Hi all!!

Just curious but for a long time its been mentioned that tinkering would include instrument making, is still the plan or was that scrapped all together?

I know a lot of us Bards (and others out there) were REALLY, REALLY looking forward to being able to make our own instruments and eventually put a mark on them.

I had to leave Instrument making off due to the complexity of getting everything proposed/approved.

How do players envision taking raw ingots and turning them into completed metal instruments without the need of a forge? That is one thing I've been stuck on with regards to metal tinkering in general... the gear press was my attempt at hand-waving some of it. But it doesn't quite get us all the way there.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

>>How do players envision taking raw ingots and turning them into completed metal instruments without the need of a forge? That is one thing I've been stuck on with regards to metal tinkering in general... the gear press was my attempt at hand-waving some of it. But it doesn't quite get us all the way there.

TBH, I could see there being different instruments in different crafts. For tinkering in particular, maybe the focus can be on the "fine detail" stuff that don't explicitly fall under other things, like instruments that involve strings or air being filled in a sack and expressed through whatever (bagpipes, duh), etc. I could see it trying to appropriate some of what is used in building out mechanisms, only with needing strings and/or covers made instead of gears (maybe with the same handwave that metals get for gears, only this time for fabrics?).

These are pretty much pulled from the instrument recall page, and I tried to pick things that were leaned heavily toward one particular part of the craft mattering most (arguably).

Blacksmithing: Bongos, Cornet, Chalumeaux, Cymbals, Fife, Flute, Horn, Piccolo, Spoons, Triangle, Whistle, Xylophone, Zills
Carving: Bones, Bongos, Damaru, Flute, Fife, Hichiriki, Horn, Ocarina, Piccolo, Syrinx, Whistle, Xylophone
Shaping: Bassoon, Bones, Bongos, Chalumeaux, Clarinet, Claves, Didjeridu, Fife, Flute, Frottoir, Guiro, Hautbois, Hichiriki, Horn, Mirliton, Mitbiq, Oboe, Piccolo, Pyi-pya, Serpent, Shawm, Spoons, Syrinx, Tapani, Txistu, Walking stick flute, Washboard, Xylophone
Tailoring: Bodhran, Darje, Ritual Drum, Shaman's Drum, Tabor, Temple Drum
Tinkering: Bagpipes, Banjo, Bass viol, Box fiddle, Cello, Cistre, Cittern, Cornemuse, Dulcimer, Elkabongador, Faenellica, Fiddle, Gittern, Guti'adar, Harp, Khurmary, Kithara, Lute, Lyre, Mandolin, Nehpar'i, Sackbut, Sarangi, Treble viol, Viola, Violin, Violincello,

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>I think most people who want to make instruments would not be happy about having to learn multiple skills to do them all.

No more than someone wanting to make all armors would have to learn outfitting, forging, and carving.

Admittedly, while it would then require people who want to make all instruments invest in multiple crafts-types, it also allows instrument-makers to not have to do one particular craft to make all things, and instead let them pick up a few alongside the other options they might be considering.

Also, looking at the way most other craft techniques seem to work, and looking at the range of instruments out there, I could see smaller instrument sets being distributed throughout crafts as "basic instrument creation"/"advanced instrument creation". If they all fell in one bucket, I would expect it to be more like "basic wind"/"advanced wind" and so on. See how techniques look in weapon smithing compared to carving. This could arguably be an advantage or disadvantage, as well, depending on how many engineering and/or tinkering techniques you'd want to invest in just instrument creation.

In a "systems happening faster" sense, IMO I could see being able to link stuff like flutes and zills into blacksmithing right now with the way blacksmithing is currently handled. Same goes for carving and most of their instruments.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

<<TBH, I could see there being different instruments in different crafts.

No thanks. One craft to tool them all.

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Engineering already includes multiple metal items.

More importantly, if instruments were a robust enough system like armor or weapons then sure, multiple crafts would be more appropriate. Instruments are a cosmetically different set of items used to train an almost completely useless skill. A single crafting discipline is much more appropriate for them.

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It seems suitable to just have a bunch of appropriate raw components(which maybe other crafts might manufacture) like brass plates, reeds, drumskins, and boards that you press with an instrument mold if you have to do anything. Maybe you heat the mold beforehand with a stove or whatever like you might do for tailoring iron.

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Re: Life mana Spell preps

You raise your hands in the air. You wave them like you just don't care. Somebody says, "Hey!" Somebody says, "Ho!" Somebody screams.

<<I believe Kodius said that gear presses exist

I wasn't talking about gear presses. I was talking about the association being made that forging = metal and engineering = not metal.

<<Two points to make.

Your points are over thinking things. This is a clear cut case. Instruments are not complex enough to require more than and should
not be more than a single discipline. Period.

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The difference is that those weapons and armours are all functionally very different.

There is no difference from one instrument to the next except for variation in teaching range which has nothing whatsoever to do with material composition. There's a reason the four separate music skills were combined into a single skill. This is an extension of that same reasoning.

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But there are multiple products that will train all 14 weapon skills split across the various skills that make weapons.

Instruments train a single useless skill.

I can't believe I'm arguing this. It's a no-brainer.

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>>There is no difference from one instrument to the next except for variation in teaching range which has nothing whatsoever to do with material composition. There's a reason the four separate music skills were combined into a single skill. This is an extension of that same reasoning.

Eh, I see it as an apples and oranges situation.

I obviously have a bias toward making crafting instruments accessible beyond just one particular craft skill subset, similar to things like weapons, armor, jewelry, furniture and so on, because I disagree with the idea of having making things be all-or-nothing when applicable.

So I don't view making some instruments craftable across multiple channels (and some being channel-specific) is a bad thing when it comes to letting players create instruments, because it means players could blacksmith or tailor or carve or tinker or shape to craft something that is an instrument. Understandably, the opposite side of that is that it means players have to blacksmith and tailor and carve and tinker and shape to craft everything that is an instrument.

My preference is getting everyone access to something, vs some getting access to everything.

I also see the possible advantage of having to only invest a few techs in multiple craft sets/subsets to create some instruments vs having to invest many techs in one particular craft set/subset, because it means that if you want to craft all instruments, you might just have to invest two or three in a few subcrafts vs investing 8+ (I can easily see at least having a basic/advanced tech for each instrument class) in one particular subcraft, because it comes off as a much heavier investment in just that one craft.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>Cups are pure fluff.

Instruments aren't?

>>Instrument techs will be something like simple instrument making and complex instrument making and will likely be branched off of mechanism crafting, possibly linking into toy crafting somehow. This vision you have of "many" instrument techniques is not going to happen.

Eh, my view is that there are so many iterations of instruments, and potential sub-iterations (types of flutes, types of bones, types of harps, etc) that they would warrant their own techniques since there would be dozens to choose from.

If instruments amount to "T1: flutes and bones, T2: a harp, T3: a banjo and lute," sure, two techs would be fine. I think it would be neat if there were more to it than that. I'd love to see short zills and stout zills and thin zills and wide zills and etc.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

<<Eh, my view is that there are so many iterations of instruments, and potential sub-iterations (types of flutes, types of bones, types of harps, etc) that they would warrant their own techniques since there would be dozens to choose from.

And I again point to the fact that instruments are not complex enough in actual function to support this.

I'm done, since you're clearly in "what if" mode.

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Here's the issue I see with instruments coming out of multiple skills: It destroys the niche of "Instrument maker".

Right now, there are several commodities people really want: armor, weapons, bows, instruments, etc. There's a reason they've been split into different skills. This way the different prestige/financial niches get split up. If three crafting skills can make instruments, then you can go to three times more crafters to get one. There's no need for a crafter to specialize to become "the" instrument person.

If there were a really strong, meaningful difference between different instruments, maybe they could be split (like bows vs. metal weaponry). But as it is, you really just need an instrument that fits into your difficulty level, and there are precious few different difficulties, most of which last you until 500+ ranks.

I would actually be in favor of more complexity for instruments, maybe give them more meaningful stats like weapons that interact with the new busking system (or any other system the GMs come up with!). However, even then, I could see maybe splitting into two crafting skills at most.


- Navesi

if you added zills to forging that would meet the instrument needs of a vast majority of the population.

tinkering rules , the toys are really excellent

-Munch-