fantasy crafting

[brianfb]

In a fantasy setting a player wants the skill to create his own quarterstaff, with hopes of making a high quality balanced one. What is that? Blacksmith? Profession bowyer? Carpentry?

[The Colonel]

Logically, carpentry - take an ash log of about 6ft, split it into quarters lengthwise (hence the name) and plane, turn and finish it into a staff.

Metal binding and tipping might require extra skills but was never a compulsory part of the weapon. Messing about with the balance should be interesting - logically it should balance at the centre, to do anything else would involve drilling it out and adding weights ...

[brianfb]

I imagine balancing would just be to do an amazing job of having the width be uniform, as well as finding an ideal piece of wood.

[Enoch]

Armoury (Melee Weapons), but I would allow Carpentry-3 for a default.

[malloyd]

Building a weapon always uses Armoury in GURPS. In this case, for 4e, Armoury (melee weapons)/TL.

Despite what is printed in the RAW, I wouldn't allow a default to Smith-3 for a weapon not made of metal, but I would permit another skill for working with the same material -3, and Machinist -3 should be OK, even at lower TLs.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by brianfb

I imagine balancing would just be to do an amazing job of having the width be uniform, as well as finding an ideal piece of wood.

Not quite. You ideally want a gentle taper to the ends, reducing the thickness of the staff in the last foot or so.

While a uniform thickness is perfectly adequate for a well made staff, one of Fine or Very Fine should be tapered and will be shod (or treated in some fashion to harden it).

You cannot apply Balanced to a staff.

[brianfb]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

You cannot apply Balanced to a staff.

Reference?

Taper or no taper, perfect symmetry would be well balanced.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by brianfb

Reference?

Taper or no taper, perfect symmetry would be well balanced.

The question then, is "does the extra balance to a weapon already designed to be mostly balanced offer any extra benefit?"

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Logically, carpentry - take an ash log of about 6ft, split it into quarters lengthwise (hence the name) and plane, turn and finish it into a staff.

I heard it was because they used to be longer than 6 feet and held at the quarter.

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Metal binding and tipping might require extra skills but was never a compulsory part of the weapon.

In GURPS, the reason a staff costs $10 is because it's got metal shodding on both ends to keep the wood from spitting and fraying. One that was just a suitably heavy, balanced stick would be $5 like a Light Club is (and conveniently a Cheap Quarterstaff is $4).

[Anthony]

As for time, a simplified generic system is to take the value added when creating the object (i.e. the cost of the finished good, less the cost of raw materials), divide by twice the typical wages for someone with that job, and that's the base time to craft the item (the factor of 2 is to cover merchant overhead and failed skill rolls). A TL 3 standard job is about $4/hr using the wage rules in Basic (I disagree with those rules, but that's a separate issue). An ordinary woodcarver is probably a status -1 job.