A bit of help on house rules?

[Gigaton-Falcon-Emu]

So I have never really been one to use house rules but I find myself debating whether to implement a crafting one (one of my players is making a supernal crafter and is threatening murder at this point trying to use craft). So my question is twofold.

First, would house-ruling that you get two for one per craft charm purchase be too much?

Second, what are some commonly used house rules in your experience?

[Boston123]

What I do is allow for Basic and Major projects to be the components of larger projects, as opposed to separate projects entirely, which is RAW.

For example:

- Major Project = forge a sword:
1) Smelt iron ore into bars or wrought iron and steel
2) Twist and forge together the bars
3) Work the sword bank on the forge (make the tang, make the fuller, forge-weld on some harder carbon steel for the edges, etc), probably requiring some advanced tools (themselves a minor project)
4) Make the handle, the crosspiece, and the pommel (a process that requires careful weighting and balancing)
5) put the thing together, add some decorative etchings, and make a sheath

-Superior Project = build a longship
1) Lay the keel
- find a suitable tree
- allow it to season
- carve it with broadaxe and adze
2) lay the planks for the sides
- forge the rivets
- rive the planks from suitable timber (which in and of itself could be a decent project)
- carve the ribs for the sides, attach them to the keel
- lay the planks together, rivet them, and caulk them
3) Build the mastfish/ other tackle
- find a suitable piece of timber
- carve the keelson, the mastfish, and the uprights
- socket it all in place on the ribs
4) Mast and Sail
- find a suitable piece of lumber for the mast
- carve it to socket into the keelson
- find/weave enough cloth for the sail
- build and attack rigging for the sail

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/norse_ships.htm

I also allow people to "sublet" projects out to other people. If you need some worked metal for an aspect of your project, but have no skill at blacksmithing, you can find a blacksmith and pay them to do the work for you.

[Sandact6]

I'd recommend this Crafting fix.

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/797631-why-craft-sucks-how-i-fixed-it

Used it myself, works great.

[BlueWinds]

A couple of house rules that have been discussed on the forum before:

• Remove all references to silver experience points. Remove all charms that deal solely with them.
• Remove all references to project slots. Remove all charms that deal solely with them.
• Both of the above at the same time.

Sanctophrax's Craft rewrite is also good, but I'm (naturally) going to suggest mine as well. There are a couple of other complete Craft rewrites floating around the forums if you dig for them, but I don't recall links off the top of my head.

[Anasurimbor]

I strongly recommend you at least seriously try using Craft as written before rewriting it. I was super skeptical of it at first, but in actual play I've found it to work quite well. If you find you don't like it after all, you can always change it later, and you'll have actual experience to base your choices on.

If you find the Power charms overwhelming, try this: http://wiseartificersinsight.com/ It'll let you play around with the different charms so you can easily evaluate them in combination.

I would recommend that a Supernal Crafter focus their Power charms on getting Divine Inspiration Technique. With seven charms, you can get enough successes to reliably complete even a legendary project. Beyond that it's just about completing things faster and more cheaply. (Of course, you probably don't really need all of those charms at character creation.)

[Heavy Arms]

I strongly recommend you at least seriously try using Craft as written before rewriting it.

Seconding this. I'd also suggest having them start with Bright-Forging Prana since it's a nice way to compensate for the sheer size of the Craft Charm list.

Though something that's pretty safe regarding the Craft Charms given the size of the tree, if your player is more concerned with that than the mundane crafting rules (you mention giving out more Charms and such), there's a few in there that could easily be combined without messing with any mechanics.

For example there's really no reason Tireless Workhorse Method, Dragon Soul Emergence, and God-Forge Within need to be separate Charms, or the later two requiring repurchases. Combining them into one Charm that automatically upgrades as your Craft/Essence increases isn't going to break anything and cuts out 10 Charm purchases (not that many character would actually bother repurchasing Dragon Soul Emergence and God-Forge Within five times since having that many superior and legendary slots is kinda pointless). Copper Spider Conception can also easily be folded into Efficient Craftsman Technique as an automatic upgrade. While not as direct in the form of "does the same basic thing but for higher tier projects," you can also combine similar Charms at the same level like Red Anvils Rising and Chains Fall Away without any real issues from saving the XP/starting Charms picks.

The end result of trimming down the Craft Charms like this is no actual change in what characters can do, just reducing how much XP you need to drop on them. In many cases it isn't going to feel like it throws off the rest of things in terms of character potency.