I have a player, he's an Outlaw Tech. He has scavenged garbage piles and destroyed droids for parts. He now wants to make a "Chainsaw Sword". This is a discussion we are having between sessions.

There are no rules I remember for making an entirely new weapon from scratch. Always one to say "yes, but..." to players, I said it would be a 3 Difficulty Mechanics check, would take 4-5 hours, and the finished product would be:

+2 Damage

Crit 4 Advantage

Sunder, Pierce 1 (he requested Sunder and Pierce 2)

Inferior Weapon

Totally breaks on a Despair.

I said all weapons he makes on his own will have the Inferior Quality (generate 1 Threat automatically and -1 damage). If he gets better material to work with perhaps he could make a better weapon than the above though, BUT if he makes 2 or 3 more weapons, then he unlocks:

WEAPON ARTISAN (custom skill, Intellect based) with 1 Rank already, and it's a career skill. Any weapons he makes with this new skill are not Inferior, and he can also use the skill to shop for parts instead of scavenge, and Triumphs or excessive Advantage make the created weapons Superior.

What do you guys think? He was actually quite disappointed. He wanted to use Mechanics and have the damage of the created weapon be based on how successful his roll was, possibly making something to rival a Vibrosaw (+4 Damage) with good scrap.

Is he too power hungry, or am I being a stingy GM? How would you have handled this question?

I'm sure down the line, a specific splatbook for Technician career, or maybe even in a random region-based splatbook there'll be more concrete guidelines for crafting/inventing things (I believe there's a few random talents as it is to make it easier when creating objects). But for now, what you propose seems fairly reasonable. If he got a triumph though, I'd consider either letting him choose - dropping the Inferior for that specific weapon, or decreasing the number of items he has to make until he gets your custom talent by 1 or 2.

In terms of what he wanted. I wouldn't allow it. Not unless he had a really difficult roll if it really was just scrap. To get something that rivals a 1,500 credit, and very powerful weapon, with just scrap would take more time, better tools, and actual materials.

It's admiral that you want to work with your players on things like this.

I think you might be leaning on the stingy side. If it were me, I would just reflavor a vibrosaw and be done with it. It has everything that a chain sword needs. You could tweak it just a little. Perhaps reduce the cumbersome rating by 1 in exchange for 3 threat to run out of ammo (power cells/gas/whatever), or worse yet for him, give it just cumbersome 3 but for 2 threat to do the same. 2 threat may be too low, but as a GM, that would be the last thing I would consider using threat for.

I don't think you need to make it that difficult to build, or that breakable. I'm sure that future desktop 3D printers would do the job.

I'd concentrate on making the weapon less effective. IMO it shouldn't be able to compare to a Vibrosword. I'd be OK with vicious, and more damage, but nothing else. Maybe add 2 Black for stealth.

It would take longer than the time frames you're talking about to design and build. However that is almost irrelevant when you consider how much time the players have when flying between stars. Just let him have a Version after every trip.

If you wanted to give an R&D flavor to the development, I'd make the first sword crappy and not tell him.

A miss would break it... Hard Mechanics to fix, until he builds another...

next one, miss by 2 breaks it...

version 3 despair breaks, and the chain wraps around and crits the player...

but version 4, would be solid.

The wookie in my group wanted to make brawl weapons. He took the base stats of the vibro sword and made them into "power fists." He just put mini flame thrower in one of them.

I love this idea. I might start implementing customs for stuff like this. Maybe one day make a starship. Haha.

Thanks for the replies guys. I like the idea of a Triumph removing the Inferior Quality.