Ok...Ok...Ok!!!!

If you do do crafting can we get a bomb.  The orc running under the castle.

I want to sacrifice something.

Edit:

Just use a crafting window.  Use the items like webs and pelts that are just sold at the store anyway and make use of them in a crafting window.  You'd have to make it a little random somehow on what comes out.  And like someone said...  Use a mana slider or # imput to decide how much your willing to give it.  You may crap out.  Kinda like minecraft does theirs.  Its fun that way.

You have to own the item first.  Dont make it to complicated.  These are not toys for your soldiers to screw around with!

Cant get more simple than that.  Its never going to be a huge game breaker.  I personally could do without it.  I just want to find things out in the woods, myself.

Something I didn't see mentioned, but I think is essential - I really feel like if you are going to be crafting, you should have to have a sovereign in a city do the crafting, and the quality of the item should be directly related to spell mastery...

... then I might be actually tempted to take a spell mastery trait. 

Also, research in the Magic tech tree should provide additional abilities.  Make these two inexorably tied so that you cn't either a) race ahead in the tech tree and make a ridiculous weapon or race a Sov/Hero up really fast to make an uber weapon (although this is more preferable since if a hero is Lvl 20 he/she is going to mop the floor against pretty much everything anyway - uber-weapon or not.)

Hmmm. You know i hadn't really thought about crafting in FE, as it already has a lot of user-designed elements in typical gameplay. You could add it as an extension of unit design. Instead of designing your units from prefabbed equipment, you design their equipment as well. Your options would be limited by the resources you have available, as well as techs you have unlocked.

So for instance, instead of having the lightning hammer unlocked at enchanting in the magic tree, the tech would allow general elemental enchanting spells based on the spell traits you posess for use in item design. As an example you could recreate the lightning hammer in the new system by having hammers unlocked in warfare, enchanting in magic, and posessing the Air 2 spell trait. You would use the hammer as a base (which costs metal) then add the Lightning enchant modifier from the crafting UI (which would cost some mana). In addition, you could also make many variations such as the Cold Hammer or even Earth Hammer (more blunt damage). So you've got every elemental variation of weapon available now, but what else can you make? Perhaps enchanting armor pieces with Air magic give +initiative and enchanting them with water gives +dodge. All of the different enchants would cost mana and/or crystal and different material types would be able to hold differing amounts of magic. Perhaps metal would only hold two enchantments on it while an item made of pure crystal could hold three. I'm not sure if this would be too much of a drag on unit production, but you could require a hero with the required spelltrait stationed in the city that is producing units with items with that enchantment. Might as well extend unit design to allow current castable unit enchantments into unit designs, as a convenience thing.

In addition to your everyday enchanted weapons and armor (which cost common resources of metal/crystal/mana) there should be item types that require special resources only dropped by monsters and/or quests. These would be limited in quantity and would be used in the same fashion that the more common ones are. An Ashwake dragon might drop some dragon's bone, which could be a new material to craft a limited amount of dragonbone weapons. A fire elemental may drop some Fire Essence that allows you to add a special fire enchantment to any designed weapon. Maybe the spiderwebs you get all the time could be used to make highly enchantable silk robes.

I think this would be the most natural way to fit crafting into FE because it extends an existing unit design and resources system. The benefit here is it opens up item crafting to designed units AS WELL as heroes. Another benefit is being able to tie it into map resources like shards, and maybe even new very rare map resources, Perhaps finding a rare flux stone could allow you to make limited steel weaponry? You would have to change the way heroes get equipment from the shop though. It's kinda silly currently how you can unlock magical equipment and still buy it for gold for heroes when your empire has no crystal whatsoever. It would be necessary since being able to pay gold for designed items with rare monster dropped components would be lame and exploitative. Make hero purchases at home require all the resources the item does for units, but with the only the production cost converted into gold.

I like the idea of using the items found on the map or by defeating a monster.  Add more items, like dragon eggs or mushrooms on a special tile.  Combo this with some researched abilities or building.  Crafting should be specific to a item and not to a class of items.  The buff to the item should be enough to make it worthy of doing, so +1 or +2 doesn't cut it.  I also agree with the fact that what ever can be buffed should have some way to be counter with something to balance the game, like a magic resist item.