How does Craftmanship work?

[Magicpockets]

Specifically, how does applying sticky aspects to items work? I've seen some sample characters with a crapton of sticky aspects on their gear, but I couldn't find out how it works ruleswise.

[Haru]

The short answer: What do you want it to do?

Well... That's sort of the long answer as well. Generally speaking, you can simply roll craftsmanship against a fixed number and on success, you attach a new aspect to the item in question. But you can go much further than that, depending on what you want to do.

The Batman writeup as far as I can tell simply has some (ok, a lot of) equipment and a ton of stunts to represent and use that equipment.

[Magicpockets]

I want (preferably non-homebrew) rules for how applying aspects to items work. Something along the lines of "3 shifts per aspect, +1 to make it sticky". Thus far, I could not find the required shifts for effects, only how creating equipment of a certain quality works. But what use is a "superb handgun" if there are no rules on what "superb" means in this context?

[Haru]

There are no rules, because what "a superb handgun" means is determined by yourself, or rather your group.

One group might decide that a superb handgun is a very accurate gun, so they give you a +1 on your guns roll with it. Others might decide it means the gun is deadlier and is now a weapon:3 instead of a weapon:2. And yet another group might do both.
Or "superb" is just an aspect to the gun, that might allow you to spend a fate point on it when you use the gun.

Then there is the fate fractal, where you can treat anything as if it is a character. So a "superb handgun" could be a character of its very own, with aspects and stunts and the like. As a character, the gun would get it's own aspects, skills and stunts and even an action in a conflict. The gun could make a maneuver for the shooter to tag on his attack, for example.

Or you just use the craftsmanship as an excuse to take a stunt that lets you use you craftsmanship to do guns maneuvers. Or let your craftsmanship compliment your guns roll. Or anything you like.

The same goes for the number of shifts required for such a roll. Or even if you roll at all. Or how you roll. If you want the creation of a gun be something really epic, you could make it a conflict. The craftsman would "fight" against the concept he has of the new weapon, and the concept's complexity (how complicated it is to build) would fight back. A consequence for the craftsman could mean that he has been working and working without rest, and it's taking its toll. One exchange could be a day, a week, a month, depending on how long you think the creation of such a weapon would take. If he can take out the concept in this fight, he was able to create the weapon.


The thing with +1 for sticky aspects is under the magic rules. For mundane aspects, you just roll, sometimes against a fixed number, sometimes against an opponent, and if you tie, the aspect is fragile, if you have at least one shift over the target, the aspect is sticky.
There was a rule of thumb somewhere that you start at +3 for maneuvers and then add 2 for every factor that would be boring or subtract 2 for any factor that would make it more awesome.

That's just how fate rolls. There are a ton of different ways to deal with the exact same situation. That's why I said that it highly depends on what you actually want to do.

[Taran]

There are rules for this: declarations and maneuvers.  Skills like investigate, contacts burglary let you discover or create aspects that you can tag later on.  I see craftsmanship the same way.  You make a declaration that your holster is specifically designed to conceal a weapon.  If you succeed, the next time you try to sneak a gun past someone, you can tag it.

I don't know of anything that lets you automatically get a free tag every scene, but you're making this stuff between scenes and given enough time there really isn't much point of rolling.  Besides, once you craft something it doesn't make sense that it goes away...but you should be careful about letting players get away with a whole slew of free tags without rolls associated with them.

[GryMor]

The basic mechanics are, make a roll, if it succeeds (per maneuver or deceleration difficulties) you apply an aspect and get a single free tag. The applied mechanics are more interesting, you could create a "High accuracy barrel" for your gun, you would only get the one tag, but you could spend fate points after that one tag is used (or expires). But you could also spend time working on your gun, habitually, and each time apply "Recently Calibrated", and get one tag each time you reapply the aspect.

These are just examples, but it does, handily, encourage and reward "Hanger Queen" behavior (excessive, continuous maintenance), for equipment, be it mundane or magical, at least one you don't have more diversified things to do.

[Wordmaker]

So would I be right to say that if you roll Craftmanship to apply the aspect "Filed-Down Sights" to a gun, I could invoke that aspect whenever I wanted, unless another character did something to the gun to remove the aspect?

[Taran]

Yes. Tagged once fp afterward

[Wordmaker]

Awesome.

[Taran]

If you're doing it to someone else's gun to screw them over, I'd give em some kind of check to notice.....in which case this might give them time to undo damage....

[Wordmaker]

That sounds fair to me.

One of my players is playing a Focused Practitioner who's a magical artificer, so he'll be using Craftmanship a lot.

[fantazero]

I've always had a crazy idea of taking a character thats super high in Craftsmanship, and lives alone in the woods.
Then I'd skip entire scenes just to apply more and more aspects to my house.

Mark's House
Aspects
Trenches, Landmines, Booby Trapped front door, ect ect ect