Hey folks! I need a little help from the gamist gearheads out there.
I'm looking for a reasonable mechanic for adding extra effort to a crafting project that doesn't involve Confidence. First, because is counts as "seasonal activity" and therefore doesn't allow for it. Secondly, I'd like to plausibly say something like "The local smith takes some extra time to make it look and function particularly well."
If something has already been written on the topic, please just point me there. I try to stick with the RAW as best I can.
Right now, the HRs I'm considering at the moment are either:
-- Free Expression Virtue allows the person to add an extra +3 to the Craft roll if an extra 10% of base crafting time is taken.
and/or
-- Any craftsman of rank 3 or better may spend an extra 20% in time AND material to add +3 to the craft roll.
City and Guild has what you're looking for, in the rules for Workshop Exertion. A crafter can add a simple die to his workshop total, but as a side effect he has to make an aging roll, and a roll on a table similar to the experiment results table for lab experiments, though with much more mundane results.
Obviously you'd need the book for that, but if you want to houserule it, forced aging rolls seem a good way to represent long term (seasonal) added effort.
The rules for working overtime in the lab, in Covenants, suggest something similar; overtime work forces extra aging rolls that year, and provides warping. If you have that book but not City & Guild, you could possibly borrow the rules from that book and just skip the warping effect for mundane crafts.