Item Quality
From Sagataflwiki
This article is about the phenomenon of Item Quality, a stat that defines the intrinsic quality of items and commodities.
Item Quality is used for tools, including military tools such as weapons, armour and shields, as well as clothing and skill kits (such as disguise kits or lockpicks), and also for materials such as metal alloys and cooking ingredients, and for slaves and horses, and some (probably all) categories of vehicles.
Average Item Quality is denoted Q3, better-than-average is Q4, Q5 and so forth, and lower-than-average is Q2, Q1 and so forth. Any tool that is used in a physical sense, including military tools, adventuring gear and some skill kits, should not be too low Quality, othewise it won't be fit for field use, possibly to the point of disintegrating if one sneezes on it, but very low Item Quality is possible for metal alloys and other materials, and also theoretically possible for slaves and mounts, although since they are expensive to own in terms of food, ones of substandard quality are likely to be put down in any realistic medieval setting.
Item Quality may be due to craftsmanship quality, often for tools and jewelry, or intrinsic properties, often genetics, such as with cooking and herbal ingredients, slaves and horses.
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Subject
Item Quality is a stat, with an average value of 3, denoted Q3. Better than average is Q4, Q5 and so forth, although for some item categories not all Quality values may be possible. For instance it may be the case (this decision has not been made yet, as of October 2010) that armor and shields can only have qualities of Q3, Q6, Q9 and Q12, in-between values simply not being possible within the setting.
Q3 is an item that is good enough, e.g. good enough for a craftsman's pride and for formal guild standards, it's what one would consider to be an acceptable mount (although medieval nobility of course preferred horses better than that, usually Q4 or Q5, and more for high nobles like Dukes and Kings), and what the average householder would regard as acceptable quality of staple cooking ingredients (but noting that luxury cooking ingredients often have a default Quality higher than 3, e.g. black truffles, in order to simulate their intrinsically valuable properties).
Worse-than-average is Q2, and sometimes also lower (Q1, Q0), although that is very rare for tools. A Q2 tool is already dangerously bad if you're likely to engage in high-danger activities on a regular basis (such as RPG-style adventuring), and there's not much of a market for Q1 crafted items except clothes and footwear.
Likewise there isn't much of a market for lower-than-Q2 cooking ingredients, or horses or slaves, although in many cases low-Quality slaves are kept around for sentimental reasons; they're just very rarely traded, and only occasionally given as gag gifts to a friend, relative or rival.
Quality Picks
For many item categories, such as almost all tools, and slaves, horses and vehicles, there'll be pick lists, and each Quality level above 3 allows for the choice of one pick worth of option from the list appropriate for the item category (e.g. the Sword List, the Armor List, the Skill Kit list), with some options costing more than 1 pick. As an example, a Q5 Lockpicking Skill Kit is two Quality levels better than average, and so allows 2 picks. These can be used to purchase 2 options each costing one pick, or one option that costs 2 picks.
Materials, such as metal alloys and cooking or herbal ingredients, tend not to offer picks. The intrinsic quality of the materials used instead affects the crafting or cooking process in some way, e.g. if you're trying to cook with rotten meat, moldy vegetables, and no spices at all, you will' suffer a hefty RD penalty to your Cooking skill roll.
Likewise jewelry doesn't offer picks. A Q5 gold finger ring of a certain mass is simply more prettily shaped than a Q3 gold finger ring of the same mass, which matters a lot if you're buying it for decorative purposes, but very little if you regard it as nothing but hack-gold, to be chopped into pieces and used for minor purchases.
Basically the options are bonuses and upgrades, such as RD bonuses to skill rolls, lowered Action Point cost to use combat items (one or several Speed Factors, applied to a weapon or shield, these often being general Speed Factors rather than action-specific), Durability bonuses, and similar.
For most item categories, there are similar option lists for below-average Quality. An item of Q1 is two quality levels below average, and so two picks worth of negative options must be chosen. These may include reduced Durability (unless Durability automatically drops with below-average Quality - this might be the case for some item categories, in which case there often is no option to reduce Durability further via negative picks), a skill roll RD penalty, increased mass (the item is heavier, leading to increased Action Point cost to use (negative Speed Factors or a greater Fleetness Penalty), or severe lack of esthetic appeal (i.e. the item is embarassingly ugly).
Most such item categories should allow the exchange of positive and negative picks to a limited extent, e.g. for a Q5 Skill Kit item, instead of choosing 2 positive picks worth of options, 3 positive picks worth of options and 1 negative pick worth of options is legal.
Allowing the choice of more than 1 or 2 negative picks, to pay for some more positive stuff, on an above-average Quality item, can lead to problems. The system is not generally geared for that, so each item category must specify how much of such "exchange" is allowed.
(Note that players should almost always be free to put additional negative options into their equipment without compensation, e.g. if a player wants to play a warrior whose sword happens to be spectacularly ugly. The limit is only on negative options that give compensatory picks.)
Advice
Item Quality matters!
Chances are, the character you are creating is a professional. A professional at something. Maybe a pro warrior. Or cave explorer. Or dragon-slayer. Or special operations forces soldier. Professionals want good tools. Yes, good gear costs a lot of money, but it's worth it, and in Sagatafl, making a character well-equipped at gamestart doesn't cost a lot of points.
Many item categories will have recommended options, and usually these can be safely followed, unless you have something special in mind. Medieval swords, for instance, were not parrying tools (although try telling that to the Kelts of the Ärth setting); you used shields for defence. As such, if you are making a non-shield-using character and you follow the recommendation, your character will be entering a world of pain (unless he has a high Dodge skill). For such a character, spend at least some of the picks, and maybe all of them, on increased Durability.
The Skill Kit item category probably won't have recommended options, because there is no single "best" choice.
It all depends on what your character values: a skill roll RD bonus, damage bonus, improved armour piercing, a bonus to range, increased Durability, special resistances (when possible, e.g. fire-resistant, moisture-resistant), or reduced size and mass (to improve concealability and portability), or even having the skill kit camouflaged as something else (a disguise kit that looks like a makeup kit, so people won't suspect your character is a spy). Generally, a skill roll bonus is good, but if your character carries a lot of gear, or wants to carry the gear into places guarded by people who aren't shy about frisking down visitors, reduced size & mass is good, and if your character is going to travel far from re-supply, Durability is good because if your kit breaks you probably don't be able to repair it.
Esthetics can also be more important than one might assume. Roleplaying gaming isn't always about fighting and conflicting directly with people. Sometimes you want NPCs to heed your character's advice, or even become his followers, and they're much more likely to do that if your character carries shiny beautiful gear. Likewise, you can avoid a lot of dangerous combat (and some dangerous non-physical conflict) if you look like a serious kind of person, i.e. if your gear looks cool. Consider your character's ability to impress.
Finally there's camouflage. Maybe your character benefits from being underestimated? A disguise kit camouflaged as a makeup kit is the most obvious options, but a very good sword can also be made to look superficially rusty and generally of shoddy make, in spite of being quite sharp and very Durable, and lockpicks can be disguised as hair pins (which is distinct from hairpins being used as improvised quality lockpicks).
Market availability
Keep in mind that during character creation, you can spend the Quality Picks on your items as you wish, limited only by the rules, and in a few cases by absolute geographical availability, i.e. if the pick option you wish flat out isn't available at all in your character's home area or in any area that his backstory says he has ever visited or has traded with. After gamestart, you're limited to what realistically available on the specific markets you visit, so unless your character travels to new lands, he'll have fewer options. That's one more reason to get exactly the gear you want during character creation.
Monetery cost
Many item categories have rules for how the monetary cost of an item goes up as Quality improves, and how it drops when Quality goes down. These are of course only guidelines, but they are realistic and should be followed most of the time.
Keep in mind, though, that sellers will try to conceal flaws in items, and that buyers might not know what to look out for, or they may have vague knowledge but lack the ability to actually notice or discern undesirable traits. That's one reason why warriors can benefit from having some knowledge of how military tools are made.
Sellers will very often price their goods for sale as if the negative qualities didn't exist; that's realistic.
Also be mindful of the fact that ultimately, the buyer determines the value. If you want to buy a female slave as a social secretary, rather than for the much more typical reason that men purchase female slaves, and you get the choice between a Q8 hottie and a mousy and frowsy Q2'er, it might well turn out that the Q8 hottie is a stereotypical blonde, with below-average Intelligence, and the attention span and mnemonic capacity of a goldfish, whereas the Q2'er may be Intelligence 4, be attentive, and become quite cooperative once she finds out that her enw owner appreciates her and focuses on what she's good at rather than on her estehetic inadequacies.
The trick is to prevent the seller from catching on to this, instead giving him the impression that you're buying the Q2 slave because you absolute cannot afford the Q8'er.
Please note
It is necessary that each item category has its own list of pick options, even going so far as to divide some sub-categories, such as melee weapon, into indivdual types, sword, axes, maces, because these sub-categories are mae in different ways and have different combat functions.
Also note that in some cases, some Item Quality levels simply aren't available, and in other cases some Item Qualities are never naturally available but may become available via magic. For instance, staple Cooking ingredients can only be Quality 3, 2, 0 or -4, and a variety (not yet determined) of above-average Qualities, but Spells can be cast to give bonuses to Cooking ingredient Quality, and this can cause a final (ingredient) Quality that "lands" on a value that cannot occur naturally, such as -3, -2 or 1.
Generally, when certain item Quality levels aren't available at all, it is because of the picks system (some tool types, such as - probably - shields and armour), or because of a desire to keep things coarse-grained (jewelry), or both, and when the limitation is only on natural occurence and is therefore not absolute, it is with regards to materials and ingredients.
Mini-FAQ
sub-section
Q: A: Q: A:
The world
Crafts and craftsmen
It is the case in most worlds that craftsmen, any characters with crafts skills (regardless of species and sex), take some degree pride in their work. Remember your grandmother, who knitted socks or mittnes for you as Christmass gifts, year after year? That's craftsman's pride too, albeit on a small scale.
Thanks to the Plateau Effect, the vast majority of craftsmen in the setting never become very good at their skills, to the point where they can routinley make much-better-than-average items with minimal effort. Nevertheless, they are proud of their consistent Q3 items and very few will have Q2 items in stock. These are made to order. Or if a few are in stock, they're hidden away somewhere, with the craftsman reluctant to admit it. Also, most such craftsmen will flat out refuse to produce Q1 items, or claim (untruthfully) that it is physically impossible for them to do so, or perhaps not always untruthfully that there are religious or guild prohibitions as hindrances.
The exception is clothes, which are often produced at Q2 and even Q1, for use by beggars and other very poor people. Note, though, that most Q2 and Q1 clothes are actually the result of recycling, either just continuing to use Q3+ clothes after they have deterioated in Quality due to normal (i.e. daily) or abnormal (i.e. adventuring or similar) wear, or else true recycling where used Q3+ clothing is dismantled and re-assmbled into Q2 or Q1 clothing.
Cheapskates are disinclined to opt for purchasing (or having wives or servants make) newly-made Q2 or worse clothes, however, because they don't last very long. In terms of the ratio of cost-to-lifespan, Q3 clothes are actually cheaper. They're more expensive as an investment, but last much longer (and even longer than that if you keep wearing them until they drop to Q1), thus once again proving the old saying that it's expensive to be poor. Some misers might opt to purchase used clothes, although that's often still Q2, because Q1 lasts for such a short while that the miser will have to open his purse too frequently to re-purchase.
Materials
Q1 materials are sometimes used by the poor, or to make items for the poor, but rarely to make tools. At best a minor material might be substandard, for instance when making a hammer, the wooden shaft might ocasionally be made out of Q1 wood, but the head itself is made out of at least Q2 Iron, and probably Q3 Iron, or else Q2 or Q3 bronze.
Much more likely, clothes and food are made out of substandard materials. In medieval settings, flour with stone grit in it (from the grinding process) is often used to bake bread, with the grit eventually causing dental damage to the poor peasants. Farmers and people living in or very close to farming communities tend to rarely eat substandard meat or vegetables, except late in winter, and even then only the poor do that.
Town-dwellers are another matter. Locally grown food is limited to a few eggs and tiny vegetable plots, maybe an apple tree, so everything has to be imported. Preservation processes lower the Quality of most food types (although in some cases like fruit the effect is small) but greatly increase the shelf life, although it often costs ressources, such as wood for smoking, or - much worse - expensive salt for curing or pickling, or (not-horribly-expensive) honey for preserve.
Clothing is also often made of substandard material, sometimes resulting in improved quality final product, e.g. a skilled craftsman (or often craftswoman) taking Q1 clothing material and via skill and effort turning it into Q2 clothes.
Elite chefs go for high-Quality ingredients, however, and so do elite craftsmen. Often they have good reason for this, because the Quality of the materials used affect the Quality of the resulting product, but even when that is not the case, it is often embarassing to be seen working with substandard materials.
Living items
When it comes to still-living "items", the Quality concept most often applies to horses and other, and sometimes to slaves, and perhaps to dogs or hunting falcons. Genetically substandard living "items" are rare, because they are simply not bred, the exception being slaves who in most settings are not kept under prison-like conditions and so have the opportunity for a variety of reproductive escapades.
The main reason for keeping a substandard slave around, is a sentimental owner. The slave, male or female, may have been born substandard but be suspected by the owner to be his offspring. Or more likely the slave was once higher Quality, but deterioated due to age (common with female slaves) disease or injury, and so again is kept around and put to whatever kind of work he or she can perform.
The same goes for service animals. A horse that was once a splendid mount but then went lame, is much more likely to be put out to pasture, than to be recycled for glue, unless the owner is a true cynic.
One Quality element of living "items" is training. A literate slave, or a thoroughly war-trained mount, has a higher market value, even if certain potential buyers ascribe no value to such traits. That said, selling horses is often simpler than selling slaves, and many potential slaves are not enslaved, simply because they appear to not be of high enough Quality to warrant the risk and cost of capture, enslavement, transportation, and caloric maintenance until the right buyer shows up. Then again, in areas where slavery is common, and there's more or less of a market economy, there will always be low-end brothels that require a steady supply of Q2 women (which, then again, is one case where death is clearly more desirable than slavery).
World impact
Crafts skills
As mentioned above, the Plateau Effect means that average-attribute characters can continue making a living at a craft for decades without becoming particularly good at it. Individuals with high values in relevant attributes will become notably good, and may get local or even large-scale fame (in the form of Reputations), depending on the category of item. As one might expect, skilled sword-makers are much more celebrated than skilled weavers in almost all worlds.
Higher Quality tools also - usually - take more time to craft, and require more expensive raw materials, so even a very skilled character won't constantly produce items that are as good as he can make them, although a fairly skilled craftsman may consider Q4 his comfort level, and be reluctant (even very reluctant) to make anything of lesser Quality, and a famous expert might routinely make Q5 or even Q6 items. Anything better, if it can be made, is by special order (and note that many such craftsmen are not self-employed, but work for kings, warlords, or high priests), or made with the intent of being given as a gift to a specific individual.
Some such craftsmen may well have a few high-Q items in stock, especially of item categories that are very popular in their high-Q forms such as swords, but if adventurers come around asking for such items, it's very much a seller's market.
The Ärth setting
Crafts
There's very little that is special about the Ärth setting, with regard to Item Quality. All cultures have respect for skilled craftsmen, although slightly more in some than in others. The Norse revere swordmakers slightly more than other craftsmen, and are very fond of those rare few individuals who can create mail armour, whereas the Kelts are muchly into swordsmithing, even to the point of regarding swordsmiths and also all other blacksmiths (and most other metalworkers) as members of the druidic social class. They do the same with shipwrights, but consider other craftsmen to be commoners by default.
More or less pacifistic cultures tend to value swordsmithing and other blacksmithing slightly less, compared to peaceful crafts, but thoroughly pacifistic cultures are rare in the violent 10th tentury. Parts of the Arabic Caliphate, perhaps, and most Jewish enclaves, and Constantinopolis inside the great walls.
Quick mini-glossary
Mass = consider this the formal term for weight. Mass is measured in kilograms, grams, or tons, or sometimes kilotons or megatons. If the campaign takes place on a planet with a gravity of 1.0g, and most non-science fiction campaigns do, then you don't have worry about the distinction between mass and weight.
Durability = A stat that most items have, denoting how physically durable it is. If an item is subject to potential damage, a Durability roll is made, and if this roll Fumbles the item will lose some Durability (1 or maybe 2 points) or instantly become more or less destroyed (either destroyed-but-repairable, or destroyed-and-only-fit-for-materials-recycling).
Iron = The game-mechanical term for medieval quality steel, which is much inferior to renaissance-era steel (game-mechanically "Steel", which is Q4) and later steels (starting with "Advanced Steel, Q5, then "Industrial Steel" at Q6 and "Modern Steel" at Q7). Note that some medieval era blacksmiths or metallurgists know how to make Steel, and a few can even make Advanced Steel.
Deterministic = Denotes, in Sagatafl, that a process is free of randomness. For a crafting process, if everything is as usual, then the resulting item Quality will always be the same. Some crafting processes involve a skill roll or a random roll; thus they're non-deterministic.
Material(s) or ingredients = Something that is used in a crafting or similar process, such as using a metal alloy via a Smithing skill to make a weapon or suit of armour, or using the Cooking skill to turn meat ingredients and vegetable ingredients into a meal.
Staple food = A food ingredient (material) that is common and commonly used. Eggs, meats, fowl, fish, fruit, vegetables, grains, and herbal spices. Anything that isn't a luxury (such as black truffle or foie gras) or a luxury spice (such as pepper). Staple food ingredients are very rarely better than Q4, whereas luxury food ingredients have a default Quality significantly higher than 3.
