Artifice

For those of you here just because you need a refresher, here's the quick n' dirty. For the rest of you, you can skip ahead.

1. First, figure out where your character's strengths lie. 

• Strength is used for hard labor (metal work, carpentry, etc)
• Dexterity is used for precision crafts (fletching, jewelcraft, tailoring, etc)
• Intelligence is used for complex work (trap mechanisms, firearms, magic items, etc)
• Wisdom is used for insightful work (medicines, potions, holy items, etc)

2. Second, figure out what you can make with the tools you know how to use. You must be proficient with a tool to use it for crafting. We have a general reference chart below, but the general idea is that it needs to make sense (an herbalism kit can be used to make healing potions, for example, but not potions of giant strength). If you're not sure, check in #ask-a-gan. 

3. Third, decide what you want to make with your skills. Again, as long as it makes sense for your score and your kit to apply, pretty much anything goes. Adventure gear, equipment, trade goods, spell components - if it is an item with a GP value, you can craft it, except for Very Rare or Legendary magic items.  
4. Take the item's cost, and divide by 100 (that means "take the last two digits off the end", so 1000 = 10). The result can't be lower than 10, and can't be higher than 25. This is the craft DC. 
5. Go to #crafting-checks and make a check using the matching score plus your proficiency bonus against the craft DC. A template has been pinned for your convenience. 
6. On a success, you can "buy" the item for half its listed cost. On a fail, you do not produce the item. You can make a number of checks each week equal to your proficiency bonus. 

As the namesake of the class sharing this very term implies, artifice is the art of craft and invention. Devising, planning, and producing items both mundane and magical all fall within the umbrella of artifice. Unlike the class, which focuses more professionally on the artform, artifice as a concept is broadly available to all characters – provided they have the tools, knowledge, and resources available to produce whatever it is they wish to make.

Please, for gods’ sake, PLEASE make yourself useful.
-Ingleheimer, probably

In Chromatia, the Artifice system permits players to craft their own equipment and gear supported by the powerful tools, enchantments, and peer assistance of the guild and the Primordials’ All-Forge. Tasks that would take others weeks and months (like crafting a complete set of plate armor) instead take a matter of days, if not hours, to accomplish. Characters who can reliably produce high level gear can easily gain renown amongst other players and within the game world, and can use it as a solid source of income producing low cost versions of popular items for other players. Consider popping into #chromatian-bazaar to advertise or purchase services!
What can you craft? Virtually everything! Adventuring gear, spell components, equipment, even magic items (up to Rare*) are potentially at your fingertips. Read on to learn how.
* Yes, you read that correctly. Up to Rare. Very Rare and Legendary items are simply too complicated for players to reliably craft in any reasonable length of time.

Checks & Balances

Using the same framework as Downtime Work, the Artifice system permits a set number of crafting attempts each week, up to the character’s proficiency bonus. When weekly reset comes through, you may then make another set of checks. Thus, a character with a proficiency bonus of +4 can make as many as 4 checks a week. Unlike other areas of the game, you must have proficiency with the required tool to perform a check and craft an item. There are no ifs, ands, or buts on this one. While it’s normal in other circumstances to say, let a player not proficient in Persuasion checks attempt a Persuasion check anyway, this same courtesy is not extended to artifice. It’s otherwise too complicated to attempt.
Artifice checks are tracked in #crafting-checks. If it wasn’t posted here, it’s not a valid roll and will not be counted, whether you succeeded or failed. The command template has been pinned for your convenience in the channel – just copy and paste, replace anything in <> with the appropriate values, and run it. For advanced users mass producing items, feel free to add the -rr # syntax to your command to perform multiple rolls at once. If that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry about it.

Cost

Crafting an item isn’t free, of course, nor is it necessarily guaranteed to succeed. How do we figure all that out? First, we check the “book” value of the item (see the relevant pages in Equipment for Chromatian price listings). Take a minute to check the item value if you haven’t already, then come back here.
Got it? Good. Now divide whatever it is by 100. Whatever you end up with is your target DC – IE, the value you have to meet or exceed in order to succeed on your attempt. This value can be no lower than 10 (Trivial), nor can it be any higher than 25 (Extremely Difficult).
If and when you succeed, you may then pay out gold equal to half the item’s value, representing the minimum cost of labor, materials, or whatever else you needed to get the job done. The only exception to this rule is magic items – magic items are instead made at a 10% discount, rather than 50%. If you’re not good at math and can’t be bothered to open a calculator, here’s a quick reference:

• 5000 gp -> 4500 gp
• 2500 gp -> 2250 gp
• 500 gp -> 450 gp
• 250 gp -> 225 gp
• 100 gp -> 90 gp
• 75 gp -> 67 gp
• 50 gp -> 45 gp

Do note that the rule of compound item costs mentioned in Magic Items still applies here. If you’re not sure what the base cost of a particular magic item should be (like Adamantine Plate Armor), check in #ask-a-gan and a staff member will help confirm for you.

Tools of the Trade

Now if you’ve got this far, you’re probably wondering what is required to make a given item, so you can actually figure out what tools you need and where to go from there. That’s fair. We now know what we can make, how much it’ll cost, and what we have to roll to succeed – the rest is easy. We’ve provided a set of catch-all rules to help define what tools can be expected to use and where.
Keep in mind this list is not set in stone. If you can justify a different tool proficiency to accomplish the job, you’re free to appeal your case in #ask-a-gan and we’ll go from there.
To start with, we need to determine which Ability Score should be associated with your check.

• Armor, simple weapons, and martial weapons (excluding firearms) typically rely on your Strength score to carve, bend, work, and shape materials into what you need.
• Delicate accessories, jewelcraft, and precision trinkets typically rely on your Dexterity score to reliably finesse delicate or fine materials.
• Complex mechanisms, firearms, and magical items rely on your Intelligence to properly plan, calculate, and implement the necessary theorems and concepts to produce a functioning item.
• Medicines, potions, salves, and holy or fiendish items typically draw on your Wisdom to discern appropriate herbs, spiritual guidelines, or handle dangerous materials safely and combine them.

Constitution and Charisma are generally not considered crafting abilities, but exceptions can sometimes be made (for example, it’s been argued before that a character with a high Charisma modifier could use this towards crafting spell components, letting their natural speaking skills to draw out the best deals on raw materials and finishing the rest of the job with the appropriate tools). As previously stated, use your best sense when determining the appropriate ability to use, and check with #ask-a-gan if you think it makes more sense to use a different score and why.
After you’ve established the score to use with your check, determine the appropriate tool. In general, you may use the below table as a starting point.

As a rule, anything that doesn’t neatly fit into one of the noted categories should be treated as a “wondrous item”. If there isn’t an obvious tool that should go along with an item (for example, it’s safe to assume cutting or appraising diamonds for spell components requires jeweler’s tools), head over to – you guessed it – #ask-a-gan and confirm the appropriate tool for the check.
Magic Items on the other hand have an additional factor to keep in mind. On top of needing proficiency with the relevant tool to craft your desired item, you also need proficiency in the Arcana or Religion skill, representing the necessary arcane or occult knowledge to produce the desired item(s). If the item had one or more spells associated with it (like a wand of magic missiles), you (or a potential helper) must also know the spell(s) in question to attach it to said item.

Group Efforts

Unlike other downtime work, artifice permits players to work together in order to successfully complete crafting checks. Each character involved in the check spends one of their attempts simultaneously, granting advantage to whoever has the highest modifier on the check in question. It’s common to use #chromatian-bazaar to plan and coordinate group checks with other players, including how much each player is investing in the item’s final production should the attempt succeed.
For the check to be considered valid, all participants must have at least one of the proficiencies necessary to succeed before they can contribute and help. For example, consider a blacksmith proficient with smithing tools attempting to craft a set of adamantine plate armor, but lacking proficiency with Arcana or Religion. Likewise, a fellow mage is proficient in Arcana, but lacks the tool training to create armor. As both players have at least one of the proficiencies necessary, and between both of them all requirements are met, they may combine their efforts into a single check, ultimately resulting in a single set of adamantine plate armor neither would have been able to craft on their own.
In case it needs said, this same logic applies to magic items with spells attached. Knowledge of the spell(s) required counts towards having at least one proficiency, even if the character otherwise lacks proficiency with the tool(s), Arcana, or Religion skills.