Craft
Trait Description: Craft allows characters to create both useful and beautiful objects. Highly skilled craftspeople can create impressive masterworks, though a character must use Charms if he wishes to create masterworks rapidly or with ordinary or substandard materials. There are five mundane Craft Abilities, each associated with one of the five elements. Several exotic varieties exist as well, such as Craft (Magitech), which applies to the wonders of the First Age, and Craft (Glamour) and Craft (Fate), which are practiced only by supernatural beings. The five ordinary Craft Abilities are:
- Air: calligraphy, jewelry-making, creating precision instruments and glassblowing (making small, decorative or high-precision items)
- Earth: masonry, stone cutting, creating earthworks (creating buildings and large objects with stone or earth)
- Fire: blacksmithing, making ceramics (forging and casting large metal objects and creating objects using fire)
- Wood: carpentry, weaving, paper-making, flower arranging (carving, weaving and manipulating natural materials)
- Water: cooking, brewing, leather working, pharmacy and poison-making (boiling and cooking plants, chemicals and animal materials)
Note: All mundane crafts performed by ordinary mortals fit into one of these five categories.
Specialties: Specific Individual Crafts—sword-making (Fire), gem-cutting (Air), perfume-making (Water); Evaluating Goods
Trait Effects: Someone with Craft (Wood) 1 can probably construct a rude hut. Someone with Craft (Fire) 3 can make an exceptional sword. Someone with Craft (Air) 5 can create pieces of jewelry that vain nobles will literally kill to own.
Typical Targets for Craft
Craft Charms usually affect objects and structures. It is possible to affect automata (living artifacts) and even creatures with Craft Charms, but few of those Charms are presented here. Promises, dreams and hopes do not count as objects unless they are made tangible through some other effect.
Craft Minimums
Characters can fulfill the Craft minimum for a Craft Charm with any Craft Ability. Supplemental Charms apply only to Crafts that the character masters to the level of the Craft minimum. Other Charms apply to all Crafts unless otherwise stated. A character with five dots of Craft (Fire) and no other Crafts could use Object-Strengthening Touch on any object, but could use Crack-Mending Technique to supplement repairs only suitable to Craft (Fire).
Dramatic Systems for Crafts
Academic Knowledge (Craft, Lore, Medicine, Occult, War)
Whenever characters are called upon to know information that they have learned in the course of their experience and education, an (Intelligence + Ability) roll is required. The Ability in question depends on the subject at hand. For most conventional academic subjects, such as mathematics, history, geography and the like, use Lore. Occult governs mystical knowledge, especially pertaining to spirits, Fair Folk, the Exalted and actual Charms and artifacts. To know how something is constructed and understand the arcane trivia of forge temperatures, gem-cutting techniques, or what have you, use Craft. Medicine covers the workings of the body in health, sickness and trauma, as well as the assorted remedies for both disease and injury. War commands the strategies and tools of warfare, from the deployment of siege engines to types of formations to actual training regimens. Other Abilities can come into play for knowledge checks when characters draw upon the formal details of their expertise. For example, identifying a fighter's style from her kata requires a successful (Intelligence + Martial Arts) check.
The difficulty of an academic knowledge check depends on the obscurity of the fact, with difficulty 0 indicating that any character with a dot of this Ability automatically knows the information without a roll and difficulty 1-5 for most checks. Difficulties above 6 are possible, but such esoteric insights are generally beyond mortal understanding. These rolls and difficulties assume the character has several minutes in which to think. Characters who try to recall details and facts on the fly substitute Wits for Intelligence and add two to the difficulty.
Build/Attune Manse (Craft, Lore, Occult)
As explained on page 113, Essence does not flow evenly through Creation, it gathers in eddies and wellsprings of power known as demesnes. Each of these sites has an aspect, defining the type of power that resonates there. Possibilities include, Sidereal, Lunar, Solar, Abyssal or any of the five elements. Magical beings capable of channeling Essence may attune themselves to these locations through a simple meditative ritual (Intelligence + Lore), difficulty 1. This attunement is a dramatic action requiring a number of hours equal to the site’s rating. If the demesne already has beings attuned to it, they mystically feel the ritual regardless of their current location, but they do not know who is attempting to attune to the demesne unless they are physically present. Unless every owner gives consent, the attunement automatically fails. With a successful ritual (and consent, if necessary), a character becomes the new owner or a co-owner of the demesne and may automatically draw (the site's rating x 4) motes of Essence from the location whenever he is present.
While useful, demesnes are not portable, and their untamed energies can gradually mutate beings dwelling in close proximity like the touch of the Wyld does. For these reasons, Exalted raise manses atop demesnes they control whenever possible. Doing so is an enormously costly undertaking, both in terms of the resources required and the labor that goes into raising one of these arcane citadels. Characters must have at least 12 Ability dots divided among their ratings in Craft, Lore and Occult to design such a structure, and then, only for manses rated 1 to 3. Appropriate specialties count toward these totals. The total number of required Ability dots rises to 15 for level-4 manses and 20 for level 5. Characters cannot design a manse with a rating greater than the rating of the demesne it is intended to cap.
Designing a manse is a dramatic action requiring a month of in-game work, followed by a roll of (Intelligence + [the architect's lowest rating in Craft, Lore or Occult]) at a difficulty of the manse's intended rating. Other characters with sufficient Ability totals to build the manse may check the results, providing limited cooperation. If the roll fails, the character finds flaws in the blueprint and must start over from scratch. If the roll succeeds, actual construction may begin. In the event of a botch, the character’s designs include fatal flaws that will make the manse collapse or even explode within a month of its construction.
The construction materials and pay for 100 workers costs Resources 3 per month for level-1 through level-3 manses. Level-4 and level-5 manses cost Resources 4 per month (or Resources 3 for materials, assuming unpaid slave labor). The entire construction project takes a number of years equal to twice the manse's rating. Adjust this time proportionally to the labor pool available, so 200 workers take half as long, while a lone, maddened Exalt hauling stones into place would take 200 years of grueling daily effort to build a level-1 manse. Using supernatural labor also speeds the process, with every such being counting as multiple mortals. For instance, most First Circle demons are worth five laborers. If a completed manse has a lower rating than the demesne it caps, the excess energies produce dramatic but largely useless special effects around the manse.
Once the manse is completed, all attunements to the demesne immediately break. In the central hearthroom of the structure, a hearthstone will grow over the course of a month. The specific stone produced must correlate to the aspect of the manse, but it may be whatever one the architect planned. Characters can attune to a manse as if it were a demesne and gain additional Essence at the same rate when present at the site. Altering or defacing a manse's hearthroom in any substantial way disrupts the manse, breaking all existing attunements. The manse must be repaired before anyone can re-attune, which requires labor and materials equivalent to a month of construction. A character attuned to a manse may take the hearthstone and carry it against his skin, using the jewel as a conduit to the site. Doing so restores (the manse's rating x 2) motes per hour to the character. If it is socketed in a dedicated artifact made from one or more of the five magical materials, the stone also provides an additional enchantment according to its specific type.
Create Item/Artifact (Craft, Lore, Occult)
Mundane Items
Characters use the Craft Ability to design and execute creative projects as a dramatic action using a dice pool of ([the character's lowest rating in Dexterity, Perception or Intelligence] + Craft) for small items that are personally assembled by hand or ([the lower of Perception or Intelligence] + Craft) for larger works. The difficulty is equal to the Resources value of the object. Such projects take an appropriate length of time to complete, as set by the Storyteller. Generally, this interval is in days equal to the difficulty for small items, though extremely simple trinkets worth Resources 1 might take only a few hours to make. Larger or higher-complexity items push the interval from days to weeks, as with most forged goods. Massive projects such as the construction of houses and ships take an interval of months and possibly years for larger structures such as palaces. Truly monumental tasks could theoretically take even longer, although the Storyteller is encouraged to break such enterprises into smaller, independently resolved tasks.
Characters cannot create items with a Resources value in excess of (their Craft + appropriate specialty) without a Charm or stunt. Furthermore, they must have appropriate raw materials and tools, which have their own Resources cost—typically one dot less than the value of the intended project. In the case of large projects, this cost also includes hiring the many laborers necessary to construct the item. The Storyteller should grant exceptions based on common sense. A set of paintbrushes is still Resources 1, even if an artist intends to paint a masterpiece. Any physical item may be built using these rules, whether the process employed is carving, sculpting, forging, painting, jewelry making or anything else. If successful, the project goes as planned. For every success by which the roll failed to meet the difficulty, the final Resources value of the project decreases accordingly. If the final value could purchase an inferior-quality version of the desired item type, the project is completed according to such specifications. Therefore, an artist who sought to paint a masterpiece worth Resources 4 but whose ended up rolling a single success would produce a Resources 1 painting—pretty enough in an amateurish and trivial way. If no lower-cost counterpart for the desired item exists (large estates could be Resources 4 or 5, but not less), the project fails. The craftsman can try again over a new interval, but he requires the same Resources cost in tools and materials as if he were starting over. Fortunately, his player adds a number of bonus dice to his Craft roll equal to the dice that came up as successes in the previous attempt. He may repeat this as many times as desired, but dice bonuses are not cumulative; they reference only the last attempt. Botching a project at any point spoils it and negates any possibility of continued retry, though Storytellers can always rule that the craftsman made a worthless item that he vainly imagines to be a work of genius.
The threshold obtained on a creation attempt determines the overall quality of the work relative to the difficulty. An exceptional straight sword is worth Resources 3, and a blacksmith who obtains three successes for a threshold of 0 still makes an exceptional sword. However, if he obtains a threshold of 3-4, his work is observably better, with superior balance and elegance. Such items are called fine equipment. If a buyer has a choice between a fine blade and a threshold 0 blade, he will prefer the former and will pay more for it (though not enough to raise the Resources cost of the item).
If a character obtains a threshold of 5 on a project, the superb craftsmanship improves the final Resources value by one dot (to a maximum of 5), automatically making the item exceptional. If possible, this quality improves the utility of the item accordingly. For example, a normal straight sword is Resources 2 and requires two successes. With seven successes, the extraordinary quality makes it a Resources 3 exceptional weapon. Because three successes would also be enough to make the weapon exceptional if the character had planned to do so all along, taking three weeks and spending Resources 2 on materials, the chief advantage of producing an unexpected masterpiece is the ability to do so cheaper, more quickly and possibly with less training. Perfect goods, the ultimate expression of what is possible in a given craft without magic, have a difficulty and creation time equal to (the Resources cost of an average item + 5) and a cost in materials equal to (the cost of an average version of the item + two dots, maximum Resources 5). Therefore, a perfect straight sword would cost Resources 4 in materials and take seven weeks to make at a difficulty of 7.
Artifacts
In addition to making mundane goods, magical beings may use the five magical materials and other exotic ingredients to produce artifacts that are nearly indestructible and imbued with enchantments (see pp. 380-381 and 385-392 for examples). Building an artifact requires that characters have a Craft, Lore and Occult each rated at 3+ for artifacts rated 1 to 3. For greater wonders, the minimum Ability rating required is (the Artifact rating + 2), meaning that characters cannot build level-5 artifacts without superhuman prowess. Artifacts are not built as normal goods, but instead require an extended roll of the same dice pool at a difficulty of (the artifact’s intended rating + 2). Exalted who craft magical materials different from the one that resonates with their kind (such as Solars working with jade) suffer a -2 internal penalty. The interval is one season, and the number of cumulative successes required depends on the rating of the artifact: 1 (10 successes), 2 (30 successes), 3 (60 successes), 4 (100 successes) and 5 (250 successes). A botch at any time halves the accumulated successes, rounded down.
Artifacts require mundane ingredients costing (their rating + 1)—maximum 5—as well as access to workshops costing Resources 4 to properly stock (or Resources 5 for workshops capable of producing level 4-5 artifacts). If characters do not have adequate tools at their disposal, they suffer a -2 internal penalty. In addition to mundane costs, every artifact requires a number of exotic ingredients equal to its rating, each of which must pertain to the function of the device. For instance, a basic daiklave could be built using the bones of a legendary warrior and steel refined in an elemental's fire. Exotic ingredients need not be expensive, but they should require effort to obtain (making excellent fodder for stories).
When determining the rating of a player or Storyteller-created artifact, keep the following guidelines in mind. Level-1 artifacts are useful but have only one minor supernatural power of a utilitarian nature. They are comparable to perfect equipment with no overtly supernatural powers (such as a quill that never runs out of ink or a jewel that glows as bright as a torch when commanded). Level-2 artifacts are moderately useful. However, these relics have little effect on stories and providing enchantments that an Exalt could approximate using a Charm two or three steps into a Charm tree. (Most "basic" magic weapons such as daiklaves fall into this category.) Level-3 artifacts are powerful, greatly expanding an Exalt's capability in one area or providing a number of weaker powers. Large artifacts might fall into this ranking if they require regular upkeep, external power provided by hearthstones, or other such drawbacks. Grand daiklaves, Essence cannons and the giant mechanized suits of armor called warstriders are all examples of level-3 artifacts, despite their differences in power. Level-4 artifacts are rare and wondrous things, such as cloaks that turn into wings and the advanced power armor manufactured in the Shogunate Era. Characters with such devices will have a sizable advantage against those without, although level-4 artifacts are not quite game-defining. Level- 5 artifacts are almost exclusively relics of the First Age, such as skyships, automatons programmed as both perfect servants and deadly bodyguards, and daiklaves that drink souls. These are game-defining devices.
Craft (Genesis)
This Ability is required to create or modify life. It encompasses knowledge and application of vitalizing Essence, formulae for synthetic flesh and bone, methods for quickening dead matter, hybridization techniques, First Circle demon-breeding templates, organic alchemy and more. The gestation of living relics requires knowledge of this Ability. Characters may not have a higher rating in Craft (Genesis) than the lowest of their Lore, Medicine or Occult ratings. See "Rules for Creating Life" in The Books of Sorcery, Vol. I—Wonders of the Lost Age, page 117, for more information on designing and customizing new forms of life.
Specialties: Hybrids, Metal Vegetation, Modified Species, New Species, Sentient Life
Trait Effects: Someone with Craft (Genesis) 1 can implant artificial mutations in an extant life form. Someone with Craft (Genesis) 3 can design a new form of life never seen in Creation or Malfeas. Someone with Craft (Genesis) 5 can engineer a plague that may endanger all life.
Craft (Magitech)
A character with this Craft Ability has conducted an intense study of the creation, enchantment and maintenance of weapons and devices from the First Age (including the High and Low First Age). She may have learned the techniques of First Age engineering in Lookshy, at the Heptagram, in Yu-Shan or in some similar locale that still has systems in place to teach such complex lore. This Ability encompasses knowledge of Essence circuitry, motonic physics, clockworks and other highly sophisticated technologies. Most automata and inanimate First Age artifacts are built and repaired using this Ability.
To represent the necessary understanding of precise engineering and the arcane substances used in First Age devices, the character must have two dots each in Craft (Air) and Craft (Fire) and at least one dot in another Craft form before she can learn this exacting discipline. Furthermore, her rating in Craft (Magitech) cannot be higher than her Lore rating.
Most sorcerer-technician characters will have at least moderate levels of this Ability, and all sorcerer-engineers are masters or near-masters of this arcane art.
Someone with Craft (Magitech) 1 can perform basic maintenance and repair on simple Shogunate-era devices.
Someone with Craft (Magitech) 3 can use schematics to build an implosion bow from scratch (provided he has the components).
Someone with Craft (Magitech) 5 can design and build entirely original First Age-style devices and weapons systems, including items never seen before in Creation.
Characters possessing the Savant Background may add their Savant rating to all rolls that use this Ability.
Example Specialties: Automata, Perfected Calculation Arrays, Skyships, Naval Vessels, Biomagitech, Energy Weapons, Transportation Devices, Utilitarian Artifacts
Craft (Vitriol)
Vitriol resembles no earthly acid nor can it be worked by familiar methods. A character with this Craft Ability knows the specialized techniques for manipulating the Malfean element. This Ability encompasses knowledge of vitriol itself, the acids and catalysts derived from it and its use in the crafting of infernal relics. In order to learn this Ability, one must understand much about demonic Essence. A character must possess Occult 2 to learn it at all and may never have more dots in Craft (Vitriol) than in Occult.
Just as vitriol serves as a catalyst rather than a raw material in its own right, so too does Craft (Vitriol) catalyze mundane crafts rather than replace them. Artisans use the lesser of their Craft (Vitriol) rating and the most appropriate mundane craft to create infernal relics and similar items. For instance, a Malfean brass daiklave would use the lower of Craft (Fire) and Craft (Vitriol), while an infernal prayer strip (see p. 190) might require the lower of Craft (Vitriol) and Craft (Wood). Note that this is different from the minimum Occult rating required to purchase Craft (Vitriol). Some alchemists study the Malfean element solely to convert it into strange formulae without learning how to work it into lasting wonders. These formulae use Craft (Vitriol) alone, unsupported by any mundane craft.
Specialties: Chalcanth, Grafts, Hellstriders, Sapient Relics, Weapons
Trait Effects: Someone with Craft (Vitriol) 1 can harden Malfean metals with vitriol. Someone with Craft (Vitriol) 3 can guide the melding of components in a vitriol font to build a potent infernal relic. Someone with Craft (Vitriol) 5 can fuse multiple living demons and countless exotic components into the structure of a mighty hellstrider.
Repair Tables
| Repair Rating | Examples | Lore | Occult | Craft | Resources | Time | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| • | Ashigaru Armor | 3 | - | - | •• | one hour | 2 |
| •• | Gunzosha Armor, Light Implosion Bow |
4 | 3 | 3 | •• | one hour | 2 |
| ••• | Warstrider, Lightning Ballista | 5 | 4 | 4 | ••• | one hour | 3 |
| •••• | Chariot of the Infinite Heavens | 5 | 5 | 5 | ••• | one day | 4 |
| ••••• | Skywolf | 6 | 4 | 6 | •••• | three days | 5 |
| •••••• | Realm Defense Grid Installation | 7 | 6 | 6 | ••••• | one week | 6 |
| Difficulty | Modifier |
|---|---|
| +1 | Each dot under the minimum Ability requirements |
| +1 | Substituting a close Ability (Craft [Fire] for Craft [First Age Weapons] to repair a warstrider |
| +2 | Rushing the job (cuts time in half) |
| +1 to +3 | Inadequate tools |
| -1 | Discussing repairs with the artifact’s least god (takes one hour, requires successful prayer roll) |
| -1 | Skilled assistant |
| -1 | Expert tools (additional +1 Resources cost) |
| -1 | Extra time taken (doubles time) |
| -2 | Repair team (see above) |
Workshops
The ability of First Age craftspeople to create many of their Age's greatest wonders came in large part from the factory-cathedrals built by the Solar Exalted. Factory-cathedrals were places of sanctified creation, where materials could be strengthened with prayers and forged into great wonders through the efforts of gods, demons, elementals and, of course, Exalts. Adamant scalpels, Essence-manipulating talismans and glyphs, prayer-drills, Hyperion keys and other tools that were artifacts in their own right helped turn the craftsmanäs dreams into reality. The smallest full First Age factory-cathedrals started at around 10,000 square feet and went up from there. In the Second Age, one or two intact factory-cathedrals might still be left in the ruins of untouched First Age cities. Yu-Shan also has a number of full-scale factory-cathedrals, but they don't get much use, and anyone not closely associated with the workings of Heaven will need a very convincing reason to gain access to them. Alternatively, the craft halls of the Mountain Folk contain workshops just as advanced as any factory-cathedral, but the Mountain Folk keep the secrets of their crafts (and the existence of the halls) to themselves, lest the Exalted get too curious.
Shogunate workshops lost much of the Essence-manipulating technology that the Solars had used before the Usurpation, along with access to Second and Third Circle demon artisans and most gods. A full Shogunate workshop requires at least 3,000 square feet for storing even the most basic collection of tools.
| × | No tools available. No repair attempt can be made without extensive use of Charms. |
| • | Limited or primitive tools only: stone hammers, flint knives and a fire pit. +4 to the difficulty of all repair rolls not based on Charms. |
| •• | Good Iron Age tools: metal tools, hammer and anvil, forge. +3 to the diffi ulty of all repair rolls not relying on Charms. |
| ••• | Good tool kit containing some simple but important First Age tools. +2 to the difficulty of repair rolls not based on Charms. |
| •••• | Shogunate era workshop containing a complete set of Shogunate tools. +1 to the difficulty of repair rolls not relying on Charms. |
| ••••• | First Age factory-cathedral. |