I know it's possible to use craft magic to create a charged device that will grant someone a virtue (such as the example shield that grants puissant single weapon). Can this also be done w/ craft magic's ability to create a lesser enchanted device? Can a mechanical forge a sword that grants puissant single weapon to it's wielder at will? Perhaps a duration Sun effect w/ one use a day. Or can virtues possessed by the craft magician only be granted via charged devices?
Erik Dahl's reply in [forum.atlas-games.com/t/question-for-mark-shirley/2091/5] seems to imply that it can be done but I'm not sure I'm reading that correctly. Does he mean a lesser device could grant the virtue or he could make the shield do some other spell like effect?
With HoH:S p.131f Craft Magic you can craft ArM5 p.96f Charged Items that bestow a Supernatural Virtue like (ArM5 p.48) Puissant Single Weapon, provided that you have that Supernatural Virtue yourself. Just having Puissant Single Weapon as a General Virtue is not enough for this. With Craft Magic you can also craft a weapon to help you with your Puissant Single Weapon Supernatural Virtue, enhancing its bonus for you.
The mechanical (with Puissant Single Weapon as a Supernatural Virtue and Craft Magic) first needs to find some material already containing sufficient raw vis. If he crafts that into a sword himself, he can make it bestow Puissant Single Weapon upon its wielder as an ArM5 p.96 Lesser Enchantment - e. g. D: Sun 1x/day.
I believe you are misreading the text you are quoting: ...Craft Magic also allows a character with a Supernatural Ability or Virtue that only affects himself to craft items that other characters can use for the same effect".
Craft magic allows the crafter to instill a Supernatural Ability, or to instill a Virtue (even non-Supernatural). It's fairly obvious from the example (Puissant Single Weapon, a General Virtue) that non-Supernatural Virtues can be instilled. The notion that there is a "Supernatural" version of Puissant Single Weapon, and that you can instill only that, seems outright bizarre to me.
You read the underlined phrase of the paragraph in a voluntaristic way: it should have been written as "a Virtue that only affects himself, or a Supernatural Ability" to mean what you read. Otherwise the "and" ties together "Ability and Virtue", unless the immediate context goes against it and forces us to shrug and conclude just plain bad style.
Also look up
and other such wrapper Virtues and Flaws: you see, that those Virtues, which a character can reasonably bestow via Craft Magic, he can also have as Supernatural ones without problems at character design.
But allowing him to bestow a General Virtue like Puissant Single Weapon, which he has because of a mundane knack or education, just makes the character fishy.
I think that is probably one interpretation, but I find it unconvincing that they would use, as the example, a general virtue, gained through another virtue, as effectively a supernatural.
Besides the odd choice, it would have probably been named "Lesser Benediction (Puissant Single Weapon)" in the example.
That said, the example could be wrong, and a general virtue could have been picked by accident.
It does seem more like a hedge mage sort of ability to grant normal virtues, I think the Learned Magicians can grant both supernatural and general, with some restrictions.
You need to know, that both the Rustic Magi in HoH:S p.130ff from 2007, and the Touches of Faerie in RoP:F p.100ff from 2009, are written by Erik Dahl. He couldn't refer to RoP:F p.111 Lesser Benediction in HoH:S, because RoP:F was later in line for publishing. I cannot tell how publication schedules were decided, and how these interfered with ongoing writing.
Note also, that when HoH:S was written, the ArM5 p.36ff classification of Virtues and Flaws was flowing. Gentle Gift is an eminent example of a Virtue, which in 2008 moves from Hermetic in ArM5 to Supernatural in HMRE: namely in Erik Dahl's contributions there on p.18 and p.121.
Puissant Single Weapon is a classical benediction by faeries or magic creatures, and it also is very appropriate to smith Rusticani player characters. So in the specific situation of HoH:S p.131f Craft Magic, it makes sense to refer to Puissant Single Weapon in the p.131 example of the armor-smith Mechanical directly, while in the rule above writing of a Supernatural Virtue.
So here we have a chapter from 2010 which takes up portions of the text from HoH:S Craft Magic, again implicitly treats Puissant Single Weapon as Supernatural, and does so with Tough as well. In 2010 RoP:F Lesser Benediction is already published and could have been referenced - but it isn't.
This may be, because other ways to get Puissant Single Weapon and Tough as Supernatural Virtues have existed all the time, e. g. since 2006 RoP:TI p.85f Infernal Blessing, which for obvious reasons you would not reference in an example of HoH:S or RM.
It may be, because declaring fitting General Virtues Supernatural is a non-issue also for ArM5 authors: just explain to your troupe, why a Virtue of your character has a supernatural origin and which one, write it down as Supernatural on your character sheet, and live with the consequences, good and bad. I always did it this way.
Or it may be because the HoH:S example was just taken over to RM without further checking, and then extended.