Is there a skill for this? I’m not seeing one, but it’s easy to miss stuff in the skill section, with it being so large. I’m hoping to do a one-off session that has a tribal Native American sort of feel, and I imagine most of the weapons will be crude. My guess is that these weapons will occasionally break, and it would be wise for me to give one of the PCs (pregened) a crude crafting skill. I was thinking survival could possibly be used. Any thoughts?
What do you mean by a crude weapon? Like finding a stick in the forest and tying a rock to it? Survival seems fine for that. But established tribal societies don’t make crude weapons.
If you want all your weapons to be crude, use the weaponsmith skill, but give the double ob penalty for not having the right tools. I assume your tribes don’t have forges and bellows and whatnot, so unless you have someone with a large smithy skill, most of your weapons will come out poor quality and thus emulate being crude.
There is quite a lot of skill involved in making stone, wood and bone weapons. First in selecting appropriate materials, for example a stone without faults, and then the actual crafting. Many tribal warriors would probably craft their own weapons and so would be especially careful in making something that wouldn’t break during hunting or in a skirmish. It would probably be a bit strange to be a male warrior and not know how to craft weapons, though of course there could be particular individuals with particular skill in this area. And “male warrior” probably also means almost every able-bodied male in the tribe.
I guess “crude” wasn’t the best terminology. What I was thinking more so was mechanically "poor quality’ to represent them not being made of metal. Does that seem appropriate? It seems that, even though stone weapons may have been made meticulously, in purely mechanical terms they would use the “poor quality” stats.
Drewstah I agree that every male warrior would probably possess some skill at crafting their own weapons. That’s why I was thinking perhaps a skill like survival, which pretty much all tribe members would have, would be an appropriate skill for crafting these sorts of weapons. Thoughts?
Are these weapons going to go up against steel and iron in your setting, or is everything stone age technology? If there’s no forged weapons, then I’m not sure you need to do anything.
They will face exclusively non-forged weapons in the one-off session; however, if the game were to happen to go on longer they would probably encounter forged weapons.
You can just make metal weapons be superior quality, and stone weapons be run-of-the-mill.
Thanks Taelor. That sounds like an ideal solution.
Survival if you want to keep it simple. Something like “Craft Natural Tools”, otherwise. The skill would probably extend to making other tools besides weapons (and many weapons could be multipurpose in any case).
For the weapon stats, I’d just make them -1 or -2 VA. Their main weakness would be when they came up against metal armour.
Another optional rule add-on could be that if all dice come up 1s when using the weapon, then the weapon is broken, to reflect their lesser durability (though this seems unnecessarily complicated).
Some inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygNuRpwZqRU&feature=share&list=PLE97CE3453A6B7A76 
This is a bit dodgy, but shows off Native American weapons in use: http://youtu.be/4r48DpmU6bU