1 hour ago, JalekZem said:

Well you have a choice, either spend lots of time and money manufacturing a weapon that is at best marginally superior to a pre-made item or spend lots of XP, time, and money and end up with something that is potentially better than a store bought weapon.

They crafting system is designed to have several iterations of an item to get it to be vastly superior to what can be purchased. Which will cost you much, much more than buying off the shelf, buying the attachments to customize it, and modding the attachments.

The system does not really work as intended unless you have a roving manufacturing line to make the items AND have spent a ton of XP on mechanics skill and talents that support the crafting process. At which point, you are monopolizing the play session or bugging the GM.

Also, in the film and cartoon scources we see 1 (?) example of crafting and that is Anikin with 3PO.....

Not entirely true. We also see a number of examples of Jedi crafting their lightsabers, Anakin also crafted his pod racer from scratch, I'm pretty sure Sabine Wren crafted her armor, and i'm sure there are other examples I'm forgetting.

58 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Not entirely true. We also see a number of examples of Jedi crafting their lightsabers, Anakin also crafted his pod racer from scratch, I'm pretty sure Sabine Wren crafted her armor, and i'm sure there are other examples I'm forgetting.

Also, Ezra made his blaster/lightsaber hybrid (yes, you said lightsaber, but this was something more), and I think it was strongly implied that Maul made his first set of cybernetic legs, though I suppose he could have gotten them some other way. And didn't someone cobble together a beacon or comm device somewhere in Clone Wars, too?

I think crafting within the context of the story is very Star Wars. It's when people have talked about how they want to pile up 500 required parts to make rolls until they build their "I win" gun, or their "you can't hurt me" armor that its gone from story to MMO stupid.

6 hours ago, 2P51 said:

I think crafting within the context of the story is very Star Wars. It's when people have talked about how they want to pile up 500 required parts to make rolls until they build their "I win" gun, or their "you can't hurt me" armor that its gone from story to MMO stupid.

You could get around that by allowing to use resourceful refit to crafted items as well and allow that way transfer practise makes perfect between sessions. You are certainly right in that regard that the crafting rules are not very flavorful, nor movie like. They are not unrealistic, I have here about 3 dozen pendants and about 300 paintings laying around from practise work. And your insistence to complain about 500 rolls in a single session, which you would not allow your players anyway is a little doublethink, meanwhile you are right that it would be mmo stupid. But as pointed out, players never get that much free time in one session anyway, so those extreme cases are not really of any practical concern.

On 2/9/2017 at 1:03 PM, Andreievitch said:

My question is - I am getting a boost die for my Signature Toolkit, but I was wondering if the rules give you any other boosts or upgrades?

Lets see, there's a couple of tools that occasionally get you spiffs - the hand grinder adds an advantage depending on what you are working on. If you have a friend willing to help, there's a blue for you, and if you have a workshop of some sort, there's another blue.

Really, what you are looking for is Triumphs that let you learn the The Make the Template Easier advantage. Okay, it's a pain in the ass to build prototypes, wasting money and time on nothing but making the check easier - but a couple of long hyperspace trips, you'll have that Super Sexy Armor from <><><><> to <> in no time flat.

To answer the "Did I miss anything?" from the thought experiment (again) you could also take the Gambler specialization and the Unmatched Fortune signature ability. Using those talents and ability you will be able to reroll and manipulate dice to towards desired results as well as double the number of uncancelled successes, advantages, and triumphs.

Chances are decent that with the number of Yellow you proposed rolling that you could see at least a couple natural triumphs, and with Unmatched Fortune you could turn three more to triumphs. Supreme Double Or Nothing could be ruled to double your number of Triumphs, giving you 6, 8, 10 or more of them, not to mention doubling the number of Advantages for even more customization.

On 2/10/2017 at 7:15 AM, Darzil said:

Specialist Tool for Mechanics, with Safety Features and Supreme Craftsmanship - Extra success, extra advantage and an upgrade check
Booster Blue - Upgrade check for one scene

Technician's Workshop - Shipboard Low-Grav gives an extra advantage - Some giving difficulty reductions or check upgrades is mentioned, but looks like this is up to GM.

Where can I find rules for these two items? This is new to me...

Both in Special Modifications. Crafted gadgets and workshop rules

Also dont forget the Manipulate Force power. 1 Control upgrade allows Force Points to be be spent on Successes or Advantages, while Mastery allows you to spend 2 Force Points on a Triumph. Also you can commit a Force Die to upgrade the Mechanic check by 1.

As for making stupid MMO styled armor, its kind of a bad comparison. While a MMO character can create some uber gear, it literally came at the cost of nothing but time and money. The FFG system requires a large XP investment in order to create the really game breaking stuff, which balances out with characters who bought normal gear and have tons of abilities to match. Sure there may be a situation where a GM may allow the character to just stack optional bonuses and roll into they are happy....but that sort "free gear" could be given to the player in a much more traditional RPG sense like raiding an ancient Jedi Bunker lost since the Jedi/Sith war, so its really not that out of the ordinary.

21 hours ago, Xodis said:

As for making stupid MMO styled armor, its kind of a bad comparison. While a MMO character can create some uber gear, it literally came at the cost of nothing but time and money. The FFG system requires a large XP investment in order to create the really game breaking stuff, which balances out with characters who bought normal gear and have tons of abilities to match. Sure there may be a situation where a GM may allow the character to just stack optional bonuses and roll into they are happy....but that sort "free gear" could be given to the player in a much more traditional RPG sense like raiding an ancient Jedi Bunker lost since the Jedi/Sith war, so its really not that out of the ordinary.

Yup. And the tradeoff here is that the crafter gets way more say in exactly what he gets, rather than relying on the GM to provide him with something.

When you do the Negotiation check to gather parts, do you ever use Threats/Advantages to improve/degrade the quality of the parts?

If you really want to craft a fantastic item all you need is numerous tools... gm approval of course. The argument could be made to use multiple tools to craft an item and if each tool adds a success an advantage and an upgrade you can have a 1 int 0 mech rolling yyyyyyy(7) on every roll with let's say 13 success and 13 advantage every time.

Spend your advantage on lessons learned and boost die then roll again and make almost any item with no difficulty die and auto success / advantage.

That is true min maxing with hardly any xp spent. The toughest part is getting the upgrade on your tools... and affording the multiple tools before you get the ones you want... even selling off the unwanted 'prototype' tools will take time and may not cover the credits spent and is subject to gm approval.

Just for kicks I made up 30ish tools and then made a number of weapons and armour... and yeah it do be game breaking... heavy clothing with a 3 soak 3 defense melee and ranged and a few other things combined being the least impressive... and that was with yggff as his stats (artisan armourer). A lot of rolls and to be honest a large workshop with reclamation equipment, reduce difficulty, auto advantage and a couple parts bins helped a lot.

Can't wait to see what he 'could' do with the fully operational rules.

10 minutes ago, jayc007 said:

If you really want to craft a fantastic item all you need is numerous tools... gm approval of course.

This proposal is like saying, "If you really wanna do damage in combat, just carry your autofire weapon in your hands and aim like 20 times before combat starts, and you get 20 Boost dice. SO MUCH DAMAGE." What you're looking for isn't GM approval on a rules loophole—you're looking for a GM to break the rules for you Note that the "Right Tools for the Job" sidebar has three paragraphs, each with separate rules. Most upgrades first of all would require the use of a tool kit, and so you don't even get a Boost die for that kind of check—the tools are necessary to perform the task. And whatever benefit you get from a tool kit is from the entire kit, not from each individual tool (and using 3 different tool kits would more likely impose Setback dice instead of Boost dice, as you are cluttering your work area with an excess of tools).

All that to say, good luck finding a GM that would actually think that this is a good idea. Crafting rules are already extremely potent when kept within the RAW.

Your artisan sounds really fun to play! There's no need to try and break the system—even though this isn't how you do it

On 8/22/2017 at 10:32 PM, jayc007 said:

Just for kicks I made up 30ish tools and then made a number of weapons and armour... and yeah it do be game breaking... heavy clothing with a 3 soak 3 defense melee and ranged

Heavy clothing? I thought the current rules only allowed soak/defense upgrades once each. So the heavy clothing equivalent could max at 2 soak 1 Def M/R.

On 22.8.2017 at 7:57 PM, Lukey84 said:

When you do the Negotiation check to gather parts, do you ever use Threats/Advantages to improve/degrade the quality of the parts?

Would be fine around my table

1 hour ago, Randy G said:

Heavy clothing? I thought the current rules only allowed soak/defense upgrades once each. So the heavy clothing equivalent could max at 2 soak 1 Def M/R.

I presumed Superior in addition, though that doesn't account for the defense.

Apologies. I failed to see the only once on the defense. So not as good as I thought and yes superior was involved