Thanks for adding the time, Ludo. I saw the hp, and thought to myself: that number doesn't mean anything, because fuel contains energy, not wattage.

Power entirely depends on how fast you burn the energy, so half the time = twice the power. Of course, engine size is usually determined by power output.

25% is a pretty good number for an internal combustion engine (goes up to 33%, if memory serves). Steam engines usually are quite a bit worse, depending on what technology they are built with.

Actually, I used Horsepower because it works the way ludo has it laid out, on a per-hour basis (my original post should actually read horsepower-hours, like the original text does, I'll change that). Efficiency is something that's left up to the engine or plant that's running it, most hand-held powered devices, running on a typical engine or plant in my world takes about a steady 20-30 hp to run, so for 1 hour (or, as I'm using it, one scene), they take 1 unit. Still, sounds like ludo has far more experience on the matter, so I'll definitely defer to him, this is basically just me breaking down a fuel conversion sheet, which was all worked out in potential BTU's and kw/h.

My campaign world entered into a sort of pre-steampunk age (basically a great deal of industrial-era tech was introduced into a high-magic world comparably suddenly), and magic blends very well with technology in it- a lot of the rules/gear I have written up may not be what you're looking for, but since I was going to make players keep up with fuel, I went through the bother of figuring potential energy of various fuels by weight, and broke them down into fuel "units" representing 100 potential horsepower.

You can, ideally, get 100hp (1 unit, in my world EDIT: This should be Horsepower-Hour, or 100hp for 1 hour) of power out of 25lbs of Coal, 20 lbs of Coal Coke, 16lbs (about 2.3 gallons) of lamp oil (assuming vegetable or olive oil, not like... ghee), 13 lbs of Kerosene (just under 2 gallons), or 34 lbs of most dry wood.

The ridiculous density of power in Oil/Kerosene made me make most engines/plants use solid fuel, and Liquid Fuel requires an upgrade. Then I went on and added some magical fuels (burning elixirs, burning condensed magical essence, that sort of thing), and I have one more fuel type, direct electricity, basically handled by trapping lightning bolts into canisters and using them to run special, obviously non-steam engines/plants.

Most powered equipment is set up to "uses 1 unit of fuel/scene/day" and +1 unit for every combat they're used as a weapon (some tools, like the arc welder, use 1 unit for every attack). Whereas large things like powered airships use units equal to their size penalty to defense per scene per day.

Hey everyone,

First, thanks for the feedback. All of it's been useful, even when it's a counterpoint to an official or desired stance.

Second, I just scripted a little something I'm going to send Alex in a few. It's based on some ideas we had at the last summit, and I think it satisfies the needs of (honestly) everyone who's spoken up here. It isn't difficult to use, it's stronger overall than any of our previous grapple rules sets, and it both allows cinematic staples out of the box and protects specialty maneuvers while letting experts shine.

Obviously I can't post my thoughts yet - they're nascent and need vetting, and then playtesting, and then one more pass through the tiger cage for good measure - but I wanted you all to know this hasn't been a fruitless endeavor. Even if these initial thoughts don't make it to press, they're a basis for something, and we can count that a win.

I'd still like to see the discussion continue. Just today several new posts have helped to clarify what we need to do, and I'm sure that will continue. I may occasionally pop in with more questions - sometimes related to our new designs and sometimes not. We strategically ask these questions to get at the core of what's needed, not necessarily to lead the discussion toward any particular destination, and as you can see in the questions I've posed so far as much about playing devil's advocate and deducing what we don't want as anything else.

For now, carry on! But please do keep it friendly. There's no need for anything else.

You know, in all my prolonged anticipation, excitement, and yeah, frustration with Spellbound I've managed to forget just how nice it is to even have the writers of the game around and open to not just questions and clarifications, but debate and actual growth- I don't think I've ever seen you or Alex voice that machined "must support the product as-is, if it is not infallible, all will collapse," mentality that seems common among developers, and though I've grown accustomed to it now, there was a time when I was in awe of it.

I know I haven't been part of this discussion so far, I have been watching it with significant interest, because I share a lot of the opinions being tossed around here, but I just wanted to make the point that, at least speaking for myself and my players (who tend to be... around), though we may seem less appreciative, you guys have gotten no less awesome, thanks for being both cool and people.

The key to grappeling is a mix of being oppotunistic and the Surge of Speed feat.

What?  I tried, but honestly can't make sense of this statement.

Without explanation, all I can assume is that you were referring to the Opportunist feat from Spycraft (which, I think it's safe to assume others would have imported to FC, too).  That gives you a half attack when one of the enemies team mates goes down - so half way to starting a grapple.  Then you mention Surge of Speed (to get the other half action) - which quite explicitly can't be used for an attack action (which grapple very clearly is).  So if that was your plan - have Opportunist kick in and then Surge of Speed to get into a grapple, your plan simply doesn't work (because it breaks the rules).  I can't think of any other explanation to your statement, so perhaps you meant something else.

I'm pretty sure he meant that since Grapple is a full action and therefore somewhat slow, you can use Surge of Speed to approach your enemy, assuming they're just one movement away, then still have your full action to initiate the grapple. The first part (be opportunistic) wasn't necessarily a prerequisite of this tactic, just him saying to be clever about who/how/when you grapple. (At least I think this is what he meant, correct me if I'm wrong, Krensky)

Now I'm curious. Anyone out there feel the constant, unavoidable possibility of an instant reversal from any position in a grapple is not a good idea? Inquiring designers want to know.

Except it's not instant reversal from any position. The common interpretation of the rule simply allows the formerly dominant participant to themselves become held or pinned.

This scene from Terminator 2 is a good example.

Round 1: T1000 decides to grapple T800 and wins the initial check; T800 is now held. The T800 fails his check, and the T1000 chooses to disarm.

Round 2: T1000 loses his check, and instead of breaking free, T800 choses to render T1000 held (the bit where he grabs his jacket). T800 wins his check and chooses to render T1000 pinned.

Round 3: T1000 loses his check, T800 chooses injure (1st wall slam). T800 wins his check and again chooses injure (2nd wall slam).

Round 4: T1000 wins check with a crit, becomes held and inflicts pinned on T800. T800 loses check, T1000 chooses injure.

Round 5: T1000 clearly has a grapple trick he brings into play, which allows him to bullrush a pinned opponent (throwing T800 through wall and leaving him sprawled and stunned, breaking the grapple.

Round 6: T1000 uses Charging Basics to shove T800 through glass and leave at a run. T800 repositions and goes to retrieve gun.

It takes a terminator to get through 6 rounds in 10 seconds.

Interesting to hear how big Chapter 3 is shaping up to be, I'm definitely still plenty interested- any thing any of us loyal fans might be able to do to help things move along? I mean, besides trying to get everyone to buy crafty products, of course.

Fantasy Craft 2nd printing, P. 361, section "Let Them Win":

Quote - Statistically, 5% of all rolls fail (with a natural 1), which makes sense in isolated situations — especially dire, desperate ones.

Wait a second... I just want to make sure I'm not missing something... There is no auto fail on a 1 or auto success on a 20, right? For any roll?

This did just slip through proof reading, right? 

Yup, that's the rules as written. Pretty much every one tends to ignore it in favour of the usual auto fail/success from the parent OGL/d20 ruleset though.

The way I run it, and have really enjoyed so far, is that if you roll a 1 but still succeed it's a success but may also be activated as a critical failure- just a failure that also gets the job done, more or less. Same goes for a 20 that doesn't succeed.

Chapter 1 is classes and feats.
Chapter 2 is the new spells.
Chapter 3 is advice and Campaign Qualities.

There's a bunch more than that in Chapters 1 and 3, but that's largely on.

This book will have *very* large chapters.

Spellbound... excitement... returning... must resist urge to ask more questions...

Also, try to bear in mind that- at least I think- what Pat said wasn't meant to be an official ruling, it's one of those things left intentionally vague for DMs to run in whatever way best suits their game, and I think he was just saying that that interpretation seemed at least reasonably balanced and simple to remember/understand.

This is the same rule of thumb I have used to determine whether or not DR effects damage from spells since DR says it reduces damage from any hits.

Interesting, but I'm not sure about that. Look at the Fire Storm spell - It's not listed as an 'attack' spell but it has AP 5. Why would it need AP 5 if DR wasn't applied?

I like to use AP for "really hot fire" because it adds to damage against objects- not saying that's necessarily the intention here, but it does at least have another use.

I think perhaps, because when you get down to it, it would be a shorter list that contained all the things that were the same between FC and 3.X. I would suggest assuming nothing is the same apart from the very core concepts, i.e. 6 stats, levels, classes, using a d20 for most things. Pretty much all the details are different. Tough though it is I'd say read the book, and, if you've got 3.X in your head, prepare to be surprised.

This, mostly. I think the reason there is no list is because it's not the same system, yeah they're both eventually based on the D20SRD if you go back far enough, and a direct comparison of the two seems to imply they're a lot closer than they are, which just causes more problems.

Feel free to go into more detail Deral (I'd certainly be happy to see more).

Well, I would, but I don't really feel my system fits the bill here- I really tried to make prizes more robust in my setting, so a character now has prize "slots" numbering 3x as much as the number of prizes they could normally keep, Mechanicals (augmentations- in this setting they're exoskeletons or complete replacements, nothing in between yet) and Somatics (magical counterpart to mechanicals), along with a handful of other things, each cost 1 slot where most cost 2 or 3, and they're tentatively also limited by attribute (Modifier + 1 max of each, Con for Mechanicals, Cha for Somatics).

The two were written to work opposite each other, mechanicals give physical or more "tangible" bonuses, while somatics give mental or more inherently magical bonuses (doubled hearing range increments, fast healing, +1 appearance bonus). Somatics work similarly to magic items, two parts a Legacy (usually a more direct or defining boost, +1 Wisdom, Darkvision I, Read Magic) and a Prestige (usually a more passive benefit, Heat Resistance 5, Cagey I).

A Somatic with a Legacy and Prestige costs the same amount of reputation (10) as a Mechanical with a Function, Style, and Purpose, but unlike mechanicals, somatics can't be damaged (usually by critical injury) and are much more subtle in appearance.

Anyway, the intent was to have them fall between full magic items and nice gear, as far as scale of power goes- but both standard gear and prizes are really widely expanded in this setting, so the balance might be a bit off- if people are still interested I could put up a thread for it, but most of the baseline rules are here, just a few tables and details missing.

actually i got to thinking, that depending on where most of your augmentations are focused making that change the benefits. torso, con bonus and a catfall style ability, legs, dex and speed bosst, and arms, attached weapons, and strength. but i dont knwo how hard that would be to keep track of.

Mine are set up similarly to magic items, each augmentation (called Mechanicals, since mine are steampunk-y), has 3 "slots" it can fill:
-A Purpose, or what exactly it is, a fully functional limb, an integrated weapon, a power source, etc
-A Function, it's physical trait, is it a lifting mechanism, does it count as armor fittings, etc?
-And a Style, or what sort of boost does it give, +1 Strength, Superior Jumper 1, +2 Acrobatics?

Any mechanical can have 1 or all of these, anything it lacks it's considered to simply not have a considerable effect.

Interesting way to go about it, I've done it as a class, but I haven't considered it as a feat before. As my current setting presses toward steampunk I just ported Spycraft's Surgery and added in augmentations as well, but did them as gear.

My take on Changelings has the Ooze type, players seem to like the little touches it adds to a shapeshifting race.