Exceptional Craftsmanship

[Asleif]

Hello there,

I am currently playing a White Council Wizard with a Focus on Ferromancy and Craftsmanship.

I was wondering if there is anything in the rules about exceptional quality craftsmanship.

I was leaning towards giving the items special aspects for instance or something similar. (E.G. for a Rapier - "Exquisitely balanced")

Any ideas on that?

Cheers
Asleif

[Sanctaphrax]

It says in the book that high-quality items are harder to destroy. Giving high-quality items special Aspects isn't in there as far as I know, but it sounds like a very good idea to me.

Personally, I'd make the quality Aspects on a newly-made item taggable. Most tags disappear quickly, but I'd let those ones stick around for a while.

[dragoonbuster]

It says in the book that high-quality items are harder to destroy. Giving high-quality items special Aspects isn't in there as far as I know, but it sounds like a very good idea to me.

Personally, I'd make the quality Aspects on a newly-made item taggable. Most tags disappear quickly, but I'd let those ones stick around for a while.

An item has a stress track to resist being broken equal to its quality. So a Fair blade has a 2-stress track length, a Superb blade has a 5-stress track, etc. This only comes into play if someone is directly trying to break your weapon. If you make the item, then whatever your roll is to make it is what the item quality is (minus any shifts you put aside to make it faster on the chart).

As far as having aspects on the item...Maybe a stunt is appropriate? Or maybe just invoke a HC/appropriate aspect when making it to have it start with an aspect on it? I like the idea of making them taggable.

[Haru]

Aspects are basically details that are relevant to the story. If the Rapier is an important item, you can easily expand it and instead of having one aspect like "exquisitely balanced rapier", you can have the masterfully crafted rapier which has a couple of aspects like "exquisitely balanced" and maybe some more describing the superior quality attached to it. Anyone using it can spend fate points on the aspects, to increase their fighting skills.

If you like you could even give the rapier a stunt or two, making it even more important. The rapier is either part of a character now, or a "character" in it's own right. Anyone using the rapier to fight gets the benefit of the stunts attached to the rapier.

If you want to put it over the top, you could even create the rapier as a fully fledged character, with the person wielding it as an aspect. It all depends on what part of the story is important to you. It's known as the Fate fractal, and I'm a big fan of it.

[Taran]

I think craftsmanship gets used so infrequently that you could just use it to make your own weapons with aspects.

This would be the equivalent as doing a maneuver with any skill except it would take longer.  In combat, a maneuver takes one exchange.  For craftsmanship, it might take a week(or less, if you get extra shifts of success).  It can be tagged later.

Even doing it as a declaration could work.  'I made this sword myself and it's 'extremely well balanced' ...but I might put a higher difficulty rating if it gets used like that often.

[dragoonbuster]

I think craftsmanship gets used so infrequently that you could just use it to make your own weapons with aspects.

This would be the equivalent as doing a maneuver with any skill except it would take longer.  In combat, a maneuver takes one exchange.  For craftsmanship, it might take a week(or less, if you get extra shifts of success).  It can be tagged later.

Even doing it as a declaration could work.  'I made this sword myself and it's 'extremely well balanced' ...but I might put a higher difficulty rating if it gets used like that often.

Yeah, I like that. Without getting into construction times (proper swords take a lot longer than a week to make, for instance), I would run it that way.

Were I playing the PC myself, because I don't mind more rolling, I'd roll once to make the item and set its quality, and then roll a second time for a declaration to give it an aspect.

EDIT: Haru, I like your ideas, but I don't think they quite work smoothly enough for the way Asleif described things; it seems like he'd be making a fair number of things, not have one consistent weapon in use.