FATE’S EDGE · SYSTEM REFERENCE DOCUMENT
Crafting: projects and upkeep
Open this reference when someone wants to make or maintain an item. It takes the crafting material out of the basic equipment chapter so a first-time reader can learn to play before studying a workshop project. Read the project procedure before choosing its costs and timers.
Crafting: The Bench and the Codex
Crafting is not shopping. It is a project — something you start, that takes time you could have spent elsewhere, that the world gets a vote on, and that ends up carrying the marks of how it was made. A thing you bought is a thing. A thing you made is a record.
What You Can Make
| Kind | What it is | Costs | Project Timer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provision | A consumable: a poultice, a charge of powder, a chalked ward, a doctored bottle. Used once. | Nothing but the scene and the materials. | None — one roll. |
| Work | A lasting mundane thing of real quality: a good blade, a lockpick roll, a boat that does not leak, a forged seal. | Nothing in XP. It is skill and time. | [4] or [6] |
| Wonder | An enchanted thing. Priced as a Talent: Minor 2 XP, Major 4 XP, Prestige 6 XP, Epic 8 XP (§6.8). | XP and Obligation — see 6.9.5. | [6], [8] or [10] |
The Roll
Attribute + Craft for a Provision or a Work; Attribute + Arcana for a Wonder. Which Attribute depends on how you are working: Wits to plan and measure, Body to force and forge, Spirit to coax, Presence to command a workshop of other hands.
DV is set by ambition:
| DV | What you are attempting |
|---|---|
| 2 | Mend it, or make another one exactly like the one you have made before. |
| 3 | A competent new thing in a craft you know. |
| 4 | Something at the edge of your craft, or in someone else's. |
| 5+ | Something nobody has made. The GM should ask you who told you it was possible. |
Position is set by the bench, not by you. This is the whole materials rule — no inventory arithmetic, no counting reagents against a recipe:
| Position | What that means at the bench |
|---|---|
| Dominant | The right materials, the right tools, the right place, and time you are not being chased through. |
| Controlled | Adequate. It will do. Most work happens here. |
| Desperate | Improvised materials, borrowed tools, the wrong roof, or someone counting down outside. |
So the answer to “do I have enough silver?” is never a subtraction. It is a Position, and it is the GM's to set from the fiction you have established. Gathering materials, buying them, stealing them, or being given them is how a player argues for Dominant.
Outcomes
| Result | At the bench |
|---|---|
| Clean Success | Fill 2 segments of the Project Timer. A Provision is simply finished. |
| Success with SB | Fill 2 segments. The GM banks the Story Beats, and the obvious place to spend them is here — the noise, the smoke, the light under the door. |
| Partial | Choose: fill 1 segment clean, or fill 2 and give the piece a Flaw. Gain 1 Boon either way. |
| Miss | Fill nothing. Gain 2 Boons. The materials are spoiled, or the wrong person heard the hammering, or a rival's mark is somehow in the grain. |
One roll per downtime action, or per scene you spend at the bench while the world waits. When the Timer fills, the thing exists.
Flaws
A Flaw is not a penalty. It is a property the object now has, and it is usually the most interesting thing about it. Name it when you take it:
- Thirsty — it wants something first. Blood, oil, a spoken name, a coin left overnight. Give it what it wants or roll at one Position worse.
- Loud — it announces you. Using it hands the GM 1 SB.
- Remembering — it does what its materials' previous owner wanted, occasionally, and the GM decides when.
- Brittle — on a Miss while using it, it breaks. Not damaged: broken.
- Marked — anyone who knows the craft can recognise the hand that made it, which is your hand.
You may buy a Flaw off later: a second project at DV 4, Timer [4]. Or keep it. A GM should be generous with Boons to a player who leans into a Flaw at the worst possible moment, because that is the entire point of the mechanic.
Wonders, and What They Cost
You cannot make magic. You can only borrow it and put it somewhere it will stay. So a Wonder costs three things:
- XP, at its Talent-equivalent tier: Minor 2, Major 4, Prestige 6, Epic 8 (§6.8).
- Obligation, marked at the moment of making, equal to the tier's step: 1 for Minor, 2 for Major, 3 for Prestige, 4 for Epic. You did not buy this. Someone lent it.
- Attunement, thereafter — see below.
A caster with no Patron marks the Obligation anyway. It goes to whatever answered.
Attunement and Upkeep
- You may be attuned to three Wonders at once. Attuning or releasing one takes a scene of quiet.
- Each attuned Wonder takes upkeep each downtime, on the standard curve: max(1, its XP cost ÷ 3, rounded up) in XP, or 1 XP and a downtime scene spent with it.
- Skip the upkeep and it decays one step: Maintained → Neglected → Compromised, per §6.7. A Compromised Wonder's enchantment is inert until repaired.
Artifacts — things you found rather than made, and things older than the people who named them — take no XP and no upkeep and never decay. They take Obligation instead, and they choose when.
Gathering
Once per downtime, a character may gather: Wits + Lore in a settlement or an archive, Wits + Endurance in the wild, DV set by how strange the thing is (2 for common, 3 for uncommon, 4 for rare, 5 for the sort of ingredient that has a name of its own). A success establishes in the fiction that you have the right stuff — which is to say it buys you Dominant at the bench for one project.
There is no reagent count. If the table starts doing arithmetic about how many petals are left, something has gone wrong upstream of the rules.
Continue: Followers and assets