Campaign Preparation: Smoke on the Water - Artisan

This guy looks massively talented.

Yesterday, I made a template for a magic user which is probably one of the most difficult classes to get right. Today, I am going to work on the other pretty difficult template, the Artisan. This template requires a lot of different skills to make a lot of different things, and that means I need to carefully utilize tools that get a lot of bang for buck with a point budget that doesn't allow for the easy shortcut of "just get a lot of DX." Let's see how this goes.

Needs

• The big things are the ability to craft shelter and boats, and probably other useful items as well. Starting with a version of the aptly named artificer talent, I'm going to pare it down to a low-tech version to make it 5 points per level instead of 10 by taking out all the electronics stuff. Next, the other important talent is Gifted Artist, which covers making a wide array of small things that are especially important at a low tech level. Also, Photography, but meh. Wait a moment, if I look at High Manual Dexterity, it gives me everything Gifted Artist does, plus Knot-Tying which might be more useful for this use case. On the other hand, it doesn't give us the training bonus. Maybe I'll take one of each to get the "foot in the door" that leads to the potential to buy more levels of either.

Let's see, I'll play around with these talents and put down some important skills, I think getting the key abilities to 14 is bare minimum competency, so let's see how we do. For the sake of differentiating my slightly customized version of Artificer with the high tech fat trimmed, I'll call my version Low Tech Artificer... and doo doo doo, it looks like I was able to put together a tolerable template that covers almost all important skills for 60 points.

The Template Proper

Here is the template that I came up with:

Artisan	60 points
Advantages:  45 points distributed among: Gifted Artist[5/lvl]; High Manual Dexterity[5/lvl]; Low-Tech Artificer[5/lvl];
Skills: 15 points distributed among: Artist, Engineer/TL both (H) IQ-2[1]-8; Armoury or Machinist, Both (A) IQ-1[1]-9; Carpentry or Masonry, Both (E) IQ+0[1]-10; Leatherworking, Sewing/TL, or Knot-Tying, All (E)DX+0[1]-10

From this advantage list, I recommend two levels of Gifted Artist, High Manual Dexterity 3, and Low-Tech Artificer 4.

From the skills, for the sake of this campaign, I recommend one point in each of:

• Carpentry
• Engineer (Civil)
• Engineer (Ships)
• Leatherworking
• Machinist
• Masonry
• Sewing

And two points in

• Armoury (Melee Weapons)
• Armoury (Missile Weapons)
• Artist (Pottery)
• Knot-Tying

This will give skill levels of 14-16 in almost all skills but the two engineer skills, which I'd recommend raising as well. With the parameters for my 100/-100 character campaign in mind, this definitely makes a character that can do what he needs to do, and still gives a lot of room for personalization.