things in order to even begin making the shoes.
Note that material costs are generally only realized at scale. A cobbler who makes fancy shoes, walking shoes, work boots, riding boots, and other assorted footwear has processes in place to minimize waste of materials - it's not really possible to buy the exact amount of material needed to make just one pair of fancy shoes. So if that is all you want to make you might have to buy twice as much material as you need, doubling the base material cost. Conversely, if you already have the materials on hand (perhaps they were looted from a horde or stolen) then this cost could be reduced to as low as zero.
Overhead Costs
In addition to the cost of materials, you also need a workspace. No amount of hammering on an iron bar is going to produce a usable long sword without a smithing forge. The cost of operating a workspace suitable to crafting a given item is also equal to one quarter of its list price. A character who wishes to use the forge of a local smith might be able to pay for access, or might have to put in some labour in exchange for the time, so whether the costs are in time or money is up to the Director.
Of course sometimes, a character might desperately need to craft something without access to the required workspace; perhaps the party has been shipwrecked and a character who is a bowyer wants to make a bow. In this case, while there are no overhead costs, the difficulty of successfully crafting the item increases significantly as the quality if the workspace goes down. Making a bow in a leatherworking shop might be at a penalty of -3, making a bow in the wilderness with an appropriate tool kit might be at -8, making a bow on a beach without even a sharpened stone as a tool would be at -21.
Labour Costs and Time
The labour cost of an item is also equal to one quarter of its list price, but since the characters are performing the labour themselves, what we need to know is how this cost translates into time. The general rule is that the amount of time it takes to craft an item is equal to the number of hours you would have to pay a Middle Class Apprentice to perform the labour at their base hourly wage of $7.50 per hour. if a pair of fancy shoes costs $120, then the labour cost for those shoes is $30, which is four hours of work at $7.50 per hour.
Skill and Profit
After investing the money on materials and overhead and spending the time doing the actual work, a player who is attempting to craft an item rolls a 21C using their relevant crafting skill. If they fail the roll, the time is considered lost, and 50% of the materials are considered wasted and cannot be reused. If they succeed, they have the item.
If they wanted to craft the item for their own use, then no need to calculate how much they can sell it for, but if they hope to make money off of the item, then you can calcalute how much profit could be had. Profit represents on average one quarter of the cost of an item, so a pair of $120 fancy shoes might return $30 profit. However, the actual amount of potential profit is based on the skill roll made to craft the item. Profit is calculated as 20% of the cost of the item, plus 1% for each point the crafter succeeds their roll by - so on a roll of 25, profit is indeed one quarter of the cost of the item. When selling the item, the rules for Haggling will also affect the sale price.
Success or Failure
When commissioning items it is generally presumed that the craftsperson succeeds their crafting roll and delivers the item on time - craftspersons taking commissions generally work well within their range of comfort and will often have parallel projects running to mitigate for failures.
When players are crafting their own items however, they will need to roll a 21C using their crafting skill, modified by any factors decided by the Director to determine if they succeed. This roll is made at the end of the process, after all the materials are used, the overhead costs are spent and the time is fully invested.
On a successful roll, the item is completed and crafting is done. On a minor critical the item will have an bonus of +1, and on a major critical it will have a bonus of +2. This means that even when using the basic crafting rules to craft ordinary items or weapons, one will sometimes end up with a finely crafted item.
On a failure, the item remains unfinished and unusable. The time is wasted, any overhead costs are lost, and 50% of the materials are ruined - though the remaining 50% can offset the materials cost of a future attempt. On a minor catastrophe all the materials are lost. On a major catastrophe all materials are lost and an accident damages both the workspace and the craftsperson: the craftsperson takes 1d20 points of damage to their health, and the workspace suffers damage that will cost 2d4+2 times the List Value of the item to repair.
Practicality of Crafting
After looking at examples of how the numbers for basic crafting work out it should be fairly clear that crafting is not the best route for adventurers seeking fortune and glory. In fact, most adventurers probably left behind a life of crafting in order to become adventurers, so it should not really be a surprise that making and selling shoes or swords is a dead end.
That said, these basic crafting rules are just the foundation of a larger and more sophisticated set of crafting systems that players might actually want to use - crafting fine items, and crafting potions, scrolls, or magical items using the Alchemy, Illumination or Enchanting skills are potentially more interesting and profitable endeavours.