Smithing System

In the world of Arvendon there are many smiths. Some hone their craft over centuries of a long, dedicated life. Others pass on their knowledge and techniques through a lineage of apprentices and journeymen. There is one thing all smiths have in common, however, from the lowliest campfire kiln used to make nails to the mighty magical smelters of a mountain’s heart capable of shaping adamantine, a smith needs a forge, a hammer, and an anvil. This rule system will help quantify how a character can take simple metal ingots, cords of wood and animal hides and turn them into useable, useful equipment for themselves and others. 

What is needed?  

  To craft weapons and armor you are going to need Smiths Tools, these are common items worth roughly 20 gold found all over the world usually sold as a kit. You will also need some materials, such as steel or iron ingots, and forge capable of working the materials you are intending to use. Lastly you will need a Design, which is a pattern, blueprint, or goal for you to work towards that will hopefully result in a useful finished product. 

How Does Smithing Work?  

  A smithing Creation is made by taking materials and Working them until they are finally ready to be Crafted. Each design has a required amount of Work Checks that must be successfully completed before the smith can make a final Craft Check that will determine if the creation is realized or turned into useless slag. Work and Craft checks are Smith’s Tools skill checks that use either your intelligence or your strength, whichever is higher. A smith may attempt up to 3 work checks per 8 hour period. There is no detriment to failing a work skill check aside from the lost time, as only successes count towards the item's completion. Once a design’s required work checks are fulfilled, the smith may attempt the final craft check at any time so long as they are near the appropriate forge with their smith’s tools. If they wish to continue working on the creation, however, they may do so for as long as they wish. Each successful work check made after the required amount reduces the difficulty of the craft check by 1. 

Master Crafting and Revelations  

  Sometimes when a gifted smith forges a blade or piece of armor they are struck by inspiration, a revelation about how they can further their craft. Perhaps they think of a new, interesting weapon to make, or a sturdier but lighter suit of armor using a new technique. Other times the skill and expertise of a craftsmen is enough to elevate even the most mundane of weapons into something far superior than the original design. When these things happen during the crafting of a creation it is called having a Revelation and making a Master Craft respectively. 

  Designs that can inspire or be master crafted will list a Threshold, which is usually quite high, that can possibly be met while making work and crafting checks while constructing the creation. Whenever you roll a Smith’s Tools check to attempt a work check on a creation and you meet or exceed the threshold you make a break-through and gain a Revelation. These Revelations can be spent to discover new designs and can be shared with other smiths freely should you so choose.

Revelations and Repetition  

While working a new design can improve and expand your knowledge and craft, repeated construction of the same creation can cause the insidious creep of tedium and stagnation. If you have not received a Revelation from a Design, the required skill check to achieve a Revelation from that design is reduced by 10. A Design may only ever provide as many Revelations as it has required work checks, once those have been earned the design becomes mundane and no longer triggers your creativity. Keeping track of what designs have provided Revelations and how many is important. 

Using Revelations to Learn New Designs   

As you craft designs and gather Revelations you may at any point decide to expend some of your collected Revelations to learn new designs. Which new design you learn can be chosen from one of three categories, those being weapons, armors, and utility. Each category also has three different levels of rarity, going from Exotic to Magical to Divine. As the rarity increases, so too do the required materials and work involved in creating the design, as well as the power of the potential creation and the number of Revelations needed to learn it. Other than choosing from the three categories and rarities, the exact design you will become inspired to learn is not revealed to you until you spend the Revelations to acquire it. 

Every time you learn a design by spending Revelations, the cost of learning another design of that same category and rarity increases. Each learned design increases the Revelation cost of designs of that rarity and category by the initial cost amount. The initial costs are as follows. 

Revelation Initial Costs 

Category Exotic Magical Divine  

Weapon 1 2 3 

Armor 1 2 3 

Utility 1 2 3 

Master Crafted Designs  

When you make the final smith’s tools check to craft a design, should you meet or exceed the Threshold with the skill check the design will become Master Crafted. Master crafted weapons gain a bonus +1 to attack and damage rolls, master crafted armors provide an additional +1 AC, and master crafted utility designs gain additional monetary value. 

Master Craft and Difficult Materials  

  Not every material is as easily effective as Steel, some require additional expertise to forge, others are just stubborn or especially brittle. We will cover the result of using difficult materials in a design in a moment, but take note that as a material increases the difficulty of the skill checks required to craft and work a design, they also increase the difficulty of the Threshold for the purpose of Master Crafting. They do not increase the Threshold for Revelations, however. 

Materials 

All designs require some sort of material in their construction. Often that may be an ingot of metal, a cordon of wood or a tanned leather hide, but it can also be anything from an elemental core to a single wild rose. Different types of materials can provide unique properties to a creation, though they may add difficulties while crafting. Each design describes it’s required materials, with many designs allowing for the use of a wide variety of different metals, woods, or even scales. As long as the materials used in a design’s creation meet the requirements of the design then they may be used, and should the creation be created successfully they will provide any additional effects that are inherent to that material.  

For example, a Breastplate design requires a single ingot of metal. Any metal ingot would suffice to meet the requirements, but let us say you choose to make the breastplate with an ingot of adamantine. Should you succeed in crafting the breastplate, it will be an adamantine breastplate that will allow its wearer to ignore critical hits and it will weigh nearly twice the normal amount of a regular breastplate. 

Materials with unique traits may improve and augment your designs, but they can also increase the difficulty of making the creation. Some materials are just hard to work with, others are cheap and require extra knowledge or skill to bring to full effectiveness. Each material has a difficulty rating. The higher the rating, the more difficult every smith’s tools skill check becomes in the creation process. Work checks, the final craft check, and the threshold for master crafting a design all increase by 5 for every level of difficulty a material within the design has.  

The Different kinds of Materials 

Below is a list of many of the potential materials you may use in your journey as a master smith. This list is by no means exhaustive, and may be expanded as your understanding of the craft increases or new materials are discovered. Some designs require wholly unique materials in their construction, such as black dragon hearts or elemental cores. Unless otherwise stated the difficulty of using these unique materials is included in the work check and crafting DCs of the design itself and they do not provide any additional effects to the creation. 

Material    Rarity   Difficulty   Additional Effect (Weapon)  Additional Effect (Armor)  

Iron/Bronze/Wood common   ~ 1 ~ - - 

Steel common - - - 

Silvered Steel uncommon ~ 1 ~ Can harm Spirits, Daemons & Lycans - 

Gold Plated Steel uncommon ~ 1 ~   - Persuasion & Performance(+2) Stealth(-2) 

Mithril rare - Reduce Weight by Half   Reduced weight by half, no   disadvantage on Stealth from armor  

Adamantine very rare ~ 2 ~  Auto Crit on Objects Immune to Critical Hits 

Ferrotia rare ~ 2 ~ Disadvantage on Concentration Magic Resistance 

*Drains Spell Slots when worn or carried* 

Living Wood rare ~ 1 ~ Counts as Magical