Crafting
Five skills make things. Each has its own list in the abilities menu (see Professions), and its checks use one stat:
- Metalcraft (Strength): forge weapons, armour, and tools at an anvil from metal stock, and temper metal at the anvil.
- Woodcraft (Dexterity): make knives, spears, clubs, staves, bows, crossbows, slings, arrows, hide armour, and clothes by hand, with a knife.
- Jewelcraft (Dexterity): cut and set gems, and make rings and amulets.
- Alchemy (Intelligence): brew potions from herbs.
- Enchanting (Willpower): bind magic from crystals into what you carry.
Anyone, trained or not, can take things apart for their materials: salvage.
Metal stock is ingots of steel, iron, mithril, and the rest, which you can buy, find, or get by salvaging. Woodcraft works billets of wood, shards of bone and horn, hides, sinew, and blocks of flint or stone.
A recipe counts a potion, flask, or scroll you carry only once you know what it is (unknown potions, unknown scrolls): an unknown one is no use to it.
Which skill makes what
Each material group is worked by one skill, with one stat:
| Group | Stock | Worked by | Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bone | shards | Woodcraft | Dexterity |
| Cloth | bolts | nothing yet | - |
| Glass | lumps | nothing yet | - |
| Hide | hides | Woodcraft | Dexterity |
| Metal | ingots | Metalcraft | Strength |
| Resin | lumps | Jewelcraft | Dexterity |
| Sinew | lengths | Woodcraft | Dexterity |
| Stone | blocks | Jewelcraft | Dexterity |
| Wood | billets | Woodcraft | Dexterity |
| Gems | loose gems | Jewelcraft | Dexterity |
Flint, stone, and obsidian are the exceptions: they are knapped by hand, so Woodcraft works them, with Dexterity, not Jewelcraft.
Cloth and glass have no craft yet. Nothing made of them can be salvaged.
Some materials are harder to work than others. A material’s work is added to the difficulty of every check that works it:
| Work | Materials |
|---|---|
| -3 | bendalloy, cadmium, pewter, tin, zinc |
| -2 | copper, gold |
| -1 | aluminium, bone, brass, bronze, electrum, horn, iron, silver, sinew, wood |
| +0 | chitin, cloth, dragonscale, duralumin, flint, fur, glass, hardened leather, hardwood, ivory, leather, silk, smokestone, steel, stone, wool |
| +1 | amber, amethyst, garnet, obsidian, zircon |
| +2 | chromium, heliodor, jade, topaz |
| +3 | emerald, ironwood, nicrosil |
| +4 | mithril, ruby, sapphire |
| +5 | dragonbone |
| +6 | diamond |
| +8 | adamantium |
Each craft skill gives craft points to its own checks: +8 at 100, +12 at 200 (see what skills give). They count only for the materials that skill works. Metalcraft never helps you salvage wood, even if you know both.
The recipes
You know a recipe by your skill in its craft, never by learning it: each is listed from a skill value, and greyed out “beyond your skill” below it. Only those trained in the craft see these recipes. Each craft’s recipes are listed on its page:
- Forging at the anvil: Metalcraft’s weapons, armour, and tools.
- Making things by hand: Woodcraft’s weapons, bows, armour, clothes, and batches of arrows and stones.
- Making jewellery: Jewelcraft’s rings and amulets.
- Salvage: taking things apart for their materials, which anyone can do.
How well it comes out
When the time is up you make one check: 2d12, plus the craft’s stat modifier (Strength for Metalcraft, Dexterity for Woodcraft), what the craft’s skill gives (+8 at 100, +12 at 200), and your talents for checks of that stat, against the recipe’s difficulty plus the main material’s work. How far you beat it (the margin) sets the grade:
| Margin | With Master’s hand | Grade | Improvements | What you hear |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 or more | 16 or more | Masterwork | 3 | “You have made a Masterwork long sword!” |
| 12 to 19 | 8 to 15 | Marvellous | 2 | “This is a Marvellous long sword!” |
| 6 to 11 | 2 to 7 | Fine | 1 | “This is a Fine long sword.” |
| 0 to 5 | 0 to 1 | Plain | 0 | “You have made a long sword.” |
| below 0 | below 0 | Failed | 0 | “The blade comes out brittle and you break it up for the metal.” |
A natural 24 makes at least Fine; a natural 2 always fails. A failure gives back 50% of the stock (at least one piece of each) and keeps the gem whole.
The odds for a steel long sword (difficulty 13), by the check’s whole bonus:
| Bonus | Who | Failed | Plain | Fine | Marvellous | Masterwork | With Master’s hand (Plain / Fine / Marvellous / Masterwork) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +4 | Metalcraft 50, an average arm | 19% | 42% | 31% | 7% | 0% | 11.8% / 43.8% / 25% / 0% |
| +8 | Metalcraft 100 | 4% | 27% | 44% | 25% | 0% | 6.2% / 35.4% / 47.2% / 6.9% |
| +12 | Metalcraft 200 | 1% | 10% | 35% | 47% | 7% | 0% / 18.8% / 55.6% / 25% |
| +16 | Metalcraft 200 and a strong arm | 1% | 0% | 19% | 56% | 25% | 0% / 3.5% / 41.7% / 54.2% |
Some metals are harder or easier to work, and add to the difficulty: bendalloy -3, cadmium -3, pewter -3, tin -3, zinc -3, copper -2, gold -2, aluminium -1, brass -1, bronze -1, electrum -1, iron -1, silver -1, chromium +2, nicrosil +3, mithril +4, adamantium +8. Any other metal adds nothing.
A Fine, Marvellous, or Masterwork weapon is exactly a weapon the anvil has worked once, twice, or three times (see Forges): each grade is one more improvement to one of its numbers, and the forge counts as that many attempts. So you can temper a Fine weapon further, but each attempt is as hard as on any once-tempered weapon, and a Masterwork can be made no finer. Armour improves in its Defence or Protection. Something with no numbers to improve, like a lantern or a pick-axe, always comes out plain. A failure makes nothing: you break the work up and get half the stock back, and keep the gem.
A craftsperson works their trades better than anyone, and their class abilities change these rules. See also: Enchanting, Gem cutting, and Mining.