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Chapter 8: Skills
Time and Quality
The purpose of many skills is to make products
or services. The time invested affects the quality
of a product, but the quality of the tools or facilities
also affects the time required to produce it.
Therefore, the longer a character crafts a product,
the better the product. The better the tools or facilities,
the faster the product is produced.
Goods in Chapter 9: Equipment have Base
Craft Time (BCT), which is how long it takes for a
character to produce 1. The 3 columns of the following
table have numbers that represent the percent
of normal condition. Therefore, 100% Quality
means that which is listed and described in Chapter
9: Equipment, while 150% Quality means 1.5 times
that quality. Time Invested refers to the BCT of
the product, as does Time Required. The difference
between Time Invested and Time Required is
that Time Invested determines the Quality of the
product, while the Quality of the tools determines
the Time Required to craft it.
Time
Invested Quality
Time Required
50
75
10,000
60
80
1,000
70
85
500
80
90
200
90
95
150
100
100
100
125
105
95
150
110
90
175
115
85
200
120
80
250
125
75
300
130
70
400
135
65
500
140
60
1,000
145
55
10,000
150
50
Quality affects many things, and the Aedile
is the final arbiter of what it affects. The quality of
a weapon affects its damage. If a hand axe has 150%
Quality, then its damage is (1d10 x 1.5). The Quality
of clothing affects the number of weaves per inch,
and therefore higher Quality clothing is warmer and
more durable. Some items of higher Quality will
weigh less, while others more. Again, the Aedile is
the final arbiter of the Quality of a product.
The prices and BCT listed in Chapter 9: Equipment
represents the standard human guild requirements.
Therefore, 100% Quality is the norm in a
human society. Equipment below this standard
should not be found for sale by a human master of
a respectable guild. However, guild requirements
often differ among cultures and races. For instance,
dwarven smiths produce higher Quality axes than
humans, on average.
Following is an example of craft time and
quality. A blacksmith crafts a hammer tool, which
has a BCT of 1 day. For whatever reason, the blacksmith
is unable to spend a full day crafting the hammer.
He spends 90% of his day, so he has 90%
Time Invested. This produces a hammer that is 95%
Quality. The blacksmith sells the hammer to a
weaponsmith. The next day, the weaponsmith attempts
to craft a footman’s mace, which has a BCT
of 1 day. Since he is using a hammer of 95% Quality,
the Time Required to craft this mace is 150%
the BCT, so it takes the weaponsmith 1.5 days.
The example with the weaponsmith is oversimplified
because more tools are used besides the
hammer to craft a mace, but the idea is that the
Quality of tools affects the Time Required to make
a product. If the Aedile wants to use game mechanics
to account for multiple tools, then all adjustments
may be averaged, or some may count more
than others.
Services may be affected by time and quality,
just as products. For example, a scribe who copies
a text may invest more time than usual, and produce
a work that is more legible and has fewer mistakes.
However, if his feather pen is poor quality,
then it may take him longer to finish the work.
However, some services are not covered by
these issues of time and quality. If considered as a
service, sexual Adeptness, has its own set of mechanics,
so time and quality need not be considered.
Skills
The next few pages present an overview of
the skills. The following tables list each skill, any
abilities or sub-abilities that are relevant to the skill,
a Learning Curve (LC), and any prerequisites for
the skill. Following the overview, each skill is described
in detail:
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