Strictly, a fletcher makes arrows and a bowyer makes bows, but the guilds long ago stopped observing the distinction and the first word has swallowed the second. Fletching covers bows, crossbows, arrows and quarrels from stave and billet through to a finished, tillered, nocked weapon.

Crafting

Bows, crossbows and projectiles are made by the common crafting routine — workshop, expense, test, result, masterwork rolls, repair. A fletcher works in a fletching workshop. What follows is what is particular to this bench.

Expense. Materials are paid in pence and the work in hours or months.

Projectiles are made a dozen at a time, and the cost and time below are for that dozen rather than for one shaft. Head type is chosen at the bench and does not change the reckoning; weight does. Every projectile here is a Fletching (Woodworking, Metalcraft) test.

Composite bows are sinew-backed, which is why they call for Hideworking; the months they take to cure are why bowyers outside the dry horse countries rarely attempt them.

What the modifier does. On a projectile, each point of modifier adds one to impact; a flawed projectile loses the same d2 from both its quality and its impact. On a weapon, each point of modifier adds 30 feet of base range; a flawed weapon loses d2 quality and that same d2 × 30 feet of range. An SV of 0 or less doubles what a flaw takes away.

Applicable successes are capped at the item’s base Weapon Quality minus eight — a WQ 10 bow takes at most two. Projectiles have no Weapon Quality; assume two.

Arrowheads may be bought in rather than forged. If they are, the Metalcraft Secondary Modifier derives from the smith’s Mastery Level rather than the fletcher’s — cost doubles, crafting time halves.

Spent projectiles are maintained, not repaired. A recovered shaft is not a damaged article to be put right under the repair rules — those restore a rating, and a projectile carries none — and the work divides in two.

Maintenance is the nightly business of anyone who shoots: shafts straightened over the knee or a warm stone, heads re-seated and re-bound, stripped fletching replaced from the quills in the case. A dozen damaged shafts are made serviceable again in about two hours, at no cost in materials. This is not the trade and does not require it — a character with no Fletching Mastery Level may do it at an Effective Mastery Level equal to three times their Fletching Skill Base, the same allowance a crossbow gives an untrained shooter. A fletcher is quicker and wastes less; everyone else manages.

Re-making is bench work. A shaft broken past straightening is stock — the head is worth salvaging, the nock and the fletching are not — and a dozen such are worked back into projectiles at the time listed above and no cost in materials. That saving is smaller than it looks, since the head is the cheap part of an arrow and the labour very nearly the rest of it, so re-making is barely quicker than starting fresh. It is worth doing because the materials are already paid for and already in hand, which on campaign counts for more than the pence.

Bullets and slings fall under the same trade in practice but different skills on the bench: lead bullets are a Metalcraft Success Value test, a sling a Hideworking one, a staff sling Hideworking (Woodworking). Crossbow spanners are a Metalcraft Success Value test, and each masterwork modifier on a spanner increases the user’s effective draw by 10%.