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Numenera Destiny introduces crafting artifacts. Numenera Discovery allows one to spend 3 XP to obtain an artifact. Are the two following statements correct?

  • By Destiny rules, crafting an artifact does not take experience, only taking iotum, parts, and time.
  • Through Discovery rules, player can spend 3 XP to instantly-ish gain an artifact, no iotum/parts expended.

I saw the question How does XP expenditure/gain work when crafting an artifact?, but it covers Numenera 1 rules and does not touch on Discovery/Destiny.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Are there multiple editions of Numenera at this point? (if so we may need to do some tag work) or are is this question the same as that one exept the answers to the old question is outdated? (If this is the case it may be preferable to get the answers to the old question updated - eg. by bountying it) \$\endgroup\$ – Someone_Evil♦ May 18 '20 at 17:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Someone_Evil Hopefully context will help: there are two versions by now, v2 (Discovery/Destiny) is backwards compatible and adds rules -- this question is about additional crafting rules introduced in Destiny. The tagging difficulty stems from the fact that Numenera 2 is not clearly marketed as Numenera 2 -- consisting of two expansions -- Numenera Discovery (Numenera Core Rules rework) and Numenera Destiny. On the other hand Numenera is a soft rule system, so version difference might not matter as much as it would in D&D 3.5 vs 5 for instance. \$\endgroup\$ – Ruslan Osipov May 18 '20 at 17:46
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    \$\begingroup\$ I went ahead and posted this on meta: Do we need different tags for Numenera and Numenera Discovery? \$\endgroup\$ – indigochild May 18 '20 at 17:53
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Both your statements are mostly correct, with some nuances:

Your first statement list is missing something:

Specifically, it is missing a numenera plan (Numenera Destiny, p. 135). Those are the numenera assembly instructions, and you cannot craft numenera without them. Problem is: Plans do not come easily. And, unless your character get access to numenera plans through advancements (Wrights, mostly), you do not decide which plans you get.

On the bright side, if you can craft an artifact this way, you can do it again as long as you can gather the necessary resources.

Your second statement is only correct sometimes:

From Numenera Discovery, p. 127:

If the item is fairly simple, the GM can skip the crafting details and just say that after a period of time, the PC creates it. For an item that significantly alters gameplay [...] the GM might require difficult rolls, a considerable amount of time, and rare, hard-to-find components and materials.

So basically, with XP you choose which artifact you want and you may skip some or all of the other requirements.

The bad part is that you only get the artifact once. And since many artifacts are in no way permanent (that depletion dice...), your non-refundable long-term XP expenditure is just a bad roll away from becoming a short-term one.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ your non-refundable long-term XP expenditure is just a bad roll away from becoming a short-term one. -- 1 XP rerolls give players options here. \$\endgroup\$ – Ruslan Osipov May 18 '20 at 20:49
  • \$\begingroup\$ Indeed, you can spend XP on a reroll to try to prevent an artifact depletion (that is just one of the ways the numenera can go bad on you). But you could instead use it to avoid a GM intrussion, to create a player intrussion, or save it for another benefit. In the end, XP is another resource, and all that matters is your choice on how to use it. \$\endgroup\$ – MACN May 18 '20 at 21:02

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