In my previous D6 game, my character was an explosives expert - well, a self taught one with loads of demolition skill. He regularly would whip up batches of Bathtub Gin (AKA crafting his own improvised explosives and grenades). Did we spend any time on it, actually working through the process of making bombs? Nope. He'd occasionally go out for supplies, and would say "I'm making another batch of boom! Who wants some - oh, and don't flush the toilet for about 3 hours." and that was about the extent of it.

Same thing here - hell, the triumphs and despairs and failures of the skullduggery roll would support the flavor of the crafting. But to go "Well, you need some blastech vapor, protion nitrate, a packet of X-13 and a brass tub to mix it all. Go out and get it" and then building a game around getting the vapor, the nitrate, the X-13 and tub would be astoundingly boring.

Just handwave it and be done with it.

Just handwave it and be done with it.

That is one solution and that is likely how I will handle it if any of my players become interested in crafting but building a more crunchy rules tight system is what some people want that is ok too.

We basically think of modification as crafting in our campaign. A big part of that is salvaging and modifying droids to help. I think the way the narrative dice supports this is just so awesome.

I read somewhere that the devs left out crafting rules on purpose, and they will be added in the future.

Can anyone verify?

If you see no point in it then your posts in this thread really aren't adding anything to the discussion and are a distraction from what the people who are interested in it are trying to accomplish. Also, just because the game is designed to be narrative doesn't mean it can't be more crunchy if you're interested in that kind of thing. I liked SAGA edition, so far I think I like EOTE better for many reasons not the least of which are the narrative dice. Those same narrative dice could be used in some interesting ways when dealing with a DIY crafting system

IE you succeed with despair so the droid you're building has a quirck of some sort that can add unique story telling opportunities. Maybe he was designed to be a medical droid but with the despair roll he sometimes uses the wrong drug when injecting patients.

In the free adventure on page 11 there is an example of salvaging and crafting a droid. Players/GM can spend a lot of time with droids and spaceships or just gloss over it. But I think the dice can handle it all. I also think there is a couple of talents such as inventor and known schematic that are the framework for building stuff. I'm currently using mechanics for salvaging, however I think a specific droid and/or star ship mechanic/salvage skill and talents might be better.

I just feel sometimes my character that can build/salvage/repair droids wouldn't necessarily know anything about a starship. So I allow him to build/program (with the help of the slicer) the droid who can repair the ship and roleplay it like that. Its just a great game.

I know this is a old thread but I am working towards getting a crafting system that seems fair and works. Here is my current format and what I am doing to support it, I am posting OggDudes form on BigTent so this is just a copy paste.

I am working on a application to set alongside OggDude's, the purpose is crafting, but I want to see what you all think of my mechanics(since they gave us the inventor option but nothing to invent)

Scrap: Scrap comes from the weapons and items one scrap per 100 credits in cost. So a holdout blaster gives 2 scraps(we round up to the nearest 100). If the player has a mechanic spec, they get the schematic as well.

Crafting Attachments: Attachments are a 1x multiplier for scrap, so if it cost 400 credits it takes 4 scraps. The difficulty is the rarity(YIKES) however a mechanic tree takes off one purple dice, and the schematic takes off one as well, so a Telescopic Optical Sight is free for a mechanic (must always roll though) 1 Rarity - 1 Mechanic point = 0 purples, if they have the schematic it's 1 Upgrade to mechanic roll because of the rarity subtractor. Each triumph upgrades the schematic, and gives a blue boost die to the build, but raises the rarity by the number of boost die. Rarity 1 + 1 triumph = 2 Rarity.

Crafting Weapon/Armor: Theses items are a x10 multiplier for scrap because they are complex. So a holdout blaster gives you 2 scrap but requires 20 scrap to build, sorry this mechanic prevents you taking armor apart to get scraps and then being able to just build a blaster with armor parts, instead you have so much scrap you can fashion the parts. Same exact mechanics from here.

Bonus/Loss: The dice roll is for each success you roll you take down the time, rarity plays a part here as well, a hold out blaster is 4 hours to craft (trust me I was in the army, this isn't crazy if you have the parts), each success takes it down a hour(hope like my players traveling to different destinations take hours or days and provides plenty of time to do the upgrades). Each 3 advantage dies also perform this action, and a Triumph does as well plus upgrades the items die pool by one boost die per(permanently). Now it is the EXACT counter opposite for the negative results, you know how to make it so failures count as additional hours, and 3 disadvantages at too that, plus each Despair breaks the item, so 1 setback die for each plus 1 level of damage up to 3, before it is a total failure. But you can fix them with a mechanic check, with the same mechanics as in game (each fix removes the setback dice, and there can only be 3 setback dice 1 for each level of shoddy workmanship). Now you might say how do you get Despair dice, it seems like you can't? If you have ever put together a weapon, not having a work bench isn't setback difficulty it's utterly increased difficulty, and thus if you are not at a workbench the negative dice pull is increased by one difficulty (one purple turns to a red), in combat(difficulty is raised by one if not more depending on the situation plus one if you're not at a bench).

Along with this system I will be working on a npc vendor generator, which will generate a npc with a stock, based off of the max rarity you want them to have, the type of vendor(Armor, Weapon, Attachments, Medical, General, Junk) and the max items, this will also generate scrap vendors who deal with some items but mostly junk like broken guns and armor. If this system works with my people I will work on a medical one with probably the same mechanics.

This feels very much like Star Wars Uprising, and I am quickly learning to hate, loathe, and despise that aspect of that game.

Necrothreading for the Win! Actually, as an old Everquest Crafter... I'm always interested in systems in place for things like this. Mostly I'll stick to narrative for a lot of this functionality, but when we get into crafting lightsabers and thinks like the Nova pistol, then I start looking at a good system for salvage or upgrade tools. Mostly I'm looking at names and how to call the parts and thingamahickees that tie it all together.

I'll have to play with the numbers and balance what I'm seeing versus what my players are currently picking up. I don't really want to spend half our sessions working through scrap metal looting from corpses because they need 10 bars of dyodinium by next week!

My NPC Technician, though... he's all about this and could possibly give assistance or make trades for some items like this and a system is a good thing to look at for reference on getting players to find things.

Reading through this thread, some of you guys would have never made it as Rangers in the early days of original Everquest when you click-dragged four items from one bag to your crafting one to make a single arrow! And had to click to accept the single arrow into your quiver. Yep, have the carpal tunnel memory twinges and the narcaleptic remnants of those late nights, but dangit, I did it! And I liked it! Was it cheaper? Who knows, maybe... but probably not. Why did I do it? Because I could make my own arrows and use them to kill bad guys... and lots of Orcs. And it was fun to do on the elevated platforms of Kelethin while you talked with other people. Kind of miss the relaxing evenings of those crafting nights with stories of where we had been and what we were planning to do. And "Hail the Storm" to any of you knights still out there...

Dangit... I need a drink... cause... memories... and pardon me, but that storm last night must have blown in a lot of allergens, huh?... I'll be fine in a minute...

An easy way: Use F&D lightsaber craft rules from GM Kit

@Josep Maria: There are players who want to craft, the lightsaber rules are a joke at best, crafting a lightsaber with the force is one thing, how do you equate that to players who aren't force users? A simple mechanic can use the same crafting skill and just make a lightsaber? This system would make crafting a lightsaber VERY hard for a mechanic near impossible, with a rarity of 10, and a mechanic bonus, it would be a 9, 9 purples, this system is meant to allow for crafting but not be ridiculous, most people are crafting as a fun thing, you don't craft a massive laser cannon with 20 damage unless you are always a engineer in a research facility. So a great mechanic or engineer can do rarity of 5 or so with utterly failing, the rest he buys and makes better, this is a anologist to the real work, people build go karts, really good mechanics restore cars, and only engineers design cars.

@GrayFax: This is why my proposed system uses scrap, I don't want to have the player required to find a mineral of type inorganic, with a class of metal, being Ferrous, and of the Steel class, but specifically Carbonite Steel, the crafting of larger items require more scrap than they give, not impossible amounts. As I use a by battle list of equipment, I let the players know what they have and what the encumbrance is, then let then divvy it up, the mechanic scraps the rest and we move on, 5 minutes at most per encounter.

Just posting this in a void (read about half the topic).

So you want to craft? First, I make my player tell me the goal. A weapon. A droid. A piece of survival gear. Whatever. I tell them they need X credits where X=2/3 the cost of the closest for for what they're building.

Supplies! I gloss over supplies because that's the 2/3 cost. But, if someone will spend the time seeking for, or as a reward or loot stumble into a specific part, that part supplies a boost die to the crafting check.

Tell me what skill or skills apply. Now do it again without metagaming. Awesome.

Success means you built the basic item. Hard points are earned on a 1 HP per 2 successes over the one necessary. If hard points don't apply, it just functions at a higher level. Boost dice, extra effects, whatever.

Qualities come from advantage. One quality (within reason) or an increase to a chosen quality (within reason) per advantage. A triumph can increase damage or decrease crit ratings by one.

Threats make things worse. Too many threats and it gets cumbersome or unwieldly, or lower damage, or can't crit. Failure means it plain doesn't function.

A despair means it goes horribly wrong. Maybe it blows up right away. Maybe it blows up later.

@Josep Maria: There are players who want to craft

This is not a crafting game. If you want to do that, this probably isn’t the game for you.

This is a narrative game. In fact, Star Wars as a whole is not a crafting Universe — you don’t see the 100+ hours of work that Anakin put in to building C3PO in the first place and all the various things he had to salvage and how he did it, you simply see the result. You don’t see the Jawas kit-bashing stuff together, you just see their results. All this stuff does happen somewhere, but it is way, way off-screen and never discussed.

There is the possibility that FFG might introduce some crafting with one or more upcoming career books, but it’s not likely to be very complex and crunchy — maybe a bit more than the F&D lightsaber crafting rules, but not by that much.

This is not a crafting game...

Unfortunately you don't seem to understand what a role playing game is, if you have a pc that wants to be a stock trader, then they can be, I am looking to make the mechanics for the game, and your statement offers no real value, if that's how you feel, then don't bother with this forum topic, I am looking for what people think for mechanics. Though I think I will stick to reddit where it unfortunately seems to be the place with people who can think outside the box, not just come up with it's not it the books and George Lucas didn't say so, so it cannot be...

I read somewhere that the devs left out crafting rules on purpose, and they will be added in the future.

Can anyone verify?

So they can put it in the Technician splatbook.... if they did

Keeping the Peace is going to have armor crafting, and there are talents that apply to inventing, so crafting in some form is inevitable.

To the proposed rules above: if you want the system to jive with the core rules as much as possible, difficulty = rarity doesn't work, because difficulty cannot exceed Formidable (5 Purple). "Impossible" tasks are still 5, but require a destiny point. Better to use the rarity modifyer (in the Gear and equipment chapter; in AoR it is p. 164) table for buying/sellig instead, because otherwise relatively common and easy to obtain items would be daunting or formidable. Using the modifier table makes making a averagely common item Average difficulty.

You can also go with a flowchart/check sheet option: start with a baseline item (like a blaster pistol) for stats. Then compose a universal list of possible options that the character can select, with each one modifying the difficulty. This can increase difficulty, upgrade difficulty, add setbacks or increase the price. You can use the talent tree template, but make each column in increase/upgrade/add setback/increase price. Options that are more intensive can increase difficulty; options that are finicky and can fail spectacularly can upgrade; options that require outside influences or potentially unreliable parts can add setback; more expensive materials or specific parts can increase the price. Once the difficulty is set, you can roll whatever appropriate check is called for (mechanics, something else), then utilize the lightsaber hilt building rules as guideline to determine success/advantage/triumph/threat/despair.

Unfortunately you don't seem to understand what a role playing game is, if you have a pc that wants to be a stock trader, then they can be, I am looking to make the mechanics for the game, and your statement offers no real value, if that's how you feel, then don't bother with this forum topic, I am looking for what people think for mechanics. Though I think I will stick to reddit where it unfortunately seems to be the place with people who can think outside the box, not just come up with it's not it the books and George Lucas didn't say so, so it cannot be...

I think perhaps you are being a bit harsh. It has been my experience that engendering a positive attitude will likely yield the help you require. Reddit's community is good, sure, but so is this one, and I feel like you're being a bit too quick to judge.

That said, you might be best served by finding a game with a crafting system and try bolting that on. Why reinvent the wheel? You could likely take the "FFG Dice to Regular Dice" conversion chart from the beta book to help adapt it.

My thoughts on the matter, which you did solicit in your original post, is that this would add more bookkeeping and crunch to the game that I wouldn't want at my table. However, far be it for me to tell anyone else how to run a game at their table. I don't care if it's canon, or RAW - what I care about is having fun at the table, and frankly I'd wrap this into a couple simple rolls and get on with the story. If a PC is a crafty crafter, has a good yarn to spin about how they crafted it, and made a successful roll or two, BAM we're on to the rest of the story. I would hate to have my entire session grind to a halt so one person could fiddle with a spreadsheet.

Keeping the Peace is going to have armor crafting, and there are talents that apply to inventing, so crafting in some form is inevitable.

Say buddy, what exactly is Keeping the Peace? Did I miss an announcement?

[edit] Google helped me out here.

Keeping the Peace is going to have armor crafting, and there are talents that apply to inventing, so crafting in some form is inevitable.

Say buddy, what exactly is Keeping the Peace? Did I miss an announcement?

Must have. The Guardian career book.

Unfortunately you don't seem to understand what a role playing game is,

Obvious troll — with three whole posts to his history — is obvious.

Obvious troll — with three whole posts to his history — is obvious.

Any more trolling than the guy who said this

This is not a crafting game. If you want to do that, this probably isn’t the game for you.

Why is it so bad for someone to ask about incorporating a crafting system and/or get opinions from like-minded people on the system they came up with?

Further, it doesn't look like anyone asked for the opinion that you gave. So in actuality, who is the troll?

Obvious troll — with three whole posts to his history — is obvious.

Any more trolling than the guy who said this

This is not a crafting game. If you want to do that, this probably isn’t the game for you.

Why is it so bad for someone to ask about incorporating a crafting system and/or get opinions from like-minded people on the system they came up with?

Further, it doesn't look like anyone asked for the opinion that you gave. So in actuality, who is the troll?

Lol, well said, I am looking for creative thinking, that's all, instead here I am getting "well that's not the way it's made" statements which add up to nothing. But the "keeping the peace" book ( https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/7/8/keeping-the-peace/ ) maybe the ticket I am looking for(unless again its only for force users which NOT every player wants to be), I understand peoples mindset for using something like the saber crafting but I want a mechanics to have no way of really building the lightsaber unless he is just that good. I may have snapped at bradknowles but it's a little confusing a rpg system is met with so much resistance when someone wants to try and create a crafting system. As I have said, if you don't think crafting is a good idea, why come to this forum about crafting? If you would like add crafting then let's talk about it. Also the reason behind the rarity usage is some items are impossible to craft in the field, I was a soldier, I did field strip my weapon, but you shouldn't be able to craft a 60mm gatling gun in the field without a workstation on a base. Oh and now I have 4 post, does that make me a lukewarm troll?

themensch That said, you might be best served by finding a game with a crafting system and try bolting that on. Why reinvent the wheel? You could likely take the "FFG Dice to Regular Dice" conversion chart from the beta book to help adapt it.

I believe the current system can handle it, I have a massive api that rolls through the pdfs and allows us to print those rolls to the roll20 app which I have a developer account with(so basically what I am saying is I am a lazy developer, I have set the system to automate rolls and don't want to rebuild it, when it's still just numbers). Also this isn't that big, I am planing on making a application that creates the vendor's, assigns a scraping mechanism for this, I want to be able to give the PC a system to use, it's not that big of a deal for me to develop the system plus it's great practice.

Blackbird888

Keeping the Peace is going to have armor crafting, and there are talents that apply to inventing, so crafting in some form is inevitable.

The table 5-1 Rarity:

I rewrote this about 5 times, thank you for the constructive ideas, I looked at the chart and I am going to test it against the PC, I think it may work and that would be simple to put in a program that would understand how many die's per grouping. All in all I think the die could be modified a bit and I think you maybe on to something, this tree is meant to roll to find something, crafting should be harder than finding though, a lot harder. I think spreading the difficult out via rarity is perfect, maybe 1 purple per rarity after rarity of 1, and anything over 5 purples upgrades that difficulty, that means for a mechanic it would be 3 red 2 purple dice to build a lightsaber. Setback used for conditions, instead of difficulty upgrades.

One concern about the Keeping the peace is the lightsaber building is made with the assumption of the force guiding you, a simple mechanic shouldn't be able to go through the same process and craft a lightsaber even if the GM said sure, I have a feeling it's more force users crafting items since it states its a guardian tree...

The idea of scrap is fine (maybe you should call then 'parts' or 'materials'?). It's just an item to be purchased. Schematics are fine too, and I think one of the talents compliments that, although that may be for ships and stuff. The sticking point is still exceeding the Formidable difficulty. The formidable difficulty is pretty, well, formidable. For a starting character, who, depending on setup, will have maybe a Intellect 4, but more likely 3, and maybe Mechanics 2. Increasing their Mechanics to 5 will take several sessions worth of XP, and the character will maybe break even at Formidable difficulty, or just succeed with numerous threat. Grabbing Dedication to increase Intellect is more XP, or a significant credit drop for a brain implant to increase Intellect. Adding Difficulty dice beyond 5 is asynchronous with the RAW, because it goes against the way the game is balanced. I can maybe see upgrading the dice once you exceed formidable.

I will say that rarity is probably not the best way to determine crafting difficulty, because more than production costs and materials used in construction. The HWK-290 is the same price as a YT-1300, yet the Hawk is rarer because of a limited production. Other things like legality also affect rarity.

The other sticking point is the idea of decreasing difficulty just because you have a specialization. There is no precedent for this, at all. A Pilot doesn't somehow lower the difficulty of piloting checks, he makes it easier to train his own ability to meet the challenge of the task. The only way a player/PC can directly modify the difficulty is through the use of talents. And Mechanic isn't even appropriate -- you want Outlaw Tech for weapons. So you don't have to be a Outlaw Tech to build a weapon if you have high enough Mechanics/Intellect, but you do make it easier if you have some of the talents found in the Outlaw Tech tree.

And the reason we have mentioned using the lightsaber rules as guidelines is because that is the only place to find interpretations for any crafting provided by the developers. Those suggestions I can just as easily apply to making a mechanics toothbrush as I could making a crossbow made of lightsabers that shoots lightsabers as quarrels. Multiple success decrease the time spent. Advantage gives it a little polish and design. Three advantage decreases encumbrance. Triumph adds a hard point. Threat increases cost and time. Three threat increases encumbrance. Despair reduces hard points. You can change that a little -- 4 Threat could reduce HP while despair adds the Inferior or Inaccurate qualty.

The idea of scrap is fine (maybe you should call then 'parts' or 'materials'?). It's just an item to be purchased. Schematics are fine too, and I think one of the talents compliments that, although that may be for ships and stuff. The sticking point is still exceeding the Formidable difficulty. The formidable difficulty is pretty, well, formidable. For a starting character, who, depending on setup, will have maybe a Intellect 4, but more likely 3, and maybe Mechanics 2. Increasing their Mechanics to 5 will take several sessions worth of XP, and the character will maybe break even at Formidable difficulty, or just succeed with numerous threat. Grabbing Dedication to increase Intellect is more XP, or a significant credit drop for a brain implant to increase Intellect. Adding Difficulty dice beyond 5 is asynchronous with the RAW, because it goes against the way the game is balanced. I can maybe see upgrading the dice once you exceed formidable.

I will say that rarity is probably not the best way to determine crafting difficulty, because more than production costs and materials used in construction. The HWK-290 is the same price as a YT-1300, yet the Hawk is rarer because of a limited production. Other things like legality also affect rarity.

The other sticking point is the idea of decreasing difficulty just because you have a specialization. There is no precedent for this, at all. A Pilot doesn't somehow lower the difficulty of piloting checks, he makes it easier to train his own ability to meet the challenge of the task. The only way a player/PC can directly modify the difficulty is through the use of talents. And Mechanic isn't even appropriate -- you want Outlaw Tech for weapons. So you don't have to be a Outlaw Tech to build a weapon if you have high enough Mechanics/Intellect, but you do make it easier if you have some of the talents found in the Outlaw Tech tree.

And the reason we have mentioned using the lightsaber rules as guidelines is because that is the only place to find interpretations for any crafting provided by the developers. Those suggestions I can just as easily apply to making a mechanics toothbrush as I could making a crossbow made of lightsabers that shoots lightsabers as quarrels. Multiple success decrease the time spent. Advantage gives it a little polish and design. Three advantage decreases encumbrance. Triumph adds a hard point. Threat increases cost and time. Three threat increases encumbrance. Despair reduces hard points. You can change that a little -- 4 Threat could reduce HP while despair adds the Inferior or Inaccurate qualty.

I think you maybe right, maybe 5 purple should be the sticking point for difficulty, if a mechanic can roll that then go for that lightsaber, and the chance that it wouldn't be a large hunk of garbage with a generator backpack just to keep it going is slim. So then a lightsaber is 5 purples, and probably a setback or two because they are not a jedi, and there is no instruction manual for something like that. I guess I have to put the things in my brain down, I would scrap the difficulty decrease for the mechanic as well as the schematic, instead the schematic would give a blue dice like the inventor skill does. I do use the rules for the time spent decrease I don't want to change to much, I do have a PC that has augmented himself(cybernetically), and he wants to craft, but I should also consider people of lower starting points. All in all I like your suggestion, I will write some code to crunch this and test it, if it works out fairly and feels easy enough then I think it's the best option. Also just because I have to the rarity still works in your example, the YT-1300 is more like a standard explorer where the HWK-290 is a imported, thus the HWK-290 is harder to find parts and more expensive to get those parts, plus less brains in the mechanical think tank, so repairing is harder as the rarity would show. But I think the only rarity I will use is the table with the every two steps is a difficulty.

Would you make the pc roll to scrap the item? Maybe against the difficulty table, then if they succeed they get a schematic?

Last thing, 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.