Difference between revisions of "Craft (Ability)"

Latest revision as of 16:24, 18 October 2015

Primordial Association: Autochthon
Astrological Association: The Peacock in the House of Serenity
Celestial Associations: Twilight,
Elemental Association: Earth
Example Specialties: Working in Haste, Improvised Materials, Style over Substance, In Groups, Evaluating Goods, Specific Goods, [see below].

The Craft Ability encompasses the arts and sciences of building things, from useful tools to fortified defenses to beautiful works of art. It is at once a single Ability and several, and together these Abilities touch upon other more complex types of crafting. Someone with Craft Wood 1 sharpen a length of Bamboo into a spear. Someone with Craft Fire 3 can make an exceptional sword. Someone with Craft Air 5 can create pieces of jewelry that vain nobles will literally kill to own.

For purposes of Favoured Abilities, Excellencies, and Charm trees, Craft is usually considered one Ability, one Charm being applicable to all the Crafts under its aegis. In terms of investing dots at Character Creation, gaining Specialtes, and the like, however, they are treated as if they were separate Abilities. Every form of mundane craft is covered by one of these Crafts (almost always within the first five), and Storytellers should judge where best to place crafts which seem to straddle more than one, based on similarities to already-assigned crafts and the comparative breadth of the possible choices.

Though Crafts have elemental names, these explicitly do not indicate Aspect associations nor do they free Terrestrials from paying surcharges for out-of-Aspect Charms. The Craft Abilities of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Wood, and Moliation are all Earth Abilities, and Craft Charms are Earth Charms.

Source: SotT Craft rules significantly adapted and modified from material originating across Exalted 1e, 
2e Core, WotLA, MoEP Abyssals & Sidereals, RoGDII, Graceful Wicked Masques, Scroll of Heroes, 
and likely a number of discussions/musings in person and over internet.   

Craft Air (Ability)

Example Specialties: Gem Cutting, Silk, Clockwork, Loom of Fate, Magitech.

Possessed By: Jewelers, Tailors, Varangian Engineers.

The Crafting of Air is the art of details, working with small objects, decoration, and the like. Craft Air (Ability) covers jewelry-making (and gem-cutting), glassblowing, laquering, textile work (such as sewing and weaving), and crafting high-precision instruments.

Note: Craft Air does not cover calligraphy, either for communication or as an art form, This is covered by Linguistics (Ability).

Craft Earth (Ability)

Example Specialties: Roads, Bridges, Marble, Shipbuilding, Excavation.

Possessed By: Stonemasons, Sculptors, Geomancers.

The Crafting of Earth is the art of structures, constructing buildings and other large objects, and working with earth and stone. Digging and building earthworks, stone carving, masonry, landscaping, and architecture all fall under the aegis of Craft Earth (Ability).

Craft Fire (Ability)

Example Specialties: Sword-Making, Porcelain, Jade Steel, Magitech, Necrosurgery.

Possessed By: Blacksmiths, Amourers, Potters.

The Crafting of Fire is the art of the forge. Smelting, casting, smithing, metalworking, crafting arms & armour, sword-polishing, and making ceramics fall within Craft Fire (Ability).

Craft Water (Ability)

Example Specialties: Motonic Gastronomy, Western School Cuisine, Rice Wine, Opium, Embalming.

Possessed By: Cooks, Alchemists, Morticians.

The Crafting of Water is the art of the kitchen and the apothecary. Cooking and preparing foodstuffs, cleaning and cleansing the home, brewing, vinting, distilling, crafting poisons and their cures, curing and preserving (including the mundane mortician’s arts such as embalming and mummification), all fall under Craft Water (Ability).

Craft Wood (Ability)

Example Specialties: Woodcarving, Paper, Rice Farming, Horses, Biogenesis.

Possessed By: Carpenters, Bookbinders, Farmers.

The Crafting of Wood is the art of plants and growing. Woodworking (carving and carpentry), paper-making, flower arranging, and farming/agriculture (the growing and harvesting of domesticated crops, and husbandry of livestock) are covered by Craft Wood (Ability).

Note: Craft Wood does not cover the creation of new breeds or changes to organisms through manipulating heredity. It plays a role in this, alongside other Abilities, under Biogenesis Crafting.

Craft Moliation (Ability)

Example Specialties: Ghosts, Ambrosia, Glamour, Pandemonium, Wyld-Shaping.

Possessed By: Ghosts, Fair Folk, the Solar Exalted.

The crafting of Moliation covers working with the stuff of spirits and the undefined energies of the Wyld. Some say that it is the art of crafting definition, and as such both overlaps with the other five Crafts and stands apart from them for working with substances whose possibility is far less defined. Both a ghost and a Fae might scream enraged at the idea that one's stasis-focused substance had commonality with the other's chaotic material, but this does not make that correspondence any less real, and the manipulation of both falls under Craft Moliation (Ability).

Note: In order to learn or know Craft Moliation, a character must have some means (through Charms or other methods) to interact with the Wyld and the stuff of spirits. Likewise, to be able to learn or know the Crafts of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, or Wood, a character must be able to interact with the mundane materials that make up Creation, though those completely unable to do so are rare indeed.