In Puella Ludio Homura Magica, AKEMI HOMURA has the ability to learn CRAFT skills. These represent her ability to take materials and transform them into a finished product; anything from foods to furniture to magical potions. Like most non-Magical skills, these can be learned from Guidebooks - though it may be that ENCHANT (ITEM) operates on these same rules, in which case it is a likely exception.
Recipes[]
Crafting an item requires a valid recipe, which may be determined through trial and error, gained through a book with recipes (which may or may not be a Guidebook), or reverse-engineered from an item through use of one of a limited number of item slots associated with the particular Craft Skill. As these slots can only be gained by leveling up the skill, they are best used on items for which there is no expectation of finding a valid recipe book.
Each recipe represents the use of a certain set of ingredients to produce a certain end product. It also has a particular base DC which sets both how hard it is to create the item and how long it takes to create the item (by default, 1 minute per 10 DC).
Known recipes are attached to the Craft Skill in question; as evidenced by CRAFT (COOKING), they appear to be removed if the skill is lost, such as by using LOAD SAVE.
The Basic Crafting Process[]
Once Homura has acquired (or wants to attempt to discover) a recipe and has the necessary ingredients and tools, she must interact with the materials for the duration determined by the base DC of the recipe. Once this is done, a die is rolled as usual for a skill, and if it is greater than the final DC of the attempt (and not a natural one), the crafting is a success and Homura produces the item.
The form of this roll is, by default, 1d20 + (STAT modifier) + Craft skill bonus + other modifiers. A natural one is an automatic failure, and a natural 20 is a critical success. Critically successful rolls produce improved items, though the particulars seem to be dependent on the recipe, and may be randomly determined in some cases.
Note that most if not all Craft Skills are {DEX/WIS} Skills - they use the minimum of Homura's Dex and Wis modifiers when in use. Using MAGICAL DEXTERITY may potentially be of some minimal use here; if the MP cost is not prohibitive, it can increase Dexterity to the level of Wisdom. However, for most crafting attempts so far, this is not a significant difference in the skill modifier relative to other available options.
If the roll result is substantially over the DC (numbers here unconfirmed), the result may be a BLESSED item. The effect of this varies based on the item; for instance, a BLESSED POTION OF MANA grants an MP EFFICIENCY status effect.
Improved Crafting[]
There are a number of ways confirmed and unconfirmed to improve a crafting attempt's chances of success, possibilities of exceptional successes, required inputs, and so on.
Reducing Requirements[]
It is possible to reduce the number of ingredients used in a crafting attempt; this increases the DC of the attempt, sometimes drastically. For instance, attempting to craft a POTION OF MANA without a SILVER DRAGON SCALE would bump the DC into the 400s. It is unconfirmed whether this is a change to the base DC or if it only affects the final DC. Presumably, eliminating less vital components has a lesser impact on the DC; this is unconfirmed.
As part of a Craft Skill's description, there is some amount of MP which can be spent to reduce the DC. This amount goes down with higher skill; at UNSKILLED, the cost is 10 MP per DC reduction, while extrapolations indicate that at LMAX it costs 2 MP per DC reduction (unconfirmed).
Once a Craft Skill is at GRAND MASTER I, it is possible to automatically succeed at an attempt as long as the DC is low enough. This starts at DC 20 and can eventually reach DC 50 at LMAX. Having any Grand Mastery also allows a critical failure to be rerolled; this reduces the chance of failing on a recipe of sufficiently low level to 1/400 rather than 1/20.
Improving Outcome[]
As noted, an improved outcome results from a critical success. On reaching GRAND MASTER I, natural 19s also count as critical successes, increasing the window for improved results to occur on rolled crafting attempts. This increased critical range does not apply to rerolls due to a natural 1.
Reaching Grand Mastery also allows spending 5 MP or doubling the required time to turn a regular success into a critical success. It has been suggested that spending MP this way can also potentially convey the BLESSED status on the item.
When an automatic critical is being used on an automatically successful roll, there is no die roll involved and the potion cannot become BLESSED in the usual fashion.
Crafting Equipment[]
Several items and enchantments can improve the crafting process by a considerable amount:
The CAFFEINATED status adds a base +2 to many skill checks per stack applied, crafting rolls included. This is the primary method for hitting high DCs. The CAFFEINE CRASH from several levels of the status wearing off at the same time is potentially life-threatening, though use of SAFE POTION OF CAFFEINE as a base may be useful in removing this issue. Likewise, CAFFEINE DEPENDENCY and CAFFEINE TOLERANCE are problematic.
An item with the CRAFT Enchantment reduces the base DC of all Craft checks by 2. This increases to 4 if the enchantment is instead specific to a particular Craft skill; the CRAFT (POTIONS) Enchantment, for instance. Both of these can be doubled with the IMPROVED EFFECT Enchantment; this has been used to good effect by Homura in reducing the base DC of her mana potion-crafting. Note that as this reduces the base DC, the duration required to craft the item is likewise reduced.
The GUIDANCE Enchantment reduces the chance of failure by adding to the result on a failed roll; this may be useful even beyond the CRAFT Enchantment in cases where the base DC is reduced to 0 but the final DC is still too high to reliably succeed.
The GREATER CHANCE Enchantment can increase the size of the rolled die, which reduces the probability of a critical failure and increases the average and maximum result on the die. Note this also reduces the chance of a critical success.
Distilling[]
It is possible to combine Potions - and possibly other items - through a DISTILLATION Enchantment on a container item. This shows up as a recipe, though it takes no time and requires no rolls. The combined item grants all the benefits of its components, but may be used as a single item (i.e., it gives benefits as if drinking multiple potions in a single gulp). Up to 5 items may be combined in a single distillation.
However, chained distillation costs MP in order to use, trading that resource for the convenience of activating multiple items at a time. Each item that is the result of distillation costs 1 MP to be used in the next distillation.
For example:
- You can distill 5x [POTION OF CAFFEINE] into one [POTION OF CAFFEINE CUSTOM MIX 1] at no MP cost.
- To distill 5x [POTION OF CAFFEINE CUSTOM MIX 1] into one [POTION OF CAFFEINE CUSTOM MIX 2] would cost 5 MP.
- To distill 5x [POTION OF CAFFEINE CUSTOM MIX 2] into one [POTION OF CAFFEINE CUSTOM MIX 3] would cost 5 MP.
And so on.
Experimental Results[]
BLESSED status on a POTION OF CAFFEINE when the DC is 2 is likely in the range of 13-15 (98.2% certainty). BLESSED status on a POTION OF MANA when the DC is 80 is likely in the range of 38-43 (96.0% certainty).