Juan Sierra
First Post
My group had questions on the crafting mechanics for this game. So far as I can tell, the rules are kind of distributed between exploits, skills, skill checks, and careers.
The following are relevant rules, and my [naive] interpretation of how crafting works. I would appreciate it if someone could correct any errors or offer improvements.
From the "craftsman" career: Builder. Assuming raw materials are available, you can make an item of equipment in one day by rolling a LOG check vs. the item's value.
There isn't a clear metric for what the item's value is, but we do get a hint from the "reputation, contacts, and credit" EONS article, which has a table of credit requested to difficulty check. I'll post a relevant snippet below:
DC: 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
CR: 500 | 650 | 900 | 1200 | 1500 | 2000
So to craft say a 500Cr sniper rifle, you'd need to have a 5d6 dice pool to have about a 50/50 chance to craft it. To get the 5d6 pool, a grade 5 character could do 8 points in LOG (3 base + 5 from careers), plus 5 relevant [crafting] skill points (say weaponsmithing). That's a pool of 13, for 4d6, so you'd need an extra 2 points, possibly from species skills + some other LOG/[craft] bonus or expending LUC dice. But a starting character *could* craft a 500Cr, which makes most early-game stuff fairly accessible.
There are also extended skill checks, which may be reasonable for a multi-hour/multi-day craft. Instead of a single check, you would need three DC15 successes (for the 500Cr sniper), but failures only cost you time. Since it appears that the "Builder" exploit allows crafting within a day, this could either mean each check is an hour (so you could reasonably succeed in crafting within a day) or a day (so a straight up but risky Builder check finished in a day, but a "safe" extended craft could take multiple days). This would still allow our grade 5 to craft a single 500Cr item in say a week on average if crafting is a major task.
A 500 Cr item is about half a month's work for the lowest paid NPC (waitress - 800Cr per month), so this doesn't seem too unreasonable. Higher level characters (with more LOG/[craft]/LUC, and possibly with higher quality equipment) could craft even more expensive items. A grade 10 focused on crafting (so 13 LOG, and say 10 skill ranks in the relevant [craft]) has a dice pool of 4d4 (LOG) + 4d4([craft]), but is capped at 7d6. This is a static score of 25, so they could reasonably craft equipment up to 9000Cr worth.
Allowing "gearmasters" would also let characters bypass the GMD (grade maximum dice) by having expensive gear that helps with crafting, making it faster/more likely to occur.
I still don't know what the "cost" is for crafting. Builder assumes you have access to resources, but doesn't say how they're spent. It doesn't make sense to spend the item's cost, cuz you could just *buy* it then. But I can't find any rules for how much you pay for the raw materials, nor what are the consequences of failure (short of time lost).
The following are relevant rules, and my [naive] interpretation of how crafting works. I would appreciate it if someone could correct any errors or offer improvements.
From the "craftsman" career: Builder. Assuming raw materials are available, you can make an item of equipment in one day by rolling a LOG check vs. the item's value.
There isn't a clear metric for what the item's value is, but we do get a hint from the "reputation, contacts, and credit" EONS article, which has a table of credit requested to difficulty check. I'll post a relevant snippet below:
DC: 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
CR: 500 | 650 | 900 | 1200 | 1500 | 2000
So to craft say a 500Cr sniper rifle, you'd need to have a 5d6 dice pool to have about a 50/50 chance to craft it. To get the 5d6 pool, a grade 5 character could do 8 points in LOG (3 base + 5 from careers), plus 5 relevant [crafting] skill points (say weaponsmithing). That's a pool of 13, for 4d6, so you'd need an extra 2 points, possibly from species skills + some other LOG/[craft] bonus or expending LUC dice. But a starting character *could* craft a 500Cr, which makes most early-game stuff fairly accessible.
There are also extended skill checks, which may be reasonable for a multi-hour/multi-day craft. Instead of a single check, you would need three DC15 successes (for the 500Cr sniper), but failures only cost you time. Since it appears that the "Builder" exploit allows crafting within a day, this could either mean each check is an hour (so you could reasonably succeed in crafting within a day) or a day (so a straight up but risky Builder check finished in a day, but a "safe" extended craft could take multiple days). This would still allow our grade 5 to craft a single 500Cr item in say a week on average if crafting is a major task.
A 500 Cr item is about half a month's work for the lowest paid NPC (waitress - 800Cr per month), so this doesn't seem too unreasonable. Higher level characters (with more LOG/[craft]/LUC, and possibly with higher quality equipment) could craft even more expensive items. A grade 10 focused on crafting (so 13 LOG, and say 10 skill ranks in the relevant [craft]) has a dice pool of 4d4 (LOG) + 4d4([craft]), but is capped at 7d6. This is a static score of 25, so they could reasonably craft equipment up to 9000Cr worth.
Allowing "gearmasters" would also let characters bypass the GMD (grade maximum dice) by having expensive gear that helps with crafting, making it faster/more likely to occur.
I still don't know what the "cost" is for crafting. Builder assumes you have access to resources, but doesn't say how they're spent. It doesn't make sense to spend the item's cost, cuz you could just *buy* it then. But I can't find any rules for how much you pay for the raw materials, nor what are the consequences of failure (short of time lost).