[Basic] Skill of the week: Jeweler and Smith

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

I'd have thought Jeweler would be important in the Mad Lands, with their gem-injection sorcery, but it's actually one of the banned skills - they're too low-tech, I guess.

Gem-injection sorcery is entirely the preserve of the Deathless, who are weird insane weakly-godlike posthuman NPCs. No PC in that setting (as written) would ever know a thing about it. And in any case, gem-injection sorcerers don't create jewellery for display; they pulverise and prepare gemstones for hypodermic injection.

[Eukie]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Or professional Skills.

Professional skills is perhaps not the best comparison, since Professional Skill doesn't really try to encompass professions (c.f. Crewman), and I believe Kromm noted that it's more of a generic placeholder for "Average Skill" much in the way that Hobby Skill is a placeholder for any necessary easy skill, and Expert Skill is a placeholder for any necessary hard skill[1]. There's also basically no guarantee that Professional Skills default to one another. Specialties in GURPS are just skills, but they tend to be grouped under a single heading for convenience and similarity, which often implies defaults.

[1] Although rules-wise, Expert Skill doesn't actually work as a generic hard skill.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Eukie

[1] Although rules-wise, Expert Skill doesn't actually work as a generic hard skill.

There's two parts to that:

The first is skills that are about a broad field of expertise following the framework rules for Expert Skills. There's potential for lots of those.

Then there's skills that GURPS simply doesn't have, for whatever reason, that are Hard because they require considerable training. That's where you add a new skill that doesn't follow the Expert Skill framework rules.

[DanHoward]

To make things more confusing, most of the skills used for making mail armour are a lot more closely related to jewellery than smithing.

[Refplace]

Sounds like a Craft skill would be a nice article forPyramid

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

To make things more confusing, most of the skills used for making mail armour are a lot more closely related to jewellery than smithing.

As in lots of detailed finger work rather than full range arm motions? Those are the main differences between Jeweler and Smith in my mind.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

As in lots of detailed finger work rather than full range arm motions? Those are the main differences between Jeweler and Smith in my mind.

Smith makes rugged tools that to handle use.
Jewellery makes autmentation that don't designed to resist damage.

Making iron wire ring that meant to handed the blow of a weapon and designed a silver chain designed to look pretty and maybe hold an amulet is technically similar but practically different to do.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Smith makes rugged tools that to handle use.
Jewellery makes autmentation that don't designed to resist damage.

Regardless of the standard English meanings of the words ("jewelry," for example, includes making ornaments of any durable material, although "jewel" is also a synonym for "gemstone"), the GURPS definitions are quite explicit: Smith is the skill of working with non-precious metals; Jeweler is the skill of working with precious metals, though it also can be used to identify a gem. There does not seem to be a Lapidary skill, though conceivably it could be a required specialization of Artist. On the other hand, the people who make objects of gold and silver are also likely to add precious or semiprecious stones to them.

By the technical definition, making delicate bronze or even lead objects would be Smith, and making big clunky silver objects would be Jeweler. Unless, I supposed, you were making a silver weapon, which would be Armoury. Armoury at TL1 defaults to Smith (Bronze) and at TL2-4 to Smith (Iron), so as a GM I would allow making a silver sword to default to Jeweler—perhaps with a bigger penalty as silver is not so well suited to making weapons.