I've been keen on the idea of putting together a critical error table, if only because the uncertainty of what an error would do makes my players a little iffy on the idea (enemy rolls a natural 1 and the first thing they say is "What would happen if I activate it?"), but errors are so situation it hasn't really worked out for me in the past (making a table, that is).

As for threats, we discussed this a while back on here- http://www.crafty-games.com/forum/index.php?topic=5445.msg99016

Any chance we could get a peek at the spell lists? Actually, previews or sneak-peaks were mentioned before, that sort of thing still in the works somewhere? Any ideas how far out something like that may be so they may be anticipated at a proper level of wild-ness?

How do you make someone Helpless?  I could not find a specific mechanic to cause this; there was nothing which said, "X causes a character to be Helpless."

For example, if a character is Paralyzed they are flat footed and can only take purely mental actions.  Mechanically, wouldn't the character also be Helpless?

Thanks

There isn't any explicit way to become helpless- I suppose that's likely because being helpless is kind of subjective, all you have to go on is the condition text "unable to defend themselves in any way." Since there's nearly no other mention of it in the book, I'd say it's up to the GM to say when a character is or isn't helpless.

For what it's worth- in Spycraft a character became Helpless when bound, paralyzed, sleeping, or unconscious- that'd be a good place to start.

I'm trying to put together a feat with a layout similar to Elemental Heritage, where a character can pick what style of arcane casting their character performs (something I've encouraged just as fluff before), gaining related benefits in return. By Style here, I mean a theme or manner of casting- maybe you cast through dance moves, songs, or by writing elaborate geometric designs in the air. I want to be careful to not cross with sources of magic, and the line gets a little hazy, and for some reason, I'm having trouble coming up with ideas, though I know there should be plenty.

So, does anyone here have any favorite magical "styles" of this sort you'd be willing to share to help spur the creative process?

I've been meaning to ask this question but always forget when I am actually at a computer: Will there be a spell chain for summoning constructs/robots in Spellbound?

There was an Artifice spell chain in Seer called Construct Assembly that did just that, so it's safe to say there will be. You can easily use it yourself as it's really just another Nature's Ally/Call From Beyond/Conjure Elemental clone, there isn't a whole lot to those spells except the pregen'd creatures.

All path using classes must feature an Alignment as one of the requirements. 

Incorrect. See Morg's Golden Lion http://www.crafty-games.com/forum/index.php?topic=3338.0 for an example.
The rest of this is golden, however. Awesome work!

Or more appropriately, the Force of Nature- but the point is still there, I think the wording is just off a tad; pretty much anything that gives you your choice of paths, or access to paths granted by your alignment must feature an Alignment as one of the requirements

Well, it's not an easy question to answer, though you could always just weigh their usefulness against a mount of similar value and figure price from there- the biggest issue is how much that sort of labor is valued in your world.

I actually more or less run slaves in my setting as contacts, that if made Standard Characters, come in mobs, and if given the Mook quality, are halved in cost (to 1/4 XP value in Reputation) since slaves are often bought and sold with coin, I included an option for PCs to buy them at a rate of 400s per Reputation cost, but that may be a more costly variant than what may fit your setting.

Trip him. A lot of armor benfits go away when you're sprawled...

Can you give an example please? I'm struggling to find any benefit that is lost.

Not -too- much is lost when sprawled, but DR from Armor is halved:

Damage  Reduction  granted  by the armor. This decreases to 1/2 (rounded up) when the wearer  is held, helpless, pinned, sprawled, or unconscious.

Fortunes of War wouldn't be affected, but the Armor feats and fittings very likely would, dropping his DR by 4- DR 7 is still pretty decent, however.

You could, of course, always just throw Acid at him, all those damage saves the armor gets aren't worth a whole lot in that case.

When I first looked at the class, I was sort of baffled by Wrestling Basics as a requirement, although logically many combat experts would have some good moves. However, looking more closely, I noticed that it granted +1 defense, offered a useful stance if you were disarmed, and put the Edgemaster within close reach of Wrestling Mastery, which gives you a trick you could use in conjunction with Master's Touch. I don't know how much of that was deliberate design, but it works out well.

Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but you could use Wrestling Basics and Quick Draw to make an iaijutsu wrestler. Once you are in Open Stance, you use a free handle item action to draw your sword, make an attack, then sheath the sword with another free handle item action. Now you have two hands free and are ready to grapple! Mix in Snake Strike for more fun.

How would quick draw work with the Handle Item Grapple Benefit?

There's a not-explicit suggestion that Quick Draw would let you Handle Item in a Grapple without using Athletics-

...the only non-free action any grapple participant may take is an opposed full-action Athletics check..."

I don't remember if there was an official ruling on that or not, but so as long as what you want to do is perform a normal Handle Item and not the cool Benefit version (meaning no handling your opponent's gear, or unbuckling armor), then maybe.

The result is you don't get 50-year old toddlers or anything like that.

I was always weirded out by this, so I did my best to avoid it as well but since I have so many species I just did 5 different lifespans (Short lived, low average, high average, long lived, and very long lived, straight forward names) with the five usual categories, each with a Fast and Slow maturation rate- all the type-modifiers I use are just +% like you see all across FC, but they only modify the upper bound of Adult and later categories

As an aside I've been tinkering with aging for an epic span campaign, has anyone else been working on a similar rule?

I've had aging for a while in my games, and I worked up some tables/attribute modifiers simply because my players were often stumped on how old they should be, but I did mine by species, rather than type. Instead of listing ages for every species individually, I worked up categories and put species into those.

Looks right, it may seem like a lot at first glance- and it certainly is an effective amount, but it's far from insurmountable. The Tarrasque still has at least one thing over this guy, though- his armor can't be ignored by a simple Called Shot trick.

Hey, I'm always up to ramble about my home system, ask half the boards. But I suppose I don't talk about my setting much, just the rules, lemme see how much I can blab (I'm pretty sure at least one of my players reads these boards so... spoiler free, unfortunately).

I'm running games in a homebrew world that began life as a relatively by-the-books high-fantasy renaissance era world that I've let my players, over numerous campaigns, change to their whim with their characters plot-driven actions. Since then (we started using this world in early 2010), the world has become far more modern- for whatever reason my players have largely focused on advancing and actually bettering the world.
Now, there is common alchemy and weak magic, with more powerful and dangerous magic growing less and less common, and the tech level has reached a sort of "early steampunk" by having a great deal of early industrial-era technology suddenly injected into it, as well as a series of major advances in commercial magic usage.
Oddly enough, through their actions, peace, alliances, and trade agreements have been formed between kingdoms separated by hundreds of miles of dangerous outlands, while the five centerpiece kingdoms are all on the verge of war (and one on the verge of war with itself).

Right now my players are hires for a new sort of job- express delivery- for the Guild of Tradecraft, a guild some of their former characters helped found in an earlier campaign along with the creator of the first Airship (which they then touted to every Monarch they could, giving their inventor friend a -lot- of business).

There are two stories unfolding, one of the players as they take delivery assignments and learn more about the friendly but strange count whom they assisted in the introductory game and have since also begun working for, and the other through cutscenes where they see the tale of an intelligent paragon of an orc who seems to be leading devout followers to some dire event with a long-since thought out plan. All the while they're seeing where their two jobs intermingle with one another and with their past character's actions, and how the two seem to be leading them on the tail of, and eventually into conflict with the orc.

The fact that the Martial Artist class can offer a trick that lets you change your unarmed damage to Subdual, at least implies that you can't convert without penalty (though someone could argue the trick is for Martial Artists using their Natural Attacks, and perhaps it is), but I've personally always allowed the conversion of unarmed damage to Subdual without penalty and never had an issue at all- others have said they allow players to deal the normal 1d3+STR subdual, like you lack the Forte or the (likely increased) damage granted by Martial Arts, but not a direct conversion.

Is that guy in the lower left corner missing the top of his head and the rest of his arm? O_o

Yup. However, what I find more distracting is the fact that several years down the line, i've only just noticed the Elf chick on the bottom right with the distractingly large boobies, disturbingly alert nipples and a waspy corset apparently made of plate armour...

There are a few more of them, too, it looks like they brought a whole unit of large-breasted, iron-corseted warriors.