The Ghost:NPCCreationGuidelines/Abilities/Craft:Water
Craft: Water is the skill for crafting anything with water or that is liquid.
Contents
Summary
Craft: Water is a very diverse and broad skill; from cooking, to perfuming, to actually practicing most alchemy rituals, to Brewing and distilling, to paint and pigment mixing. It is probably the most common of the elemental crafts to see on any NPC or realistic character sheet.
Ratings
What follows is a description of what the seven possible levels of skill in this craft mean thematically and mechanically. Remember that the following rubric is applied to these tasks: on average each level of skill yields a number of successes on the role equal to it's rating due to being assumed to be paired with a like attribute, and as a craft skill that must be a minimum of 1 degree over the difficulty of the task to make progress on the extended roll. Therefore the accomplishments listed here are GUIDELINES and should never be taken as gospel by players or GMs because as everyone knows the dice are a fickle and malicious mistress and even the largest pools can botch.
For each step of this chart except Zero the accomplishments listed should be considered 1 difficulty lower than the rating of the skill, so this also gives guidelines for what this author thinks the difficulty of various tasks should be: again, players beware of your ST disagreeing with my assessments.
Zero
You have no proficiency in cooking, one of the most basic life skills required by human beings, to say nothing of the other applications of this craft: throughout most of creation you will be looked down on by the majority of people as an incompetent unless you are of a class which both is considered to be 'above' the need to know how to cook AND acknowledged within the area where you find yourself. If you attempt to cook, brew, practice alchemy, or compound wet pigments you are doomed to failure, and will be belittled and insulted by members of the majority of professions for your lack of talent and laughable decision to ignore the craft which is in a sense the foundation of most others. In terms of what you will accomplish when using this craft you are one of those unfortunate people who can 'burn water' when trying to cook.
One
Nearly everyone in creation, no matter their profession or station, has at least this rank in Craft: Water. The Warrior classes pick it up when on campaign, the working classes learn it at their parents knee, the tribal societies just seem to spread it around by osmosis, and the intelligentsia are forcibly taught it by their tutors so they know how to compound inks and brew coffee. In terms of what you can accomplish with this level of training you would most likely be able to do any of the following: Brew typical 'office' coffee, cook a grilled cheese sandwich, mix up water colors from prepared pigment sticks, steep black walnut hulls to make ink, and with access to a stocked first age kitchen cook premixed soups from a can.
Two
Here we get into the province of those who actually give a flying about being able to use the craft effectively but who have not gotten quite up to 'professional' status. In the majority of creation's cultures this level is seen as 'above average' competence for men but bellow average for women. It may be sexist but that is simply how things are, women are expected to do the cooking and men the hunting or farming. There are of course exceptions, such as the Togo Togo people of the west who believe that fire is a man's element and therefore any task which uses it, cooking included, must be done by men. In their culture the women do the fishing and the men the cooking, but they are an exception, not the rule.
With respect to what a person with this level of skill can be expected to accomplish the following is a good rubric: Cook soups, stews, breads, and roasts such that they will satisfy a hungry family, dye cloth black with iron and tannin, mix simple oil paints from prepared bases, and press olive oil from olives or cider from apples.
Three
This level is the bailiwick of those who use this skill as a profession, including throughout most of creation the majority of women. Those using this skill in this manner almost always spend 5 or more hours a day doing some subset of this craft, be it cooking for a family or working in a perfumery.
When deciding what is appropriate for people with this level of Craft: Water to be able to do use the following guidelines: Cook food which people would wish to eat frequently, distill base perfume oils from raw flowers, stew old mutton into something edible, compound the bases for paint to have pigments added, ferment ingredients into 'small beer', and dye cloth various simple colors.
Four
Now, at last, we come to those the people of creation would consider talented. These are those who are set a cut above the average housewife: Chefs, Master Perfumers, Artists known for their unusual pigments, and compounding pharmacists.
To give a better sense of what these people would be known for use the following as your guidelines: (with other skills similarly ranked as appropriate.) Cook food which would please the pallet of a 'foodie', Create personalized scents for women of the minor nobility and upper mercantile classes, master the arcane arts of mixing plant and mineral pigments to make new colors, properly ferment or distill various wines and spirits, and prepare alchemical concoctions for resiting diseases and numbing pain.
Five
And here we find ourselves entering the rarefied heights of those who are storied and lauded in their professions, the crem-de-la-crem, the five star chefs, the true Artistes, and the pioneers in the fields of medicinal alchemy. Here most mortals scarce dream to tread and fewer still actually achieve. A person with the necessary talent and skill to walk in these circles emerges perhaps once in a generation in any major nation or region of creation and sometimes are not recognized within their own lifetime for their true talents.
As a rubric for the kinds of things one should consider worthy of a person at this level the fallowing would be a reasonable guide: Cook food which would be lauded by kings and princes, found a brewery which could coast for 50 years on the strength of it's first showing, create new foods which would become the basis of an entire school of cooking, compound perfumes which would cause most unladylike fistfights among the women of the nobility, and create minor wonders such as 7 Bounties Paste with alchemy.
Six
And finally, at the highest end of things, we come to those who will be legend. These lofty heights are achieved perhaps once in 100 years in each of the five cardinal directions outside the Exalted, and often times women such as this BECOME exalted on the strength of their talent. When one talks of such people it is in hushed tones, with reverence, and often beneath their portraits in schools of craft founded in their honor.
To gain a sense of what persons such as this are capable of use the following as your guides, knowing full well that we as players and STs almost certainly will never truly stand among people of such stature in our real lives and ergo know but little or what it is that drives men and women such as these: Cook food which draws the gods to dine, Create a perfume which would not be called to task for the slogan that it is loved by 'Every Girl Alive', Reorder the steps of a well defined brewing process in order to make a new kind of alcohol, and Create entirely new types of dye which creates colors found nowhere in nature.
End Notes
Here are filed a few notes and links which have no where else to be on this page...
Helpers
The Following Users have helped provide material assistance with this project
Back Link
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