Carry this to in game, it highly reasonable to think that the first few times you try to repair something with a low/the starting level of repair on a character working on a high quality item, that you will ultimately do more damage to it than what it already had done to it. Work on lower quality items to see better results with your low repair level, and work on raising your repair level higher to expect to have better results on repairing higher quality items. At least, that's how I understand things.
I was tempted to say that repair needed tuning before, and now requires fixing. However, I see your point now, how it's planned to be, and indeed how your tuning will be difficult (and frustrating for repairing players, eh eh).
I'd still like to know, out of curiosity, a little more detail on that particular project, for I can see at least two objectives:
- one will always damage something he tries to repair until he reaches a certain level. (For example, let's pretend Repair skills go up to 300, he will always damage a Q100 object until he reaches 100 in Repair skill). This looks like what is described along this thread.
- one will actually repair, not damage, but repair better with a higher skill, with the occasional failure or fumble. This is what happens with other crafts, so it would be consistent. (Getting a slag is rare with Metallurgy).
Well, the money part will also have to balance itself to make Repair viable skills. What I really wanted to remind with this post is that repair jobs are an essential part of a "medieval" world, as opposed to a modern, consumerist one. The weapon makers will have to suffer heavily at some point from the concurrence of
weapon repairers...
