CorlanDashiva/UsingCraftsToMakeMagicItems
Prerequisites
Occult: 3 or the artifact rating (whichever higher)\\ Lore: 3 or the artifact rating (whichever higher)\\
If you are making a copy of an artifact you have present to study, reduce these requirements by 1.
Resouces needed
For an artifact of level x, you need resources (1+x+relevant magical material costs if necessary). Each special ingredient you use that is thematically appropriate to the artifact you want to make lowers this by one to a minimum of (x).
EG to make a songbird of serenity (Artifact 2) out of Jade would normally require resources 3, but if one of your ingredients was the finest singing voice in creation then you could lower this to resources 2. The voice could be added by having the posessor sing over your work as you make it, or by cutting out their voice box and using it as part of the songbird.
It takes one week to gather the ingredients if you are near a large city (Nexus, Lookshy, etc.). If you are not near a large city, it takes one month and requires an additional resource point.
If you require the use of magical materials but do not have a source of the magical material, adjust the cost as follows:
Jade: included in the resource cost above, Jade is easily obtained anywhere where trading occurs.\\ \\ Moonsilver: harder to come by, if you want to use moonsilver increase the resources cost by 3 in the Realm and 1 everywhere else. This is normally traded from Lunars, but can occasionally be obtained from the great houses of the realm.\\ \\ Oricalchum: Very hard to obtain, increase the resources cost by 4 in the realm and 2 everywhere else. This is normally gathered from traders.\\ \\ Soulsteel: Hard to obtain in creation, but easier in the underworld. Add 3 to resource cost in creation, and 1 in the Underworld.\\ \\ Starmetal: Almost impossible to obtain anywhere. If you cannot get any for yourself you can trade for it, but at +5 to the resource cost to make the item.\\
Successes needed
To actually make the item, you need to roll Dex + Crafts and get the number of successes shown below:
Artifact 1: 15\\ Artifact 2: 30\\ Artifact 3: 55\\ Artifact 4: 90\\ Artifact 5: 135\\
This can be an extended roll, but is subject to the following conditions:
- Each roll takes one month – you must have access to a good workshop for all of this time, the ST may impose penalties if the workshop is sub-standard.
- You must say how many rolls you wish to make, and each roll is at a difficulty equal to the number of rolls you make. So if you said 5 rolls, each roll would be at difficulty 5. If you achieve enough successes before you finish with the rolls, you finish early, but if you do not achieve enough successes by the last roll, you must start again. All of the resources can be re-used but you lose all the time you spent on the item so far.
- If you are working with a magical material that is not the correct material for your Exalted type, you are at a further +1 difficulty on all rolls.
Charm use
Certain Solar charms can be used to affect this process. They are as follows:
Flawless Handiwork Method: does what it says on the tin, can be applied to all rolls.\\ Chaos-Resistance Preparation: makes the item resistant to the warping energies of the Wyld\\ Craftsman Needs No Tools: you do not need a workshop and you work a lot faster, each roll requires only five days instead of one month.\\ Impurity Hammering Blow: allows much lower quality base materials to be purchased and then purified by the Solar. This charm allows you to reduce the Resources value needed by 2 as long as you have all of the magical material you need – this charm cannot be used to purify magical materials. Use of this charm doubles the time taken to gather materials.\\
Comments
Resources Needed - you say that if you are near a large city then it takes a week to gather the necessary components. I take it this is only for the standard, easily-obtained components, rather than the rare difficulty-reducing components? Or even the rarer Magic Materials. Personally I would insist on roleplaying the obtaining of rare components, and all Magic Materials other than Jade. Just adding +5 to the resources cost (for Starmetal anyway), and then just having the Starmetal turn up seems somewhat lacking.
Successes Needed - Where did you get those numbers from? Are they from the Bo3C? Or did you just pull them out of thin air? Not that I'm saying they're wrong, they look okay, I'm just curious.
Charm Use - What about the Craft Charms of other Exalt types? How do they affect things?
- Garden
As to the Craft Charm bit, no Abyssal Crafts Charms would be useful at all. Nor any of the Lunar Charms aside from possbily Tool Hand Technique. The Dragon Blooded only really have a single constructive Crafts Charm, their version of Tool Hands. Sidereals have one or two Charms that might help. Crafts Charms that actually MAKE things are mostly Solar. - Telgar
Resources - I figured everything is for sale if you know where to look. Bear in mind that you do not need magic items but simply things made from the magical materials, and such things are going to be uncommon but available, if you have sufficient monies, hence the increased resource cost. If you already have the magical material then you can ignore the additional cost imposed by it. This does assume that a lower level artifact uses less of the magical material (maybe it is alloyed with steel) and any large item made completely out of a magical material should have it's cost adjusted upwards.
Successes Needed - Out of my head. The formula is for artifact level x, it requires 5x^2+10 successes. This gave about the right number I felt. The Bo3C has a simple 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 progresion but has the higher level artifacts take longer to make. I don't think you should be able to throw out lvl 1 or 2 artifacts every couple of weeks, which under the Bo3C system a heroic mortal could do. My way, making a level 5 artifact is not only time consuming but incredibly unlikely to succeed without serious magical assistance.
Incidentally, under my system mortals cannot have a good chance to make magical items. You need a basic pool of 14 for a reasonable chance of success (over 4 months, less over any other period of time). They can still succeed with stunting or massive use of virtues, but such should be the exception rather than the rule.
Charm Use - No idea, the Solar charms are the only ones I've looked at so far, and probably the only ones I will, being that I play a Solar craftsman. See Telgar's comment
I'm a bit confused by the number/difficulty of the rolls to create the artifact. It looks like if you just said "I'll just make one roll," that one roll would be at difficulty 1, so that's always the best way to go. Am I missing something?
-someone (i'm still not sure how to register, actually. do i just make a user page? or do i go somewhere specific? sorry, i know it's off-topic)
Hi there and welcome to the Wiki. To register so that posts are listed as being by you on the Recent Changes page you just have to enter your username on the preferences page. It is normally a good idea to make a user page as well, even if you don't have anything on it yet.
As to making the artifact, you can make one roll at difficulty 1, or two rolls at difficulty 2, or three rolls at difficulty 3, and so on. If you make one roll it is at a lower difficulty, but if you have a good dice pool you'll be a lot better off making more rolls (you get to add the successes together - I may not have made that clear). Hope that helps... - CorlanDashiva
