Tools

Always Making Useful Things

You don’t ever have to spend a fate point to declare that you have the proper tools for a particular job using Crafts, even in extreme situations (like being imprisoned and separated from all your stuff). This source of opposition is just off the table. (Fate Core, p.103)

Big Pocking Wrench

You can do a lot as long as you have your trusty giant wrench on hand. +2 to Crafts when using it to fix or break something with a large wrench, provided the wrench is actually useful for what you are using it for.

Demolitions

You are an expert with explosives. +2 to attack rolls made with Crafts against a target structure whenever you have time to prepare and place charges at its exact weak points. (adapted from Spirit of the Century SRD, §6.12.2)

The Tools Are Lesser than the Hand

You can produce master-craftsman-level work with the crudest of tools. With a proper workshop, you can create impossibly amazing devices in the finest da Vinci style. (Fate System Toolkit, p.99)

Workshop of Choice

Pick a specific workshop or machine shop. You know exactly how this place is arranged and how it operates, and gain +2 on Crafts whenever you perform work within it.

Targets

Architect of Death

+2 to Crafts rolls when designing, repairing or upgrading weaponry. (adapted from Spirit of the Century SRD, §6.12.2)

Favored Material

Choose a type of solid material (e.g. wood, steel, bone). +2 to Crafts when you work predominantly with that substance. (Peter Blake)

From Another Time

You are intimately familiar with the technology of a time other than the present. Choose a time period other than the present day. Add two to your Crafts skill when working with objects or materials from that time period.

Grease Monkey

If it has an engine and wings, propellers, or wheels, you “get” it, intuitively and completely. +2 to Crafts when dealing with vehicles. (adapted from Spirit of the Century SRD, §6.12.2)

Master Bowyer

+2 to Crafts when crafting or repairing bows. (Peter Blake)

Shipwright

+2 to Crafts when building or repairing boats or ships. (Peter Blake)

Stonemason

+2 to create advantage with Crafts when assessing or working with stone. (Peter Blake)

Surgical Strikes

When using Crafts in a conflict involving machinery, you can filter out unwanted targets from whole-zone attacks without having to divide up your shifts (normally, you’d need to divide your roll between your targets). (Fate Core, p.103)

Taxidermist

+2 to Crafts when preserving, stuffing, or posing dead animals. (Peter Blake)

Techniques

Better than New!

Whenever you succeed with style on an overcome action to repair a piece of machinery, you can immediately give it a new situation aspect (with a free invoke) reflecting the improvements you’ve made, instead of just a boost. (Fate Core, p.103)

Bricoleur

You are skilled at improvising when making or repairing something. +2 to Crafts when you creatively incorporate reused materials into your machine.

Eye For Flaws

+2 to create advantage with Crafts when you examine an object or machine for physical weaknesses. (Peter Blake)

Hogtie

When you use Crafts to create a Hogtied (or similar) advantage on someone, you can always actively oppose any overcome rolls to escape the hogtie (also using Crafts), even if you’re not there. (Normally, if you weren’t there, the escaping character would roll against passive opposition, making it a lot easier to escape.) (Fate Core, p.91)

Master Bricoleur

(requires Skilled Bricoleur.) When you succeed on a roll to which the Bricoleur stunt applies, your success takes two time steps less than normal.

Mister Fix-It

You are talented at getting things repaired under time-critical circumstances. The time it takes for you to get something fixed is reduced by two shifts. (adapted from Spirit of the Century SRD, §6.12.2)

Scavenger

There is an art to making things quickly out of cannibalized parts. You find it easy, because the people who made the thing you took apart did most of the work. +2 to create advantages with Crafts whenever you disassemble machinery for later re-use.

Skilled Bricoleur

(requires Bricoleur.) Necessity is the mother of invention. +2 to Crafts when you have nothing to build with except inappropriate materials.

Thump of Restoration/Percussive Maintenance

(requires Mister Fix-It.) Sometimes a bunch of repairs can get short-handed with a good swift thump. To activate this ability, spend a fate point and roll Crafts (vs. a target of Mediocre). If your roll succeeds, the device or contraption starts working and continues working for a number of exchanges equal to the shifts gained on the Crafts roll. Once the time is up, the device stops working again, and any efforts to repair it are at a one step higher difficulty (since, after all, you hit the thing). If you wish to thump again, you may do so for another fate point, but the difficulty for the Crafts roll increases by one on each subsequent attempt. (adapted from Spirit of the Century SRD, §6.12.2)

New Actions

Locksmith

If you can take apart a clock, you can take apart a lock. You may roll Crafts instead of Burglary when lockpicking.

Personalized Weaponry Engineering

Clever engineering can compensate for a lack of combat skill. Pick a broad category of weapon (e.g. swords, polearms, crossbows). When you wield a weapon of this sort that you have created yourself, you may attack with Crafts instead of Fight (for melee weapons) or Shoot (for ranged weapons). Such weapons will often include odd devices and unusual features that make their use very different from that of a normal weapon.