HARP, as encompassing as it is, skirts vaguely on the status of Craft and Lore skills. It gives examples, and enough of a system for a GM to work with, but it hardly gives anything for a player to play with. So I've taken some time to come up with a general outline for how I plan to do crafting.
To successfully complete a Craft, the character makes a Craft Maneuver roll halfway through the production of the item (CoM pg 111).
Crafting skill is divided into Categories and Skills. When a player takes a Craft, he can choose which one to take. Since crafts are designed to create tools (for one purpose or another), the skill associated with each craft may be used as a Bonus Skill. In some cases, the Bonus Skill may be an appropriate Lore, depending on the materials being worked with. The following list is of the categories and examples of specific skills within each category.
- Apothecary: Non-magical potions and medicines.
- Potion-brewing: Healing medicines, remedies, and elixirs. (Healing, Flora/Fauna Lore)
- Poisoning: Identification and application of poisons. (Flora/Fauna Lore)
- Smith: Working of metal into tools, weapons, and armor.
- Armoring: Metal armor such as metal shields, chain mail, and plate mail. (Armor)
- Weapon-craft: Metal weapons such as swords, axes, and maces. (Weapon)
- Cook: Preparation, preservation, and serving of food. (Flora/Fauna Lore)
- Horticulture: The ability to domesticate plants. (Flora Lore)
- Tailoring: Sewing, tanning, repairing, and making leather, or cloth. Can even be applied to parchment and vellum.
- Clothier: Can make and mend cloth and leather armors and clothes. (Armor)
- Paper-making: Can make papyrus, parchment, vellum, and rune paper. (Runes)
- Wood & Bone: Carpentry and woodcarving organic-composed weapons and objects.
- Bowyer: Crafts bows, arrows and crossbows. (Missile Weapon)
- Instrument-making: wooden or bone musical instruments. (Instrument)
- Drawing: Images, sketching, painting, or maps.
- Cartography: Map-making. (Navigation)
- Calligraphy: Writing in legal script. (Public Speaking)
If the artisan has ranks in the Skill (not Category), then the object will be a Medium All-or-nothing maneuver, in addition to a maneuver bonus from the applicable companion skill, assuming the Artisan has ranks in it (the bonus should be beneficial to the artisan, so ignore a roll of a negative modifier). If the Artisan fails the maneuver, he may attempt again, starting over from the beginning (ie. begin counting the days to make over again). If he succeeds, he has successfully crafted the item.
If the Artisan is skilled, he instills Superior Workmanship to his item, based on the ranks he has in the skill (Martial Law 45).
The standard assumption is that the artisan will attempt to craft an object that he has a Crafting Skill for, such as crafting a sword with Weaponsmith.
However for every change to and from a Skill and Category, the difficulty increases by one tier. So a Metal Weaponsmith attempting to make a Target Shield would have to make a Very Hard maneuver (Weapon-to-Metal: Hard; Metal-to-Armor: Very Hard). In addition, there can be no Superior Workmanship for such a transition. The artisan can not go across different Categories.
Additionally, if a character wanted to only make one object within a Skill, such as arrows with fletching, he may take that as a craft, going from Medium maneuver to Light. This can grant the Superior workmanship bonus.
This took me some time and thinking, tell me what you think. Also, I hope the categories are sufficiently encompassing. I tried to make the major ones equally useful, which required some possibly odd mixing, such as "Wood and Bone" and "Leather and Cloth" (which I felt would include paper, even though sewing fabric, tanning leather, and making paper have little similarities).
Any input is appreciated!
