My Own Take On A Craft Rewrite That Inclu

[serGregness]

To clarify what I mean by nothing stops you from doing this, the reason why I reincorporated slots was the fact that they allow the crafter to make things without consulting with the st as to whether or not they have the time, whereas an st might want to be more conservative with what they will allow a crafter to do without them, a crafter with slots knows how many projects of which types they can do.

That said I am hearing what you are saying and since the point of this rewrite was to acomadate as many people as possible I also want to be acomadating without compromising too much.

With that in mind I was thinking of two fixes to the system that could acomadate your concerns and I’d like you to tell me which one you think is best.

1. The crafter starts with two unspecified superior crafting slots but once they decide on whether to use them for large mundane or artifact they are stuck, allowing for possibilities such as 2 large mundane at start, 2artifact at start, or 1 large and one artifact at start.

2. The characters start with 1 and 1 as written but the superior slots are similar enough that by expending 5 or 10 gp they can convert one slot to the other.

The first of these options is the more powerful initially but when the crafter advances down the tree and gains more and more superior crafting slots I feel like the second one has the greater versatility, I’d like to get your input on it though.

Edit: just thought of another option, basically mixing the two, where you can choose which type of superior slot your two starting superiors will be, either a 2:0 1:1 or 0:2 and that you can also spend gp to shift them

As for the ability to use craft xp to reduce the goal number, my play tester also pointed out that this was too powerful in practice and together we came up with the idea of imposing a maximum reduction in the core of 50% of the original total for each project, and then changing the charm vice miricle so that it functions as a removal of this gating, with an optional repurchase at essence five to make the conversions more efficient.

I do find your terminus idea interesting, but I think that there are already more than sufficient ways to increase terminus in this system, even after implementing your suggestions for the magical materials change and I don’t want it to be too easy to get extra terminus if someone finds they don’t have enough to complete by the end of their terminus. If I did this it would somewhat ruin the “you can ask the st how to get an extra terminus if needed but expect it to be dear” that I have in that section.

If you do end up playing this system with your players I would love to hear the results and to list your group asnplay testers. Critiques from actual play situations are the best and I desperately want to have more of them.

The question you keep not answering is why the slots have to be different at all? With all the words I've spilled on this topic so far it maybe seems like this is a bigger deal for me than it actually is, but having different types of superior slots just strikes me as weird. All you need to do is say 'superior slots are universal' and 'certain superior projects must account for their scale, which must be addressed by the following rules' without adding a bunch of weird overhead by making players worry about what kinds of slots they have at the moment. Make them worry about their projects, not their slots.

Anyway, to answer your question: I'd prefer the solution from the edit (I suppose that's #3).

As for the general difficulty, I was so focused explaining the craft-xp-as-terminus idea I actually forgot to talk about a couple other issues that make it seem like a good idea. My bad! :V

So, simply limiting the craft spending to half the project's goal doesn't meaningfully address the problem. You need to increase the goal numbers themselves, and they need to increase significantly. Your Artifact 4 is at Difficulty 5, with a goal of 40, and a Solar with just a max Craft Excellency has >50% chance of completing that with a terminus of 6 (23 dice -> ~11 successes, +1wp per roll. On difficulty 5, this is ~7 towards the goal per roll). This is without spending any craft xp and requires no actual craft charms. A Dragonblood has a real shot at an artifact 5 if they can get to a Terminus of 10 (19 dice -> ~9 sux +1wp = ~5 towards the goal per roll). Again, no spending craft xp, no actual craft charms (well, we know the Craft excellency is a separate charm purchase for them, but you get my point). If you're letting people buy down half the project goal? You're gonna have people regularly building artifact 5's without having to buy a single craft charm.

I assume you can see how that's a problem?

My gut instinct would be to go back to the goal numbers from core Craft, or something close to them, since those were already set at a point that locked Artifacts behind the appropriate number of charm purchases. That does mean you'd also need to use some of the core Power tree craft charms or write your own that are on that level. I like what the charms in your rewrite do to let craft do more than just artifacts, but the problem with core was that it only let you really do artifacts, not that artifact crafting was locked behind charms in the first place. This was what was rattling around in my head when I was suggesting the craft-xp-for-terminus idea, since if you bump the goal numbers up that much, suddenly you need them. It's totally my fault for forgetting to mention that!

Or, maybe you have another approach?

[norraba]

The question you keep not answering is why the slots have to be different at all? With all the words I've spilled on this topic so far it maybe seems like this is a bigger deal for me than it actually is, but having different types of superior slots just strikes me as weird. All you need to do is say 'superior slots are universal' and 'certain superior projects must account for their scale, which must be addressed by the following rules' without adding a bunch of weird overhead by making players worry about what kinds of slots they have at the moment. Make them worry about their projects, not their slots.

Anyway, to answer your question: I'd prefer the solution from the edit (I suppose that's #3).

My mistake I didn’t think I was avoiding answering it. To put it plainly it is this way because that is what has made sense to me while writing it, this is my second time rewriting craft with the first time being a slight modification of some of the other rewrites to make it better for my group of players, and in all my time working on my second rewrite, of which the ability to maintain slots and points was my focus, as well as all the charms I had a really find time writing and adapting, it seemed to me that this was the most appropriate way to do it.

To put it simply, just as it seems wierd to you to have the superior slots as two different categories, it seemed wierd to me when I was trying to clearly define the value of points and slots to have both types of superior projects fall under the same banner, espeacially since in the original writeup for craft in the raw mundane superior slots get almost no attention and seem like an after thought to artifacts, which is something I absolutely did not want. Totentanz, who I modified the scale system from, addressed this by treating superior mundane as not being a superior slot at all but an upgraded major slot which I did not like and so I changed it to being its own distinct superior slot. That’s just what made the most sense to me when doing the writeup and what I built on for everything that came after it.

Now then because my goal is to make his a system that will work for everyone I will happily introduce the third solution that I proposed to it because I think it is flexible enough while allowing for this to stay true to my writeup.

As for the general difficulty, I was so focused explaining the craft-xp-as-terminus idea I actually forgot to talk about a couple other issues that make it seem like a good idea. My bad! :V

So, simply limiting the craft spending to half the project's goal doesn't meaningfully address the problem. You need to increase the goal numbers themselves, and they need to increase significantly. Your Artifact 4 is at Difficulty 5, with a goal of 40, and a Solar with just a max Craft Excellency has >50% chance of completing that with a terminus of 6 (23 dice -> ~11 successes, +1wp per roll. On difficulty 5, this is ~7 towards the goal per roll). This is without spending any craft xp and requires no actual craft charms. A Dragonblood has a real shot at an artifact 5 if they can get to a Terminus of 10 (19 dice -> ~9 sux +1wp = ~5 towards the goal per roll). Again, no spending craft xp, no actual craft charms (well, we know the Craft excellency is a separate charm purchase for them, but you get my point). If you're letting people buy down half the project goal? You're gonna have people regularly building artifact 5's without having to buy a single craft charm.

I assume you can see how that's a problem?

My gut instinct would be to go back to the goal numbers from core Craft, or something close to them, since those were already set at a point that locked Artifacts behind the appropriate number of charm purchases. That does mean you'd also need to use some of the core Power tree craft charms or write your own that are on that level. I like what the charms in your rewrite do to let craft do more than just artifacts, but the problem with core was that it only let you really do artifacts, not that artifact crafting was locked behind charms in the first place. This was what was rattling around in my head when I was suggesting the craft-xp-for-terminus idea, since if you bump the goal numbers up that much, suddenly you need them. It's totally my fault for forgetting to mention that!

Or, maybe you have another approach?

First off I want to say thanks for doing that but if math for me,probabilities were never my strong suit though I feel like I’m going to get a refresher on them soon enough.

You’ve illustrated a pretty clear problem here and I agree that I need to do something a bit more drastic to fix it, however I doubt I will ever reincorporate the power charms that I have not already included in this write up, primarily because I dislike the massive amount of dice tricks included in the original system to the point where litterally half the craft tree was “roll more dice” and the rest of the craft tree was “gain more points and slots”

I already have a very fat tree for craft as it is and I think that although I am going to be changing some charms to acomadate this issue I don’t want to add any more unnecessarily.

But keeping too many powerful artifacts out of the hands of dragon blooded is something that needs to be done other wise the setting doesn’t make sense any more, so I’ll figure that out, I still think that that ability to tweak the point but system as well as modifiying a few charms can work, partly because the ability to buy more terminus might result in the same issue, dragon blooded with access to loads of materials and other terminus generating things, as well as having loads of points, can gain as much terminus as they need to craft whatever they want, it will just take them a bit longer but that’s not an issue because they now have all the time in the world.

I don’t know how what fire has wrought is going to style dragon blooded craft, although from what the devs have been saying in the ask the devs page it is going to be interesting, but i don’t have a doubt that I’ll likely have to rewrite some of this when it comes out just as I am now refining it in order to acomadate the release of arms.

Hell I can add the give more evocations charms back in now that they have been updated.

I will do some math and get back to you on how I plan to fix this.

Edit: ultimately though I do like the idea of being able to buy more terminus, it was actually part of my original draft for this version back when I had every type of craft points doing something different. If I did do it then I would add it as a second ability of the points system rather than a replacement for the downgrading the goal and I would make it so that you need that projects generated points to increase the terminus, I.e. needing white points to buy more terminus for superior projects.

Edit 2: also I wanted to say that I really appreciate all this feedback, I really want this to be the best system I can make and it’s easier to do with people actually pointing out the flaws to me, so thanks a lot and also I’m back in the states now so I’ll be able to respond more regularly than I was before.

[norraba]

just bought arms last night and i'm already finding some wonderful things to help me clarify and adjust some things in my rewrite, including the examples of exotic ingredients that we saw in the opening fiction where the crafter was making the orichalcum infinite chakram. I think this is going to help me clarify the touchstone mechanic a bit better for anyone still having issues understanding it.

hoping to make a lot more progress on this soon, as well as implementing the changes that people have suggested to improve the system, i appreciate the patience and continued interest i've been given by those interested in the rewrite as i'm balancing responsibilities and activities in life with continuing this process.

[norraba]

Ran some dice calculations using anydice.com to get a feel for how easy and/or difficult it would be craft artifacts using my system.

for solars rolling each time with a full excellency and managing to stunt each time will have 22 dice to roll they are still only guaranteed getting as much as 2 successes, with the chance of getting successes rapidly decreasing the number of successes you are aiming for, and this is without any penalties. summarizing this the maximum number of successes is 44, the minimum is zero, and the mean is 11, with a standard of deviation of about 3 successes, and this is before penalties are applied.

applying for each artifact level, and allowing for the upward end of the deviation we get 11 successes per roll for artifact 2, 10 successes per roll for artifact 3, and 9 successes per roll for artifacts 4 and 5, and keep in mind that this is all assuming the best case scenario for our rolls.

artifact 2 should be no issue, as its difficulty cakes it accomplishable almost within the base terminus without applying any modifiers, which could be an issue that needs to be addressed.
artifact 3 is a bit more difficult with a a goal of 30, but still within the realm of possibility with a simple workshop from the terminus modifier list, and even if artifact 2 isn't anything to worry about, artifact 3 definitely is because this is where evocations start coming into play
artifact 4 is substantially more difficult but as long as a solar can attain as few as 4 terminus modifiers then they can easily reach the 40 goal limit with only 7 success per roll
artifact 5 with a goal of fifty could also feasibly be accomplished with 6 terminus assuming the luck of the dice, but could more securely be accomplished with 8 terminus which could easily be attained and would only require 6.25 successes per roll, well within the median range of a difficulty 5 roll.

what this tells me is that crafting artifacts with this system is potentially too easy, and this is before even taking into account the base ability of the system to trade gold points for the reduction of the goal number of a crafting project, which i have decided to limit to only 25% in the base to be upgraded to the full amount with a charm purchase. taking that into account and i'm left with only 19 dice needed for artifact 2, 23 dice for artifact 3, 30 dice for artifact 4, and 38 dice for artifact 5, which makes things even more easy to do.

with this in mind i've decided i need to rework both goal numbers and the generation of terminus for this system in order to give players access to artifacts, but not make them so overwhelmingly easy to complete that it becomes ridiculous. i don't believe that the issue lies in the ability to decrease the goal number because the issue was already there in the first place before i accounted for that, and if anything my playtesters have told me that it is a bit too daunting acquiring enough gps to make a real dent in the number.

as for how this has to do with dragonblooded, which was a serious concern of serGregness and appropriately so as their inability to duplicate the solar wonders is key to the setting, i can not tell exactly how it will affect them. i searched through the entire devs post trying to find a hint as to how their excellencies will work and from what i found they will not have excellencies, but unique dice adders for each ability that can be best described as "not excellencies." I think it is safe to assume that they will not have dice adders as potent as the solar base, but also given then shrinking in the power gap, that they will be more powerful than they were in second edition. for this reason i decided to go with a median of 15 potential dice per roll for them as i compute my probabilities, which gives their base pool a median of 7.5 with a standard of deviation of 2.5 so calculating the upward end of their potential we have

artifact 2 needing a minimum of 3 to 4 rolls
artifact 3 needing a minimum of 4 to 5 rolls
artifact 4 needing a minimum of 8 rolls
artifact 5 needing a minimum of 10 rolls

with the goal decreasing ability that they have access to, they won't have a charm to increase from the 25% cap, they can lower this to

artifact 2 needing a minimum of 2 to 3 rolls
artifact 3 needing a minimum of 3 rolls
artifact 4 needing a minimum of 6 rolls
artifact 5 needing a minimum of 8 rolls

this might not seems like a big deal but we need to also account for the fact that under the current terminus rolls of my system a db could fairly easily get up to that much terminus.

starting with a base 2 they could have 3 from having the best workshop, 3 from materials (based on the description from arms saying they have lost many of the magical reagents and exotic ingredients or used them up and that this is supported in my charms by having some of the exotic ingredients being gotten through charms i've judged them to not be able to get the 4 or 5 bonus from this) and they could get as much as 6 more from the other category from having incredible help, taking 20 times as long, and having a specialty or ability, and having an appropriate charm. all this adds up to a well to do dragon blooded that you'd find in a great house being able to get a maximum terminus of 14 in my system, meaning that even though it would take them forever, the ability to make artifact 4, 5, and even n/a would be in the realm of possibilities for them to accomplish within their lifetime, which is a problem setting wise, since, if even one dragon blood from each house every generation made one of these it would be too much.

im thinking of changing the terminus to make the base terminus at 1 and decreasing the amount of bonus terminus a person can get, possibly putting a maximum of 8 terminus, and then increasing the dice goal for each level of artifact, except for 2 which i will keep at the same since it seems more appropriate to have a load of level 2 artifacts around. I'll let everyone know when i come up with a good balance and i hope to hear your thoughts on what i've put together here.

[norraba]

i'm seeing some very interesting things about dragon blooded craft and i think i am going to have to edit this to make it function with out having to change db craft charms