Thus Spake Zaranephilpal/CraftList

Comprehensive List of Craft Abilities for Exalted

Damn, I'm such a geek. I made this for my own use, but I thought you all might like it. Feel free to suggest everything and anything I missed. This is theoretically current as of Blood and Salt.

Alphabetical List with Page References

1. Architecture (Bo3C, p. 104-108; Ex, p. 246; GoD, p. 116 KoH, p. 56; RoR, p. 34; ToT, p. 62, 79)
2. Armoring (Bo3C, p. 123*; Ex:O, p. 65)
3. Artifice (CoW, p. 104)
4. Carving (CoW, p. 48; Ex:O, p. 91)
5. Breeding (BaS, p. 95)
6. Calligraphy (Ex:S, p. 130, 206, 207, 218; ToT, p. 117)
7. Clockworks (RoR, p. 36)
8. Courtesan (GoD, p. 119)
9. Domestic Service (ToT, p. 69)
10. Dowsing (BaS, p. 78)
11. Dragon Armor* (AB:A, p. 80; Ex:O, p. 65)
12. Farming (CoW, p. 26; Ex, p. 136; GoD, p. 40)
13. Fate**** (Ex:S, p. 63, 104, 143-145, 209, 219)
14. First Age Weapons*** (AB:A, p. 79, 84; Ex:O, p. 48-49, 65)
15. First Age Mechanisms*** (Ex:O, p. 62)
16. Flying Machines (GoD, p. 28; RoR, p. 70)
17. Forest Care (KoH, p. 27)
18. Forgery (ToT, p. 93)
19. Gem-Cutting (Ex, p. 136)
20. Glamour**** (BaS, p. 118; Ex, p. 286, 287; KoH, p. 61, 63, 65; ScS, p. 137, 138, 140)
21. Herbalism (RoR, p. 43)
22. Home Repair (ToT, p. 93)
23. Jadecrafting**** (Ex:Ab, p. 130, 234)
24. Jeweler (Ex, p. 340)
25. Landscaping (GoD, p. 116)
26. Lapidary Appraisal (BaS, p. 109)
27. Leatherworking (Ex, p. 136)
28. Magical Devices (AB:A, p. 78)
29. Manses (ToT, p. 93)
30. Mask Making (GoD, p. 27)
31. Masonry (CoW, p. 94)
32. Metalworking (Bo3C, p. 123*; Ex:O, p. 49; GoD, Fine Metalwork p. 28; RoR, p. 34, 45**, 47, 89**)
33. Moliation**** (Ex:Ab, p. 130, 232, 234-238; KoH, p. 58)
34. Necrosurgery (Ex:Ab, p. 130, 188, 226)
35. Needles (GoD, p. 113)
36. Pandemonium**** (Ex:Ab, p. 130, 233, 238-242; KoH, p. 58)
37. Poetry (CoW, p. 108)
38. Sculpture (BaS, p. 81; CoW, Sculpt p. 97; Ex:O, p. 128; ToT, p. 93)
39. Shaman (ScS, p. 26)
40. Skin-Changing (CoW, p. 23)
41. Skinner (CoW, p. 128)
42. Smithing (Ex, p. 136; GoD, Smith p. 96)
43. Soulforging**** (Ex:Ab, p. 130, 233)
44. Stoneworking (CoW, Stone-Carving p. 70; GoD, p. 116; KoH, Stonework p. 56)
45. Swordsmithing (Bo3C, p. 123)
46. Tanning (KoH, p. 54)
47. Torture (ToT, p. 118)
48. Traps (CoW, p. 31, as Hunting Gear and Traps p. 102; GoD, p. 32)
49. War (Ex:O, p. 46, 65)
50. Warstriders* (KoH, p. 87)
51. Weaponcraft (ToT, p. 114)
52. Weaving (BaS, p. 106; Ex:S, p. 60; GoD, p. 96)
53. Webwork (EsC, p. 74)
54. Wonders (GoD, p. 102)
55. Woodworking (GoD, p. 116; KoH, p. 53; ScS, p. 142)
56. Wyld**** (CoW, p. 116)

* Ex:O notes on p. 65 that Craft (First Age Weapons) is the skill used to design, maintain and repair most sophisticated First Age weapon systems like dragon armor and warstriders. This rule retroactively modifies appropriate references to Craft (Metalworking) and Craft (Armoring). In addition, the skills Craft (Dragon Armor) and Craft (Warstriders) are entirely obsolete and should be treated as specialties of Craft (First Age Weapons).

** Ex:O notes on p. 62 that Craft (First Age Mechanisms) is the skill used to design, maintain and repair skyships. This rule retroactively modifies references to Craft (Metalworking) as denoted by the double asterisk.

*** Characters cannot have a higher rating in Craft (First Age Weapons) than their Lore or Occult. This same rule presumably holds true for Craft (First Age Mechanisms), although that is not stated by the text.

****These Craft Abilities represent supernatural capabilities unique to their practitioners. Craft (Glamour) belongs to the fae and their progeny. Craft (Moliation) and Craft (Pandemonium) are the skills used in conjunction with the Arcanoi of the Shifting Ghost Clay Path and Terror Spreading Art, respectively. Only beings capable of learning Arcanoi may use these Abilities except perhaps as a theoretical exercise. Craft (Fate) is the province of the Sidereal Exalted and the divinities who work in the Bureau of Destiny, and does little good for anyone without access to appropriate Charms or astrological Colleges. Presumably, this restriction also falls on Craft (Wyld), though this isn't stated.

Crafts I use in my series:

1. Architecture This one appears all over the place. It's a given.
2. Breeding This is a deliciously clever Ability. I was going to fold this into Lore, and I suppose you could, but I can definitely see the Craft in this.
3. Calligraphy This feels more like a Linguistics Specialty than a separate Ability, but Sidereals makes such a big point of it that I'm loath to do away with it.
4. Carving I'm of two minds about Carving (and similar variants like Sculpture). On the one hand, these "form" type Crafts fall neatly under the respective Craft focuses dealing with the material worked by the form. For instance, Stoneworking is an act of carving and possibly sculpture by definition. Should a person who knows how to carve wood also carve stone? Of course, should a character's ability to stab with a knife have any bearing on swinging a daiklave? Obviously, this is a game and it would be silly to get caught up in unnecessary minutiae. However, the precedence of other Abilities seems to suggest that Crafts should be reasonably broad in their implication. Thus, the other side of the argument votes in favor of keeping the broader options of these Crafts open for players. If you want to carve a block of wood, you can use Woodworking or Carving, whichever has a higher rating. The advantage of Woodworking is that you know all the other details and means of transforming wood through art, while Carving gives you the ability to carve in other mediums.
5. Clockworks Spiffy! This is a great Craft for Varangians, Mountain Folk and Autocthonians.
6. Courtesan Where does the craft of sex fall? The actual act would seem to be a variable function of Athletics, Endurance or Performance under most circumstances, while the business side of prostitution would fall to Bureaucracy as normal. Socialize would probably govern seduction attempts. Honestly, I see a place for this Craft if only because it's a tasteful answer that doesn't force a would-be Don Juan to blow 10 Ability points.)
7. Domestic Service Hey, cool! Your very own Alfred, or Renfield, for that matter. This catchall set of seneschal and butler skills makes a good Craft, though not one that is likely to see play outside of NPCs. I see fun potential for Imbue Amalgam, however. J
8. Farming Another basic standby like Architecture.
9. Fate Kind of necessary for Sidereal games, wouldn't you say?
10. First Age Weapons Yay! Magitech!
11. First Age Mechanisms I'm not quite sure what separates this from First Age Weapons. I suppose it's a matter of scale and intent. FAM would cover big vehicles and systems or those that had a non-military function. That's just speculation, mind you.
12. Flying Machines Skyships are tended by First Age Mechanisms, so I guess this Ability encompasses airships and mechanical flying devices rather than those flown by Essence-driven super-science. More Da Vinci, less Escaflowne.
13. Glamour Where would the fae be without this?
14. Jadecrafting Plainly necessary, wouldn't you say?
15. Jeweler This covers a niche skill, with applications for Hearthstones.
16. Landscaping I can't think of anything else to cover this.
17. Leatherworking This fits right along with all the other material-working Crafts.
18. Metalworking This is one of the default Crafts, perhaps the most widely-referenced one in all the books.
19. Moliation Kind of necessary for ghosts.
20. Necrosurgery Yay! Frankensteinian monstrosities! Ok, admittedly, I'm biased.
21. Needles This is extremely and unduly narrow for an Ability, but it makes sense for the demons in question. I understand why they have the Craft, but I wouldn't give it to anyone else.
22. Pandemonium Oh, the horror! The horror! More, please!
23. Sculpture See Carving.
24. Skin-Changing See Needles. I understand why the critters have this, but I'm not about to give it to anyone else. If you want to mess with skin, take leatherworking or necrosurgery.
25. Soulforging Duh.
26. Stoneworking This is a good default catch-all.
27. Traps My first response was to fold this into Survival, but I can also see how an engineer who built deathtraps for a building wouldn't necessarily know anything about roughing it in the wild. I'll buy it. Survival still covers most wilderness snares, though, especially in the context of hunting.
28. War This is fairly important.
29. Weaving I buy it. This is a good basic Craft.
30. Wonders This is great for Makarios, considering what he does with it. I'm not about to let this fall into anyone else's hands.
31. Woodworking Another basic Craft. Good.
32. Wyld Looking through the powers for the Illuthrita, I don't even see why they have this Ability. Still, it's fairly harmless as long as no one else has access to it.

I'm throwing out or subsuming the following Crafts in my games for a variety of reasons

1. Armoring Pick up metalworking or something more broadly useful. This makes more sense as a Specialty.
2. Artifice This oblique reference in the entry on Brass Legionnaires doesn't really work for me. There shouldn't be a single Craft to make/repair Artifacts. That's just asking for problems. Artifacts are precious enough that characters should have to work for it, using the most appropriate Craft for the task.
3. Dowsing This is a function of Survival. Yes, the same could be said of Calligraphy and Linguistics, but Dowsing appears once in a softcover while Calligraphy appears in two books (one of which is a hardcover). I therefore exert unfair bias to nix Dowsing.
4. Dragon Armor First Age Weapons canonically makes this obsolete.
5. Forest Care Why is this a Craft? Isn't this a function of Lore and/or Survival? I'd be inclined to go with an Ecology specialty for Lore and leave it at that.
6. Forgery Last I checked, this is a function of Larceny.
7. Gem-Cutting I'm subsuming this into Craft (Jeweler).
8. Herbalism No sir, I don't like it. This belongs as a specialty of medicine and maybe Lore, but not a separate Ability.
9. Home Repair I'm folding this into Domestic Service, with any serious repairs handled by Architecture.
10. Lapidary Appraisal I'm subsuming this into Craft (Jeweler), right along with Gem-Cutting.
11. Magical Devices I think I'd fold the creation of Icemind into First Age Mechanisms, even though it isn't actually an example of First Age technology. Makes more sense than inserting a new Ability, especially one with such frighteningly broad utility. See Artifice, above.
12. Manses Creating or repairing Manses is a tripartite function of Craft (Architecture), Lore and Occult. That's pretty clearly established. Now, I can totally buy a specialty in Manses for Craft (Architecture), but that's as far as I'll go.
13. Mask Making This is awfully narrow. I realize that the deity in question makes masks and that's it, but I'd make this a specialty for carving.
14. Masonry Between Architecture and Stonework, I think this is covered.
15. Poetry Ick. Calligraphy aside, Linguistics specialties should stay Linguistics specialties.
16. Shaman Um, what is this supposed to cover exactly? Shouldn't any shamanistic creations be a duel function of Occult and another appropriate Craft?
17. Skinner This is a function of leatherworking or necrosurgery, not an Ability unto itself.
18. Smithing I'm folding this into metalworking, except in the reference to Alveua (who damn well ought to be able to forge anything because she's just that cool.)
19. Swordsmithing Way too narrow. I'd make this a specialty of metalworking.
20. Tanning I'm folding this into Leatherworking, with Tanning reserved as a potential Specialty.
21. Torture The act of torture is either a matter of Investigation (for the interrogation end) or Medicine (to administer torture) or a combat Ability (to beat the crap out of someone).
22. Warstriders See Dragon Armor.
23. Weaponcraft Yikes! I'm vehemently opposed to any Craft that lets you make whatever weapons you want. That should depend on what you're making said weapons from.
24. Webwork This is a Weaving specialty.

A conditional recant

Ok, I'm torn.

Here's a quote from the Exalted forum:

I only skimmed a bit, so forgive me if I missed something.

Craft (armouring) isn't less uesful than Crafts (metalworking), just different. You can't actually make a whole suit of armour using Crafts (metalworking) for example, because you usually need cloth padding, leather straps, etc at the very least. If you're going to learn metalworking to make armour, you're going to need to learn two other crafts (although you might be able to get by with only one). - TheMouse

As I said, I'm a little leery of including Craft (Armoring) in my games. TheMouse wisely noted that it seems like armoring ought to be a function of several crafts (metalworking, leatherworking and so on) for the various components involved in the process. Looking at my own armor, I must sheepishly agree. Of course, while multi-crafting is likely a more realistic way of handling the creation of armor, I'm not sure how dramatic it is to make players work so hard and invest so much experience into something as "mundane" as crafting armor. That being said, I guess I should probably add the craft back in my list. If you have Craft (armoring), you get to make any kind of non-powered armor (or powered armor with greater difficulty), but you don't get the diversity of say, metalworking.

Of course, that probably means I should stick a Craft for nonmagical weapons back in. I suppose it's as plausible that you have a single craft to build all melee weapons as a single ability to use them.

-Neph

---

Commentary

Craft(Shaman) gets thrown out, but Craft(Courtesan) doesn't? Huh?\\ _Ikselam

What about Craft (Glass) -- something that could well be especially useful in, say, Chiaroscuro? I have a character with that. I also have a character with Craft (Painting) -- although hers is Painting / Calligraphy, as my ST allowed me to have both be the same thing.\\ ~ Shataina\\ PS: Is the list above actually supposed to be editable by other people, or should people just list other Crafts down here?

It would seem to be useful as a comprehensive Crafts index, though I would leave Neph's comments on them (the bit below the "here there be non-canon" mark) alone. - willows

Keep in mind, Shatiana, the list is only of craft skills specifically mentioned in Exalted books as of Blood & Salt. I agree that Craft (Glass) would be appropriate for a Chiaroscuran artificer, but until such a character is written up in a published book, it doesn't belong on this list. I also would be suspicious of fiddling with the list itself, as this is a Thus Spake (and he did). If someone wanted to have a general page of Crafts that people could add suggestions to, maybe as a discussion. - Kicker

It seems like the Craft list actually belongs somewhere else. Neph's decisions on which Crafts to keep and which to throw out logically belong in a section which is basically just full of his house-rulings, but the comprehensive list of published Crafts isn't unique to him in any real way.\\ _Ikselam

This reminds me of a question I always think of when I read these things. I've noticed that a lot of Neph's "Thus Spakes" are actually things that he does personally, or houserules, or personal takes on the Exaltedverse, rather than canon. I have to ask, are they really appropriate as "thus spakes" in that case? I mean, the entire point of the "Thus Spake" section is "official, canonical" word on matters, right? So the fact that every last random statement he makes is put up here is kind of ... well ... missing the point. I mean, I don't really read this section often so I don't really care, which means I'm not going to bother doing this myself, but I suspect that it might be useful to start at least labelling entries that are specifically not "canonical information" as non-canonical information.\\ Because, you know, honestly, though I love Neph and all, I really don't see the point of giving his personal houserules and canonical interpretations some sort of high holy status. It's like having a casual conversation with him about a series he's running and then posting the events of his game as canon.\\ What do people think?\\ ~ Shataina\\

As I understand it the precise purpose of the WriterQuotes section is to archive things the writers have said; nothing more, nothing less. - willows

Interesting. Thanks for clearing that up.\\

~ Shataina

What about Craft: Body Shaping (E:tL p130)? - CorlanDashiva

Lunars suck!