On a phone, so this will be slim: only roll any check if it advances the game. If they want to salvage or scrap something in their down time, with nothing going on, then don't roll. If they're in an encounter or on a time limit, then roll.

I can't get into the other question now.

Crafting systems are as complex as you want them to be.

I had a simple system I used back in my d20 campaign that would work well enough here. Basically, my players just tracked a few pools of part types (weapon, armor, droid, speeder, etc), and the amount of in each "pool" was just tracked by credit value. They added value by scavenging parts from the respective sources. If they had enough parts to equal the market value of an item, they can make a roll to create that item.

With the multi-dimensional results in this system, you can get substantially more complex if you desire.

Given the description in Keeping the Peace, I am reasonably confident the Technician book will hold some rules for crafting. I've had my own ideas but have not bothered fully fleshing them out instead waiting on the Tech book. Keeping the Peace though I'm sure will end up using the same sort of idea though.

Given the description in Keeping the Peace, I am reasonably confident the Technician book will hold some rules for crafting. I've had my own ideas but have not bothered fully fleshing them out instead waiting on the Tech book. Keeping the Peace though I'm sure will end up using the same sort of idea though.

Whatever that system is, it is not likely to be very crunchy. Moreover, crunch does not serve this system well.

If there is something lacking in this system, and you want something that will integrate well, then you need to come up with something that doesn’t have a lot of crunch to it.

There is nothing here that indicates the OP understands these concepts.

No, he seems to want to bolt some mechanism from some MMO-like game onto this one, and I believe that does a disservice to everyone involved.

The person who wants a lot of crunch won’t like it, because none of the rest of the system has much crunch, so you’re going to have to keep changing more and more of it, until you arrive at something that is pretty much the polar opposite of what was made by FFG.

The person who doesn’t want a lot of crunch won’t like it, because it adds a lot of crunch to a very non-crunchy game and does not fit in well with the overall mechanics that have been developed so far.

I have no problem with house rules to fix real problems that actually exist in the game. Or, to temporarily cover gaps that will hopefully be addressed in the future by the developers.

I have a problem with people proposing house rules as a poor band-aid on a problem that is caused by the lack of their understanding and imagination of the game as written.

I have real problems with someone who is trying to take a crunchy solution to a perceived problem and then bolting that on as a supposed “fix”, which is usually caused by the fact that such people typically have only a crunchy hammer and all problems look like crunchy nails.

To the OP:

Hey — it’s your game. You run your game the way you want, and I’ll participate in games that are run according to the rules that I like.

However, if you want to come onto this forum and ask us what we think of your crunchy solution that you want to tack onto a very non-crunchy game, then don’t be surprised if you get back some answers that you don’t like.

what would you do if a user wanted to upgrade a item, my idea is that they would roll against difficult group. The 4 advantages could decrease encumbrance or add a quality within reason, so upgrading a blaster could give a accurate of 1, but this would also increase the rarity of the item and move it up the rarity groups as described in the AoR book. This would give the mechanical PC a schematic which the next time they attempt to build it, they would get a blue dice for having the schematic.

I don't quite understand what you mean by upgrade. In the terms of the book, I think of attachments, in which case I would apply them as normal. If you refer to what bonuses you get from rolling well when constructing the item (determing the results generated from the roll), then my suggestion was only an example. I wrote it real quick without much thought. There is possible grounds for the crafter to roll multiple Triumphs. You can expand the options, so the player can choose what bonuses he gets. Hard points are nice, as they allow you to apply attachments, obviously, but you can have it so they can add an item quality. I would read the different qualities and restrict it to the ones that make sense if your making your own item. I can think of Superior and Accurate now, but those are really good qualities, and should be appropriately 'pricy'. You can add possibilities for three or more advantage as well.

Another thing to consider is giving handcrafted items a bonus unique to them that you couldn't get with a store purchased item. Handcrafted lightsaber hilts allow you to install one mod from one attachment for free. That's a pretty good one -- a definite incentive for players to try, they get it even if they roll poorly, but not so amazing that it breaks the game or throws it off balance.

what would you do if a user wanted to upgrade a item, my idea is that they would roll against difficult group. The 4 advantages could decrease encumbrance or add a quality within reason, so upgrading a blaster could give a accurate of 1, but this would also increase the rarity of the item and move it up the rarity groups as described in the AoR book. This would give the mechanical PC a schematic which the next time they attempt to build it, they would get a blue dice for having the schematic.

I don't quite understand what you mean by upgrade. In the terms of the book, I think of attachments, in which case I would apply them as normal. If you refer to what bonuses you get from rolling well when constructing the item (determing the results generated from the roll), then my suggestion was only an example. I wrote it real quick without much thought. There is possible grounds for the crafter to roll multiple Triumphs. You can expand the options, so the player can choose what bonuses he gets. Hard points are nice, as they allow you to apply attachments, obviously, but you can have it so they can add an item quality. I would read the different qualities and restrict it to the ones that make sense if your making your own item. I can think of Superior and Accurate now, but those are really good qualities, and should be appropriately 'pricy'. You can add possibilities for three or more advantage as well.

Another thing to consider is giving handcrafted items a bonus unique to them that you couldn't get with a store purchased item. Handcrafted lightsaber hilts allow you to install one mod from one attachment for free. That's a pretty good one -- a definite incentive for players to try, they get it even if they roll poorly, but not so amazing that it breaks the game or throws it off balance.

I agree, I have been worried about balance, I don't want to have 500 stormtroopers just to compensate for the player's super death star blaster pistol with autofire of one and 2 boost die. I will try this out with my player who has the crafting itch... I think given the rules in the books and your suggestions I can make something that will adhere to the books current rules while allowing for some mad scientist events. With any luck the new book will contain a crafting system that isn't just for jedis.

Crafting systems are as complex as you want them to be.

I had a simple system I used back in my d20 campaign that would work well enough here. Basically, my players just tracked a few pools of part types (weapon, armor, droid, speeder, etc), and the amount of in each "pool" was just tracked by credit value. They added value by scavenging parts from the respective sources. If they had enough parts to equal the market value of an item, they can make a roll to create that item.

With the multi-dimensional results in this system, you can get substantially more complex if you desire.

I think to keep it simple I will go ahead and track parts by parts, so armor parts, ship parts, attachment parts, rather than using a multiplier on parts, and I think using the credit value is the most logical, though I think a part for me will be worth 100 credits so I don't have a million parts to track. I hope my PC realizes all the trouble he has caused lol, I hope one day he GM's so I can become a wine maker, or pointless but complex...

Crafting systems are as complex as you want them to be.

I had a simple system I used back in my d20 campaign that would work well enough here. Basically, my players just tracked a few pools of part types (weapon, armor, droid, speeder, etc), and the amount of in each "pool" was just tracked by credit value. They added value by scavenging parts from the respective sources. If they had enough parts to equal the market value of an item, they can make a roll to create that item.

With the multi-dimensional results in this system, you can get substantially more complex if you desire.

I think to keep it simple I will go ahead and track parts by parts, so armor parts, ship parts, attachment parts, rather than using a multiplier on parts, and I think using the credit value is the most logical, though I think a part for me will be worth 100 credits so I don't have a million parts to track. I hope my PC realizes all the trouble he has caused lol, I hope one day he GM's so I can become a wine maker, or pointless but complex...

In what I described, you don't track individual parts, you just track how much the parts are worth. For example, if a character wants to scavenge weapon parts from a group of enemies they just beat, have them make a mechanics (or whatever skill you want) check. Lets say the succeed with 3 successes, and you assign 100 credits/success*, they just found 300 credits worth of weapon parts. If they had 500 credits worth of weapon parts back at the ship, they can add these parts and now they have 800 credits worth of weapon parts.

*Adjust this parameter to whatever you see fit. I pulled 100 credits from your text, but it could just as easily be 50 or 10 per success. It could also be tweaked based on the quality of gear carried by the baddies they're scavenging. Balance to taste.

There are a lot of ways you can use Adv/Threat and Triumph/Despair. Accrued advantage could be used to cap cost or rarity of devices that can be created, or spent to add qualities to a weapon (they represent finding really good parts), threat could just be used as negative adv (they represent finding defective batch of parts or finding out that you don't have *quite* what you thought when you try to build a device). Triumphs can add HPs to a weapon or device, Despairs can be spent to add negative qualities to a device permanently (REALLY bad parts) or various other fun ways to narratively screw with the PCs.

Overall, this kind of a system is meant to be FUN and LIGHTWEIGHT. It's tacked on only as a way to provide some consistency, and shouldn't** slow the game down.

** Edit: When I say "shouldn't slow the game down", I mean that would probably be suboptimal to include this system if slowing the game down. This is not a claim that there is something inherent to the system proposed that prevents it from slowing the game down.

If you are really going for a system of advanced description for crafting, I would go for more than just scrap. You almost need a loot table (yeah, I know MMO... but still, that's why they are valuable is because it works) of parts and pieces you could get from each of the items in the weapon table / armor table / gear table (by type?). Each of the items will need a rarity as discussed, but also encumbrance and then what it could be used to manufacturer.

A side benefit, is you can fill up the ships hold with all kinds of pieces and parts for the collector and have lots of dialogue on why he is obsessing over it when he could just go buy a stupid BlasTech DL-44 Heavy Blaster that will just do the job!

The hard part might be building the items. And if you really want to go crazy, you can have each of the pieces built from a rarity of different types of material (so a double complication... rarity of piece and rarity of material). In time, this could be a very valuable resource... completely non-cannon, but there are going to be parts guys that would absolutely love the hell out of this.

I would certainly allow it at my table, because I have one of those guys. I would make him keep up with all of the miscellany if he wanted to go through the potential of rolling for his salvage items. (EDIT: To clarify - he would still have to roll salvage in front of me, but we could do that after sessions when everyone is gone if needed). I don't see that it would impact table play very much, except I would make him do his combines in front of the group once he has all the pieces.

Maybe I missed details about this, but... If someone is going to disassemble items to get parts, then they're going to still be carrying ENC worth of items after doing so (or even more). A rifle broken down isn't easier to carry without some form of case to deal with it. In fact, a disassembled weapon is harder to deal with as all those fiddly bits have to be put somewhere or they spill all over the ground, heheh. Also it takes quite a bit of time to properly and fully breakdown an item. So, not sure the mechanic would want to stick around after a firefight to tear apart the weapons of the guys they knocked down/KO'd/killed... As those guys are probably going to be coming to at some point and calling for help (medics, buddies, their boss, etc...). So, the mechanic would be loading himself down with those weapons (it's what, 5-8 ENC for a typical ranged weapon?) which means he couldn't carry much away from any given fight. And people would probably have issues with seeing someone running around with 4 or 5 weapons and call the authorities... even outside of Imperial space.

they're going to still be carrying ENC worth of items after doing so (or even more). A rifle broken down isn't easier to carry without some form of case to deal with it. In fact, a disassembled weapon is harder to deal with as all those fiddly bits have to be put somewhere or they spill all over the ground, heheh

Since Encumbrance is an abstraction of how hard it is to carry an item and not necessarily its mass, I'd be inclined to say a disassembled weapon that's not in some sort container might incur an additional Encumbrance penalty. However, I wouldn't push it too far lest we turn this into Edge of the Spreadsheet.

Personally, I would assume that the disassembly would happen back on the ship. Encumbrance is a real thing in our games and is one of the reasons we don't pick up much extra stuff off of downed guards and such. Rules like this would certainly change how we handle this a bit.

If they had a bit of time and wanted to field strip something, I could be persuaded to allow the roll to happen then for one or two items. In some cases it could help encumbrance quite a bit. Most of our crew carry utility belts and several carry packs of various kinds so stowing the pieces would be easier than the entire weapon. I probably wouldn't tell them what they got in the moment, just a generic description and write down the specifics for when they get back to the ship.

I think crafting could be handled pretty easily and informally. I do agree that to some degree everything is going to be factory-made, but that doesn't mean the characters can craft anything. People today buy components and assemble them into computers. People buy lumber and nails from the hardware store to "craft" structures and items. People make their own guns, something that is generally thought of as a factory-only item. Even in medieval times the blacksmith didn't mine his own ore. There is almost always a chain involved, so I don't think the presence of factories negates crafting. In fact, technology might make it easier. Considering CNC and 3D printing technology that we have now, it could be very feasible for a very advanced society to have enthusiasts that build their own gear.

I think there are two main types of crafting:

Hasty/Improvised Crafting: this is when the character needs something somewhat serviceable and he needs it now.

-Crafting is quick and should take maybe a turn or two.

-Crafting is limited to simple items, like making the SW equivalent of a molotov cocktai

l

-Requires a single skill check

-Crafted items should be inferior to standard purchased items. Reduce damage and critical rating of weapons by 1 (or more as appropriate). Items that are not single use are prone to breaking (3 threat or 1 despair results in item breaking).

Deliberate Crafting: this is a process that may take days or longer but results in a high quality item.

-Character needs knowledge of what he is crafting. Require XP in the appropriate skill and possibly acquiring an appropriate schematic (or a schematic for something similar that he can modify if this is a completely custom item).

-Crafting requires appropriate materials, either purchased or scavenged from similar items (this could be useful to a character that has several captured blaster pistols from enemies and wants to scrap them to build a blaster rifle).

-Crafting requires a successful skill check (probably at moderate difficulty for a standard item, higher for rare or custom jobs). On a failure, one or more (possibly all on a really bad failure or failure with threat) parts are ruined (introduces some element of risk). Despair might create a faulty item that works for a short while only to fail at an extremely inconvenient moment. Success with threat might either create a substandard item or require additional parts due to some hiccups in the process. Advantage could require fewer parts or reduce the time required. Triumph creates an exceptional item (increase the rating of one aspect of the item by 1, like +1 damage or critical rating).

-Crafting a standard item reduces the cost by 1/2 (if buying the parts to assemble) and the character may be able to create items that aren't readily available at the store.

-You can use the modification/attachment rules as a general guideline for custom items. I would make the character choose a standard item as a base and not allow too much deviation. Maybe the character adds a modification that wouldn't normally apply, improves a single stat by 1 point, adds an extra hard point for attachments, etc., but custom items should have a higher difficulty to craft than standard items.

-As a variant of the above rules, the character could customize an existing item rather than building from scratch. Similar method but requires fewer materials and the check is less difficult. Of course, there is the risk of ruining a perfectly good item.

-A crafted item may be more difficult to sell and goes for a lower price even if a buyer is found (no warranty, not coming from a reputable manufacturer, using nonstandard parts, etc). Crafting should be an interesting option but it shouldn't completely overshadow the prospect of simply buying an item off the shelf.

I will be putting together a system to do the calculations, though I think they aren't as hard as I originally made them, but I do agree and its how I run my games that disassembly happens at the ship. I will try to incorporate several versions on a webpage, but the final goal is to have this sit alongside ogg dudes system. I will link it this week.

Off of the top of my head, if I were to add crafting it would use mechanics or another appropreate skill. Perhaps a custom crafting skill depending on the item.

Difficulty of the roll is based on the complexity of the item and difficulty to construct. Simple items that are easy to counstruct would be easy difficulty, while something like a starship would be Formiddible.

Crafting restricted items add two setback dice to the roll as the components needed are hard to come by.

You need one success per 100 credits (rounded up) in the price of the item. May make multiple rolls until you accumulate the needed number of successes. This represents working on the item over time. Time spent working on an item need not be consecutive. So making a 245 credit item would require 3 successes and take 3 hours. Those 3 hours could be splt up over the course of a day or several adventures as the character gets needed parts.

Advantages can be used to either reduce construction time or to upgrade dice on future rolls. Avantages reduce time by 25% each. Apply one time reduction before the next, so if it takes 100 minutes to complete and you spend 2 advantages to reduce the time it would take 56.25 minutes. Failures halt progess. Setbacks either upgrade difficulty dice of future rolls. increase time (25%), or increase raw material cost (10%).

Must aquire raw materials/parts worth 50% of final item cost. Some abilities/talents may lower the amount the character has to pay.

Base construction time is 1 hour per 100 credits of the item's base cost.

If just making an item, like a piece of art or some crazy Chadra-Fan contraption, there is no set base cost or set cost for raw materials. Each roll represents one hour of work (before any potential time reduction).

This is taking far longer than it should, a lot of problems at work but.. here is the link: http://bit.ly/1OGvGpr

Thus far its only scrapping, but I will work out the rest tonight along with being able to decide on the character which sets of rules, IE one scrap product, or armor scrap, weapon scrap etc(data from http://swrpg.viluppo.net/equipment/weaponqualities/ so thank them for that). I will make it a series of checkboxes, and once I have this formula down I will build the application. This is very rough btw, but you can visit the link via your phone and it will format down correctly(though I wouldn't go that route without seeing the full system). I was originally planning on making this work for only OggDudes Character( https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/89135-another-character-generator/ ), but I think I will make it do both, first look for OggDudes system, if its not installed, it will build its own local database(cloud via dropbox or google drive or other). I am not sure if I want to put a built in dice roller, or allow people the freedom to define their own success/advantage/triumphs. The final applications will be a desktop application, a web razor site written in C# with a mysql or XML dataset, and a application for each phone type starting with windows since I have VS Pro 2015. I am hoping to talk with oggdude to try and update his code base to a universal C# or a web base.

I'm definitely of the camp that says, "In a galaxy with city-worlds, FTL travel, no perceivable energy scarcity, and trillion-credit-per-year corporations...truly there is nothing new under the sun."

There's no way for a character to make anything that hasn't already been made before. Hard stop.

From there, you're basically reinventing the wheel, or taking a pre-existing wheel and deconstructing/reconstructing into a slightly different wheel.

The vast, vast majority of "crafting" in the Star Wars universe consists of the latter option: taking finished products and salvaging/rearranging/reassembling into a different set of finished products with a slightly different set of capabilities. This covers just about all "kit-bashing", modifying, enhancing, etc. As well as Anakin "crafting" C-3PO, essentially by assembling already working droid parts into a complete package. These applications are covered within the scope of the modification and mechanics rules already in place, and require little additional tweaking.

If you're reinventing the wheel, you're basically going the long way around, just to say that something is totally your own. At what point down the rabbit hole things cross over from "you're just using pre-assembled parts" to "wow, this is totally original" is as fluid and subjective as anything else, but suffice to say that somewhere between Ikea assembly instructions, and going out and mining for ore with the final intent of building a space ship...modification turns into true crafting.

As a GM who feels that, in this galaxy, you can't make anything from scratch, alone, that companies can't make faster, cheaper, and more reliable...my quick & dirty rule is that you need to pay 10x to 100x the finished cost of the item in materials alone. The more you go back to basics, the more expensive it is. Generally, there's a series of high difficulty rolls involved (failing any of which will destroy materials and require buying more), and the truly high-tech bits may still simply be out of any one character's ability and may need to be bought off the shelf (how is your character going to build an Xciter for a blaster, or an ultrasonic vibration module for a vibroblade?). Once it's all said and done, they realize they've just spent 25,000 credits for a fairly standard-stat blaster pistol (that now only accepts proprietary parts that will have to be crafted from scratch anytime the thing breaks, as opposed to accepting off-the-shelf replacements). Once they do this once or twice, they realize why everyone else in the galaxy, corporations included, tend to opt for modifying existing tech, and focusing on iterative upgrades.

This process doesn't even account for engineering and prototyping, so I may even tell a particularly dead-set player that after all this, they have a functioning blaster pistol, but that it randomly shorts out, gives them a nasty shock, and needs to have it's power pack dropped, Xciter de-energized, and reloaded to fix the jam. To figure out why it does this and how to fix it, well, that's more mechanics checks, testing, deconstruction...

Long story short, when it comes to fabricating complex machinery and electronics, there's way, way, more time, money, and failure involved than most end consumers realize...and that cost is spread thin among thousands, or millions (or billions) of sales, once all of the headaches are worked out. For a quantity in the single digits, the cost per item is so astronomical that it's simply not at all feasible, as long as you care the tiniest bit about any semblance of realism in your game.