Arrowhead Blacksmithing Changes

[Math321]

Under the old blacksmithing system, if you wanted to make arrowheads, you needed the "Blacksmithing" ability, as well as a decent Forging: Arrowheads skill.

Under the new blacksmithing system, if you want to make arrowheads, you need the "Blacksmithing" ability and the "Blacksmithing: Blades" ability, as well as a decent Forging: Arrowheads skill.

This seems a little strange to me. Making arrowheads would seem to have a lot in common with making nails and spikes and other pointy commodities, rather than daggers and swords. Arrowheads even get a larger boost from Forging: General than most other products do!

Additionally, and importantly, any characters that have spent a long time making arrowheads under the old system (Artus, Verel, etc.) can no longer do so without investing in the Blacksmithing: Blades ability.... Even if they never intend on making daggers/swords once they learn the bodkin and broadhead schematics. This could result in such people ripping their hair out trying to find room in their packed ability-lists, just to make room for an ability their characters can't/won't make full use of... Or deciding that arrowheads aren't worth 2 ability slots, and just dropping blacksmithing entirely.



To avoid those odd/sad scenarios, I'd like to propose a change. I believe it makes mechanical and logical sense to allow the base "Blacksmithing" ability to be the ONLY ability requirement for forging arrowheads, just like it used to be. There are 3 main ways this could be done. Any of the three would be good ways of keeping the ability-cost of arrowheads stable while still integrating them cleanly into the new forging system:

A. Blade-smiths can teach non-blade-smiths the broadhead or bodkin schematics using the schematic teaching system.
B. The bodkin and broadhead schematics can be discovered with the schematic discovery system by anyone with a decent enough Forging: General skill. Essentially treating them as commodity items based off of Forging: Arrowheads.
C. One or both arrowhead schematics can be bought at schematic merchants, just like other basic schematics can.

Thank you for your consideration. Please implement one of these options if it is possible!

[artus]

Whole heartedly agreed. As I stated in the ability cap topic, I didn't expect you gms to do that without telling or asking us first, so it came into a huge shock for me and i ended up sobbing like crazy and had a plan to drop blacksmithing entirely since I could no longer use it to do anything I used to do anymore (fits Quintin's second possible outcome). I thought the new forging system only came to make forging make more sense. Didn't expect anything to be gated behind abilities like that.
By saying this, I'm not trying to tell you it's something I personally benefit from and it needs to be changed back so that I can benefit from it again, no. Arrowheads have been something we forgers have worked on for a very long time. Not all smiths craft arrowheads, and not every arrowhead crafters do or want anything else besides being able to do just that. Besides what quintin suggested above, I would like to add one more suggestion, which is the same suggestion as I previously said in the ability cap topic:
How about scrapping forging general and make it so anyone can forge commodities while being able to do what they want to do, so that way you don't need to drop forging blades for arrowheads (though it makes more sense to see arrowheads under general category imo). Either way, I too would like to ask for your consideration, as many, many arrowhead crafters are very much impacted with the change and most, if not all of us don't have ability slot to spend anymore for forging blades just so we can make arrowheads, because it wasn't required before and we never even thought of preparing for that. We, or in this case at least me, don't even want to forge blades to begin with, but now we need that ability to craft arrowheads.

[Nobody]

To avoid those odd/sad scenarios, I'd like to propose a change. I believe it makes mechanical and logical sense to allow the base "Blacksmithing" ability to be the ONLY ability requirement for forging arrowheads, just like it used to be. There are 3 main ways this could be done. Any of the three would be good ways of keeping the ability-cost of arrowheads stable while still integrating them cleanly into the new forging system:

A. Blade-smiths can teach non-blade-smiths the broadhead or bodkin schematics using the schematic teaching system.
B. The bodkin and broadhead schematics can be discovered with the schematic discovery system by anyone with a decent enough Forging: General skill. Essentially treating them as commodity items based off of Forging: Arrowheads.
C. One or both arrowhead schematics can be bought at schematic merchants, just like other basic schematics can.

Thank you for your consideration. Please implement one of these options if it is possible!

I was thinking about this and have an alternative suggestion that might make more sense. Leave new blacksmithing as is, and expand the Udemi arrow making ability to unlock forging arrowheads (without needing a seperate blacksmithing ability) and knapping arrowheads (and flakes, also without a seperate knapping ability). Then for udemi, who already specialize in fletching, the whole process is available with only one ability point.

[Math321]

Huzzah! This complaint has now been solved by the new Blacksmithing: Munitions ability. It has no prerequisites - not even Blacksmithing - so if someone JUST wants to make arrowheads (and shot, and crossbow bolts), they can have that instead of the Blacksmithing ability.

In addition, the ability cap has very recently been raised to 21, so if someone in this situation wants to keep making Forging: General stuff too, they can simply take Blacksmithing and Blacksmithing: Munitions both.

[Jirato]

It should have blacksmithing as a pre-requisite. If it does not, that is a bug and will be fixed.

[Math321]

Noctere (at least I think it's Noctere) decided to remove the pre-req when he noticed that the ability had it - less a bug and more of a miscommunication between GMs, I guess.

[CHAT - (a mysterious GM)]: oops, slight error there.
[CHAT - (a mysterious GM)]: There, removed the pre-req.

Whatever the case, if it is meant to have the Blacksmithing prerequisite, things are still fine - Artus can now take both abilities and be right where he started. That's good for him and anyone in a similar position to him. :D He can even potentially get new goodies like crossbow bolts and firearms shot.


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EDIT: relavant Jirato quote:

[CHAT - Developer Jirato]: Minor misunderstanding between Noctere and I when we were discussing the implementation of the new ability, sorry about that. Original intent by him was to just release it without a pre-requisite to address the issues brought up this morning. I do not like the idea of having a Blacksmithing: Whatever sub-ability that doesn't require the core general Blacksmithing abilities first, so I figured the best way to address this and still enable the people who were full up on abilities to be able to make arrowheads was to just increase the ability cap, since we've released two new abilities in the past 24 hours and the overall number of ability choices has increased.

[CHAT - Developer Jirato]: Either way, nothing is lost here. Y'all can still make arrowheads without having to drop any existing abilities now, since you ahve that new extra ability point.