Making a spear

[doulos05]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

How do you know that?

Is it perhaps... that you have some skill?


They person I knew who spent 3 days failing to make a simple fishing spear is not hyperbole. He'd never dealt with construction anything of wood before, but he had plenty of experience using wood products (tool handles, furniture). But no, he didn't know you needed to find a good seasoned piece of wood, or that too many crooks or a curve makes using it difficult, about finding the right thickness, how to spot the difference between seasoned and dry and brittle. Then he had difficulty just smoothing and shaping the prongs, and attaching them almost proved too much.

Did he finally make a decent(ish) fishing spear? Yes, after days of "Spear making isn't hard, after all primitives could do it!", even after discovering that survival was hard even though "primitives could do it".

It is a skill roll. Armoury/TL 0 (IQ-5). Though yeah, I'd give a +2 with a successful Survival roll (or just let them make Survival -3) for a simple all wood spear.

Alternately, it could be a Cultural Familiarity thing kinda like the example in the book of the TL4 knight being unable to even attempt to use Scuba gear at default because it's outside his cultural familiarity.