P1 I've already had one player make a mild gripe about a necromancer being able to summon 4 skeletons at some point in the future. After playing 4e for so long, I think my players are just used to spending about equal amounts of time interacting with the game, even if they summon other things or have pets or companions or whatever.

P4 See, that's once thing where I'm a bit antsy in regard to messing with damage/vitality scales - critical hits. I had thought that might be an interesting twist in it, and it's not like they're exactly rare - especially with nat attacks IV+. As far as cutting vitality in half, I'm a bit drawn on that one - at lower levels, it makes damage even scarier, and at high levels, you're still running about the same problem. Same "slope" if you will. If anything, I'd want them to still receive the full amount of vitality, just in a slowly declining gradient - a curve that starts of really fast, then slows down very far. At that point, it seems to be easier to just modify monster damage - really, damage dice are already an approximation, so saying that a skeleton warrior hits for 2d12 on a longsword instead of 1d12 doesn't really seem abnormal to me.

P6 As far as chits and action dice, I'd like to see some way of working them together, but I haven't had any brilliant ideas hit me so far. As is, you can use them to boost your skill checks, but more than that could be something interesting. Rolling an action die to gain as many chits? Something? I'm not sure.

And those kind of checks don't happen all that often. So far, two sessions in, we've only done one, with another coming up real soon. They're interesting, but not something you want to do twice or more a session.

re: 4e's "everyone must be equally effective" balance concept

P1 It's not a question of effective, or everybody at the table being awesome. The problem is how much table time they're getting. One player can spend 6-10 minutes just rolling and taking actions for him and his 3 NPCs, doing trivial damage, missing a lot, or not being very effective due to DR, or whatever; another player can cast one spell and do hundreds of points of damage between several creatures or hit the damage weakness or just outright kill something that the other player cannot, but take 30 seconds to do so. Yes, players need to pay attention when it's not them resolving things at the table, but when you have 9 characters on the board, and 4 of them are controlled by one person, you cannot say that everybody is playing the game equally.

Again, it's not a matter of if they player with 4 characters on the board is better, worse, or effective or not effective; they are just taking up way more time at the table than other players. Running them as NPCs only increases the GM's workload. Having a limited number of actions, no matter how many NPCs you have seems to be an effective, static, and predictable way of keeping 20 minute turns being 12 minutes on one player, 8 minutes on the other 4.

As far as "two half actions and one relatively inconsequential actions" being more or less complicated, or more or less restrictive: It's nice when things are predictable for the player. "Well, if I take this, will I be able to do it once a turn? Twice a turn? 4 times a turn? Who knows, until either I ask the GM or he makes the call at the table. This other thing, that is similar, but not quite the same? Different answer, but I still don't know until I ask the GM". It's nice when a game is predictable. You can make calls as a GM; you're supposed to. But if you have to make calls on everything, why not boil it down so all you have are characters with 6 attributes, and everything else is just a GMs call? A bit of hyperbole, but the point stands - I like to make as few unnecessary calls as possible, and reserve my attention for the character that is doing something awesome, not "can I do this ordinary-ish thing".

I'm not saying that FC is totally unpredictable as is; it's rather nice in that way, and I understand that part of FC's mantra is that GM calls are a required part of the game - that's great, and part of what drove me away from 4e was the invisible wall of "if it's not in the book, don't do it" (even though there are very good guidelines in that game for doing things outside the rules).

But the action types in 4e (standard, move, minor, immediate interrupt, immediate reaction, opportunity, free) are easy, cut, dry, and very predictable, with fewer questions asked about "but when does x happen in comparison to y". That is one of the things I feel 4e has done better than any other game so far - and as much as I like FC, it is not absolutely perfect in every way in comparison to every other game. The 4e action types also allow for a finer gradient, I feel, that is more predictable.

What I am finding a hard match for those actions, is that FC advocates doing more than just attacking twice on your turn, or just move and attack, with a variety of things other than that you can do during combat -in addition to an attack or move-. Hence, a compromise seems to be in order - two half actions (or a full action) and a swift/minor action; making "handle item" a swift/minor action makes sense, especially if you can then trade and half action for a swift/minor. I think this allows a larger gradient on actions, and could serve to benefit things at my table.

P4: I like that FC can have a goblin with the same stat block challenge players at threat level 2 and threat level 12 - but the problem is it does different damage. When you're talking a level 2 soldier, with 28 vitality, a hit for 12 damage is really painful! Almost half his life! That same soldier at level 12 with 168 vitality? 12 damage? Not exactly threatening. Can I just add in some feats and class abilities and modify the xp value to higher? Yes, but I would rather just consult a chart for damage levels the same way I do for attack bonuses, saves, and other stats.

P6: I wouldn't expect everybody to use this at their tables, but I find it's an interesting way of doing something that isn't either "pass/fail this skill roll; rinse repeat" or combat. We have found it a good framework (same as attack rolls, feats, tricks, and vitality has been a framework for combat) for exactly that.

If you think PC stuff scales too fast wouldn't it be simpler to reduce that scaling?

By reducing how often/much they gain vitality?

Remember that this is a company board for an RPG that is seen as an alternative to those other RPG's and expect some defensiveness, some of it justified, when you start roasting our sacred cows.

Well understood; I'm not here to rattle cages or offend people, I'm simply looking at tweaking the (very good game) that I have discovered to suit my (and my table's) own particular tastes. I had assumed it went without saying that I enjoy FC enough that I would rather make modifications to it, rather than simply steal ideas from it to use in other RPGs.

I like the idea of using NPC natural attacks as weapon attacks; thanks a ton for that idea, and it seems to solve my problem very nicely with minimal fuss.

The Pathfinder system is more or less exactly what I intended to do; the problem comes when multiclassing with another class that has fewer (or more) skill points than the first class; I figured having "core aptitude skills" for each class that would be granted upon multiclassing; for instance, a soldier would start with maybe "athletics or resolve plus 3 others" but multiclassing into soldier would grant "athletics or resolve" as maxed skills; alternately burglar would be "prestidigitation and either acrobatics or bluff plus 6 others" while multiclassing would be "prestidigitation and either acrobatics or bluff". Of course, if you already have those skills, and maxed, no effect.

Part 1: The idea is for every character to share equal "table time". You have player 1, a multi-class warlord/lancer with a mount and a right-hand man. Maybe he even uses two-weapon fighting. So he makes his first attack, hits, rolls damage, second attack with a maneuver, hits, rolls damage, opponent has to roll save, he then moves; his mount makes it's move and attacks, misses. His right hand man uses an attack with a trick, misses.
Then you have player 2, a priest. Who casts Cure Wounds III to save another player. Rolls good. His turn is done.
This part doesn't seem like a terribly difficult fix - have it so it uses an action to command an NPC; there will be some items that need to be altered, but it doesn't quite seem draconian.
Altering the action economy into the standard-move-minor would be as much a clarification as anything else; it also tends to help sort out what actions you can do in your head, again increasing the speed that you can move around the table. I've honestly thought about making it "half/half (or full) and then a single swift action; I'd simply have to pick out the items in the book I want a swift action to be. Generally speaking tho, there are simply things that I want a player to do that doesn't take a half his actions in a turn, but isn't a free action either; saying "you can only take that free action once" seems arbitrary and while I have no problem with GM rulings like that, I prefer for the player to be able to see that kind of thing when he makes that choice during character creation, not at the table after initiative has been rolled.

Part 2: Mostly this is a "place keeper" rule until Spellbound comes out (which I am certainly looking forward to!).

Part 3: I don't see how this could make a spell impossible to save against? Currently, you have an NPC cast "ouchpewpew" at a character; the DC against his saving throw is 15. The player makes a Saving throw, with their +6 reflex save. They must roll a d20 and get a 9 or higher. Altered, the NPC makes an attack at +6 (dc -9) against a reflex defense of 15 (9+save bonus); they must roll a 9 or higher to hit.
The hard part of this comes with items like "you are discombobulated, make a fort save every round to see if your head clears". I think I might have a way of handling that, but I'm working on it at the moment - it'll likely be just a "roll d20, higher than 10 means you cleared it off" with some ad hoc modifiers, but it might instead be an ability check with a low DC.

Part 4: This is the one I am most hung up on; I'm not sure if it works as written as intended, or if I am missing something, or what. It seems as a player levels up, their DR and Vitality increase significantly; while a goblin with a base XP of 55 keeps the same damage at level 13 as they did at level 3. Am I missing something? It seems like as a group levels up, you have to either use higher base xp NPCs to challenge them, or more NPCs - significantly more. A t-rex always does 2d12+5 lethal with a bite, no matter if that T-rex is threat level 2 or threat level 20.

Part 5: I'm likely going to make this an option; honestly, when I make a character I tend to max out 3/4 of the skills I want, then "dabble" the rest of my skill points around into "what if" skills. Perhaps that's just me, and I realize that focus skills base the number of focii upon skill ranks; I'm sketchy about this idea, but I wanted to see if it would work - some of my players aren't keen on micromanaging skill aptitude, and I can understand that.

Part 6: This should honestly link to another post; more or less, it turns a non-combat encounter into a sort of "mini-game" that can be customized to the situation. There are 3 major parts to it.
For one - you determine how many chits (tokens, we use poker chips) the player starts out the encounter with, as well as how many the GM starts with. Generally, this is set to "one for each player, one for the GM for each player" but can be altered based upon situation.
For two - you determine which skills can be used; you don't lock these in, if a player comes up with something clever, that's great. Some of these skills can be used to "bet" chits, usually with a limit of 3 chits. Some of these skills come with a chit cost in order to alter the "playing field", either opening up other skills to be used or giving a bonus to other skills or players permanently or temporarily. Some of these skills can be used to trade chits, with a limit of a player only getting 1 traded chit each round. Some of these skills are rolled by everybody on the GM's turn; a failure gives the GM a chit, a success may either cost the GM chits or simply get the player by that round.
For three - you determine the ending result; generally this means the players can "buy" their success in the encounter at any time with a certain number of chits; alternately, the GM can "buy" their failure with a certain number of chits as well. Other options include "you can end this at any time, and cash in your chits for a number of (insert things the player wants to get with this encounter here).

I'm sure that's all very confusing, and hard to figure out, so I'll give an example.
Situation: The players have just woken up on the beach of a strange island. They need to make a base camp, set up supplies, and make it so that they can survive before they start wandering into the jungle all crazy like with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Set up: Each player receives 1 chit; the GM receives 1 chit per player in the group.
Skills: Survival is the primary "betting" skill; a player may bet up to 3 chits to gain 1 chit plus as many bonus ones as they bet on a success, with a failure, those betted chits are instead lost.
At a cost of 1 chit, any player may make a Search check to grant another player or themselves a +2 bonus to their next roll.
An Athletics check can be made without betting a chit to gain a chit.
A Medicine check can be made to grant another player a chit, with a limit of each player only gaining 1 chit a turn in this fashion.
On the GM's turn, each player must succeed either a survival or a resolve check or pay the GM a chit.
Any player may make a Crafting check and spend up to 5 chits; if they fail, these chits are lost but if they succeed, they count towards making an Island House which requires 10 chits; once completed, the Island House grants a +4 bonus to all remaining checks.
(The GM can spend 10 chits for a massive storm to happen, taking 3 chits away from each player and 3 chits away from the Island House).
Each Round represents one day on the island.
Success: The players must have 5 chits per player, upon success they have a constant source of food, shelter, and clean fresh water that they may use to resupply with.

This was a pretty simple one, to introduce the players to the system. There were no grave consequences, but if I wanted to be mean, I could easily have let the GM spend chits to make a player sick, cause critters to attack the camp, or have the GM buy the player's failure and be unable to have a base camp at that location, requiring some searching and exploring under harsh conditions to find another good location. Bear in mind I am not trying to make any skill rolls cut and dry; nor am I trying to prevent creative use of skills anymore than the combat rules keep a player from being creative in combat; I am simply trying to grant a framework or rules system for the players to understand the consequences, good and bad, of their actions as they progress through a non-combat encounter. It worked outstandingly! For once, I had a non-combat encounter that the players were talking through tactically, trying to work off of each other's strengths and weaknesses, and figuring out what to do, instead of "well I make a check. Do I make it or not?" - which is how this sort of thing went previously.

Part 1: Alter the current types of actions into the "standard-move-minor" action types and action economy; alter the current action economy into something more inline with that (meaning, remove "I have a pet and a henchmen so I have 6 half actions to deal with and keep track of every round, while other players have 2").

Part 2: Narrow the focus of generalist mages. Treat spell schools as focuses (the same way they are used with crafting and ride skills) for the Spellcasting skill.

Part 3: Alter the way saves are made, and how durations are tracked. Alter Saving throws to be static defenses (dragons attack reflex at a +15 instead of "make a DC 25 saving throw"). Durations are going to probably be "check at the beginning of your turn if you shake this off yet or not".

Part 4: Scaling NPC damage guidelines.

Part 5: Skill system simplification. Likely, each class will get a pick of a number of skills to more or less max out; multiclassing will have skills that you'll pick up as well if you don't already have them, but only a few core skills per class in such a fashion. This one is a little more wonky, and I'm not totally sure I'm going to implement it, but I'm probably going to try.

Part 6: Attempted integration of my chit-based "non-combat encounter" system.

The first two are going to be pretty draconian; I'll be re-writing/altering a very large portion of the game to work the first one in especially. I'm not sure if anybody will be interested how this will turn out, but it'll be awhile before I quite get all of this nailed down.

What do you guys think of all this? Yes, a large portion of it is coming as "things I like from other RPGs".

I'm not so worried about the standard characters - sure, they'll pretty much auto-fail their first damage save (he will be doing at least 36 damage literally 9 times out of 10 - that's a damage save of 29) and every damage save after that - but I usually put between tough I and tough III on most combat NPCs.

My worry is special NPCs, who are supposed to be scenic and memorable, going down in two rounds. Even with tough and DR, unless I specifically nerf his character, that's 60+ damage per round.

Tho admittedly, there will be fights were he is near useless, and anytime he fights intelligent opponents, he'll get ganked, number one target.

Yeah, a big part of the reason for my switch to FC instead of D&D4e was that we were running 6 out of 8 hours in 3 combats per session, goofing off for another hour, and split the last half hour between terrible skill challenges that nobody cared for, and RP. I'm wanting to break it down into moreso 1/3 adventuring/skill challenges, 1/3 combat, and 1/3 RP. That would be my ideal, with significant crossover. (I also have a really fun new way of doing skill challenges that makes it interesting, instead of rote skill checks pass/fail).

His build is something like Pech Rogue Burglar 7; 12 str, 19 dex, 14 con, 14 int, 12 wis, 11 cha; feats wolf pack basics/mastery/supremacy, knife basics/mastery/supremacy, ferocity basics (note: campaign property: fast feats). Skills +9 acrobatics, +11 athletics, +8 blend, +9 bluff, +12 craft, +1 disguise, +6 haggle, +1 impress, +1 intimidate, +5 investigation, +2 medicine, +11 notice, +14 prestidigitation, +12 resolve, +9 ride, +9 search, +9 sneak, +8 survival, +9 tactics.

The trick is, his character is going to be a glass cannon - it's something this player has done before, and often, so I know how it will likely go. He'll take down an NPC, and maybe one or two more, and do huge amounts of damage, and if they NPCs they are fighting are intelligent, they'll all gang up on the huge damage stabbing machine and take it down - and FC is way less forgiving than D&D4e.

...one of your players wants to play a burglar that can do 8d6 + 14 damage on a sneak attack (threat 18-20) - at level 6.

I was worried about this, when I started playing. Basically with a mage in the group, every single encounter your players will be full vitality, full wounds; resource management will more or less be nil - maybe have to manage rations and ammo?

I looked at three different ways of solving this, and these are the three that popped up:

Remove spell points per scene, change it to spell points per hour.
Pros: Well, there goes the magical auto-healing. Also, there goes the slightly worrisome aspect of mages with universal magic - the ability to marginalize other class abilities or skills, ala knock and other utility spells.
Cons: There goes the fun of being a mage; casting a limited number of spells per day will make magic items and scrolls far more important than they really are.

Insert Healing Surges. For those unfamiliar with the system, a "healing surge" is about a quarter of a character's hit points in value, and they have a limited number of healing surges per day. When they are all gone, that person can get (almost) no healing done to them AT ALL. This makes higher power healing spells more valuable, as opposed to more economic healing spells that heal more-per-spell-point. The number of healing surges a character would get would vary based upon intended role or constitution, or both, with some new feats to help.
Pros: This seems to solve "how often can you get healed in a day" and could also be spread out to include meals or potions as well, to balance those out. It also makes healing somebody with more hit points more powerful than healing somebody with fewer hit points, making healing spell balance work out well, and further rewarding people that really want to stack on the vitality. You could easily alter Cure Wounds I-IV to heal 1-4 surge values worth of hit points, effectively allowing heal IV to heal to full; you could also do "surge plus 10/20/30/40" or whatever arbitrary value you felt would work.
Cons: Pushing in a whole new system into the game can have unintended consequences. I really thought this might work, but it seems like adding yet another full layer to an already multi-layer cake. It's also more or less ripped straight from another different game that I am leaving for a reason.

What I finally decided on:
Campaign Property: Fragile Heroes (although some classes I rounded up, some classes I rounded down). Altered Campaign property, basically every character at the end of a scene heals to full vitality, with no healing of wounds. To make things a little more interesting, a character heals his Wis score in stress and his Con score in subdual after every fight, as well as lops off one tier of fatigued or shaken.
Pros: The pool of resources-per-combat is reduced dramatically, making defending yourself a more viable option, as opposed to just "kill them as fast as you can before they kill you". This makes combat more dramatic and tactical - it's not about dishing out max damage. It also makes in-combat healing much more powerful, which in my mind is a good thing compared to as-is. However, seeings as how all vitality is returned at the end of a fight, a healer isn't an absolute requirement. Healing just 1 wounds a day makes any critical hit or ever dropping to 0 vitality absolutely disastrous.
Cons: It makes keeping track of things a bit more cumbersome, but not overwhelmingly so. It does make players a bit more cautious, willing to run away from a fight if it's not going their way, and afterwards being able to heal up and go back into it. Since your con mod can be half your vitality value or more, it makes constitution an even more valuable asset. Critical Hits can become game-enders very quickly.

Things I did in addition to this:
Touch of Light spell now removes one condition, or lowers it by one grade.
Paladin's Lay on Hands now does the same as Touch of light, only once-per-scene, as a half-action, and without a spellcasting check.
Cure Wounds spells now heal fewer wounds: I-IV heal 0, 1, 3, and 5 wounds per cast respectively.

I'm strongly considering allowing a Mend check to heal 1d6 wounds OR remove/lower a condition, with the usual limit of mend-checks-per-day. I might allow it to heal subdual instead.

Two more questions.

Sneak attack dice, do they always apply when one applies? For instance, wolf pack mastery (lets you applie a single sneak attack die when flanking) and a burglar with an extra sneak attack die from Bag of Trick - 2d6 sneak attack, or just the 1d6 it says you roll for flanking?

Poison: How does it work? More importantly, how does a monster applying poison work? For example,  disorienting poison, for the sake of argument it has the fast-acting upgrade. When you get stabbed with a dagger with it, you get a Fort Save DC 12 or you take 2 temporary dex impairment...and then you save a minute later, and keep saving every minute until you make it, or are rendered comatose (or in the sake of debilitating poison, you die)? Or do you just save the second time and you are done with it?

How can I increase the DC for a monster that applies poison? Say, a giant scorpion, threatening higher level characters, maybe level 12? A DC 12 is going to be a cakewalk. Do I just up the DC to whatever I feel appropriate? Should I make it an extraordinary attack, attached to the sting natural attack? Just make the DC 5 higher for every 2 xp?

How much treasure should I be handing out? Is there a guideline? Should it be about 100sp into their stake after every adventure (at an assumed 0 prudence?) together with a variety of gear and/or prizes, and by prizes I mostly mean magical items?

If you allow a player to "buy" a magic item, should they be charged the silver value of the item they are enchantiing? What level should the item be if they are buying it with reputation?

Thanks for the detailed response.

I dunno how I read p204. I think I understood it as "coming adjacent" instead of moving from an adjacent square into another adjacent square. Silly me.

Also, I apparently misread the "mook" quality for Special NPCs - it removes their Vitality, not their Wounds pool. So basically the "mook" quality means that any hit automatically crits if it hits. Makes sense.

Thanks for the help!

Just played my first session tonight. I was stoked, and I still am about continuing the campaign. Love the rule system.

It never explicitly says that a player may move freely adjacent to a flat-footed opponent. Is this a purposeful omission, or am I missing something?

It seems to be that Armor Check Penalty applies to any ability that is modified by Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution, and no other abilities? Did I interpret that wrong? At which point an armored mage seems like a most appropriate scenario, if anti-thematic.

What happens when a player scores a critical hit against a special NPC with the "mook" quality?

Is there anything preventing a player being able to cast cure spells more or less indefinitely outside of combat?

A mage seems to be able to case cure spells pretty much at a whim - while the priest, typically a character able to heal, relies upon mend checks (which are limited to twice a day outside of combat) and only if they have "life" as an alignment path is there any room for actually casting heal spells. Is this a purposeful bent, are there going to be more diving casting options in the upcoming magic book? Or arcane casters going to be better healers?

Does Damage Reduction or Damage Resistance stack unless it says otherwise? Does armor piercing have any effect against damage resistance?

Under what conditions does a character with a Flight Speed need to make a Maneuver check?

Does a character's size modify their gear, rations, or rates at which they starve/dehydrate?

For the Drake, is "quadruped" anything other than descriptive? Is there anything keeping a drake from using a zweihander with the Drake upgrade?

A few of these are pretty obvious, some are a little questionable, and some I think there is an obvious answer but I cannot find reference for it in the book or I don't know exactly how to go about it.