[safisher]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Okay. Would you use Armoury (Body Armour) even for the Invention rolls?

Yes, for sure.

What about the rolls to adapt the flash bainite process to harden steel pieces of the size and shapes required for body armour?

Metallurgy/TL8 is what I would use.

Fair enough. Though I've always had some difficulty imagining how someone at lower TLs would learn how to make swords or plate armour without learning anything else about using a smith's tools. Since there is only a default from Blacksmith to Armoury and not vice versa, the RAW theoretically lets someone be a master armourer who can make the finest articulated plate armour, with duplex plate, fluting and various flourishes, but couldn't make a nail or a hatch from iron or steel.

It's also possible to know nothing about swords, knives, maces, axes, and armour and just make hammers, punches, nails, and horseshoes. Not likely, but certainly possible. I think the default assumes you can work it out from theory if you take your time.

I figure realistic armourers at lower TLs must learn some Blacksmith skill as well, as part of a basic apprenticeship. I guess I'm just wondering what kind of foundational knowledge of a similar sort you might pick up in the process of learning to make steel alloy armour at TL8.

I suspect at low TL you could pick up Smith/Iron as an apprentice, then get training in Armoury, but only if you do metal armour (not say, leather or fabric only). At high TL you can have a metal Armoury shop that doesn't include a forge at all! You cut your sheets with shears and hammer all things to shape cold. My father used to be a farrier and he did a lot of horseshoing cold.

That doesn't give me the information I need to come up with plausible backgrounds for the NPCs the PCs might encounter in the part of Vargas' lair where they've been working on finding a way to make armour to Vargas's exacting specifications or what kind of clues to Vargas's history, contacts and operations the PCs might discover from the computers there (or if they manage to convince an armourer he doesn't want to work for a lethal sociopath anymore and turn him into an informant).

Understood.