Overview

Crafting includes building commonplace items like canoes, wooden palisades, and clothing. To create them, the crafter needs access to basic materials (stone, wood, clay, iron, and so on). However, crafting also includes the numenera. Crafting numenera objects is different from commonplace crafting. To craft numenera objects and structures, one needs iotum usually salvaged from ruins (amber crystal, mimetic gel, responsive synth, tamed iron, and more), special parts (iron screws, synth casements, wood struts, glass panes, and so on), and specific directions on how to use them called plans.
Numenera plans are not actually cohesive blueprints but instead represent a combination of contemporary anecdotes from decades of trial and error; practical knowledge distilled from wrights, nanos, Aeon Priests, and other numenera scholars; and actual seeds and fragments of prior-world knowledge detailing mind-bending energy sources, impossible materials, universal constants, and concepts that defy words. When amalgamated, plans allow crafters to build powerful installations, weird devices, inscrutable automatons, amazing vehicles, and more. It’s likely that the objects and structures that Ninth Worlders create using seeds and fragments of prior-world knowledge bear only a passing resemblance to what an entity of a prior world would’ve done with the same seed concepts, but they are amazing nonetheless.
Plans specify which and how much iotum can be used to create a specific object or structure. They also set the minimum crafting level for the object or structure. Seeds of plans can sometimes be found when iotum and other types of numenera are salvaged for valuables. These seeds can later be developed into complete plans by someone with the experience to do so. Some characters—including Wrights—develop new plans through constant study and discipline.

ASSESSED DIFFICULTY FOR CRAFTING TASKS

The assessed difficulty of crafting a commonplace object or structure is the same as the object or structure’s level, but that’s not true for numenera objects and structures. The assessed difficulty of a crafting task to build a numenera object or structure is always higher than the level of the completed project. For instance, an installation that cures maladies might be level 5 once completed. But the assessed difficulty of the crafting task to build it is 7.
Assessed difficulties can increase beyond difficulty 10, though crafters have many means to decrease the difficulty, including the use of special tools, type abilities, cyphers, certain special components, and of course, relevant skills. If the assessed difficulty for a crafting task would remain above 10 even after all modifications have been applied, then the installation or object cannot be crafted, at least not until some other help is applied to reduce the difficulty.
An assessed difficulty for a crafting task could potentially be reduced so that it becomes a routine task. However, such a task still requires the same time to build as if it had an assessed difficulty of 1.

DETERMINING ASSESSED DIFFICULTY

When building a numenera object or structure, PCs also need to keep in mind the minimum level at which the object or structure in question can be built, called its minimum crafting level. For instance, even if a character has a plan for building a turret that spits poison at foes, that turret might not be able to be constructed at any level less than 5. This, in turn, means that the assessed difficulty for building that turret at the minimum crafting level would be 7, because the modifier for assessing the crafting difficulty of an installation is +2.
The plans described in Numenera Plans each have a minimum crafting level associated with the object the plan describes. That page also includes a table of minimum crafting levels for cyphers and artifacts presented in Numenera Discovery. The new cyphers and artifacts presented in this book have minimum crafting level information already associated with each entry.

MULTIPLE SUCCESSES FOR CRAFTING SUBSTASKS

Crafting tasks, whether crafting a commonplace or exotic object, require the crafter to succeed on multiple subtasks to achieve overall success. The number of subtasks required is equal to the assessed difficulty of the crafting task attempted. So a crafting task assessed as difficulty 5 requires five subtask successes.
The difficulty of each individual subtask begins at 1 and then increases by one step for each remaining subtask, until the crafter succeeds on the final, highest difficulty subtask. Generally, subtask attempts occur at equally divided intervals over the course of the full time required to craft the item. For instance, a character wants to craft a level 2 cypher. Because crafting a cypher has a difficulty equal to the level of the cypher +1, the assessed difficulty of the crafting task is level 3, which means the crafter must succeed on three subtasks. The Crafting Cyphers table says it should take about 4 hours to finish crafting it, so the character must succeed on one subtask about every hour or so, starting at difficulty 1 and ending with a difficulty 3 task at the end of the crafting time.
If at any point the crafter fails on a single subtask, the object or structure isn’t ruined. Instead, the crafter merely loses time. A failure means the time spent on that crafting roll was wasted, but the character can spend that much time again and then try to succeed at that same subtask. If the crafter fails twice in a row on the same subtask, the character can continue crafting but in addition to losing another interval of crafting time, 1 unit of iotum (of the highestlevel iotum being used) is destroyed in a mishap and must be replaced before crafting can continue.

REDUCING CRAFTING DIFFICULTY

Crafters can reduce the assessed difficulty of a crafting task with applicable training, assets, special abilities provided by their focus or type, and so on. Use the reduced assessed crafting level as the starting point for determining the time to build, the number of crafting subtasks attempted, and the difficulty of the final and highest subtask. The amount of time it takes to craft an object or structure varies by the final, modified assessed difficulty, so decreasing the assessed difficulty not only makes it more likely that the crafter will succeed, but it also means they have to spend less time on the project. This means that someone trained in crafting numenera treats an assessed difficulty 7 task as difficulty 6 in terms of difficulty, number of subtasks, and time required. A Wright who’s trained in crafting numenera and has the Adept Builder ability (which lowers the assessed difficulty by 1) reduces an assessed crafting difficulty of 7 to difficulty 5. A mid- to uppertier Wright focused on crafting numenera can quickly turn around even higher-level cyphers in just a few hours or days.
A character may ask to apply Effort to each subtask. Of course, applying Effort is something characters do in the moment, not over the course of days or weeks. Generally speaking, it’s impossible to apply sustained Effort over periods greater than a day, so Effort cannot be applied to any crafting task or subtask that exceeds 28 hours.

RELEVANT CRAFTING SKILLS

There’s a world of difference between crafting a canoe to cross a lake and crafting a lightning tower that can blast a horde of attacking abhumans.
This is why there isn’t a general crafting skill that applies to both. Instead, a character who wishes to become trained in building numenera objects and structures should focus on becoming skilled in crafting numenera, which eases associated tasks like any other skill. To craft objects like canoes, palisades, and normal buildings, a character can choose a skill that provides general crafting knowledge such as carpentry or masonry. To create weapons or armor, a character should learn a more specific skill, such as weaponsmithing or armoring, respectively. As is true with other skills, crafting skills can further ease the assessed difficulty of a crafting task when a crafter has two skills that both directly apply to the task. For example, if a crafter trained both in crafting numenera and in bowyering attempts to make a numenera artifact that works something like a bow, the assessed difficulty to make that artifact is decreased by two steps.

TIME TO BUILD

It takes time to craft or repair objects and structures. The following tables list times to build in minutes, hours, days, and longer for large projects. Any crafting task that lasts one day or longer assumes that the crafter spends an average of about nine hours per day on in-depth, full-time work, not a full 28 hours each day. The object or structure still requires a minimum of 28 hours or longer to craft; however, the crafter is able to set up certain processes—letting a hide soak to soften it, allowing glue to dry, letting responsive synth settle, allowing mimetic gel to replicate, and so on—and walk away to sleep, attend to other tasks, and so on, before returning to the crafting task.

CRAFTING COMMONPLACE OBJECTS

Commonplace objects are items that are not crafted using special components of the prior worlds. They can be as simple as a spear or as complex as plate armor. Generally, commonplace items do not include items that are self-powered (unless that power is provided via a waterwheel or some other very basic technology). Objects that use wood or coal as fuel, similar to twentieth-century steam engines, may seem simple by modern standards, but to the average Ninth Worlder, both steam engines and zero-point engines work via equally inscrutable principles.
Plans for creating commonplace objects are not nearly as complex as those for crafting numenera items, but crafting lore is still useful. A list of plans for commonplace objects is presented in Commonplace Objects and Structures.

CRAFTING COMMONPLACE STRUCTURES

A commonplace structure is a lean-to, a shed, a hut, a one-room house, an inn, a shop, a stone mansion, a five-story tower, a caravanserai, or even a fortress. From the simple to the elaborate, these discrete structures vary in complexity by level. Ideas for commonplace structures are presented in Commonplace Objects and Structures.

CRAFTING CYPHERS AND ARTIFACTS

Cyphers and artifacts are numenera devices that most characters are already familiar with, though up until now, PCs could usually only get them by finding them in some weird ruin or other.
Now, with the proper plans, components, and time, characters can attempt to craft their own cyphers and artifacts! This means if a character wants a level 5 rejuvenator, they can make it, provided they have the plans to do so and some time to spare. Likewise, characters who have plans for level 6 battle armor can try their hand at crafting it once they acquire the proper components and spend the appropriate amount of time to build their new synth-and-steel battle suit.

CRAFTING VEHICLES

Crafting a hover disc or even a motorized wheeled vehicle is fundamentally different from crafting a beast-drawn cart. Wagons, carts, carriages, and similar things are built using skills associated with building commonplace objects (see Crafting Commonplace Objects). Exotic vehicles include the aforementioned hover disc and motorized wheeled vehicles, as well as powered flying craft and ships that can travel to distant stars or even burrow into different dimensions. Plans for exotic vehicles are presented in Numenera Plans.

CRAFTING CONSIDERATIONS

SUBSTITUTING IOTUM

If a crafter doesn’t have all the correct iotum a plan calls for, a substitution can be attempted, as long as the substituted iotum is at least equal to the level of the missing iotum and is provided in equal units. Substituting a component hinders the crafting task, unless the substituted iotum has a special quality that allows it to be substituted. For example, if substituting bio-circuitry for responsive synth, the assessed crafting difficulty remains unchanged. Generally speaking, only one type of iotum substitution can be attempted in any given crafting numenera task.

CRAFTING AND EXPLORING

A character can leave their crafting tasks idle for short periods while they turn their attention to other things, such as a short exploration of a nearby ruin, without any appreciable effect on the ongoing crafting tasks. Although the components are weird and volatile, they will still be where a crafter left them when they return. The only real effect is that the time spent away from the project doesn't count toward the time needed to build it. However, with the GM’s permission, a character might leave the crafting task in the hands of an ally or follower with training in the appropriate crafting skill and not lose any time.

MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS CRAFTING PROJECTS

A character can work on more than one crafting project at a time. Generally, a character can have a number of concurrent crafting projects equal to their tier. However, some characters may have special abilities or equipment that can increase that limit.

ASSESSED TASKS ABOVE LEVEL 10

If the assessed difficulty for a crafting task exceeds level 10, the character can’t actually begin crafting the project until they can lower the assessed difficulty. A character can do so by applying skills, special equipment, cyphers, artifacts, and, in the case of Wrights, special abilities derived from their type.

DISABLED, MINOR, AND MAJOR DAMAGE

Objects and structures can sometimes sustain damage without being completely destroyed. Depending on how damaged an object is, its abilities might be degraded (minor damage) or may no longer work at all (major damage). An object or structure may also be disabled, in which case it no longer works but repairing it is a simple task compared to repairing an object that has sustained major damage. Finally, an object might be completely destroyed, in which case not only does it not work, but it’s also not really a candidate for repair.
Disabled: Object doesn’t work but repairing it is a straightforward task.
Minor Damage: Object’s effective level is –1.
Major Damage: Object is broken and no longer functions.
Destroyed: Object no longer functions and is so broken that it can’t be repaired.

REPAIRING DAMAGED OBJECTS AND STRUCTURES

If an object or structure becomes disabled or damaged (but not destroyed), a character can attempt to repair it. The repair time, assessed difficulty, and iotum required for repairing numenera objects and structures vary based on how damaged the object or structure is. Sometimes, a numenera object or structure is merely disabled, meaning it doesn’t work, but it hasn’t otherwise sustained damage—for example, an installation is disabled by vandalism, through enemy salvage of a critical part, or due to a simple malfunction. In this case, repair could be a simple, one-round task.

MINOR AND MAJOR DAMAGE TAKEN BY AUTOMATONS

Objects that are also creatures, such as automatons, should be treated as creatures that have health, rather than objects that can sustain minor and major damage. Of course, the GM always has final say over what special damage will affect an NPC and how it is applied.

MODIFICATION

A plan or instruction set usually creates a specific object or structure. But what if a crafter wants to make a few modifications? For example, a character who creates a ray emitter cypher might want to extend its range. A character who fashions a detonation cypher may want to tune it so that it detonates only when it senses a particular trigger nearby—something as simple as movement to something as complex as a particular individual. A character creating an installation that creates a force field may want to increase the area protected by the field. In addition, some crafters may wish to make purely aesthetic modifications. A character may want to add a little style and personality to the objects and structures they create. Or they may want to make small decorative additions or other changes that don’t have a real effect on the object or structure’s purpose—attaching an installation to another installation or a large vehicle, or putting the control surface for an installation in a protected cubby, without changing anything else.
For instance, the crafter making an automaton may want it to be covered in a soft, fur-like coating instead of bare metal. Or they may want a ray emitter to sport a beast head so that, when it’s used, the beast head looks like it’s spitting the ray. Another crafter may not care so much about adding personality to a crafted object or structure, but they may want the result to appear smooth and fashionable, as opposed to a cobbled-together mess of parts and iotum (which is how many contemporary crafted numenera items appear).
MODIFICATIONS FOR EFFECT
To modify the effect of an object or installation, a crafter must contribute an additional unit of iotum to the crafting process whose level is equal to or higher than the completed object or structure’s level. In addition, a modification to an object or structure’s effect adds at least one step to the assessed crafting difficulty. A small modification to a device’s target, range, or duration is an acceptable modification. “Small” is subjective and up to the GM, but generally, it means increments of one additional target for an effect (though the GM may rule that the benefit is too great for one additional target in the case of some higher-level devices), a range increment of an additional 50 feet (15 m), or a duration increase of an additional round (for powerful effects) or hours (for effects that already have durations of several hours).
Desired modifications that go beyond such minor changes aren’t considered modifications. Instead, the crafter is moving into the territory of having to develop a new plan altogether.
MODIFICATIONS FOR APPEARANCE
A crafter can modify the appearance of an object or installation to give it a particular style or a visual customization that is pleasing to the crafter—to improve its aesthetic quality beyond that of a jumble of wire and synth melded to strange components. To do so, a crafter must contribute double the number of points’ worth of parts that they’d otherwise contribute to the process. If the character wants to add sleek styling and winglike protuberances to a headpiece artifact, they can do it as long as modifying the appearance of the item doesn’t grant new effects or change existing ones. Modification for appearance is simply a matter of the crafter deciding how they want their project to look when they’re all done.