Tempering

Tempering is how you rework gear you already own. Open it from the Temper button on a weapon, shield, or piece of equipment you carry, or simply ask for the work in play. Three kinds of work go on the card, adding a prefix to an open slot, raising a prefix already on the piece one tier, and swapping a prefix out for a different one. Each spends one of the piece's tempers, and the card shows the reagents, the tempers, and the roll before you confirm. Your Crafting level does not gate any of it, so what limits the work is the reagents you carry and the roll you make. Making something new from raw stock is a different trade, as described on Crafting.

Actions

Action	What it does	Tempers
Add a prefix	Fills one open prefix slot. The affix you pick always lands, and the dice decide how strong. On Common gear the landing also raises the piece to Uncommon.	1
Raise a tier	Moves one prefix already on the piece up a tier. The landing is exact, and the value quoted is the value you get.	1
Swap a prefix	Replaces a rolled prefix with a different affix. The replacement rolls fresh the way an add does, and a failed roll still lands it at its lowest value, so the old affix is gone either way. Only a critical failure leaves the row untouched.	1

An add seeds a row and a raise finishes it. An add never lands the best tier its affix can reach on that piece, so the deep values are climbed into rather than bought outright. The picker says so on each row by marking the tier the work cannot land below, noting when the roll can land higher, and naming the tier a later raise could carry it to.

A triggered affix, the kind that burns or poisons what you strike, is a prefix like any other, so it fills a prefix slot and climbs by tier.

Tempers

Tempers are what a piece will tolerate. Rarity sets how many it starts with, and the item card shows how many are left, as described under Tempers. A spent temper never comes back, so choose your work with care.

• A critical success refunds one temper across everything you confirmed together.
• A critical failure scars one temper and leaves nothing behind.
• Writing an item effect into a piece spends no temper at all, and works on a piece with none left.

A piece with no tempers left takes no further work. Ammunition takes none at all, because it carries what it was fletched with and nothing a maker can add later. A Mythic item is authored whole and has no tempers to spend.

The roll

Tempering is open information. One roll settles everything you confirm at once, a d20 in the governing craft skill against the difficulty on the card. When several tempers ride the same roll, it is judged against the hardest of them. The card carries the difficulty line, your total on the roll, and an info icon spelling out every outcome. Working at a matching workspace rolls with advantage, as described on Crafting#Workspaces. Every temper roll earns experience in the craft that governed it.

Difficulty	DC
Easy	10
Medium	14
Hard	18
Severe	24

What sets the difficulty follows the work. Adding is priced by the piece's rarity and by how scarce the affix you aim at is, and never asks more than Severe, and swapping is priced the same way as adding. Raising is priced by the tier you climb into, so a raise into T6 or deeper asks Easy, T5 Medium, T4 Hard, and T3 or T2 Severe. Reforging rolls no dice at all, as described under Reforging below.

Outcomes

Each piece of work gets its own verdict, stamped on the receipt after you confirm.

Roll	Verdict	What happens
Critical success	Applied, Raised	The work lands and one temper is refunded. An add lands a tier better than its guarantee
Success	Applied, Raised	Everything lands as quoted
Failure	Faint, No take	An add still lands, at its lowest value, and spends its temper and materials. The last raise on a row does not land and keeps its temper, though its materials are spent and only a Legendary reagent comes back. The raises under it still stand
Critical failure	Scarred	Nothing lands and one temper is scarred. Everything you committed comes back, so the scarred temper is the whole cost

Skipped is the last verdict, appearing when the piece changed between lining the work up and confirming it, and the inputs then come back unspent.

Reagents

Every temper draws one reagent, picked for you from what you carry, cheapest first. Two tempers never draw the same one. Reagents come from the creatures you hunt and from dismantling gear, as described on Crafting.

A reagent belongs to an affinity family, and each one rolls an aspect of that family at the moment it drops. The aspect decides which affixes inside the family that reagent can power. The picker groups a family's affixes by aspect and names the reagent that powers each group, so a family with nothing matching in your pack says which reagent you need.

What quality buys is the guaranteed tier, the rung the work cannot land below even on a failed roll:

• A Rare reagent raises the guarantee one step.
• An Epic or better reagent raises it two.
• A reagent at or above the item's own level raises it one more.
• A base Crafting level of 14 or better raises it one more again.

A reagent below the item's level narrows how deep the add can land rather than refusing it, and the picker says what it seeds and what a fresher reagent would reach. A raise into T3 or better needs a Rare or better reagent of the covering family, and nothing shallower will carry a piece that far. A Legendary reagent survives a failed roll and comes back to you. No reagent asks a minimum Crafting level to work with, so a potent reagent is never refused for your skill alone.

How deep the work reaches

Every affix runs on a numbered ladder, and the item card chips each row with its tier. T1 is the pinnacle, and counting down the values get smaller and the tiers get easier to reach.

• T2 asks an Epic piece at item level 18, and it is the top rung anything rolls. Tempering reaches it and so does a drop, so your own work can match the best affix a find carries.
• T1 is never rolled by anything, a drop included. It is written onto Legendary gear when the piece is made, so it comes with the legendary rather than from a workbench, as described on Legendary gear.
• Everything below opens on the piece's own item level and rarity, as described under Item level.

The piece you are holding is what sets the ceiling. Tempering is priced by the reagent backing the work and by the roll's difficulty rather than by your Crafting level, so a low level piece stays a low level piece however skilled you are, and a high level piece is workable well before you have mastered the craft. Fresh crafting is the opposite, since making a new item is gated on your own mastery, as described on Crafting.

Not every affix runs the full depth. A shallow family has fewer rungs, so its weakest tier carries a smaller number. The affix list of each slot carries the family's tiers and gates, indexed at Affixes.

Item effects

A piece holds one suffix at most, and on gear that suffix is an item effect, a power with limited uses. It is written in by asking a maker for it or by doing the work yourself, never set up on the tempering card. It costs no temper, so a piece with none left can still take one. The materials and the roll are the whole price, and a new effect replaces the old one whole.

Effects come in three strengths, and the carrier sets the ceiling.

Strength	Carrier	Uses
Lightest	Uncommon or better	3, back after any rest
Middling	Rare or better	2, back after a long rest
Strongest	Epic or better	1, back after a long rest

Ask for an effect the piece cannot hold and it binds at the strength the piece can carry instead of being refused, and the card names the limit.

Reforging

A piece can also be reforged onto another gear base. This is work you arrange in play rather than set up on the card, so you simply say what you want the piece to become. Reforging costs one temper, rolls no dice, and simply happens once you confirm it. What the piece carries travels where it can, a row that cannot roll on the new shape is lost and named, a cursed pairing always travels, and the new base brings its own implicit. Rarity and item level carry through unchanged.

Legendary and Mythic pieces never reforge, and nothing takes a Legendary shape. A signature row binds a piece to the shape it was made in, so asking to reforge a signature piece makes a fresh item instead, and the old piece is spent with nothing carried across.

Several tempers at once

Adds and raises can be lined up together and confirmed as one. Each entry shows its own cost and landing, and a raise lined up on top of another quotes off the previous landing. The whole lot then rides one roll.

The work cannot outrun the piece:

• There can be no more entries than the piece has tempers.
• There can be no more adds than it has open slots.
• No two adds may aim at the same affix.

Nothing is spent until you confirm. A previewed prefix can be swapped for another or dropped, closing the picker keeps your work, and the card lists every reagent and temper the work will spend. If something cannot go through, Confirm locks and the card names the one thing to fix, such as a reagent claimed by two tempers or a requirement you have not met yet.

When tempering refuses

Refusals name the one thing standing in the way, checking the piece's own level first, then its rarity, then the reagent backing the work. A blocked temper therefore reads as "needs an item of level 3, this one is 2" or "a fire reagent is missing".

Some rows never take work at all. A row the piece was made with rather than rolled, a signature, an elevated grant from a strong foe, or a cursed pairing, is part of its identity and never climbs. A piece carrying a row written before the affix ladders existed keeps it exactly as it is and takes no tempering.