Craft Characters in Combat

[HalfTangible]

When 3e rolls around, I'm gonna try making a character with as much focus on crafting as possible. The problem is that I don't understand how that would work in 2.5e, let alone 3.

Okay, so... quick primer on this guy: I want to have a character who crafts artifacts and weapons that make up for a weaker body, and also provides his allies with enhancements like that. I want to craft weapons like flamethrowers or power armor to make this character a beast in combat without necessarily needing to start off with strength 5. Or perhaps as a layer of traps and a strategist. Or even to make acid and napalm bombs (or something similar). Essentially, someone who builds weapons, armor and traps and then uses all of them in clever concert to vanquish his foes.

For 2.5e what craft abilities/charms should I pick up for this?

Thank ye.

[Ejtaka]

Really, in 2.5, your only option is to spend a HUGE amount of time crafting artifacts, and then building in drawbacks to reduce commitment cost. If you are playing in a circle that has a home base, then there is stuff you can do as well: traps and battlefield management and building a manse with lots of automated defense, or making automatons to do your fighting for you.

If you don't invest in combat directly in 2.5, you will lose to someone who has. Artifacts don't really take you far enough. You might be ok at the Essence 2-3 range, but you will fall behind in the Essence 4-5 range.

From what I hear about 3, this will change to some extent. I have to wonder if there will be Utility Belt type artifacts/charms, or some Charms in Craft that let you add bonuses to your weapons a la Earthdawn weaponsmiths.

I think the Anima of the character types with Craft are supposed to help as well. Twilights get a defense anima (soak of some sort). I don't know what Earth gets, but I'm willing to bet that there will be something about toughness in there. I suspect that Daybreak and Defiler Exalts will have something similar to Twilight, like now. Sidereals get a Performance bonus, and that might be defensive? I dn't know? Maybe somewhere int he Charms there's a synergy? You know how Sidereals are. As for Lunars and Alchemicals: they aren't skill based, so its up to you to figure it out.

[Crumplepunch]

I suggest traps.

Wait wait, hear me out.

Okay, so the trap rules in Scroll of Kings work as follows:

1) Each trap has a difficulty to craft, a difficulty to spot and an attack pool

2) If someone enters the vicinity of the trap, they roll to spot, and if they fail, they take the attack pool as an unblockable attack with varying results (being restrained, falling into a pit, exploding a firedust mine, etc).

3) Threshold successes on the crafting roll can be added either to the difficulty to spot or the attack pool.

Normally the attack pools and difficulties to spot are trivially low, but an Exalted crafter can make some impressive deathtraps.

A Solar craftsman can expect enough threshold successes to raise the attack pool of his traps to a respectable 15-20 (again, unblockable) depending on specialities and equipment, but this still leaves his traps easy to spot (difficulty 1-3) What do?

This is where Eye-Deceiving Camouflage comes in. For a 6m commitment, nobody will spot the trap unless they have superhuman senses.

[Citadel97501]

Personally I have had a lot of fun with a crafting focused guy, especially with using CNNT to create castles, underground tunnels for invasion, and similar things. Hell I think I even once changed a flat area of dirt into a metal sheet, and then used tunnels and trap doors to disappear and reappear using stealth actions. I always considered this charm to let you pull crap like the Alchemists from Full Metal Alchemist

I should note that I have also used that same charm to simulate the Raising the Earth Bones spell but the spell doesn't require a craft check RAW, but with CNNT you can do it faster and with more flavor. Another option was using CNNT to make arrows on the fly.

[Citadel97501]

I suggest traps.

Wait wait, hear me out.

Okay, so the trap rules in Scroll of Kings work as follows:

1) Each trap has a difficulty to craft, a difficulty to spot and an attack pool

2) If someone enters the vicinity of the trap, they roll to spot, and if they fail, they take the attack pool as an unblockable attack with varying results (being restrained, falling into a pit, exploding a firedust mine, etc).

3) Threshold successes on the crafting roll can be added either to the difficulty to spot or the attack pool.

Normally the attack pools and difficulties to spot are trivially low, but an Exalted crafter can make some impressive deathtraps.

A Solar craftsman can expect enough threshold successes to raise the attack pool of his traps to a respectable 15-20 (again, unblockable) depending on specialities and equipment, but this still leaves his traps easy to spot (difficulty 1-3) What do?

This is where Eye-Deceiving Camouflage comes in. For a 6m commitment, nobody will spot the trap unless they have superhuman senses.

I am concerned about one problem with using traps, namely it takes 17 rounds and that is using CNNT, and working on the two quickest traps...Snaglines and Stake Traps. Now if you could increase difficulty to shorten construction time, it would be much better. If that crafting rule does exist please tell me where it is, so I can read it?

[Zelbinnean]

Well, like, here's the thing.

Craft is going to be 1/10 of your Abilities you get Charm discounts on.

Want to be a crafter with weird weapons I suggest you build a firewand (and/or convert the 1e Artifact firewand, the Dragon Sigh Wand, to 2e...it's easy, I've done it several times) and take Archery/Righteous Devil. But don't expect a non-combat Ability to give you as much in-combat utility as an explicit combat Ability does.

FWIW, I recall hearing that in 3e, Lore will have some cool in-combat support/buff effects. At the same time we have NO idea how Craft is going to work in 3e, I just assume the system is going to be much more coherent and fun than it was in 2.X (which was to say, not at all).

[Aquillion]

2.5e barely has any actual crafting charms anyway. You have an excellency, your speed-up charm, and then a few things to eliminate problems that were invented specifically for those charms (Words as Workshop, the five-dot-access charms, etc.)

Also Dexterity 5 is more useful than Strength 5, which is good because you need Dexterity to craft anyway (you need Dexterity for everything.)

Nothing in Craft is going to directly make you a beast in combat without considerable focus on custom charms. And even with those -- if you want to be really, really good in combat as a Solar, you're really better off taking combat abilities. Just play up the fact that you're using equipment you made yourself.

[Crumplepunch]

I am concerned about one problem with using traps, namely it takes 17 rounds and that is using CNNT, and working on the two quickest traps...Snaglines and Stake Traps. Now if you could increase difficulty to shorten construction time, it would be much better. If that crafting rule does exist please tell me where it is, so I can read it?

Uh, no, clearly you have to construct traps ahead of time and lure people into them. Takes a little extra effort.

Personally if there was a crafter who could just build a stake trap under my feet and hit me with 20 unblockable dice I'd be pretty pissed.

[Citadel97501]

Uh, no, clearly you have to construct traps ahead of time and lure people into them. Takes a little extra effort.

Personally if there was a crafter who could just build a stake trap under my feet and hit me with 20 unblockable dice I'd be pretty pissed.

I wasn't expecting that to be a thing, I was expecting him to be able to spend a maybe 10 to 15 ticks to cover the ground with a series of metal floor tiles so you had to deal with those while fighting him, or maybe he sets you up with a created leg snare that he triggers with his spear, or maybe throws his spear (missing) which triggers the spike trap.

[Ryumaru]

I happen to know of a homebrew battlecrafting system that might be right up your alley here.

[Zelbinnean]

Uh, no, clearly you have to construct traps ahead of time and lure people into them. Takes a little extra effort.

Personally if there was a crafter who could just build a stake trap under my feet and hit me with 20 unblockable dice I'd be pretty pissed.

The concept of that would be pretty cool. Obviously the balance is not letting it be an "lol I win" button.

[Couch]

I can see a Sidereal Craft Charm that make it so that a trap was always there. Trap Card Activating Prana.

[semicasual]

I suggest you put some points in Thrown and Craft: Fire, and then start making bombs. The craft check isn't hard, and if you've got the Resources, you can easily produce a lot of them in not a lot of time. One area where Crafters can definitely get an edge over other combat-characters is in how easy it is for them to bring grenades to a swordfight.

http://exaltedpast.wikidot.com/item:firedustgrenade

http://exaltedpast.wikidot.com/artif...omanticgrenade
http://exaltedpast.wikidot.com/item:...adsecretweapon

http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-605776.html - grenade-specific throwing charms.

Area-effect weapons are much, much easier to use than direct-hit weapons in 2.5e, because the ground has a DV of 0. Explosions are dodgeable, but not blockable IIRC.

[4uk4ata]

Weren't bombs generally something you craft with alchemy instead?

Also, many splats have a fair few lore charms with combat application, and with a bit of reflavoring/stunts those can be represented as small gadgets you use. A crafter can easily get an elemental focus lens, and the description made mention of possible versions for other exalt types, i.e. a version for solars boosting blazing solar bolt.

[Odd_Canuck]

When 3e rolls around, I'm gonna try making a character with as much focus on crafting as possible. The problem is that I don't understand how that would work in 2.5e, let alone 3.

Okay, so... quick primer on this guy: I want to have a character who crafts artifacts and weapons that make up for a weaker body, and also provides his allies with enhancements like that. I want to craft weapons like flamethrowers or power armor to make this character a beast in combat without necessarily needing to start off with strength 5. Or perhaps as a layer of traps and a strategist. Or even to make acid and napalm bombs (or something similar). Essentially, someone who builds weapons, armor and traps and then uses all of them in clever concert to vanquish his foes.

For 2.5e what craft abilities/charms should I pick up for this?

Thank ye.

Everything you describe here isn't crafting. It's having custom gear and being a batman of combat.

It's all about the effects/results of crafting and nothing to do with actually being a crafter. Being a crafter is just the background reason for having the marvelous toys.

I'd say take Allies (Solar Crafter 5) and grab some customized artifacts and maybe have a small army of followers that do the lesser crafting for you. That will allow you to reap the advantages of crafting without investing heavily into it directly... which is important, because unless your GM and whole group are all A-OK with take large amounts of downtime for you to do crafting, it's going to be a waste of charm purchases. In the unlikely event that the whole group is fine with vast amounts of downtime, the question is going to be What are the others doing during this time? They're going to be accomplishing things in their field just as significant as you with those years. Or to put it another way, you making stuff for yourself and them isn't like doing the same thing in D&D, where you have grateful players that are more effective in combat, the majority of the time you end up with people sitting around going "Why the hell are we sitting around for 3 years in the middle of the Mask of Winters launching an assault campaign? oh to get a new armor? Yea let's go kill that guy and take his stuff instead, it's faster"