I'm always the GM but I plan to a character ready to go in case I ever get to play as a player, part of that is figuring out how to get starting armor... and the Force & Destiny Guardian Book has armor crafting rules which makes obtaining the cool armor a lot easier.

For me I'd like reinforced clothing with an extra point of soak (2 total) a point of ranged defense and a point of melee defense. each attempt to make reinforced clothing costs 25 credits a pop and takes 6 hours of time, so if you were determined about it, you could make 2 attempts a day. now basic "reinforced clothing" has 1 soak, 1 encumbrance, 0 defense and 0 hard points so game mechanically equivalent to heavy clothing, which has a book price of 50 credits but I imagine GM's would let you sell it for half value at 25 credits (material cost only). So essentially what you could be doing is sitting in your village making heavy clothing at cost for your friends & family until you get a good enough roll to make the clothing that you want.

And for what I want, if you have 3 yellow dice (survival will work, useful because I plan to spend my human starting XP + 10 obligation by raising Brawn, Agility, cunning and willpower from 2 to 3, mechanics works off of intellect, and survival works off cunning) so with survival as a class skill and knight level play you can start with 3 yellow pretty easily which is actually XP cheaper than cross spec buying into gadgeteer and down the second column (in the worst case it costs you 45 XP to buy 3 out of career ranks of survival, but you might start with survival as a career skill or want to buy into a spec with survival anyway, for example recruit or marauder or commando, etc.)

I assumed you made 8 trials with 3 yellow to get 2 triumphs out of 24 rolled yellow dice which then cost 200 credits (25*8) and used those 2 triumphs once each one armor schematic to drop the difficulty from average (2 purple) to simple (no purple) and then you start rolling for real

so I wrote myself a little MATLAB program to see how difficult it would be

here is that program

now why it is doable so easily is because of "practice makes perfect" entry of table 3-2 on page 91 of keeping the peace, basically for 1 advantage or 1 triumph you can gain a boost die on the next check you make with the same skill before the end of the session AND it doesn't say that it can be selected only once.... so the strategy is if you don't have sufficient triumph plus advantage to make the armor you want, you convert them all to boost dice for your next attempt then try again. Now this program that I wrote tries again until it succeeds and returns the number or attempts needed, the number of triumphs successes and advantage and suits of "heavy clothing" that you made at cost before you got the number of triumphs, successes, and advantage (so if there is extra left over you can add some extra stuff to the armor) that you needed to make the clothing that you wanted, and it does that process 100 times randomly so you can make a percentile table to roll on once in front of your GM.

so assuming a pool of 3 yellow dice and that you want reinforced clothing with soak 2, ranged defense 1, and melee defense 1 one randomly generated table is...

the first column is the number of attempts till you first get what you need
the second column is the number of triumphs on the first time you get what you need
the third column is the number of successes (triumphs included) on the first time you get what you need
the fourth column is the number of advantages on the first time you get what you need
the fifth column is the number of suits of stock heavy clothing that you made at cost,
the sixth column is what you'd have to roll on a d100 at the table to get that outcome

if you look at that table it means at 2 attempts per day you spent 11 or fewer days to make the starting armor I wanted, and you made some of your friends and family happy by making "heavy clothing" for them at half the price it would have cost them in a store and it cost you 25 credits (plus however many attempts it took you to get armor schematic twice).

now I really would like a 3rd point of soak in my reinforced clothing and I get that with either 2 triumph (for integral attachment, with the superior attachment) and 9 advantage or 3 triumph and 5 advantage but that table looks like this

now a few of those entries are doable, but chances are your GM won't even consider rolling on that table because it could take years of game time for many of those outcomes, but there is another option if you're willing to pay 5000 credits for the "superior attachment", all you reall need is an extra hard point and that's actually doable, so you'd need one of the following results combos
at least 1 success and at least 12 advantage
at least 1 triumph and at least 8 advantage
at least 2 triumph and at least 5 advantage
3 triumph and at least 2 advantage
(which are doable because you're dumping all triumph and advantage on insufficient rolls into boost dice for the next roll)


that table looks like this

so in the worst case it took you 38 days and 50 credits to get reinforced clothing with 1 hard point, soak 2, ranged defense 1, melee defense 1 and you had 1 advantage left over that you could use to make it sealable, what use is sealable clothing since you can't vacuum seal it? (I'll get to that in a moment), oh and you sold 73 sets of heavy clothing to your friends and family for 25 credits each (because you're such a great guy or gal).

now with only 5000 more credits (this is knight level play right??? ) you can have
soak 3, range defense 1, melee defense 1, sealable reinforced clothing, well why stop there you could pick up a rank of the tinkerer talent to add a hard point and add a thermal shielding system and I quote the EotE core page 194 "This attachment can be installed on any armor that covers the entire body and can be sealed." that's why sealable reinforced clothing has a use... so maybe dipping into gadgeteer eventually would be worth while after all, and if so you could used jury rigged to increase the ranged defense to 2, and there's armor master, and improved armor master so then your soak would be 3 for brawn plus 3 for armor + 1 for armor master, you'd have 3 ranged defense and 2 melee defense.

Boo Yah it's now good to be an awesome tailor in EotE.

Boo Yah it's now good to be an awesome tailor in EotE.

$DEITY help us all.

EDIT: And you just convinced me that my next House Rule shall be:

“There is absolutely no cross-over between the Crafting system and the Attachment system. Use one or the other, but you can’t use both.”

I don't think any sane GM would let someone just sit there crafting or selling unsuccessful attempts to "family and friends".

As a GM, I wouldn't let Known Schematic be taken multiple times, and I wouldn't let all the advantage and trumphs convert to boost dice for the next check.

Advice to the OP, please use the Spoiler tags for the code and generated results. It will make reading your post easier. You can find it under Special BBCode to the left of the Font box.

I wouldn't have a problem with this. In fact, we did this yesterday during the maintenance session of the game. However, the armor cost us 32,500 credits per suit. That is not including the cost of the attachments. The total cost per suit was over 60,000 credits with the mods installed. We hired the best armorsmith we could to make the armor, so the price was well worth it. We purchased 4 complete suits of custom armor to represent Je'daii Heavy Armored Robes.

As a GM, I wouldn't let Known Schematic be taken multiple times, and I wouldn't let all the advantage and trumphs convert to boost dice for the next check.

Actually by RAW the player decides how to spend triumph and advantage, so the GM doesn't have a say about that.

BTW 1 point of soak (armor master), 2 of the ranged defense and 1 of the melee defense (jury rigged and improved armor master) comes from gadgeteer talents not the crafting rules. By itself Def 1/1 soak 3 clothing isn't that bad, it's only 1 point of soak better than you could get otherwise.

As a GM, I wouldn't let Known Schematic be taken multiple times, and I wouldn't let all the advantage and trumphs convert to boost dice for the next check.

Actually by RAW the player decides how to spend triumph and advantage, so the GM doesn't have a say about that.

BTW 1 point of soak (armor master), 2 of the ranged defense and 1 of the melee defense (jury rigged and improved armor master) comes from gadgeteer talents not the crafting rules. By itself Def 1/1 soak 3 clothing isn't that bad, it's only 1 point of soak better than you could get otherwise.

Actually, per RAW, the GM has final say on everything

But not allowing what RAW does is bad for and leads to resentment at the table

But not allowing what RAW does is bad for and leads to resentment at the table

Personal table differences aside (I feel you have a problem if you are going to resent your GM for preventing you from spamming armor creation until you can throw 15 boosts), narratively, it makes no sense to learn the schematic for an armor, and then do it again. There is a reason that option can only be selected once, and allowing it to stack over multiple attempts makes things start to get silly.

learning a schematic can only be done once per suit, but of different attempts you can use it once each, that's what the rules say. The idea is that you can make a schematic and then improve it the more you learn.

15 boosts is a little absurd, but I think that was intentional hyperbole, you really only need 1 boost (3 triumph and a double advantage on the once boost) to do what I proposed (the Def 1/1, Soak 2, 1 hp reinforced clothing) but it gets a lot easier if you have a few more. look at the number of rolls it would take, there is a bit of variability but there were some 2 attempt, 3 attempt, 5 attempt, 6 attempt, 2 attempts is 1 day, 3 is a day and a half or a long day, 5 is 2 days, one check for the augmentive armor takes 120 hours or 10 straight days of work (assuming a 12 hour work day)... which equates to 20 attempts at reinforced clothing, and MOST of that last table is less than 20 attempts.

Just to clarify your position, are you saying that you would allow one character who had maxed out mechanics to spend 10 days to ATTEMPT to make a suit of augmentive armor (which will probably not result in the upgrades that they want the first time because of the 5 purple difficulty) and not allow a different player to spend the same 10 days trying to make a nice set of reinforced clothing? Or are you saying that you would not allow a player to attempt to make segmented armor (2 soak, Def 1/1, 4 hp) which has baseline stats better than the reinforced clothing (which after lots of upgrades had 2 soak, Def 1/1/, and 1 hp, and maybe a few advantage left over)? Or are you saying that you wouldn't allow them to attempt to make segmented armor if they only had a 3 yellow pool, and the difficulty for segmented armor is 4 purple? Is the objection because with clothing it only takes a base pool of 3 yellow to pull off? Or is the objection because reinforce clothing is "clothing" i.e. that can be made with the survival skill instead of mechanics or because it's easier to blend into a crowd?

FYI the reason the technique I demonstrated works is because 1 set of reinforce clothing can be attempted every 6 hours for 25 credits a pop, and heavy clothing with identical baseline stats normally sells for 50 credits a pop. What I showed you is very close to as "bad" as it gets, and even then the "fully upgraded" reinforced clothing does not have as good stats as the baseline armor listed further down the table. The technique might also work for the "light armor template" but it's not quite as easy to pull off, or as easy to hide. I mean how much attention is one tailor selling probably less than 20 sets of bog standard heavy clothing for the cost of the materials going to attract from another local merchant let alone the empire? But on the worst roll on the last table, 73 sets of bog standard heavy clothing sold at cost of materials over the span of 38 days, that MIGHT attract the attention of other local tailors who hire some muscle to make threats. And even if other merchants did make threats... they PC can say I'm sorry, tell you what, I'll make a bunch of sets of heavy clothing for you at the cost of the materials, I'll donate my time and labor to make it up to you, or a I "will work for food" scenario. It's really not unbelievable from an in universe perspective considering how little in game time it takes FOR REINFORCED CLOTHING.

Advice to the OP, please use the Spoiler tags for the code and generated results. It will make reading your post easier. You can find it under Special BBCode to the left of the Font box.

done

I'm looking at the armor crafting section, and personally I'd say that Armor Schematic can only be taken once, for a single reduction in difficulty. The reason it lists a minimum difficulty of Simple is due to the existence of talents like Master Artisan, which itself would drop the difficulty of a Mechanics check.

Otherwise, things start getting overly cheesy, especially if a player keeps trying to spam armor-crafting in the hopes of creating a suit of uber-armor.

I'm looking at the armor crafting section, and personally I'd say that Armor Schematic can only be taken once, for a single reduction in difficulty. The reason it lists a minimum difficulty of Simple is due to the existence of talents like Master Artisan, which itself would drop the difficulty of a Mechanics check.

Otherwise, things start getting overly cheesy, especially if a player keeps trying to spam armor-crafting in the hopes of creating a suit of uber-armor.

it's the same phrasing as "sealable", "extra melee defense", "special embelishment", "efficient construction", "extra ranged defense", and "extra soak" ... are you saying that a player can only use those once ever (instead of once per suit) too?

I'm sure that the designers considered PCs "spamming" the armor creation rules... the practice makes perfect and lessons learned entries in table 3-2 are there to make successive attempts on the hard stuff easier, and in terms of preventing excessive abuses I'd guess that's why there are rarity and restrictions on some of the armors and TIME COSTS on all of them, they made it pretty hard to "spam" segmented armor and augmentative armor or even "combat armor". About the only template that they made "spamming" easy for was the reinforced clothing and that's probably because it's not as abusable as the others (there's a lower upper limit on how bad it could get).

I'm looking at the armor crafting section, and personally I'd say that Armor Schematic can only be taken once, for a single reduction in difficulty. The reason it lists a minimum difficulty of Simple is due to the existence of talents like Master Artisan, which itself would drop the difficulty of a Mechanics check.

Otherwise, things start getting overly cheesy, especially if a player keeps trying to spam armor-crafting in the hopes of creating a suit of uber-armor.

I would disagree since a crafter will spend time to get the perfect design. If they are given enough credits, like 32,500, to make a perfect set of heavy armor using the segmented schematic then they will do so. The cost to order it ensures that they will make a large profit and allows them to perfect their custom suits. Think of each progressive roll as a separate prototype and the final result will be the production model. That's the key there. Each step along the way is a single attempt on successive prototypes to the finish product. This also accounts for the crafter adjusting their template to get the best results. Your way of thinking will stop all progress after the first prototype and there will never be any progress on any items.

So, the thought occurs to me that most people I know of who make prototypes for systems will actually keep every prototype they make, or disassemble and re-use the parts, or otherwise destroy prototypes that they don’t need to keep any more.

They don’t sell any of the intervening prototypes, whether to help pay for the development of newer/better models, or any other reason.

I’m not sure how to use this observation, but I’m thinking that this could be a serious drain on your financial resources.

Moreover, in the case of the OP, I don’t think you could sell your prototypes for anywhere remotely close to full retail value.

I’d start players off at one-quarter retail value for selling prototypes like this, or even lower — I mean, you start off at one-quarter value if you’re trying to sell scavenged equipment that is otherwise in good condition, right?

And no one would want to buy prototypes from a street vendor who made the stuff in their basement.

Finally, this game is supposed to be “Star Wars”, not “Crafting and Farming Wars”. If you want that, there are other games called “Starcraft”, and “Farmville”.

I think there's an important point getting missed here... reinforced clothing is not armor per se, game mechanically it's "heavy clothing" (something like a leather jacket). Tailors don't rip apart perfectly serviceable clothing just because it's not a masterpiece, and they do sell perfectly serviceable clothing that aren't masterpieces.

I think there's an important point getting missed here... reinforced clothing is not armor per se, game mechanically it's "heavy clothing" (something like a leather jacket). Tailors don't rip apart perfectly serviceable clothing just because it's not a masterpiece, and they do sell perfectly serviceable clothing that aren't masterpieces.

Tailors work on a commission basis. I had a suit tailored for me on Saville Row in London, for my wedding. Whatever they’ve done along the way to get to where they are today, they’re not making stuff on spec and then hoping to sell it in order to pay for their learning process.

What they will have is various customers who come to them to have examples made, and if they are not very experienced, then they will be paid less, and they will probably learn something in the process. And they might be able to charge the next customer a bit more, and maybe learn a bit more on the next job.

But that’s totally controlled by the customers who are looking for what those tailors can provide.

If you do make clothing on spec, hoping to be able to sell from the production run, you might make a few one-off items that you use as prototypes, but you keep those. You can use them as demo units to help you sell the production line that you have not yet set up. But when the production line is set up, you simply can’t do that at the kind of costs that it takes to make prototypes.

Production runs have to have much, much lower costs of raw goods and labour (like, an order of magnitude or so), because otherwise you couldn’t afford to operate and make a profit on the final units that you do actually sell — which are virtually always being sold through at least one or two layers of distributors.

The bespoke instances you see on the runway cost much, much more than the el-cheapo lookalikes that you can buy a few weeks or months later at Zara. They cost much more to design and make, and they cost much more to buy — if you can even buy them at all.

And the ones you can buy at Zara cost much, much less to make than they sell for, because of all of the layers of production involved and all the middle-men and middle-middle-men that have to be able to bring home a profit for themselves and their people.

So, if Custom Tailor is the model for the Crafting rules, that’s going to be totally different than if the model had been child slave labour from Uganda making the runway styles to be sold in Barcelona.

Star wars is a bit anachronistic (sp?) We see people with small businesses putting hard labor in to make small runs by hand, anakin built 3-cp0 from spare parts and his own pod, we see food vendors out in the streets of Mos eisley, while it might not be politically correct in our world slave labor, or if you prefer manual labor, is cheap out on the fringe. In ep 7

As I envision it, the reason I said village, the edge of the empire/outer rim/fringe game has cheap manual labor, people are poor and often do manual labor for little more than food or room and board. When you talk about large production runs, that's fine for coruscant but out on the fringe I am imagining little shops, sure they'll make something custom for you if you'll wait and pay but a lot of people buy floor models because they can't afford that little bit more... heck starting EOTE characters have 500 credits for gear if they don't take extra obligation and often 400 of that is going to a blaster, 50 credits for heavy clothing, and then they have to choose 2 out of the three following

A Com link for 25 credits

An extra reload for 25 credits

Having 25 credits in your pocket so you pay for your next meal/drink etc.

That's the "reality" I see for player characters and there friends and family. If they could save 25 credits on a set of bog standard reinforced/heavy clothing, that's anot her 25 credits that they have to feed themselves and their families (assuming that they have families). The fringe is far away from production runs and prototypes... I see a "tailor" temporarily working for meals and a cot in the back room of a small clothing shop while learning what he needs to complete his side project... a set of spiffy sturdy functional clothing for himself that he intends to use on his next "adventure" once his friends show up or he can get a ride off planet.

Or maybe it's not the back of a clothing shop he's staying in, maybe he's staying with some villager trading his labor for room and board and the neighbors are bringing him the fabric they want him, the skilled tailor, to make clothes out of for them, clothes that fit them, and they are bring a half a loaf of bread or the occasional few credits to the old lady who is housing and feeding him, all the while he's working on his side project for himself in his little free time (the friends and family model I was referring to in my first post). That's a large part of the outer rim as I see it. And admittedly this flavor text description only works for reinforced clothing, but that's all I intend it to work for.

Star wars is a bit anachronistic (sp?) We see people with small businesses putting hard labor in to make small runs by hand, anakin built 3-cp0 from spare parts and his own pod,

That was a labour of love. We don’t see him making a whole string of 3P0 units, so that he can sell the ones that aren’t as full-featured, thus allowing him to keep experimenting and trying to make that ultra-3P0 unit.

we see food vendors out in the streets of Mos eisley, while it might not be politically correct in our world slave labor, or if you prefer manual labor, is cheap out on the fringe. In ep 7

Rey did hard dangerous salvage work for food.

Salvage is not making. It can be a part of making, but only a part.

As I envision it, the reason I said village, the edge of the empire/outer rim/fringe game has cheap manual labor, people are poor and often do manual labor for little more than food or room and board. When you talk about large production runs, that's fine for coruscant but out on the fringe I am imagining little shops, sure they'll make something custom for you if you'll wait and pay but a lot of people buy floor models because they can't afford that little bit more... heck starting EOTE characters have 500 credits for gear if they don't take extra obligation and often 400 of that is going to a blaster, 50 credits for heavy clothing, and then they have to choose 2 out of the three following

A Com link for 25 credits

An extra reload for 25 credits

Having 25 credits in your pocket so you pay for your next meal/drink etc.

That's the "reality" I see for player characters and there friends and family. If they could save 25 credits on a set of bog standard reinforced/heavy clothing, that's anot her 25 credits that they have to feed themselves and their families (assuming that they have families). The fringe is far away from production runs and prototypes... I see a "tailor" temporarily working for meals and a cot in the back room of a small clothing shop while learning what he needs to complete his side project... a set of spiffy sturdy functional clothing for himself that he intends to use on his next "adventure" once his friends show up or he can get a ride off planet.

IMO, all that is built into the prices you pay out-of-the-book. Having to make hard choices like that is just one of the first tasks you come up against as a player. The hard scrabble life you’ve lead up until now is precisely why you may be down to your last 25 credits.

So why is your context for crafting reinforced clothing in the star wars game, tailored suits for run ways, or fashion shows, or large production runs with prototypes? Why isn't it a guy laboring at cost for room and board while he lovingly works on his personal side project in his little spare time?

Also maybe you didn't catch this, but with all the advantage and triumph being spent on boost dice for the next roll... he's not actually experimenting with any suit of clothing but the last one. They aren't prototypes, they're bog standard manual labor... the experimenting he's doing slowly overtime on his personal side project while the day to day grind job of tailoring just keeps him fed while he's working on his side project

After quite a review of the armor/crafting system I have to conclude that not only is it fairly balanced but it makes a lot of sense in the star wars universe.

The way a crafter can learn to make something better and better the more they craft it makes complete sense both in terms of reality and star wars. It also should be a massive credit sink and a massive time sink. Making a legendarily good suit of armor can require special components, rare materials and be adventures all on their own.

And really +1 soak or +1 defense or a little less weight or an extra HP or two is not really that overpowered. Armor is generally terrible at stopping damage.

Even the best most awesome suit of battle armor is going to be pierced by a moderately modified blaster riffle.

Your average PC with brawn 2-3 is topping out at 6-7 soak in crafted and modded battle armor and probably spent over 25,000 credits to get it.

Why deny your jedi artisan PC a chance to make amazing gear that could rival stuff from the ancient past. Instead let that be an awesome sidequest.

Why deny your jedi artisan PC a chance to make amazing gear that could rival stuff from the ancient past. Instead let that be an awesome sidequest.

I wouldn’t. There would be no problem in my game with doing that.

Of course, that would mean your PC doesn’t do anything else during that time, and doesn’t get to go out adventuring. You’d still have to show up in order to do your crafting rolls for the week, but then you’d be done.

If the PC is just going to do crafting in their spare time (as I think one of my players will be doing), then you don’t get to sell all the examples you make along the way for enough money to permanently fund all future development.

If you want to do this as a hobby, then you’re not going to make money at it, and if you try to sell your creations then you’re unlikely to get a whole lot for them.

In that case, you better buck up and fund your hobby in some other way.

In summary, I don’t see an inherent problem with the crafting rules per se, but I do have a problem with abusing them. And if you try to abuse them in my game, then I’m going to rein that in.

I have two words for you: Space Kickstarter!

There, build one prototype, put an ad on the holonet and let the development costs roll in!

This whole thing reeks of cheese to me, not the smelly good kind, but the smelly bad kind.

As the designers talked about on the O66 podcast, the idea is that this system lets you craft armour that is more or less the same as what you can buy, except cheaper - with the risk of being sub-par or outright failure, and of course there's the possibility of creating something even better.

This kind of Ford-assembly line has little of Star Wars in it. And that is the best image conjured from the original post.

And also, if a GM adjudicates this (abuse of the armour crafting rules, taking it outside the intention of the game and the system) differently than the player wants it to be and this in turn creates resentment, that player has nothing to do at a gaming table and should take a walk around the block and consider why his or her own desires are so much more important than the game and his/her fellow gamers. The GM adjudicating that RAW is too easy to take advantage of and therefore disallows or modifies it, is no reason for resentment.

I mean, using this system of yours, I can just mass craft super armour for all my minions and rivals and nemeses, because you know, of course they all had copious of time to craft armour before they started the game.. and of course every nemeses will have a bunch of minion and rival armour crafters, having at it... all the time... right? It's within the RAW, so I should really do it... right? It'd give income to the evil guys, loot too, and super-armours all around. Win-win yeah?