From The Crucible: Crafting As A Struggle [PEACH]

[Kyeudo]

Ever since I read Exalted Third Edition's system for crafting, it hasn't quite set well with me. Don't get me wrong - it was a step forward over Second Edition's craft rules in many ways. However, there were a number of proud nails to the system, such as basic projects acting as a gating mechanism for all other mundane projects and project slots being rendered effectively pointless by the first Solar Craft Charm everyone buys. While posting in one of the never-ending series of threads about the Craft system, I had an idea that seemed to get some positive responses, so I've been working on developing that idea into a usable system for a while now. I haven't yet added a rewrite of the Craft Charms yet, but I wanted to get some feedback about the base system while the Charms are still in the design phase. So, without further ado, I present From The Crucible. Let me know what you think.

EDIT: For those who dislike doing math and/or just extra work in general, I finally wrote a small widget to assist in creating new craft projects for these rules.

[Ellis]

I'll admit that I'm not terribly familiar with vanilla crafting, could you summarize the outline of your changes?

[Kyeudo]

I'll give it a try.

• Two colors of craft points instead of three
• New craft objectives (stolen from Sanctaphrax's craft fix)
• One type of craft slot instead of three
• Craft[Artifacts] and Craft[Geomancy] no longer exist
• Basic projects no longer gate Major projects
• Superior projects showcase large-scale mundane works instead of focusing entirely on artifact crafting
• Artifact crafting has only one Ability minimum instead of four.
• Instead of an extended roll with an absurdly high success count, artifact crafting is now a series of opposed rolls called Milestones.
• There are five types of Milestones, each with its own dice pool. These encourage Ability and Attribute diversification.
• Milestone rolls are opposed by the project.
• The project has five traits called Complications that it can use to oppose a Milestone. It must use all of them before any of them can be reused, so it won't always use its best Complication.
• Exotic Components are emphasized. The craftsman must provide a number of these equal to the project's rating. These give the project special abilities it can use to oppose the craftsman's Milestones, modify its Complications, and each add a single Milestone to complete.
• Project's have a resource pool called Complexity. It starts out with ten points per dot of rating and can only be refilled through special abilities.
• Failed Milestones add undesired traits to the final artifact called Quirks. The need to ritually purify Stormcaller to prevent it from harming allies is a good example of a Quirk.
• Getting too many Quirks on the final artifact causes the project to fail
• Quirks can be removed using rules for repairing artifacts.
• A list of example special powers for projects.
• A list of example Exotic Components, from Orichalcum to Unrequited Love.

[Clophiroth]

I have read it, I have given it to a player of mine (the Crafter) and we have decided to use it as our main crafting system. Will reply after we have tested it, to see if we like it, but we have really liked what we have seen.

[Kyeudo]

I have read it, I have given it to a player of mine (the Crafter) and we have decided to use it as our main crafting system. Will reply after we have tested it, to see if we like it, but we have really liked what we have seen.

Glad to hear it and I look forward to hearing how it goes. Just a heads up, but I based the dice pools around the idea that Craft Charms after revision would produce dice pools similar in size to what can be achieved using Melee Charms, so be aware that using the default Craft Charms could result in all rolls being rendered trivial.

[Clophiroth]

Glad to hear it and I look forward to hearing how it goes. Just a heads up, but I based the dice pools around the idea that Craft Charms after revision would produce dice pools similar in size to what can be achieved using Melee Charms, so be aware that using the default Craft Charms could result in all rolls being rendered trivial.

That´s what the player thought: it looks like making artifacts will be easier than in the vanilla system. But we will not be able to play until next week, so I can´t say for sure

[Kyeudo]

I'll see if I can finish up the first draft on my Charm revision in the next few days.

[Kyeudo]

The Thanksgiving holiday was not as productive as I had anticipated, but I finally got the Craft Charms done. It looks like I'll need to add some Lore and Occult Charms, but I'll have to consider those areas further before I do anything - I wouldn't want to accidentally break the balance of sorcery or something.

[norraba]

As someone who has also rewritten the craft system, this sounds interesting, I’m looking forward to reading through it when I have the opportunity, I love the idea of repairable quirks thatnyoubhave included, kind of like making prototypes that need to be fixed later on, could be a reason why dragon blooded have such a difficult time redirecting the glories of the first age.

Honestly what has me most excited about this is the fact that I was planning on making genesys symupported exalted and was dreading adapting the craft system again for genesys but since it uses opposed rolls in that setting anyway your mention of it makes me think this might be a very good way of doing it for that system.

[Steamfunk]

I really like the overall look of it, but I am having some slight difficulty parsing what it looks like when everything comes together. Could you write up an "Example Artifact Creation" thing to run through what using this would look like in play?

[Kyeudo]

Sure.

First, we need an example craftsman. There are some who call him . . . Timothy. Timothy has Dexterity 3, Intelligence 4, Strength 3, Stamina 3, Craft(Metalwork) 5, Lore 3, Occult 2, and a few Craft Charms - the Craft Excellency, Craftsman Needs No Tools, Flawless Handiwork Method, Supreme Perfection of Craft, and Design Beyond Limit - and is about to attempt the creation of his first Artifact. Because he's done three basic projects and two major projects, accomplishing the projects exceptionally and with two objectives each time, he has 34 silver points on hand. Over the course of his adventures so far, Timothy has acquired a number of exotic components suitable for use in an artifact: a quantity of moonsilver, a chunk of adamant, some raw chaos, an everburning flame, and a demon's claw.

Timothy decides that he wants to be daring and wants to create a three dot artifact weapon, so he needs to provide three different components. Looking at the materials available to him, he decides against the moonsilver and the demon's claw, because those would boost the project's Taboo Complication and Occult is his worst Ability. This leaves him using the adamant, the everburning flame, and the raw chaos. He proposes an idea for what sort of artifact this would be to his Storyteller - Timothy wants to create a javelin of solidified crimson flame and sky blue crystal that can materialize temporary copies of itself to throw and have Evocations based around precision strikes of intense heat. His Storyteller gives her okay, so he starts figuring out the project's traits.

As a three-dot artifact, each of the project's Complications have a base value of 13. These are then modified by the three exotic components. Adamant adds +1 Delicate, +1 Intricate, and -2 Mysterious. Everburning Flame adds -1 Mysterious and +1 Intricate. Timothy rolls four dice to figure out what Raw Chaos contributes to the project and gets a 4, 2, 9, and 2, which gives him +1 Intricate, +1 Delicate, -1 Taboo, and -1 Delicate. Summed up, the project has Stubborn 13, Delicate 14, Mysterious 10, Taboo 12, and Intricate 16. The project has the special powers Diamond Clarity, Trouble the Sleeping Dragon, and, rolling an 8 for Raw Chaos, Amazingly Mysterious. The project requires 8 Milestones to complete. After rolling again for Raw Chaos and getting a 4, those Milestones are 2 Fabrication, 3 Refinement, 1 Ritual, 1 Research, and 1 Design. With nothing modifying its Complexity pool, the project has 30 points of Complexity. The project will take three months of work to finish.

All of the paperwork out of the way, Timothy is ready to attempt his first Milestone on the project. He spends 10 silver points and declares he's going to roll for a Refinement Milestone. Refinement is Stamina + Craft, so he's got a base pool of 8 dice. The Storyteller decides that the project is going to oppose Timothy's Milestone roll with the Mysterious Complication and declares that the project is going to use both Amazingly Mysterious and Trouble the Sleeping Dragon to supplement the roll, giving it 15 dice and punishing any 1s Timothy rolls at the cost of 9 points of Complexity. Timothy has three dots in Lore, so he doesn't lose two dice like he would if it was a Taboo Complication. Timothy could use Design Beyond Limit to change to a Design Milestone, but that would only get him one more die on the roll, so he instead opts to pay eight motes for the Craft Excellency, and performs a one dot stunt, giving him 18 dice for the roll. Timothy and the project roll. The project gets (10, 8, 6, 2, 3, 3, 2, 10, 2, 10, 10, 7, 7, 4, 9) for 12 successes and Timothy gets (7, 9, 3, 10, 8, 8, 10, 10, 4, 1, 2, 5, 4, 2, 4, 6, 1, 4) for 10 successes.

The project has bested Timothy, and so gains a Quirk. It is the first Quirk, so it is going to be a new Minor Quirk, something undesired and annoying but not central to the artifact. The Storyteller rules that wherever the duplicate javelins strike soil, a crimson, Wyld-tainted lily flower sprouts. The project's Trouble the Sleeping Dragon power would cause Timothy two levels of lethal damage, but Timothy activates Supreme Perfection of Craft and buys off the two 1s he rolled.

Undeterred, Timothy tries again. He spends 10 more silver points and once more attempts a Refinement Milestone. This time, the project has only 21 points of Complexity remaining and can't use the Mysterious Complication again until it has used the other four Complications. The Storyteller accordingly chooses to oppose the Milestone roll with the project's Intricate Complication (16 dice) and against spends 4 points of Complexity on Trouble the Sleeping Dragon. Timothy again spends 8 motes on the Craft Excellency and does a one dot stunt. Timothy gets (6, 5, 5, 4, 9, 10, 10, 3, 10, 7, 5, 7, 4, 4, 10, 6, 8, 8) for 13 successes and the project gets (9, 4, 9, 4, 5, 3, 4, 3, 9, 2, 7, 3, 8, 9, 5, 9) for 7 successes. Timothy completes the Milestone, leaving seven more, and didn't roll any 1s, so Trouble the Sleeping Dragon does nothing. Timothy decides that he may want to invest into another dot of Stamina or a couple Charms from the Power tree before trying another Refinement Milestone and he definitely needs to get some more silver points in order to finish, so he'll be on the lookout to solve some problems with a Craft roll and CNNT.

Does that help?

The Complexity and Essence costs for special powers and Charms are very rough at this stage. I hope to hear back about how they work out in play.

[Kyeudo]

So, I finally found the time to code up a small program to help anyone using these rules generate new projects quickly (link in OP). While I was at it, I did a quick pass on the rules themselves, incorporating the errata from Arms of the Chosen, bringing the Ability minimums on many Charms down a dot or two, and adding a Charm to better integrate with Lore and Occult. For now, I decided against mucking around with additional dice adders or dice tricks in Lore and Occult - too much else like Sorcerous Projects connected to those Abilities that I don't want to disturb. I might change that when I get What Fire Has Wrought and do a Dragon-Blooded update.

[Kyeudo]

I did an update to the widget for these rules (see the opening post). It will now allow you to add your own powers and components to use and automatically saves those to the XML file on application close. I've got What Fire Has Wrought and am thinking about how to convert those Charms over to this system, but it's slow going given real life and also running some games of Exalted periodically.

[Hakkonen]

What's wrong with lesser projects gating greater ones? I understood that to represent big projects being made up of smaller ones; i.e. you don't just "build a skyship," you have to lay the keel, build the hull, sew the sails, craft the fittings, etc.

[Kyeudo]

What's wrong with lesser projects gating greater ones? I understood that to represent big projects being made up of smaller ones; i.e. you don't just "build a skyship," you have to lay the keel, build the hull, sew the sails, craft the fittings, etc.

Developers clarified that the whole ship was one project, not something that was intended to be broken down into sub projects.

Even if that wasn't the case, the main justification for gating mechanics is to put brakes on mechanically significant things like artifacts, not to keep blacksmiths from making swords because they haven't made enough horseshoes.