Exalted 3ed: Solar Craft & What To Get
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
Ok, so I've been digging through the Crafting system, trying to get a feel for it, and to try and figure out what the bare minimums you need for stuff are. Its been interesting, and like most things in Ex3, a mix of good and bad.
I'm going to assume most people have gone over the basic system: crafting stuff gives you craft XP of one of three flavors, that you can put towards crafting the next tier of stuff. This happens when you meet a set of objectives after you finish a project. When your project causes another character to gain or strengthen an intimacy toward you, when you gain from the end of your project (you get payed, or you get a new Merit like Allies or Contacts) or when its inline with one of your Intimacies, you get a set amount. These rewards do stack, and probably account for most of your craft xp gain through the story. That is particularly true at the silver xp level, where you can rack up it pretty fast by virtue of running a business. Gold takes longer to build up, by virtue of you being limited to three project slots at once (these don't apply to silver XP generating minor projects, and you by temp ones for a project out of silver xp) but given even the longest of these cap out at a week, so it will build up fairly fast if you can craft regularly. Well, provided your not doing a big project (oh thank god, their are actually different rules for making bigger scale stuff this time round). Controls for materials to craft with are pretty firmly in the STs hand, which given how variable such things can be is probably for the best, if a bit annoying.
Anyways, that's the mortal end of the spectrum. As an Exalt you can probably just ace past that without anything more then an Excellency, even if you are a bit unoptimized, and you'll probably only bother with excellencies for the high quality bonuses to finishing your objective. How much Craft XP is largely going to depend on how much crafting time you get (or materials, with charms) but odds are good that if you put in some effort (read, tell your ST your crafting during downtime) you'll be able to rake in enough to make the end of story bonuses look pretty small.
Where this starts getting complicates is Artifact crafting, or the big thing everyone wants to do with crafting (unless you want to make manses, that's in here to). I won't go through all the requirements, but a few thing jumped out at me. The first is your capped by your mundane crafting skills in addition to your skill in Craft (Artifacts). You want to forge a daiklave, you need to know how to forge a sword. This isn't to big a deal for Solars, who have some good charms to mitigate the XP sink problem (I'll talk about it when I get to charms) but I'm somewhat wary for what this means for Sidereal and Dragon Blooded crafters. Mortals, well mortal don't get to craft artifacts (and without magic couldn't break the difficulties even if they could). Still, the requirements are less strict then 2e, where you needed everything in 3e and three Attributes maxed out.
Speaking of, there is no longer a set Attribute for craft. I assume it runs off what fits best from your stunt. I'm a bit of a mixed mind of this. On one hand, it makes optimization tricky. On the other you can actually play a Strength based blacksmith now. Intelligence still seems like the good all round choice, though I have no idea what you would use Appearance + Craft for.
Well, moving on, you need (Artifact Rating) gxp (gold xp) to setup a slot for you to make your artifact. Then you need to spend a set time period assembling your artifact, dependent on its rating. Only after that do you roll to finish. Each roll costs 10gxp, and is made at difficulty 5. All successes go into a pool, and when that pool hits a set number you're done. But you can only make six rolls. If you don't hit the goal number of successes by that pint, your project fails and you loose all craft xp put into it. Thankfully, there is no set interval, so you can walk away from a project for a bit, level a few traits, get more gxp and come back to it when you are better.
This is the part that will trip people up, IMHO. You need to budget out what your going to need, particularly at the higher level projects, or risk burning through a great deal of craft XP for no gain. You can't count on your Excellency to carry you through like you can for other sub systems. Ergo your number one priority in crafting is to get these numbers up, and I'll go over what charms do that when I get to charms. For now, lets just look at how many successes per interval you need for a given level of artifact:
Artifact 2: 30 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 5 successes. Assuming you have an optimized pool (11 dice pre-charms, and 10 from Excellencies) you can pull through on just Excellencies. Remember, the roll is made at difficulty 5, so you lose 4 successes from a successful roll. Ergo, your average Excellency backed roll will be 6 successes, not ten.
Artifact/Manse 3: 50 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 9 successes, or 13 successes rolled per roll.
Artifact 4: 75 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 13 successes, or 17 successes rolled per roll.
Artifact/Manse 5: 100 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 17 successes, or 21 successes rolled per roll.
Yes, the later levels of successes needed strongly resemble your total dice pool. Don't worry about this to much, as the charms for this are quite good, and maybe start with a smaller project instead on an Artifact 5.
One last thing before moving on: you get gxp based on how many intervals you have left. You want to finish these as fast as possible to conserve gxp, both for the 10 you spend per roll to finish and to increase your total reward at the end. Spending 62-65gxp per crafting roll is not what you want to be doing.
Artifact/Manse N/A are similar to the above, except using white xp (wxp) which is rather more precious and hard to come by. The successes per interval are:
Artifact/Manse N/A: 200 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 34 successes, or 39 successes rolled per roll.
Yeah. You actually can do this at chargen, but its a lot of charms. I also doubt your going to have the 50-60wxp you need to finish the project (10wxp per roll to finish, and your probably going to need them all). Better to make regular artifacts for a while, and have a good stock of craft xp (and building up your personal power) before taking a stab at N/A stuff.
So without further ado, to charms. Oh god, there are so many. The good news is, at least off the start most of these are superfluous. A lot of them are based around letting you craft more (either by giving you more craft xp or dropping craft xp costs). These are great, once you've gotten going. But if you can't finish your projects, then all the saved costs are going to mean jack shit. There are few I'd probably recommend to any crafter, but for now lets skip everything else and jump ahead to the Power Craft Charms (Craft is big enough its subdivided into sub categories: Efficiency, Momentum, Repairing and Reforging, and Power. They basically do what they say on the tin).
The Power Charms are what people would term 'excellency like', in that they revolve around making your rolls better. Despite probably being the most important craft charms, these are the last section, and peoples eyes are probably glazing over by the time they get to them. That said, this is where you make sure your project succeeds, and you aren't throwing potential down the drain. Its base charm is Flawless Handiwork Method (FHM), which is a 10s reroller. Or in other words, get successes from 10s, reroll them to see if you get more successes. It has a Craft 3 repurchase to also reroll 6s. That come out to, on average, (# of dice rolled * 0.617), so 61% of your roll. So on 21 dice (full burn excellency) it come out to 12.957 successes. You can pretty safely round that to 13, so that will probably cover an Artifact 3.
The next Charm your probably looking at is Supreme Masterwork Focus, which is Crafts Doubles Rule adder. Baseline Double 9s to roll, jumping your successes to around 74% of your roll, assuming you also enhance it with FHM. That gets you around 15.5 successes on your rolls. This does not affect Artifacts though, you need to repurchase for Double 8s to do that, jumping your success rate to 86% of your roll. That give you around 18 sux on a roll, or enough to probably cover an Artifact 4. The last repurchase also affect legendary projects, and gets you Double 7s that boosts you to 99% (ok, 98.7, but whose counting) of your roll. At that point you may as well expect your roll in successes, which will probably cover your Artifact 5 projects. The two better versions do cost craft xp: Double 8s requires a gxp, and Double 7s requires a wxp. That said, this is probably the most powerful craft charm in terms of ramping up successes. Even better, SMF's prerequisite is FHM, so that covers your baseline needs fairly well.
Beyond that, the other main tree of the charms is good for covering if your rolls don't stick to average. Experiential Conjuring of True Void and Unbroken Image Focus both activate after a roll, adding successes and dice. They cost craft xp (Unbroken Image Focus in particular can get pricy fast), but they're good for making sure your project stays on budget. Essence-Forging Kata is basically Infinite Craft Mastery, but its only really going to be useful if your firing off lots of craft rolls in rapid succession (such as a big push to finish a project). Mind-Expanding Meditation allows you raise your dice caps by up to (Craft), paying 1sxp per dice added to the cap, and a single wxp. Its probably the most generally useful of the bunch, given that it means more dice to feed into the SMF/FHM combo, helping boost the probability curve up and more solidly in your favor. First Movement of the Demiurge enhances Experiential Conjuring of True Void, and its a bit of a niche effect, given it only effects rolls made by its prerequisite. That and its mechanic is a bit of pain to use. The only reason I can think of to grab this is it leads into Divine Inspiration Technique and Holistic Miracle Understanding. Or as I call them, the dice exploders.
Going to be honest: unless your crafting N/A stuff, you don't need the die exploders. They're also kinda a pain to use, after all the other rerollers. That said, if your making N/A stuff, this is where you get the successes, and they are potent in their own right. Divine Inspiration Technique works passively: every 3 successes you roll, you add one non-charm die. If your looking at what full power SMF/FHM do to your success pool and paling a little, then you are wise. Assuming full Excellency burn with Mind-Expanding Meditation, you get 26 successes on average. That means eight non-charm dice, all subject to the same modifiers as the main roll (yes, that means the rerollers). Including the generating more none charm dice for every 3 successes. So it goes, roughly: 8 dice -> 8 success -> 2 dice -> 2sucesses. Another 10 successes to your existent 26, giving you a total of 36. Don't take that as gospel, as it spike a good bit higher with good rolls. Assuming the averages given here though, it put you 3 successes short of the 39 a roll you need for Artifact N/A.
This is where Holistic Miracle Understanding comes in. It enhances Divine Inspiration Technique: every time the dice generated by DIT come up with 3 successes, it adds 3 more dice to the next pool. This only triggers once, but it enough to prolong things. From the prior example: 8 dice -> 8 success -> 5 dice -> 5 successes -> 4 dice -> 4 successes -> 4 dice -> etc. And yes, that does look like an infinite dice loop, but probabilities used as a general rule break down a bit at lower numbers, so eventually it winds down and dies. It makes it tricky to calculate how long it will last, but it will probably push you over the 39 successes a roll you need for Artifact N/A.
Only a few charms left now. Inspiration-Renewing Vision just makes a roll not count towards the total of six rolls you can make towards finishing an artifact, effectively giving you an extra roll worth of successes. That drops the number of successes per roll you need for a N/A to 29, which makes it more manageable. You can only pull this once a story, unless you finish a crafting project with a goal number of 50+ without it (totally doable). Horizon-Unveiling Insight just plain bumps the number of rolls from 6 to 7 for everything. So you either get the 29 per roll for a N/A (less for other projects) or drop it 25 if used in conjunction with its prerequisite. I'd personally recommend getting these over the die exploders, they're a lot less of a pain to use, they both give roughly equal utility for finishing legendary projects, and the prequisites for Inspiration-Renewing Vision are better then for HMU.
The last two charms are Triumph-Forging Eye and Bright-Forging Prana. These are actually early charms in the tree, but I didn't know when to talk about them, as their kinda outsiders. Triumph-Forging Eye is your boilerplate 'once a week have a freebie excellency'. Which, meh. Craft is generally a down time ability, so your use for freebie excellencies are limited. Its a bit niche, as a result. Bright-Forging Prana, on the other hand, is awesome. It give you three free charms, that disregard Essence prerequites, to apply to a single project, once per story. This is great when your pushing at your one big project, since you can tweak what you need from what you haven't bought yet (and given how big Craft is, that will be a lot). It also means you don't need to buy the die exploders: you can just load them up on one project you really need done, and not have to deal with them the rest of the time.
So what does this all look like put together? Here's a run through I did with basically all the power charms:
For those not wanting to parse through that, it spat out 61 successes, all said and done, or 78 if you pumped it up using 16s/g/wxp. That's a good roll, looking through the numbers, but it not unreasonably good either.
OK, I've gone on long enough, and the theory crafters aside, most of you probably just want to know 'what do I need to be good at Craft at chargen?' Flawless Handiwork Method, both repurchases, are pretty much a must, given their general utility. You probably won't need Supreme Masterwork Focus and its repurchases right off the bat, as your still building craft XP, but you will want all its repurchases once you start pushing for Artifacts 3+. Bright-Forging Prana is a good way to cover your early bases for your first big crafting project.
Aside from the 'yes this project will actually finish' of the Power tree, you want Craftsman Needs No Tools and Thousand-Forge Hands. These are your speed boosters. More speed, means more craft projects done, which means more craft xp. Its also how you get your big craft projects done in a game friendly time. Very few games will let you spend ten years on one project (the unassisted time for N/A projects!) You also want the Arete-Shifting Prana, which lets you apply your crafts to a conceptually linked Craft, letting you do things like 'I can use Craft(Cooking) to do Craft(Explosives)'. This helps early one when your short on crafts, and it links to Supreme Celestial Focus, which lets you spend gxp to buy Crafts. This is pretty critical, as far as expanding your Crafts without dropping yourself into a inescapable xp sink. Even better, if you can build up to buying Supreme Perfection of Craft (about 5 charm purchases) which gives craft xp/day (one gxp and (essence+2)sxp) based on how many Craft abilities you have rated at five, you can make a craft xp loop to keep boosting your craft ratings.
And yeah. That's it. Pretty much everything else is gravy, pick what you want based on your characters style, and just make sure your Power Craft charms keep pace with what your trying to make. Or in other words, no trying Legendary projects until you've bought most of that tree.
I'll talk more about some of my favorite crafting charms are, and what I think the stinkers of the tree are (beyond Dual Magus Prana, that one has been covered in depth) later, since this is post is long enough as is, and I need sleep. Apologies for any grammar, spelling or math errors.
Have at it people.
I'm going to assume most people have gone over the basic system: crafting stuff gives you craft XP of one of three flavors, that you can put towards crafting the next tier of stuff. This happens when you meet a set of objectives after you finish a project. When your project causes another character to gain or strengthen an intimacy toward you, when you gain from the end of your project (you get payed, or you get a new Merit like Allies or Contacts) or when its inline with one of your Intimacies, you get a set amount. These rewards do stack, and probably account for most of your craft xp gain through the story. That is particularly true at the silver xp level, where you can rack up it pretty fast by virtue of running a business. Gold takes longer to build up, by virtue of you being limited to three project slots at once (these don't apply to silver XP generating minor projects, and you by temp ones for a project out of silver xp) but given even the longest of these cap out at a week, so it will build up fairly fast if you can craft regularly. Well, provided your not doing a big project (oh thank god, their are actually different rules for making bigger scale stuff this time round). Controls for materials to craft with are pretty firmly in the STs hand, which given how variable such things can be is probably for the best, if a bit annoying.
Anyways, that's the mortal end of the spectrum. As an Exalt you can probably just ace past that without anything more then an Excellency, even if you are a bit unoptimized, and you'll probably only bother with excellencies for the high quality bonuses to finishing your objective. How much Craft XP is largely going to depend on how much crafting time you get (or materials, with charms) but odds are good that if you put in some effort (read, tell your ST your crafting during downtime) you'll be able to rake in enough to make the end of story bonuses look pretty small.
Where this starts getting complicates is Artifact crafting, or the big thing everyone wants to do with crafting (unless you want to make manses, that's in here to). I won't go through all the requirements, but a few thing jumped out at me. The first is your capped by your mundane crafting skills in addition to your skill in Craft (Artifacts). You want to forge a daiklave, you need to know how to forge a sword. This isn't to big a deal for Solars, who have some good charms to mitigate the XP sink problem (I'll talk about it when I get to charms) but I'm somewhat wary for what this means for Sidereal and Dragon Blooded crafters. Mortals, well mortal don't get to craft artifacts (and without magic couldn't break the difficulties even if they could). Still, the requirements are less strict then 2e, where you needed everything in 3e and three Attributes maxed out.
Speaking of, there is no longer a set Attribute for craft. I assume it runs off what fits best from your stunt. I'm a bit of a mixed mind of this. On one hand, it makes optimization tricky. On the other you can actually play a Strength based blacksmith now. Intelligence still seems like the good all round choice, though I have no idea what you would use Appearance + Craft for.
Well, moving on, you need (Artifact Rating) gxp (gold xp) to setup a slot for you to make your artifact. Then you need to spend a set time period assembling your artifact, dependent on its rating. Only after that do you roll to finish. Each roll costs 10gxp, and is made at difficulty 5. All successes go into a pool, and when that pool hits a set number you're done. But you can only make six rolls. If you don't hit the goal number of successes by that pint, your project fails and you loose all craft xp put into it. Thankfully, there is no set interval, so you can walk away from a project for a bit, level a few traits, get more gxp and come back to it when you are better.
This is the part that will trip people up, IMHO. You need to budget out what your going to need, particularly at the higher level projects, or risk burning through a great deal of craft XP for no gain. You can't count on your Excellency to carry you through like you can for other sub systems. Ergo your number one priority in crafting is to get these numbers up, and I'll go over what charms do that when I get to charms. For now, lets just look at how many successes per interval you need for a given level of artifact:
Artifact 2: 30 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 5 successes. Assuming you have an optimized pool (11 dice pre-charms, and 10 from Excellencies) you can pull through on just Excellencies. Remember, the roll is made at difficulty 5, so you lose 4 successes from a successful roll. Ergo, your average Excellency backed roll will be 6 successes, not ten.
Artifact/Manse 3: 50 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 9 successes, or 13 successes rolled per roll.
Artifact 4: 75 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 13 successes, or 17 successes rolled per roll.
Artifact/Manse 5: 100 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 17 successes, or 21 successes rolled per roll.
Yes, the later levels of successes needed strongly resemble your total dice pool. Don't worry about this to much, as the charms for this are quite good, and maybe start with a smaller project instead on an Artifact 5.
One last thing before moving on: you get gxp based on how many intervals you have left. You want to finish these as fast as possible to conserve gxp, both for the 10 you spend per roll to finish and to increase your total reward at the end. Spending 62-65gxp per crafting roll is not what you want to be doing.
Artifact/Manse N/A are similar to the above, except using white xp (wxp) which is rather more precious and hard to come by. The successes per interval are:
Artifact/Manse N/A: 200 successes total. Over six intervals, you need an average of 34 successes, or 39 successes rolled per roll.
Yeah. You actually can do this at chargen, but its a lot of charms. I also doubt your going to have the 50-60wxp you need to finish the project (10wxp per roll to finish, and your probably going to need them all). Better to make regular artifacts for a while, and have a good stock of craft xp (and building up your personal power) before taking a stab at N/A stuff.
So without further ado, to charms. Oh god, there are so many. The good news is, at least off the start most of these are superfluous. A lot of them are based around letting you craft more (either by giving you more craft xp or dropping craft xp costs). These are great, once you've gotten going. But if you can't finish your projects, then all the saved costs are going to mean jack shit. There are few I'd probably recommend to any crafter, but for now lets skip everything else and jump ahead to the Power Craft Charms (Craft is big enough its subdivided into sub categories: Efficiency, Momentum, Repairing and Reforging, and Power. They basically do what they say on the tin).
The Power Charms are what people would term 'excellency like', in that they revolve around making your rolls better. Despite probably being the most important craft charms, these are the last section, and peoples eyes are probably glazing over by the time they get to them. That said, this is where you make sure your project succeeds, and you aren't throwing potential down the drain. Its base charm is Flawless Handiwork Method (FHM), which is a 10s reroller. Or in other words, get successes from 10s, reroll them to see if you get more successes. It has a Craft 3 repurchase to also reroll 6s. That come out to, on average, (# of dice rolled * 0.617), so 61% of your roll. So on 21 dice (full burn excellency) it come out to 12.957 successes. You can pretty safely round that to 13, so that will probably cover an Artifact 3.
The next Charm your probably looking at is Supreme Masterwork Focus, which is Crafts Doubles Rule adder. Baseline Double 9s to roll, jumping your successes to around 74% of your roll, assuming you also enhance it with FHM. That gets you around 15.5 successes on your rolls. This does not affect Artifacts though, you need to repurchase for Double 8s to do that, jumping your success rate to 86% of your roll. That give you around 18 sux on a roll, or enough to probably cover an Artifact 4. The last repurchase also affect legendary projects, and gets you Double 7s that boosts you to 99% (ok, 98.7, but whose counting) of your roll. At that point you may as well expect your roll in successes, which will probably cover your Artifact 5 projects. The two better versions do cost craft xp: Double 8s requires a gxp, and Double 7s requires a wxp. That said, this is probably the most powerful craft charm in terms of ramping up successes. Even better, SMF's prerequisite is FHM, so that covers your baseline needs fairly well.
Beyond that, the other main tree of the charms is good for covering if your rolls don't stick to average. Experiential Conjuring of True Void and Unbroken Image Focus both activate after a roll, adding successes and dice. They cost craft xp (Unbroken Image Focus in particular can get pricy fast), but they're good for making sure your project stays on budget. Essence-Forging Kata is basically Infinite Craft Mastery, but its only really going to be useful if your firing off lots of craft rolls in rapid succession (such as a big push to finish a project). Mind-Expanding Meditation allows you raise your dice caps by up to (Craft), paying 1sxp per dice added to the cap, and a single wxp. Its probably the most generally useful of the bunch, given that it means more dice to feed into the SMF/FHM combo, helping boost the probability curve up and more solidly in your favor. First Movement of the Demiurge enhances Experiential Conjuring of True Void, and its a bit of a niche effect, given it only effects rolls made by its prerequisite. That and its mechanic is a bit of pain to use. The only reason I can think of to grab this is it leads into Divine Inspiration Technique and Holistic Miracle Understanding. Or as I call them, the dice exploders.
Going to be honest: unless your crafting N/A stuff, you don't need the die exploders. They're also kinda a pain to use, after all the other rerollers. That said, if your making N/A stuff, this is where you get the successes, and they are potent in their own right. Divine Inspiration Technique works passively: every 3 successes you roll, you add one non-charm die. If your looking at what full power SMF/FHM do to your success pool and paling a little, then you are wise. Assuming full Excellency burn with Mind-Expanding Meditation, you get 26 successes on average. That means eight non-charm dice, all subject to the same modifiers as the main roll (yes, that means the rerollers). Including the generating more none charm dice for every 3 successes. So it goes, roughly: 8 dice -> 8 success -> 2 dice -> 2sucesses. Another 10 successes to your existent 26, giving you a total of 36. Don't take that as gospel, as it spike a good bit higher with good rolls. Assuming the averages given here though, it put you 3 successes short of the 39 a roll you need for Artifact N/A.
This is where Holistic Miracle Understanding comes in. It enhances Divine Inspiration Technique: every time the dice generated by DIT come up with 3 successes, it adds 3 more dice to the next pool. This only triggers once, but it enough to prolong things. From the prior example: 8 dice -> 8 success -> 5 dice -> 5 successes -> 4 dice -> 4 successes -> 4 dice -> etc. And yes, that does look like an infinite dice loop, but probabilities used as a general rule break down a bit at lower numbers, so eventually it winds down and dies. It makes it tricky to calculate how long it will last, but it will probably push you over the 39 successes a roll you need for Artifact N/A.
Only a few charms left now. Inspiration-Renewing Vision just makes a roll not count towards the total of six rolls you can make towards finishing an artifact, effectively giving you an extra roll worth of successes. That drops the number of successes per roll you need for a N/A to 29, which makes it more manageable. You can only pull this once a story, unless you finish a crafting project with a goal number of 50+ without it (totally doable). Horizon-Unveiling Insight just plain bumps the number of rolls from 6 to 7 for everything. So you either get the 29 per roll for a N/A (less for other projects) or drop it 25 if used in conjunction with its prerequisite. I'd personally recommend getting these over the die exploders, they're a lot less of a pain to use, they both give roughly equal utility for finishing legendary projects, and the prequisites for Inspiration-Renewing Vision are better then for HMU.
The last two charms are Triumph-Forging Eye and Bright-Forging Prana. These are actually early charms in the tree, but I didn't know when to talk about them, as their kinda outsiders. Triumph-Forging Eye is your boilerplate 'once a week have a freebie excellency'. Which, meh. Craft is generally a down time ability, so your use for freebie excellencies are limited. Its a bit niche, as a result. Bright-Forging Prana, on the other hand, is awesome. It give you three free charms, that disregard Essence prerequites, to apply to a single project, once per story. This is great when your pushing at your one big project, since you can tweak what you need from what you haven't bought yet (and given how big Craft is, that will be a lot). It also means you don't need to buy the die exploders: you can just load them up on one project you really need done, and not have to deal with them the rest of the time.
So what does this all look like put together? Here's a run through I did with basically all the power charms:
Intial Pool: 11
Excellencies: 10, 10m
Mind-Expanding Meditation: 5, 5sxp, 1wxp
26 base dice:
10 10 10 10 10 9 9 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1
13 sux before any doubles - important for Unbroken Image Focus
Supreme Masterwork Focus (2m,1wxp): double 7s = 26 sux
Flawless Handiwork Method (6m): reroll sixes and tens till they fail to appear
10s: 5, 6s: 1 = 6 rerolled dice
10 6 5 4 2 2
+2 sux before any doubles = 15
Double 7s = +4 sux = 30 total
10s: 1, 6s: 1 = 2 rerolled dice
9 6
+1 sux before any doubles = 16
Double 7s = +2 sux = 32 total
10s: 0, 6s: 1 = 1 rerolled dice
5
Total Sux from roll 8
Divine Inspiration Technique: 1 non-charm die/3sux. 32/3= 10 dice
10 9 7 5 4 4 4 3 2 2
+3 sux before any doubles = 19
Double 7s = +6 sux = 38 total
10s: 1, 6s: 0 = 1 rerolled dice
8
+1 sux before any doubles = 20
Double 7s = +2 sux = 40 total
Total Sux from roll 8
Divine Inspiration Technique: 1 non-charm die/3sux. 8/3= 2 dice
Holistic Miracle Understanding: If prior roll generated +3 sux, +3 dice
5 die pool
9 7 7 4 3
+3 sux before any doubles = 23
Double 7s = +6 sux = 46 total
10s: 0, 6s: 0 = 0 rerolled dice
Total Sux from roll 4
Divine Inspiration Technique: 1 non-charm die/3sux. 3/3= 1 dice
Holistic Miracle Understanding: If prior roll generated +3 sux, +3 dice
4 die pool
9 6 3 2
+1 sux before any doubles = 24
Double 7s = +2 sux = 48 total
10s: 0, 6s: 1 = 1 rerolled dice
3
Total Sux from roll 1
Experiential Conjuring of True Void: 6, 4m, 4s/g/wxp
+1sux (49), +6 non-charm dice
6 dice pool
9 9 9 8 6 6
+4 sux before any doubles = 28
Double 7s = +8 sux = 57 total
First Movement of the Demiurge, for every three of a kind successes (ex: three sevens, three eights, etc.), convert a failure to a ten.
9 9 9 8 6 [6]
10 9 9 9 8 6
+1 sux before any doubles = 29
Double 7s = +2 sux = 59 total
10s: 1, 6s: 1 = 2 rerolled dice
5 1
Total Sux from roll 5
Divine Inspiration Technique: 1 non-charm die/3sux. 5/3= 1 dice
9
+1 sux before any doubles = 30
Double 7s = +2 sux = 61 total
9 9 9 [9] 8 5 1
First Movement of the Demiurge does not trigger agian
Total Sux from roll 1
Unbroken Image Focus (3m + 1s/g/wxp per success): Take the number of sux on the intial roll (taking this to mean before the non-charm dice insanity, so 16). Can add Essence+Sux non-charm successes to the final total. 17 in this case, costing 17s/g/wxp.
61 successes total for 22m, 1wp, 5sxp, 2wxp, 4s/g/wxp. If Unbroken Image Focus is used, 25m, 1wp, 5sxp, 2wxp, 21s/g/wxp for 78 successes
Excellencies: 10, 10m
Mind-Expanding Meditation: 5, 5sxp, 1wxp
26 base dice:
10 10 10 10 10 9 9 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1
13 sux before any doubles - important for Unbroken Image Focus
Supreme Masterwork Focus (2m,1wxp): double 7s = 26 sux
Flawless Handiwork Method (6m): reroll sixes and tens till they fail to appear
10s: 5, 6s: 1 = 6 rerolled dice
10 6 5 4 2 2
+2 sux before any doubles = 15
Double 7s = +4 sux = 30 total
10s: 1, 6s: 1 = 2 rerolled dice
9 6
+1 sux before any doubles = 16
Double 7s = +2 sux = 32 total
10s: 0, 6s: 1 = 1 rerolled dice
5
Total Sux from roll 8
Divine Inspiration Technique: 1 non-charm die/3sux. 32/3= 10 dice
10 9 7 5 4 4 4 3 2 2
+3 sux before any doubles = 19
Double 7s = +6 sux = 38 total
10s: 1, 6s: 0 = 1 rerolled dice
8
+1 sux before any doubles = 20
Double 7s = +2 sux = 40 total
Total Sux from roll 8
Divine Inspiration Technique: 1 non-charm die/3sux. 8/3= 2 dice
Holistic Miracle Understanding: If prior roll generated +3 sux, +3 dice
5 die pool
9 7 7 4 3
+3 sux before any doubles = 23
Double 7s = +6 sux = 46 total
10s: 0, 6s: 0 = 0 rerolled dice
Total Sux from roll 4
Divine Inspiration Technique: 1 non-charm die/3sux. 3/3= 1 dice
Holistic Miracle Understanding: If prior roll generated +3 sux, +3 dice
4 die pool
9 6 3 2
+1 sux before any doubles = 24
Double 7s = +2 sux = 48 total
10s: 0, 6s: 1 = 1 rerolled dice
3
Total Sux from roll 1
Experiential Conjuring of True Void: 6, 4m, 4s/g/wxp
+1sux (49), +6 non-charm dice
6 dice pool
9 9 9 8 6 6
+4 sux before any doubles = 28
Double 7s = +8 sux = 57 total
First Movement of the Demiurge, for every three of a kind successes (ex: three sevens, three eights, etc.), convert a failure to a ten.
9 9 9 8 6 [6]
10 9 9 9 8 6
+1 sux before any doubles = 29
Double 7s = +2 sux = 59 total
10s: 1, 6s: 1 = 2 rerolled dice
5 1
Total Sux from roll 5
Divine Inspiration Technique: 1 non-charm die/3sux. 5/3= 1 dice
9
+1 sux before any doubles = 30
Double 7s = +2 sux = 61 total
9 9 9 [9] 8 5 1
First Movement of the Demiurge does not trigger agian
Total Sux from roll 1
Unbroken Image Focus (3m + 1s/g/wxp per success): Take the number of sux on the intial roll (taking this to mean before the non-charm dice insanity, so 16). Can add Essence+Sux non-charm successes to the final total. 17 in this case, costing 17s/g/wxp.
61 successes total for 22m, 1wp, 5sxp, 2wxp, 4s/g/wxp. If Unbroken Image Focus is used, 25m, 1wp, 5sxp, 2wxp, 21s/g/wxp for 78 successes
OK, I've gone on long enough, and the theory crafters aside, most of you probably just want to know 'what do I need to be good at Craft at chargen?' Flawless Handiwork Method, both repurchases, are pretty much a must, given their general utility. You probably won't need Supreme Masterwork Focus and its repurchases right off the bat, as your still building craft XP, but you will want all its repurchases once you start pushing for Artifacts 3+. Bright-Forging Prana is a good way to cover your early bases for your first big crafting project.
Aside from the 'yes this project will actually finish' of the Power tree, you want Craftsman Needs No Tools and Thousand-Forge Hands. These are your speed boosters. More speed, means more craft projects done, which means more craft xp. Its also how you get your big craft projects done in a game friendly time. Very few games will let you spend ten years on one project (the unassisted time for N/A projects!) You also want the Arete-Shifting Prana, which lets you apply your crafts to a conceptually linked Craft, letting you do things like 'I can use Craft(Cooking) to do Craft(Explosives)'. This helps early one when your short on crafts, and it links to Supreme Celestial Focus, which lets you spend gxp to buy Crafts. This is pretty critical, as far as expanding your Crafts without dropping yourself into a inescapable xp sink. Even better, if you can build up to buying Supreme Perfection of Craft (about 5 charm purchases) which gives craft xp/day (one gxp and (essence+2)sxp) based on how many Craft abilities you have rated at five, you can make a craft xp loop to keep boosting your craft ratings.
And yeah. That's it. Pretty much everything else is gravy, pick what you want based on your characters style, and just make sure your Power Craft charms keep pace with what your trying to make. Or in other words, no trying Legendary projects until you've bought most of that tree.
I'll talk more about some of my favorite crafting charms are, and what I think the stinkers of the tree are (beyond Dual Magus Prana, that one has been covered in depth) later, since this is post is long enough as is, and I need sleep. Apologies for any grammar, spelling or math errors.
Have at it people.
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