If no one has said it before, Scott, welcome to the boards.
I'll do my best to explain Crafting.
Let's say we want to craft a simple longsword. Look in chapter 4: Forge and find the longsword and without any upgrades the complexity is 12M. For this example we are going to assume that we don't want/need upgrades.
A few things to check:
- Do we have the appropriate crafting focus?
- Do we have the minimum amount of downtime?
- Do we have the minimum skill needed?
- Did we make enough money?
And the answers:
- We'll assume that someone making a sword has the metalworking focus.
- The complexity of a longsword is 12M, meaning we need at least one Month of downtime.
- If the total crafting bonus + career level is greater than complexity, we can make the item. Level 4 + 7 ranks in Crafting + 1 (INT) = 12, so we're good.
- Roll the d20, add the bonus (8 in this case) and compare with Table 2.9. Let's say we rolled a 9. 9 + 8 = 17 which (for a month) gives us 150s. That is more than the cost of the longsword at 60s, so that means we can make up to two swords and pocket 30s.
Hopefully that helps.