Written another way, if you fail the test to make the alchemical steel mundanely, what do you get?
You end up with trash metal. While it is still metal, it is worthless for pretty much anything (carbon content is wrong, grain is massive, etc). Same thing happens when you over cook steel while forging, since you burn it. You can throw it in with a mix of raw material and ore, then re-smelt it to get some usable material from it.
Working with metal, especially in old style coal forges, sucks. Even with modern gas forges which produce an even heat over a much larger area it is difficult. Don't even get me started on pattern welding.
This is excellent- I'd been pondering some way to permit extra magnitudes to ease the burden of Finesse checks, but simply allowing e.g. "+3 to the Finesse check per extra magnitude of complexity" would just result in high-level Sling of Vilano type spells that just couldn't miss. Applying it to the time penalty specifically gets around that neatly. Gonna have to yoink this one for my own game (if any of my players get interested in Creo/Rego craft, which so far they haven't).
The full write-up is in my games House Rules Thread. Please take anything from it you might find useful, that is why I shared them.
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