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Craft (Skill)
(Active) [Familiar] worst of WIS and DEX
Possessed By: Some Humans, Gnomes, Dwarves, Deep Gnomes, Grey Dwarves, Barbarians, Bards, Druids, Mages, Paladins, Priests, Rangers, Rogues, Warriors, Blackguards, Earthsingers, Loremasters, Master Archers, Craft priests.
Effects: The Craft skill has these applications:
* Repair Items (Active): The Craft skill can be used to repair items which have become damaged as a result of magical attacks, acid, rust or any of the other rigors of the dungeon. Mending a metal item requires access to a forge, and mending any item demands a set of craftsman's tools. To repair items, a Craft skill check is made against a base DC of 10, plus a modifier based on the power of an item if it is magical (more advanced magical items require more careful craftwork!), +1 for every 10% of its hit points the item is missing, +2 per previous failed attempt to repair this item.
Repairing an item normally takes two hour, but if the craftsman values the item highly, she may decide to work slowly, taking 8 hours instead and receiving a +4 bonus to the skill check. A successful Craft check repairs a number of hit points of damage to equal to 2d8 + 1/3rd of the crafter's Craft skill rating. Failing a repair DC by 5 or more actually damages the item further, inflicting an additional 1d8 points of damage.
* Temper Masterwork (Active): By tempering and reforging a sword or other item, a character can preserve it in a state of perfect flawlessness - a masterwork. Crafting a weapon so that it becomes a masterwork in this manner requires a Craft skill of at least +12. A masterwork weapon gains a bonus to damage of +1 at Craft +12, +2 at Craft +17, +3 at Craft +22 and so forth. After being used on combat over a period of time, a masterwork blade can lose its edge and revert to being a normal weapon, requiring the crafter to temper it again. The DC to temper an item is 15 + the dungeon depth such an item would be typically found at. Doing this takes 6 hours.
Only long blades, short blades and daggers can be tempered. As always, working with metallic items requires a forge.
* Dwarven Weaponcraft (Active): The dwarven ability to create magical weapons and armour is limited by the Crafts skill. A dwarf using this ability can create items roughly equal to what would be found at a depth equal to her Craft skill rating -- a dwarf with Crafts +8 could create items typically found on dungeon level 8. Note that the best items found on a given level of the dungeon are typically somewhat 'out of depth', being excepyional for the depth they are found at.
* Craft Dragon-Armour (Active, Unimplemented): If a character exceptionally skilled with Craft should be fortunate enough to slay a dragon of young adult age or older, she can use her skill to craft dragon scale mail armour from the beast's remains. Doing this requires that the dragon corpse be dissected in order to obtain dragon scales, and then a forge found at which the character can work. Creating dragon scale mail requires a Craft skill of at least +15, eight hours of work and a Craft check against a DC of 20 plus the dragon's age category. Failing this check causes the dragon scales to be wasted and the attempt to create armour fails.
If the check is successful, the armour gains the base traits of normal scale mail, but its base armour values are increased by +1 per age category of the dragon; additionally, it conveys either a saving throw bonus or an elemental resistance equal is magnitude to twice the dragon's age category -- for example, scale mail made from the hide of an adult red dragon would grant Fire Resistance 12.
Dragonskin is supple and almost infinitely adaptable in the hands of a truly skilled craftsman. For every three points the base DC is beaten by, the mail's armour check penalty decreases by one, to a minimum of 0.