Martial arts weapons crafting

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

So, should people with a martial art that includes weapons not already know the recipe for them? I mean if you know how to swing a medieval sword you’d know what one was and be able to try and craft it. Once your Fabrication reaches 7 or so and you are able to craft all kinds of other hard items to make, one would think that the weapons you were trained on would be some of the first things you’d make.

From a realistic perspective someone would probably craft one to the best of their abilities and then continue to refine those abilities until they’ve gotten good. It’s how RL smiths learn.

On a related note, should the Martial Arts books also contain those recipes?

just my 2c

  • Shane
1 Like
2

Hah hah no.

Swinging a sword and knowing how to make a sword are different things.
Just like shooting a gun and knowing how to make a gun are different things.

There is no reason for martial arts instruction manuals to include recipes on how to make weapons.

2 Likes
3

I’d have to agree. Even though you might be familiar with using an item doesn’t mean you could replicate it. It might give you insight to make the handle thinner or longer or whatever, but that isn’t the same as making it from scratch. That’s more in the realm of modifying an existing item.

4

I might agree if the longsword recipe wasn’t included in the Ye Old Scottish Bakery book that teaches cooking and haggis.

Also, you still wouldn’t be able to craft the thing until your Fabrication was high enough. I’ve had situations where my character can make a Katana, but not a longsword. That is stupid.

So yes, knowing how to swing a sword is different than making one - one is Cutting and Melee the other is Fabrication. But if I know what I want to make and I’ve got the skill to do so I should be able to do it.

And if I know how to swing a sword I damn well know what I want to make, right down to the handling characteristics, distal taper and differential temper - I’d just need the skill to do so.

Someone who doesn’t know how to swing a sword probably isn’t familiar with these things.

  • Shane
1 Like
5

I might agree if the longsword recipe wasn’t included in the Ye Old Scottish Bakery book that teaches cooking and haggis.

“You can make this so you should be able to make that” isn’t accepted as justification. It’s entirely possible the medieval weapon recipes in Ye Scots Beuk o Cuikery should be removed instead.

Without actual instructions on the tools and methods involved, illustrations of a sword would at best let you make a “sword-like object” - it looks like a sword, but doesn’t function anywhere near as well as a real one (kinda like how characters with gun and fab skill can make pipe rifles - they know the basic mechanics of a gun and can extrapolate from that to make a gun-like object, but don’t have the tools or know-how to make anything better). It wouldn’t be as hard as a real sword, or as tough, or as balanced, or as light. Even if you know the swordsmanship techniques and have a picture, you could never learn the forging techniques without a forging book. You wouldn’t know how much metal to use, or the alloy composition needed, or how to make the alloy, or how hot to make the furnace, or how to use the furnace at all, or how to hammer out the blade, or the dimensions needed, or how to quench it (or even that quenching is a stage in the forging process), and so on. It only gets more complicated with the Japanese swords, which are composed of at least two different steel alloys with different compositions that cool and contract to different extents, creating the signature curve.

And if I know how to swing a sword I damn well know what I want to make, right down to the handling characteristics, distal taper and differential temper

No, you wouldn’t. If all you have is the swordsmanship book with vague, non-technical pictures of swords, you wouldn’t even know what a distal taper or differential temper are, or how to control them, much less how to refine them.

Real life smiths don’t just learn from pictures and a pipe dream. They learn under a teacher for years (or a library book for a few days, I guess). Then they refine their work from that pre-existing knowledge base. If you want to replicate that knowledge from scratch, how many prototypes will you have to destroy just to create a sword-like object? And then how many broken, bent, or dulled blades will it take to realize you have the alloy composition wrong (if you figure out that’s the problem at all), and how many more iterations will it take to get the composition right? If you’ve never held a real, properly forged sword before, how long will it take to figure out the balance is wrong, or the blade is too thick, or the tang or temper is wrong, if you even realize these things at all? In real life, it takes days to actually make a sword if you already know how; the game is very generous when it comes to forging time due to previous limitations of the crafting system, but that can change now that you can put down a crafting project and pick it back up later. I would give it months to learn how to craft a proper medieval European sword from scratch. Learning how to forge a Japanese sword from scratch is infeasible.

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6

skill in a martial art might impart a want to make the weapon from it, so a very rudimentary version depending on the weapon, based on description, but would not teach how it is made, best materials, balance, how to join the different components, etc…

simpler weapons… with adequate crafting skill and facilities, sure. But they are never going to be on par with weapons that are official purpose-built with machined components and alloys.

7

So, in RL it would take months to learn. I would also say that if you don’t know how to use a sword or have access to someone who does you will not ever make a proper one.

What process does the game have to reflect this? None. You just have to find the right book. I would love for there to be an auto learned recipe for “Crappy Sword” that can teach you the recipe “Less Crappy Sword” and so forth but that’s not in the game.

No matter how long your character lasts or how high their skills get, not matter that they are an expert in that particular martial art, they will never learn without finding a specific book.

My argument is that in game if you have that specific martial art you know exactly what kind of weapon you want and when you get the skills for it you can then make one.

  • Shane
1 Like
8

I know kickboxing IRL, I’d be hard pressed trying to make anything but the most crude of punch daggers and I arguably wouldn’t even know what one was without having read about them (or played this game of course).

You can already make crude versions of pretty much any weapon, I don’t quite get what you want beyond auto learning a recipe you shouldn’t know.

9

How good a smith are you? Not very good, probably, or making a punch dagger wouldn’t be a problem.

So, here you have the recipe for the weapon, but not the fabrication skill. Kickboxing taught you the recipe, but you still need the fabrication skill to make a good one.

  • Shane
10

Kickboxing didn’t teach the recipe, I already said I probably wouldn’t know what one was if I hadn’t read about them.

I think @harison86 was spot on with what he was saying, even with a set of skills geared towards a certain area you aren’t just going to know how to make something properly. This is covered by the crude weapons already avalible, you have a basic idea of what it is and what it should do and can make a crude version based on that insight. Anything more then that would and should require more detailed instructions, instructions you aren’t going to learn just by knowing how to use said object.

11

Well, punch dagger are probably not the standard equipment that you use - unless your school is much more hard core then most.

When you learn medieval swordsmanship or other weapons based arts you need to know about the weapons - at least enough to purchase some of them.

For Kickboxing a better example would be your bag gloves. You know a good set from a crappy one and if you were a really good tailor you would be able to make a set. Someone not familiar with boxing or kickboxing would probably not make a good set.

My thought is that when fabrication gets to the 7-10 mark you can make whatever you want if you are familiar with them and that familiarity is taught when you use the gear as a regular part of your training.

  • Shane
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How would knowing a good sword from a bad sword make you knowledgeable about what goes into making it a good sword or a bad sword, the alloy composition, the tempering etc?

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Fabrication tells you that.

  • Shane
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Except it doesn’t, we have gone full circle back to my point about having skills in a certain area doesn’t automatically grant you information in regards to that area.

15

Except that it does. You know the properties that you want in the metal and high fabrication tells you how to achieve that.

There are two parts to making anything in the game - the recipe which you can have regardless of your ability to make it and the skill to actually make the thing.

From practical experience I personally can tell you that I’d take the metal from a leaf spring to make a sword - it’d do just fine. I just personally don’t have the smithing skill to pull it off.

My character with a fabrication near the max should be able to.

  • Shane
16

There are two parts to making anything in the game - the recipe which you can have regardless of your ability to make it and the skill to actually make the thing.

Is exactly the point you are missing, you want to get rid of the recipe.

17

NO!

I want people who know the specific martial art to know the recipe because I think they should be familiar enough to duplicate the things they practiced with for years - but only once they get to be a good enough smith to pull it off. Or the in game equivalent which takes less time… but that another subject.

I would argue that even with the recipe you’d need Melee and Cutting Weapons skills in addition, kind of like Archery does for bow/arrows.

  • Shane
18

Having the skill to make something and having tangentially related skills on how to use something doesn’t grant you specific knowledge on how to make something.

19

“Having the skill to make something and having tangentially related skills on how to use something doesn’t grant you specific knowledge on how to make something.”

Huh? If you have the skill to make something you can make it.

  • Shane
1 Like
20

Skill =/= knowledge
Just because you have the skill to make something with the proper instructions doesn’t mean you have the capability without the proper instructions.