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[Footkerchief]

It's not arbitrary.  Shoddy items have been in the Reqs (not Bloats, Reqs) for forever, so something vaguely along these lines is going to happen.

Annoyance and difficulty: New players more than anyone else would take this kind of change in stride.  They probably wouldn't be surprised at all, because they don't have previous expectations about DF's crafting mechanics.  Also, it will add interesting difficulty even for veterans -- the nature of the game is that unexpected needs come up, and suddenly you need a bunch of mechanisms because the murky pools dried out and you've got to irrigate from the cave river.

Inconsistent -- crafts already produce more than one item per stone.  There's no reason why failure would have to be all-or-nothing.  No problem there.

Gameplay value -- I disagree.  It's a realistic problem that changes how a player makes decisions, and it adds storytelling value.  It could even frustrate the crafter with a mild unhappy thought, depending on their personality of course, which increases the depth of dwarves' interaction with their world.

[profit]

You know... This thread amazes me...

In my opinion this is a small aesthetic change and due to the way crafters level up fairly rapidly it would be at most a minor inconvenience to a brand new settlement... and maybe a slight danger to one that was short on wood.

I don't get why it has received so much more discussion than my other (and more useful IMHO) ideas.

Is everyone that afraid of a stone breaking the first couple times they do crafting?

I thought these ideas were much better ->
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=27560.0

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=27586.0

This is just to add a little flavor.. I still do not see it affecting gameplay significantly in the long run, other than your crafters will level up a little faster.

Why is everyone so afraid of it?

[Granite26]

I think the gameplay advantage would be a tangible encouragement to keep people in the jobs they come in, but creating a steep 'change of job' cost.  The problem is, there are a lot of jobs that are useless as it is, and training up kids from scratch is also underpowered.

Currently even the lowest quality crafting will still result in a huge value addition compared to the raw materials.  Poor crafting should be roughly equal or even below raw material value so you REALLY have wasted time and materials when failing at crafting.

Modelling opportunity cost?  I like it

[Athisus]

I think that this is a good idea, but not for dwarves. Sure, I can't really make anything out of stone, but that's because I'm human. Dwarves are traditionally born with a special connection to both craftsdwarfship and the earth. Anything that combines these two things is bound to have effects on a dwarf's learning curve with them. Even if you don't buy a hereditary connection, one could argue that dwarf culture centers around stone and metal goods, and every dwarf would be educated from a very young age about how these things work, whether by actual teaching, or just the action happening all around them. This sounds like a good thing for a human fortress, but I think dwarves would have a much easier time making crafts like this.

[Duke 2.0]

 Perhaps we could mod races to have job enhancements? Dwarves would get bonuses to metal and stoneworking, while humans would get bonuses to... eer, a little bit of everything. Goblins would get combat bonuses, and elves would get woodcrafting and bow bonuses.

 Thus we won't come across dwarves breaking stones like they never seen them before.

[Jisaan]

So... Did the TC change the original post? That would explain the apparent misunderstanding regarding the effects on skilled workers. If it was changed, I'd like to point out that you should probably leave the original post as it was, and then add the changes to the end, to avoid confusion.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Different crafts should have different failure rates and different chances to recycle the materials used.  This would create more diversity among the crafts and make some more or less 'expensive' in raw materials to train for.

Things like wood, bone and stone crafting all involve removing material from a starting mass that can't be repaired, thus when you break the mass your working on theirs no way to reuse it for the same craft.  Though their is some potential to use it for some bulk non-crafting purpose or for smaller crafts.  Example wood -> wood scraps which can be burned for fuel, stone -> rubble which can be used in construction, bone -> bone fragments which could make bone meal.

Glass and unfired clay tend to be very reusable because their mailable materials when being worked on and any error or breakage just starts the crafting process over again with no real waste.

Cooking involves permanent chemical changes to the ingredients and can't be recycled in any way but the nature of the ingredients mean the product will almost always be edible and thus usable, though simply of very low quality.  Failure tends to take the form or burning the food, leaving out a key ingredient or getting the ingredient ratios wrong and contaminating the food with pathogens.  The first two could result in an obviously poor food item but the third could be a hidden modifier.  Any dwarf that eats the contaminated food barfs a short time later and goes to their room nauseous and looses some otherwise productive time to the nausea as well as getting an unhappy thought hit "Got sick from poor food recently".  This would provide a very interesting non-linear 'cost' to failure and perhapses result in some interesting social interactions between the cook and the victim of the bad meal.

[profit]

So... Did the TC change the original post? That would explain the apparent misunderstanding regarding the effects on skilled workers. If it was changed, I'd like to point out that you should probably leave the original post as it was, and then add the changes to the end, to avoid confusion.

I did change the original post, but it was for clarification mostly as quite a few seemed to think I wanted 75% of everything to fail not the lowest level of crafting.   

And I updated what food gave because I thought it was a good idea to turn into subprime edible things instead of vanishing entirely.

Different crafts should have different failure rates and different chances to recycle the materials used.  This would create more diversity among the crafts and make some more or less 'expensive' in raw materials to train for.

Things like wood, bone and stone crafting all involve removing material from a starting mass that can't be repaired, thus when you break the mass your working on theirs no way to reuse it for the same craft.  Though their is some potential to use it for some bulk non-crafting purpose or for smaller crafts.  Example wood -> wood scraps which can be burned for fuel, stone -> rubble which can be used in construction, bone -> bone fragments which could make bone meal.

Glass and unfired clay tend to be very reusable because their mailable materials when being worked on and any error or breakage just starts the crafting process over again with no real waste.

Cooking involves permanent chemical changes to the ingredients and can't be recycled in any way but the nature of the ingredients mean the product will almost always be edible and thus usable, though simply of very low quality.  Failure tends to take the form or burning the food, leaving out a key ingredient or getting the ingredient ratios wrong and contaminating the food with pathogens.  The first two could result in an obviously poor food item but the third could be a hidden modifier.  Any dwarf that eats the contaminated food barfs a short time later and goes to their room nauseous and looses some otherwise productive time to the nausea as well as getting an unhappy thought hit "Got sick from poor food recently".  This would provide a very interesting non-linear 'cost' to failure and perhapses result in some interesting social interactions between the cook and the victim of the bad meal.

All good ideas, I think the pathogen during cooking part is unique and would be good, just beyond the scope of what I thought would be a simple change.

I had also just decided it would be easiest to not bother with failures dealing with things that do not have a quality modifier.