Guild Artisan

## **Crafting the World**

You are a member of an artisan's guild, skilled in a particular field and closely associated with other artisans. You are a well-established part of the mercantile world, freed by talent and wealth from the constraints of a feudal social order. You learned your skills as an apprentice to a master artisan, under the sponsorship of your guild, until you became a master in your own right.

#### Languages

* Common and the local, cultural tongue (if there is one)

#### Equipment

* A set of artisan's tools (one of your choice), a letter of introduction from your guild, a set of traveler's clothes, and a belt pouch containing 15 gp

### Feature: Guild Business

Guilds are generally found in cities large enough to support several artisans practicing the same trade. However, your guild might instead be a loose network of artisans who each work in a different village within a larger realm. Work with your DM to determine the nature of your guild. You can select your guild business from the Guild Business table or roll randomly.

As a member of your guild, you know the skills needed to create finished items from raw materials (reflected in your proficiency with a certain kind of artisan's tools), as well as the principles of trade and good business practices. The question now is whether you abandon your trade for adventure, or take on the extra effort to weave adventuring and trade together.

Most of those skills need tools to accomplish, such as craft or repair an item, forge a document, or pick a lock. Your race, class, background, or feats give you proficiency with certain tools. Proficiency with a tool allows you to add your proficiency bonus to any ability check you make using that tool. Tool use is not tied to a single ability, since proficiency with a tool represents broader knowledge of its use. For example, the DM might ask you to make a Dexterity check to carve a fine detail with your woodcarver’s tools, or a Strength check to make something out of particularly hard wood.

### Feature: Guild Membership

As an established and respected member of a guild, you can rely on certain benefits that membership provides. Your fellow guild members will provide you with lodging and food if necessary, and pay for your funeral if needed. In some cities and towns, a guildhall offers a central place to meet other members of your profession, which can be a good place to meet potential patrons, allies, or hirelings.

Guilds often wield tremendous political power. If you are accused of a crime, your guild will support you if a good case can be made for your innocence or the crime is justifiable. You can also gain access to powerful political figures through the guild, if you are a member in good standing. Such connections might require the donation of money or magic items to the guild's coffers.

You must pay dues of 5 gp per month to the guild. If you miss payments, you must make up back dues to remain in the guild's good graces.

### Variant Guild Artisan: Guild Merchant

Instead of an artisans' guild, you might belong to a guild of traders, caravan masters, or shopkeepers. You don't craft items yourself but earn a living by buying and selling the works of others (or the raw materials artisans need to practice their craft). Your guild might be a large merchant consortium (or family) with interests across the region. Perhaps you transported goods from one place to another, by ship, wagon, or caravan, or bought them from traveling traders and sold them in your own little shop. In some ways, the traveling merchant's life lends itself to adventure far more than the life of an artisan.

Rather than proficiency with artisan's tools, you might be proficient with navigator's tools or an additional language. And instead of artisan's tools, you can start with a mule and a cart.

## Artisans of the Commonwealth

### **Proximity is *Everything***

The artisans of the Stonehearth Merchant Company (SMC) are as much engineers and technicians as they are craftsmen. The SMC is a conglomerate, producing nearly anything from scrolling paper (used in the privy) to fireball scrolls (that blow the poop out of every place else). Potion production, wands, wagons – if it's made, sold and bought, a character could be a professional doing so before the calling to adventure strikes.

The SMC artisans will have advantages, but also more restrictions. Like the Arms, they have their own similar indoctrination that not only keeps the loyal to the Stonehearth Way, but are necessary countermeasures to all the forces targeting them with charms and other attempts at mind control.

## Beyond the Artisans

Guild Artisans cover the vast majority of crafting jobs, but Sages also have representation here. Most famously, it's sages, rather than calligraphers, that produce the staple SMC seller of magical scrolls. Sages also find their place in the planning, management and administration. The accountants...? Sages. The clerks...? Sages.

That said, there are countless manufactories and shops through the Marquisate and the greater Commonwealth that have access to both the magical and mundane science and engineering. While they have restrictions too, they're not nearly as restrictive as those in the SMC.

An "**Artisan of the Arms**," for instance, produces magical weapons and armor that are used by noble houses from one side of the Commonwealth to the other. Along those same lines, those specialized creators can sell to licensed adventurers.

### **Something to Fight For**

The D&D Player's Handbook has a standard template of backgrounds: two skill proficiencies, two languages, an equipment kit that speaks of a very unsuccessful career as [that background]. While the starting kit is a high-speed/low-drag way to kick aspiring characters into adventure mode, it underplays how much benefit a professional background can have.

What can you do within the Commonwealth that seems plausible? A fairly successful career in North Point would likely include a cottage on the lowlands outskirts of North Point or up in some highlands hamlet. In fact, that might be just the hook a character can use to slingshot into action:

A character could well elect to go all-in, starting a new life as a soldier as their quest to right the suffered wrong drives them. A Guild Artisan of some sort, especially an Artisan of the Arms, may look at adventuring as a professional extension, perhaps becoming a Bard (academic). A sage who specialized in scroll preparation may be taking the next step to actually do the enchanting and inscription.

## Where to From Here?

* Go back to the **Background page**...
* Go back to the **Character Creation page**...