Crafting a more generic Crafting Ruleset
 

Greetings, all!

Sometimes, one needs to generalize item-crafting rules to something more universal than LTC. E.g. in some settings, it makes sense to have crafting at higher TLs (Star Wars, or some of my own game worlds). So I'm trying to polish the generalized ruleset I've kept ready-in-case-I-need it so far. Some things seem obvious, but others raise questions

The basic idea is similar to LTC:
An item is split into materials cost and labour cost. One needs to purchase materials, then add an amount of labour equivalent to the labour cost; more on that later.
Unlike LTC, I'm using a crafting roll's MoS in a more forgiving manner: like in freelance jobs, every ±1 MoS corresponds to a ±10% adjustment to the productivity of the crafter - whether in the form of reduced time (calculated based on adjusted productivity), or in the form of accidentally producing an item of improved quality (on a critical success, or a sufficiently high MoS - again, use Freelance income adjustments as a guideline). In this ruleset, deliberately producing an item of superior quality normally just takes more labour, assuming the prerequisites of such quality (if any) are met.

However, I have ran into two things that I'm worried about when trying to balance the generic ruleset:

1. How to pick the base labour value rate? I.e. should Jewelers inherently count as adding labour value at a Wealthy rate (×5), while Sewing crafters do it at a Struggling (×½) rate? If yes, how do I adjust which skills deserve such a free boost, especially when people are crafting stuff for themselves and not for sale nor as part of a regular job?
2. How should crafting with multiple skills and/or Wildcard skills be handled? E.g., should something that requires both Smith and Armoury (and rolling the lower of the two) inherently add labour at a double rate? Or perhaps at a rate of ×1+(some_smaller_number×extra_skill_count)? What about use of Wildcards in such situations, which are extremely expensive as skills?

I know that "you can craft that much doesn't mean you can sell that much", but I'm working on the assumption that the output may be either sold or used by the party itself.

Any other useful ideas on the topic welcome.
Thanks in advance!

Re: Crafting a more generic Crafting Ruleset
 

Seems to me labor rate has to be tied to campaign job tables.
You could probably simplify it by using Wealth levels such as Struggling in your example. However sewing could easily be struggling in one setting or even country/region and Comfortable in another where that region has a rep for luxury goods of that type.
Likewise even in one area you may have different levels based on quality and skill.
So something like...
Labor= Time (10*Material in pounds/TL) * Hourly rate (Wealth level modifier vs. base wage * CF)
Higher TL reduces time needed to work on given material.
Wealth Level modifier is *1 for average, etc as per standard Wealth mod.
Base Wage could be say $10/hour but will vary based on setting.
Default CF 1 but higher quality or specialty items would increase the CF (Fine*2, Very Fine*5 for example).

So a TL 8 coat made of 5 pounds of material would take 6.25 hours to make and cost $62.50 in labor for an average coat. A Fine quality coat would cost double that.

Numbers are just balllparked of course and not really tested.

Re: Crafting a more generic Crafting Ruleset
 

Higher tech seems to me generally to involve more capital. Even in low tech environments, you need tools. In high-tech ones, the tools, machines, factories become more and more important, relative to the labor. So you probably need three categories of input. Individual tools are still part of that (though they might be software tools), but there are also more group tools, and then the large-scale production facilities, which might require such an enormous investment that no one company, let alone one craftsman, actually owns one for their exclusive use.

Re: Crafting a more generic Crafting Ruleset
 

I would be generic by just referencing the Job rules (B516):

• Crafting is a Job. If you create stuff and sell it, you earn money as per B516, usually freelance. If you craft for your own purposes, you typically get a discount; figure in kind payments will be worth 150-200% as much as the wages they replace.
• As a rule of thumb, a job requiring one Easy skill is Poor, Average is Struggling, Hard is Average, and Very Hard is Comfortable. If the job roll requires the lesser of two or more skills of the same difficulty, add +1.
• At the GMs discretion, you may take a perk to convert any job to a job at your wealth level. Typically this is either cinematic or a superpower.

Re: Crafting a more generic Crafting Ruleset
 

My assumption in reducing time was based on having appropriate tools for the TL.
I think straight division by TL is overly simple but using tools of a lower TL should increase the time for pretty much anything I can think of.

I like the idea of skill difficulty being a major factor in job level.
As for the rest I thought the Ops question was more about making the material rather than the income.

Re: Crafting a more generic Crafting Ruleset
 

It errs on the side of cinematic, but the system I came up with might be a good jumping off point. There, skill 12 in an Average or harder skill gives you an Average wage (Easy - and maybe Very Easy - requires skill 14 for Average). Every +1 to skill is +1 SSR to wage - hence, Masters (+2 skill) are +1 Wealth Level (x2 wages, or +2 SSR). This actually matches pretty closely for the various jobs in LTC3 (I believe having a supporting skill or prerequisite tends to get you into the higher end of wages, but not quite +1 SSR).

Using either Time Spent rules or your MoS-based variant allows skill to "double dip," so you might want to adjust actual wage by assuming the character always rolls a 12. So, a character with Armory (Melee Weapons) 14, rather than having 2x the wage of Average, would actually have (2xAverage)/1.2, because then when the character rolls a 12 the wage is (2xAverage)/1.2 * 1.2 (+20% for MoS 2), for 2xAverage.

Realistically, only certain tasks can actually benefit to this extent - a master jeweler probably can't draw wire at twice the speed of a journeyman, but he can set a gem to a certain quality at twice the speed (as an example; I don't know if either of these statements are actually true). In fact, the above is probably more an average - there are some tasks the Master can do no faster than a properly-trained Journeyman, but there are others he is either more than twice as fast at (including potentially some tasks that a Journeyman outright lacks to ability to reliably do). That's a bit much for a "generic" ruleset, however.

Re: Crafting a more generic Crafting Ruleset
 

That's what the Payment in Kind option is about.