Do you let starting PCs craft their own gear as from Keeping the Peace and Special Modifications or just use purchased items?

I'd let them craft after CHARGEN, if it's appropriate in your story. If they want to buy stuff during CHARGEN to do that I'd allow that. There wouldn't be any rolls during CHARGEN though, and maybe not after depending on where they start out. You can choose to either share where they start or not with them, or just tell them there is a risk involved in that they might not be in a position to craft anything if you are starting them out on a crashing ship or something.

I agree with the floating pirate head!

Do it how you like, but the recent group that we just started, the GM encouraged us and helped with modifications to personal equipment (and the ship).

Mind you, this occurred after character generation, but the GM knew what he was doing and we started with ramped up opposition and threats.

For the first campaign, no one knew the crafting rules so . . . we just bought stuff off of the shelf.

I do not allow pre-introduction crafting.

If it fits the back story of the character and doesn't interfere with your plot, then sure let them craft starting gear. I'd also allow the other players to roll Negotiation checks to try to find discounted gear if they like, so that the crafter isn't getting a big advantage over the other characters.

Make sure they are aware that a failed crafting roll means they lose the material. It is possible that they may start off with no gear at all.

My big problem with "crafting" beforehand is that this game is a narrative dice system. If you divorce the dice from the narrative—if you remove the narrative grounding from the rolls—you've just started the game off with min-maxing, and unconsciously set a precedent for future expectations.

I had a game once where I worked up a starting "montage" with my players, where they introduced their PCs to the table by describing a short scene. One of the PCs was crafting a weapon in the montage. And it worked fine; we were able to use the dice to the best cinematic effect, complete with the PC accidentally setting his hair on fire. The rest of the session he got some weird looks, and teasing from the other players, and imposed setbacks on social checks

But that kind of stuff doesn't happen if you resolve your rolls outside of table time.

Most of the crafting check results are capable of being self-contained (altering the item/mod in some fashion) so it isn't as much of an issue as it would be with other activities. In many cases the opening scene won't really prohibit them from doing it post-intro anyway so there really isn't much difference in the end, and if it's just one or two things and you really want to make narrative use of the results then nothing stops you from carrying the narrative effects over to the opening scene (or using them to set up an opening scene).

I ended up having the player scrap his roll and told him to make it when we actually introduce his character. Having to suffer 3 strain can be useless, except when you're in the wilderness trying to craft before nightfall. I'm in a sort of pre-game session to get my characters "feel" down. My GM is letting me craft my equipment, but it's amid action and adventure.

As someone who has been doing an engineer for a very long time now, I say go ahead. A starting character - unless they are crafting a stick - will more than likely blow the roll or come up with something much, much worse than what they would have gotten at the store. You really have to get into the 4 dice range (plus a couple of Inventor blues) to make crafting pay off. And then it's still a coin toss if the thing is "eh, not bad" or that they've forged Excalibur.

9 hours ago, Desslok said:

As someone who has been doing an engineer for a very long time now, I say go ahead.

I completely misconstrued this sentence when I first read it.

On 1.9.2017 at 7:49 AM, Desslok said:

As someone who has been doing an engineer for a very long time now, I say go ahead. A starting character - unless they are crafting a stick - will more than likely blow the roll or come up with something much, much worse than what they would have gotten at the store. You really have to get into the 4 dice range (plus a couple of Inventor blues) to make crafting pay off. And then it's still a coin toss if the thing is "eh, not bad" or that they've forged Excalibur.

I once made a droid tech (*) who's mechanical idea was to craft droids to help him (i.e. give boost dice). He himself was a droid and his ideological idea would have been a desire to have a family (a droid family he himself build). He would have been fairly competent crafter from beginning. I never played him, because I'm the GM. So I kind of disagree. Beginning character may be fairly competent crafter, but then he's kind of one trick pony. At the beginning at least. When doing balanced character, I agree with you.

Hmmm. I have to introduce that character as NPC to current campaign.

(*) He was inspired by Order 66 crafting episode.

And to OPs question. I'd might allow it, but with direct integration to game as awayputurwpn said. Also depends on what PC might want to craft. I'd also require it to be integral to character and its backstory.

On 9/1/2017 at 0:49 AM, Desslok said:

As someone who has been doing an engineer for a very long time now, I say go ahead. A starting character - unless they are crafting a stick - will more than likely blow the roll or come up with something much, much worse than what they would have gotten at the store. You really have to get into the 4 dice range (plus a couple of Inventor blues) to make crafting pay off. And then it's still a coin toss if the thing is "eh, not bad" or that they've forged Excalibur.

That really all depends upon how difficult the intended object is to build, and if they put any of their starting XP into Mechanics, or otherwise was able to start with two ranks in said skill. My starting character is an Armorer with a three Intellect and two ranks in Mechanics (YYG), and managed to successfully build a suit of Customizable armor (Average Difficulty PP) And managed to not only succeed, but also make it sealable and lightweight. Granted, I wouldn't have wanted to try and build a more difficult set of armor, but If the character has the Intellect, and a "decent" starting level in Mechanics, they do have a fair chance of succeeding at building anything up to Average or possibly "Hard" difficulty.

On 9/1/2017 at 10:09 AM, Vorzakk said:

I completely misconstrued this sentence when I first read it.

ROFLMAO!!!!

On 30.8.2017 at 4:36 PM, Lukey84 said:

Do you let starting PCs craft their own gear as from Keeping the Peace and Special Modifications or just use purchased items?

Jup, would allow this as part of their backstory. Materials need to be paid as part of their starting equipment, rolls after char gen, depending on the background story the stuff might be already old and worn out or just recently crafted. Either way, I say why not? It just a little bit of gifted time and if the background fits, it adds to the character.

I only let characters who's class is craft centric to do it at CC