Item degradation and repairing - a simple house rule

[Glorelendil]

Huh. I guess I have been thinking about how this rule would have worked in the games I'm in and my reaction was "God we would have spent every FP repairing..."

Hardly so. Even if you are a Woodman with 0 points in Craft and who never spends a Fellowship Phase home, you can live with a -1 to your Protection rolls or Injury rating without worrying too much.

Of course, with some points in Craft, you wouldn't have the problem at all. And personally I like looking after my equipment, as a player.

When I first saw the Artificer of Eregion Virtue in Rivendell, for example, I loved it. Finally a rule for rightfully upgrading your equipment thanks to your skills, rather than to your merits.

Oh, then I'm misunderstanding part of it. I thought that if you are using Craft it's an undertaking. Not correct?

[Michebugio]

Oh, then I'm misunderstanding part of it. I thought that if you are using Craft it's an undertaking. Not correct?

It's all written in the first post:

The characters have the following options to repair or substitute broken equipment:

1) With a Frugal or Martial Standard of Living, the character may have one piece of equipment completely repaired or substituted during his Fellowship Phase, but only if he is spending the Fellowship Phase within his Culture.
With a Prosperous Standard of Living, the character may have one piece of equipment completely repaired or substituted during his Fellowship Phase. The piece of equipment may be also that of another Companion instead, if he wishes so.
With a Rich Standard of Living, the character may have up to two pieces of equipment completely repaired or substituted during his Fellowship Phase. One or both of the pieces of equipment may be also those of another Companion instead, if he wishes so.

2) As a Fellowship Phase Undertaking, the character may attempt to repair additional equipment with a Craft test (TN 14). On a normal success, he removes 2 points of penalties from weapons and armors, or he repairs a shield. On a Great success the penalties removed increase to 4 points, and on an Extraordinary success the penalties removed amount to 6 points. He can distribute these points as he wishes among his items (for example, if he obtained a Great success, he can remove 3 points of penalties from his weapons, and 1 point of penalty from his helm).

3) During the Adventuring Phase, given enough time and appropriate materials a character may attempt to jury-rig his damaged equipment with a Craft roll. This has the same effects as described above, but it is made against TN 18 and it removes half the penalties (1 point with a normal success, 2 points with a Great success and 3 points with an Extraordinary success).

The repair based on the Standard of Living is free and doesn't require an Undertaking.

[Glorelendil]

Ok, but if you don't have the appropriate Standard of Living then you end up spending your Fellowship Phase crafting, instead of, say, healing Shadow corruption.

[Deadmanwalking]

Theoretically, this is all very true. In practice... well, maybe it's just my group, but after the whole Tales from the Wilderland campaign, we almost NEVER rolled Craft, except for building barricades in The Crossings of Celduin.

My group are also doing TfW, mixed in with DoM (shh, no spoilers! I'm really enjoying being surprised), and did The Marsh Bell as our opening adventure. We're at slightly less than 40xp at the moment, so still pretty early on I suppose.

And, as mentioned, we've used Craft a lot. I'll go into some reasons why I think that might be below.

Ok, maybe if we had a Hobbit or a Dwarf we could have seen it a bit more, to remove Shadow, but the general impression (mine and of my players) was that Craft is almost a dump ability.

Uh...Hobbits don't start with Craft. That said, I think this fact is rather key, and biasing you to some degree.

Because of how TOR is designed, only Travel, Awareness, and the Survival skills are really essential for a group. Almost any other single skill can be worked around...but that doesn't make those skills useless, just able to be worked around.

On the other hand, also because of the way TOR is designed, it really benefits players to find ways to use the skills they actually have. So...our group started with two Dwarves (one player dropped out and we're down to one now). Knowing that their characters were master craftsmen, those players (okay, mostly the one who stuck around...the guy who left wasn't big on non-combat stuff) looked for opportunities to use their Craft skills and came up with quite a few (every one of the examples in my first post got done with Craft at least once...most couldn't have been done otherwise for one reason or another).

You can always do the stuff using Traits and Specialties (Smith-craft, Stone-craft, Woodwright and Burglary): every character has 2 of these, so an entire Fellowship can almost always do any artisanship-related task without even rolling.

Sure...but if you do that, you're investing in specialties that won't be used for Advancement points (at least somewhat), and are definitely investing them in compensating for the party lacking Craft.

And besides you need either a lot of players or everyone taking two Craft-related specialties to get everything. The group I'm in, our Dwarf has Smith-craft, our Elf Fire-making, our Hobbit Burglary, and my Beorning Cooking (which is...rather niche). That's it for Craft related specialties in the PC group (unless you count Leechcraft)...and is an average of only slightly less than 1 per PC (there are 5 of us). How does that selection of abilities help repair a boat or build a barricade? Answer: It basically doesn't. Could our Elf have taken Woodrwright? Sure...but then he wouldn't have Elf-Lore (which has been handy a time or three).

The Hobbit, Beorning, and Woodman cultures don't even include any Craft related specialties (other than Cooking and Tunneling...which are both cool for other things, but very niche as Craft replacements). That's half the corebook cultures who can't really help with this trick (well, beyond someone grabbing Burglary)...and one of the ones who can is Dwarves, who get a good rating in Craft for free.

So...basically, you need a lot of Bardings, Men of the Lake, and Elves to replace the Crafts skill entirely with specialties. And even then, you don't get Stone-craft (since only Dwarves get that), and don't get to spend those specialties on other stuff.

Again, maybe it's just my group. It's quite surprising for me that you didn't have the same impression. Since stuff doesn't get broken in TOR, it doesn't need repair, so... what should players repair then? Broken bridges, boats, barricades? Yes but this occurs so rarely... While there are some other abilities that really matter and that are used so often (think about Stealth, Travel, Athletics), Craft seems to be used just for trivial and secondary tasks that never impact the game in a deep way.

There's been at least a couple of times per adventure it's come up. A raft got built, a boat repaired, a barricade constructed...that sort of thing. It's also been used as a knowledge skill a few times to analyze architecture or weapons to determine how well made/likely to break they are.

It being the skill to make a fire quickly (like, say, in the midst of combat) has been especially relevant and useful...setting a fire is really handy when you're right next to spider webs with an army of spiders coming over them at you (the Elf was Wounded, Weary, and back at camp for that one), and having multiple people preparing torches is rather nice when attacked by a Wood-wight...

[Majestic]

Even in Tales from Wilderland, I haven't felt like Craft is a dump stat.

Warning: SPOILERS below:

It could be used to identify the 'Wolfbiter' artifact (p. 18).

It can identify Dindy's lock (p. 38).

It can be used in recovering the key (p. 40).

I think my players used it when they helped out the villagers of Stonyford (they aided them with their routines of life for a day or two to endear themselves and to generally assist them)

In Mountain Hall, a Dwarf can use it to give useful strategies for underground combat (p. 93).

It is used to free Walar (p. 99).

It is needed to repair the gates of Celduin (p. 128).

You use it to destroy the bridge (p. 128).

It is what is used to overcome the rusted Dwarvish mechanism (p. 152).

And those are just what I see with a quick eyeball scan (I don't have Tales on PDF).

Per the rules it is what a character possessing "skillful hands" is blessed with. So in addition to using it every time you prepare a meal, pick a lock, start a fire, or repair anything, it is also used for things like neutralizing poison, healing Shadow, or evaluating/appraising an item.

It's an important skill in Middle-earth, and I guess I just don't see it being a "dump stat".

A good example from TfW: when they brought back a piece of Wolfbiter to the Woodmen, the dwarf PC in my group offered to reforge the axe and include that piece. She could have used a trait, but she wanted to axe to be really good, so she rolled (an extraordinary success, btw).

In my game, our Dwarf did the exact same thing for a Woodman character (though I don't remember how well he rolled for the Craft to do that; I don't think it was anything spectacular).

[Glorelendil]

In Zedturtle's "Theft of the Moon" playtest Craft ended up playing a central role, even though it wasn't written into the adventure. I think I might have spent Hope on it, even.

[Michebugio]

Warning: SPOILERS below:

It could be used to identify the 'Wolfbiter' artifact (p. 18).

It can identify Dindy's lock (p. 38).

It can be used in recovering the key (p. 40).

I think my players used it when they helped out the villagers of Stonyford (they aided them with their routines of life for a day or two to endear themselves and to generally assist them)

In Mountain Hall, a Dwarf can use it to give useful strategies for underground combat (p. 93).

It is used to free Walar (p. 99).

It is needed to repair the gates of Celduin (p. 128).

You use it to destroy the bridge (p. 128).

It is what is used to overcome the rusted Dwarvish mechanism (p. 152).

And those are just what I see with a quick eyeball scan (I don't have Tales on PDF).

Thanks for the impressive summary, it's all true but the simple fact that my players rolled maybe a couple of the tasks listed and yet finished the campaign means that Craft had not a significant impact on the game... so yes, it's a nice skill that can be used for a lot of side-quests and entertaining sub-tasks, but in the end I feel it's just flavour added that can give an advantage or two, but otherwise it's just a mean for scoring Advancement points.

Moreover, all of those roll are game mechanics added specifically for the situations: except for healing from Corruption (only for Hobbits and Dwarves), there is no Adventuring mechanism described in the Loremaster's book that can benefit from a high Craft score, and sometimes I miss it.

[Deadmanwalking]

Thanks for the impressive summary, it's all true but the simple fact that my players rolled maybe a couple of the tasks listed and yet finished the campaign means that Craft had not a significant impact on the game... so yes, it's a nice skill that can be used for a lot of side-quests and entertaining sub-tasks, but in the end I feel it's just flavour added that can give an advantage or two, but otherwise it's just a mean for scoring Advancement points.

This goes back to my earlier statement: The same would be true of most skills the party lacked a good rating in.

TOR is just designed with a group not having every single skill in mind, so most tasks can be done with either other skills or appropriate specialties. Pretty close to always. You're acting like Crafts is unique in this respect, but it's a common trait. Only Athletics, Travel, Awareness, and the Survival skill group are really essential in and of themselves. Almost everything else can be done with at least two separate skills, or at least a skill and a specialty.

Awe? You can get away without it entirely via Courtesy and Battle. Persuade? Awe, Courtesy, and Riddle can do almost anything it can. Inspire? Song does just as well. And so on and so forth. Aside from the 6 skills listed above (only 1/3 of the skill list) almost everything can be replaced with something else.

Moreover, all of those roll are game mechanics added specifically for the situations: except for healing from Corruption (only for Hobbits and Dwarves), there is no Adventuring mechanism described in the Loremaster's book that can benefit from a high Craft score, and sometimes I miss it.

Huh? What do you mean only for Hobbits and Dwarves? Hobbits don't start with Craft and anyone can use it to Heal Corruption.

[Balou1917]

I also see CRAFT as a great answer to building shelters while in the joyrney phase. Also for storage of any kind. From racks to defenses to caches etc. All the way to buildings on a holding your character is involved with

[Rue]

In Zedturtle's "Theft of the Moon" playtest Craft ended up playing a central role, even though it wasn't written into the adventure. I think I might have spent Hope on it, even.

I believe you did, and it was totally worth it!