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I was looking over my trade lists the other day, while trying to craft some leather armour, and I noticed the main stat on leatherworking, is Int. Why is this? Wouldn't dex make more sense, seeing as it's mainly cutting out pieces of leather, and sewing them together?

It has to do with D&D. Totally makes sense when you think about it: gotta know how to do it before you can make effective armor, right?

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Well, yeah, but that's where the skill level comes in. I may be missing it, but I don't see an equivalent to that in D&D.

Nylo wrote:Well, yeah, but that's where the skill level comes in. I may be missing it, but I don't see an equivalent to that in D&D.

Both skill level and the stat play a role. Crafting is defined as intellect by d20 so this will be difficult to argue. Essentially, this means that if you have a +3 ability bonus from int (16 int), you will get +3 added on top of your skill check. FK might do it slightly differently, but that is the overall gist of it.

As far as -all- crafts are concerned, the governing attribute would be intelligence, with the secondary attribute being related to the required work of the craft itself. For example, a smith's trade would be based on intelligence and strength, whereas, something as intricate as woodworking or lapidary would be based on intelligence and dexterity. In no way should charisma, constitution, luck, or wisdom play any part in the the success of a trade craft.

As far as charisma is concerned, it would only affect how good you are at hawking your finished product.

As far as constitution is concerned, it should only affect how long it takes you to complete the craft.

As far as luck is concerned, it should only affect your chances at finding rarer materials and slightly at that. For example, someone who is considered "unlucky" shouldn't be fated to never finding any worthwhile materials and someone who is "lucky" shouldn't be fated to almost always finding the good stuff. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Beshabans and Tymorans. With the current system you have more craft-heavy characters following deities of (Mis)Fortune than you do following the actual deities of craft.

As far as wisdom is concerned, it should only affect the quality of the finished product, but not to the point that it overthrows level of skill. While intelligence is the efficiency of how quickly you are able to learn things, wisdom is how efficiently you apply what you have learned.

As I sit here, staring at a particular character's known trades, I see Int all over the place.

Appraise is Int/Wis, armorsmithing is Int/Dex, weaponsmithing is Int/Dex, and woodworking is Int/Dex. Leatherworking stats don't seem out of place in the crafting trades. Unless you compare it to lapidary's Dex/Luck, but lapidary has always been an odd one.

And, speaking from a position of experience. Luck doesn't have a HUGE impact on trades. An influence, yes, but not so much that a crafter that doesn't follow (mis)fortune, or doesn't enchant stacking, would be at a great disadvantage. I'll never understand where that rumor came from. Follow what god you will, crafters. Play your character, don't let your character play you.

Right, right. I agree that most trades that are actually involved with crafting an item are correct. It's just a few that need to be redone, specifically:

The three material-gathering trades - Logging, Mining, and Tanning (not entirely sure on tanning though). I believe all three of these have a physical attribute as the primary attribute, with luck as the secondary. When it should be intelligence first, with the physical attribute coming in second and luck, if at all, should just be a behind-the-scenes attribute that could affect the trees/veins you find, not your success on gathering the material once found.

Edited to add: Looking through a few FR sourcebooks, I see that all crafts that produce an item are based on intelligence and dexterity, with the exception of wizardly crafts. So, FK does have it almost inline with rulebook D&D. It's just the luck part that needs to die by fire.

I disagree.

There are two schools of thought here. We could relate gathering trades to their physical attributes, like it is similar to now.

Second, we could make the gathering trades like the profession skill in d20, which would make wisdom the primarily attribute.

Personally, I like leaving it to the physical attribute that is closest to the respectie trade.

It's nonsense that crafters mainly follow deities of luck. This is mostly because those followers aren't any more or less lucky codewise than anyone else can be with a trinket or two.
Lirith does use a spell that increases luck while mining. I don't personally think that it affects her hit rate of the rarer metals enough to give a noticeable difference.

I have no live-port experience with logging or tanning and very limited test port work with them. So, I'll stick with what I know well: mining and smelting. Mining is Str/Luck and Smelting is Str/Con.

I don't see a huge impact from Luck on mining. I really don't. That is based on rather extensive person experience with a base-line luck character (he is not a (mis)fortune follower!) and alternating +luck enchanted items and 'good fortune' potions. Maybe mining is different than tanning/logging. After all, mining is heavily influenced by the 'ore determined by area level' coding we have in effect. Even so, in high level areas my base-line luck fellow gets high ore and low ore in respectable numbers.

Am I wrong? Am i not seeing this magical huge dent luck has on gathering trades? I just don't see it.

Smelting, on the other hand, I could see an argument for attaching Int somewhere in there, but at the same time I see Str/Con's argument as well. Feels more like a preference decision in the end.


And to be perfectly honest, the most famous crafters in game history were/are NOT followers of fortune faiths. The first to come to mind are dwarves and a forest faithful. Just fyi.

Aldren was created with a LCK of 18, back in the day when we could train them at character creation. I have seen no real significant boost to mining higher level veins with him, and that is a character that has (seemingly) 8 points of LCK higher than any character created without the ability to put points into LCK at creation.

Just what I've observed here.

Having read extensive information on Smaug's Luck affects, I'd suggest not expecting much.

Athon wrote:Second, we could make the gathering trades like the profession skill in d20, which would make wisdom the primarily attribute.

I'm all for anything that's per d20 and 3.5ed Forgotten Realms rules.