Hello, if you are an explorator and adventurer lets discuss CRAFTING.

It's all started because mechanicus in our party has been a real explorator in nature and the universe should have opened secrets to him as he opened himself to Omnissiah :).

In short words part of exploration and engineering were missing connected to fixing, building, exploring and inventing. We have decided to accept the challenge for greater good and come up with crafting rules.
After searching for rules in WH 40K rulebooks and forums we decided to base rules on pretty good descriptions from DH Inquisitor's Handbook: p.240 Trade (Armourer) and p.245 Crafting Rules.

What is missing?

• Usage of Trade skills are rare and poorly portable
• Calculation of difficulty for crafting should be depending on action complexity
• Better duration table for crafting

Concept

STC concept is used to provide wide range of motivation for exploration and possibly logical explanation of Adeptus Mechanicus way of existence.

Complexity for crafting is based on crafting actions and complexity of object which you can say depends on the size.

• Actions : Repair, Upgrade, Improve, Manufacture, Template, Design, Invent
• Objects : Drugs&Ammo, Tools&Gear, Weapon&Armor, Vehicles, Buildings

Main roll is Tech-Use roll which shows understanding of true Omnissiah knowledge with additional usage of system specific Trade or Lore skills. It is both simple and agile to change for any wh system. Sum of object rarity and action complexity for this object is used to determine resulting modifier for a roll.

Details

1. STC

STCs in WH40K setting are pretty misteroius so there is an idea to represent it as a blueprint which can be used limited amount of times with a specific chance to get broken. This idea can explpain what big part of mechanicus are doing on Forge Worlds: with STC Success Rating all STCs must come to an end after some time even if STC is used to create a copy. Logically while some mechanicus copying STC for manufacturing others trying to reverse engineer from manufactured objects same STCs from which they were originally built. If STC is finally used up and there is no mechanicus who has enough knowledge to re-create design then technology is lost. It explains why technology can be lost and STC's even for same technologies already possessed by Emperium still would be in high demand.

In order to describe this mechanism there two STC properties:

STC rarity

• rarity of stc is one step rarer than object
• near unique object stc can be bought only from manufacturing organisation
• unique can be received only from STC holder only

STC Success Rating

• Success rating is number on d100 to determine chances to get job done correctly.
• If roll on d100 more than Success Rating then job is not done because STC is faulty:

Сrafter lost 1 time interval for the job, lost all materials and craftsmanship of STC got one level worse. If craftsmanship was poor then it is corrupted and can't be used anymore.

• Each STC has it's craftsmanship which sets Success Rating

Poor - 30
Common - 60
Good - 80
Best - 95

2. Actions

First 3 actions are focused directly on objects, then manufacturing, connecting objects with STC, and other 3 are focused on STC's.

Repair

• Description: Repairing brokens items, engraiving, fitting.
• Complexity: Get object rarity as base difficulty.

Upgrade

• Description: Install upgrades - smaller objects - into weapons, armours, vehicles, buildings, etc. Scope can be an upgrade for weapon, but the same way weapon will be upgrade for vehicle.
• Complexity: For multiple upgrades take rarest upgrade as base difficulty.

Improve

• Description: Combine two different objects of the same complexity. Combine 2 weapons to create combi-weapon, remove qualities like Unreliable or Primitive. Resulting rarity of the imporved object will be rarest object - ( 10 * number of improvements ) .
• Complexity: Get rarity for rarest object in improvement, add penalty for number of objects (-10 for each object after the first one) and add penalty for number of improvements (reverse triangle numbers: -10 for 1 improvement, -20 for 3 improvements, -30 for 6 improvements, etc...)

Manufacture

• Description: An action on intersection of STC's and object - build object using raw materials and STC.
• Complexity: Get object rarity as base difficulty

Template

• Description: Objects reverse engineering in order to create STC
• Complexity: Get object rarity as base difficulty

Design

• Description: Mixing multiple STC's for designing new STC to manufacture objects with traits and design changes taken from different STC's. Resulting rarity of the designed STC will be rarest STC - ( 10 * number of design changes ).
• Complexity: Get rarity for rarest STC in design, add penalty for number of STCs (-20 for each STC after the first one) and add penalty for number of design changes (triangle numbers: -10 for 1 design change, -30 for 2 design changes, -60 for 3 design changes, etc...).

Invent

• Description: Process of invention STC for something new like new vehicle, weapon, drug.
• Complexity: Base difficulty is Unique.

3. Roll

In order to make these rules portable and easy to use through different WH 40K systems main roll is selected as a Tech-Use roll.

To take in account possible Trade skills or character backstory traits there is one Bonus roll can be used to underline proficiency over some actions, objects or situations. Bonus roll number of DoS sums with Tech-Use roll number of DoS.

Negative modifiers or additional pre-requisite rolls can also can be applied by GM for Archeotech, Xenotech or other Forbidden Lores.

Result amount of DoS can be spent either on decreasing time or increasing craftsmanship:
1 DoS - decrease time by one time interval, if interval equals 0 then switch to time intervals of one step shorter time interval. (look at Table 2. Crafting Time)
3 DoS - increase craftsmanship by 1. It can be increased only by 1 level from base craftsmanship.

Usage

1. Difficulty

In order to calculate difficulty of main roll use Table 1, crafting action description and object rarity.

Table 1. Crafting Difficulty

• Objects Repair Upgrade Improve Manufacture Template Design Invent
• Drugs&Ammo +50 +40 +30 +20 +10 0 -10
• Tools&Gear +40 +30 +20 +10 0 -10 -20
• Weapon&Armor +30 +20 +10 0 -10 -20 -30
• Vehicles +20 +10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40
• Buildings +10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50

2. Time

Use difficulty of the crafting roll to determine how long will it take to finish crafting action using Table 2, which is based on scale time from DH Inquisitor's Handbook. Table 9-5. GM rolling 2d10 to determine crafting duration in corresponding to dificulty time intervals.

Ranges between different intervals does not equal because objects rarity also not distributed equally with most of rare items at rare(-10) to extremely rare(-30) and then near unique(-50) and unique(-70) having invention difficulty from -90 to -110.

Table 2. Crafting Time

• Mod Time Time for job Time interval
• +121 Free Action
• +91 Rounds 2d10 x 1 Round 1 Round
• +61 Minutes 2d10 x 1 minute 1 minute
• +41 Minutes 2d10 x 5 minutes 5 minutes
• +21 Hours 2d10 x 1 hour 1 hour
• +11 Shifts 2d10 x 6 hours 6 hours
• 0 Days 2d10 x 1 day 1 day
• -11 Weeks 2d10 x 1 week 1 week
• -21 Months 2d10 x 1 month 1 month
• -41 Years 2d10 x 1 year 1 year
• -61 Decades 2d10 x 10 years 10 years
• -91 Centuries 2d10 x 100 years 100 years
• -121 Millenniums 2d10 x 1000 years 1000 years

3. Craftsmanship

In order to determine maximum craftsmanship for object manipulation and manufacturing use next table. Slots means how many projects/actions can be done in parallel. Base craftsmanship is determined by worst source material craftsmanship used in action.

Table 3. Objects and manufacturing base craftsmanship

• Craftsmanship Prerequisites Bonus
• Poor combi-tool and pure wish 1 slot
• Common manufactorum 2 slots
• Good good manufactorum 3 slots
• Best best manufactorum 5 slots

In order to determine maximum craftsmanship for STC actions use Table 5. Base craftsmanship is determined by worst STC craftsmanship used in action, object craftsmanship is not relevant for STC. Only 1 STC action can be done by 1 mechanicus or 1 laboratory.

Table 4. STC actions base craftsmanship

• Craftsmanship Prerequisites Bonus
• Poor just notebook and imagination -10 on STC actions
• Common laboratorium 0
• Good good laboratorium +5 on STC actions
• Best best laboratorium +10 on STC actions

4. Cost of materials for manufacturing

In order to manufacture object materials should be bought. Cost is provided in Treasury Points .

Table 5. Manufacturing cost (calculated as rarity modifier first digit)

• Availability Materials cost (x3 for good craftsmanship, x10 for best craftsmanship)
• Rare 1 Treasure Point
• Very Rare 2 Treasure Points
• Extremely Rare 3 Treasure Points
• Near Unique 5 Treasure Points
• Unique 7 Treasure Points

Please, do enjoy crafting and gaming

That's last article from this series that was planned. Thank you all and may this community be blessed by Emperor. We also have some details on spaceship battles, but it's not so big to have separate article. We are also working on battleships, ship cards to manage battles, and ship fits overall, porting Legio Cybernetica and colonies math, but these topics are far from finish. If you have any questions, please, write.

Kind Regards.

Here about who, what and why.

Edited October 11, 2020 by rt1234456
version 2.0 of crafting rules