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UNDER DEVELOPMENT
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Oh hai there.

Introduction

Artisans have a number of skills that allow them to help financially maintain a group - they can repair equipment, reduce costs of living, and similar financially-focused abilities. These are generally drawn from their ability to make things, the primary onus of the artisan.

Item construction is the primary purpose of the artisan; the financial protections they provide are a rather useful side effect. And so in this section we will discuss precisely how item construction is performed, first in its universal premises, then in its specifics at the basic level and with the introduction of the metagame aspect (the crafting grid).

Fundamentals

These are the fundamental steps of item creation.

Resources

Above all else, the artisan requires resources. These are specific items that can be used to make other items. Resources are incredibly varied, from stone mined out of quarries to meteor fragments, from quartz to diamond, from common mushrooms to the desert rose. Anything and everything that can be gathered has the potential to be a resource: the only distinction between something useless and useful is whether or not it is an integral part of something that can be made.

Thus, the first step is in gathering resources. The artisan can accomplish this by finding the resources himself, hiring individuals to procure them for him, or simply purchasing them. Of these, purchasing resources is the most complex, as the marketplace is a constantly fluctuating place, and it may be useful to have a mediator along for such tasks.

Item Design

This step is different for characters who happen to be able to craft items and Artisans.

For those who are not Artisans proper - that is, characters that have no access to Artisan Disciplines by virtue of lacking both a Type One and Type Two skill - this is a simple proposition. They must simply find the item they wish to craft, look up the skill associated with crafting it and its Crafting TN, and make a skill check against this number. Success indicates that the individual crafts the item successfully; failure indicates that the item is not made, and resources are wasted.

For those who are Artisans proper, they can decide to craft one of the following.

• A Stock Item, which is an item found in the Equipment section. Crafting such an item is straight-forward, and accomplished as above (though the Artisan may have Specials or Talents that directly improve their ability to do so).

Example: Eric wants to craft an iron longsword, a one-handed sword. He looks up the base Crafting TN of a longsword, then modifies it for iron.

• A Custom Item, which is an item found in the Equipment section, but modified in specific ways. Artisans can gain access to Specials that allow them to modify items in new ways, such as making swords sharper, armor more durable, or any number of other modifications. These modifications require additional skill use, and require not just crafting, but designing the item.

Example: Eric wants to craft an iron longsword that is sharper and more durable. He looks up the base Crafting TN of a longsword, then modifies it for iron. He then determines how much of his relevant Specials he wants to invest into the weapon, and modifies the TN for those modifiers - the final result is the Designing TN. If he can make that check, he modifies the original Crafting TN based upon the degree of his success, and must succeed in that check to produce the weapon.

• A Unique Item, which is an item not found in the Equipment section, made essentially from scratch. Advanced Artisans with access to more Specials and Talents can create new item types out of whole cloth, such as new types of weapons or armor, or devise entirely new items with entirely new functions. This procedure requires significantly more detailed designing of the item, and its crafting is significantly more difficult: specifically, it requires design of what will become a new stock item.

Example: Eric wants to make a new type of weapon, a double-ended sword. He must follow the item creation rules for doing so, from which he will derive an Designing TN. If that check succeeds, he has successfully designed the new weapon, which has a new set of rules for its use. He then proceeds to modify that base design based upon materials and other modifications, as though making a custom item. The result of the initial Designing TN becomes the base Crafting TN for the new stock item, a double-ended sword.

Defects

Defects are imperfections in item design, making it less able in some manner than otherwise anticipated or desired. They can also be used intentionally to allow the Artisan to make an item that excels in one area but is significantly weaker in another.

Defects can be incorporated into an item in one of two ways.

• Design Process: The Artisan can choose to specifically lower the Designing TN of an item by incorporating Defects. This allows him to design an item with desired properties that he may otherwise be unable to design.
• Craft Process: If the Artisan fails on the Crafting TN roll, he can modify the Crafting TN after the fact by incorporating Defects. The sum value of the modifiers to the TN of these Defects must be sufficient to bring the TN equal to or lower than his roll. This allows the item to be crafted.

These decisions affect the end item differently - items specifically designed to have Defects are not inferior items, just items with different design decisions. Items that accept Defects due to a low Crafting roll are obviously deficient and inferior in some manner.

Example: Eric specifically designs a Wood Sword that has fewer HP than normal. The end weapon is obviously thinner than other weapons, but is not inferior to weapons similarly designed: it is of normal quality for its material and design decisions.

Example: Eric attempts to make an Iron Sword, but winds up a few points short of the Crafting TN. He decides to make it weaker, reducing its HP. The end weapon is obviously inferior to other Iron Swords - the metal is thinner in some parts than others, misshapen, or otherwise clearly inferior.

Tokens

Just as everyone else uses a token resource, so, too, do Artisans.

Craft Tokens are representations of the Artisan's ability to put pieces together into a cohesive whole. For instance, a neophyte Artisan may only be able to make a sword sharper or lighter, but not both in the same weapon, while an expert Artisan may be able to make it sharper, lighter, more durable, and incorporate materials that grant elemental affinities into its design.

However, craft tokens are not the only aspect of item crafting. Artisans must balance their token use against their available resources: making a sword sharper requires tokens, not resources, while incorporating materials that grant elemental affinities require resources and tokens.

Advantage of Using the Craft Grid

The basic system allows for rather complicated item crafting, and doesn't have to involve the crafting grid. So the question is - why would you?

Rather than modify the base Crafting TN for an item based upon the modifications you wish to make, you instead make a Designing check against the Crafting TN (as though you were not modifying the item at all). Subtract this TN from the result of your roll; from that number, you can designate any amount as the length, and the remaining as the width, of the crafting grid, with a minimum of 1 each. This means that you must always roll at least 2 higher than the Crafting TN to successfully design an item.

Example: You want to make a custom iron longsword, for which the base TN is 4. Your Design roll is an 11, which is 7 higher. The length and width of your crafting grid must add to no more than 7 (so it can be 6x1, 5x2, 4x3, etc). If you had rolled a 5 or lower, you would have failed to design the item.

The Crafting Grid then gives you an edge in that your crafting is a little more versatile, a little more freeform - you aren't "locked in" to a design decision, but can instead modify the item's eventual construction until you are happy with the result.

Crafting Grid

Random notes, here, for now.

To ensure the ability of Specials to continue ad infinitum, at some point in a Special's block progression, it goes from one block to two blocks, with the second being a single tile that must be contiguous with the main block. That secondary block then follows the original progression, up to the max size, after which a third block of a single tile is added, etc etc. This allows crafting Specials that are infinite, just like everything else in Journey.