Fantasy Craft Q&A Thread!

[pawsplay]

But standard characters can, at least, generate stress damage, yes?

[Rei Malebario]

Some weapons (specifically the Scourge, Bullwhip, Rapier and Razor) inflict Stress damage. As Stress damage bypasses Damage Reduction, this means armor (natural or artificial) makes almost no difference against these weapons* making them perfect for use against tough, heavily armored opponents - not really the situation where these weapons should be at their finest. Adding to that is that they target the Will save so they're extremely effective against tough, brawny types but not against highly willful characters regardless of scrawnyness.

We condider stress damage-dealing weapons a feature, rather than a bug While the model may not perfectly fit everyone's perception of how traditional weapons work, we use the damage type to represent nflicting weapons which cause pain moreso than physical damage. Note that you can't kill someone with a stress damage weapon outside of a coup de grace, so there's the counterbalance.

It's still pretty absurd that a platemail with heavy fittings that provides near total protection against a shortsword provides no protection against a scourge, a bullwhip, a razor or a rapier - weapons not normally known for their ability to penetrate steel plates. I'd expect these weapons to have zero effect against someone thus armored. And all it takes to kill someone with one of the latter two is for them to fail a single Fortitude save and they'll bleed to death unless the GM suddenly calls a scene change in the middle of combat or they manage to incapacitate you before bleeding to death. But since you can prioritize your defense at this point, they'll likely have a tough time of it.
(And these weapons don't really cause pain more than physical damage. Especially the bullwhip, razor and rapier cause real, grievous physical harm - they're not items you'll ever see someone suggesting police officers use instead of nightsticks and tasers in order to avoid accidental fatalities... )

Yep, except for the fact you won't kill them, only cause them so much agony they pass out. Who's to say that because something regenerates it doesn't actually get hurt? The Tarasque will blow off a number of saves with its huge Resilience and cagey, while the Troll may occasionally get staggered by some ouchy weapons (for example the LOTR movie trolls don't seem to like getting shot with arrows or being chopped on by halflings). If the aforementioned barbarian wants to wade in toe-to-toe with that straightrazor against a Troll or Tarasque instead of beating him down....well, I wish him luck

Once they're passed out from agony, he'll have 2d4 hours to find some way to kill them before they wake up. Say, by performming a coup de grace with the claymore he put away when he spotted the monster. So I don't think he'll need that luck - he has a straight razor after all. 
And let's not forget the inherent absurdity of the mighty Tarasque's formidable defenses that allow it to shrug off direct hits from a ballista offering it no protection at all against a scourge or a razor.
And that it's kind of a bit weird that it's impossible to seriously injure someone with a bullwhip (but not with a sap).

[Deral]

If it makes you feel any better Platemail does in fact provide protection against a bullwhip and a scourge, they're both blunt and Platemail grants Blunt Resistance, and a quick Reinforced upgrade will help with the other problems, maybe your concept of plate includes those by default.

Also, dedicated training (whip supremacy) will at the very least let you do lethal with whatever whip you choose.

Edit: Also, I think a lot of this is chosen for flavor or dramatic appeal rather than outright true-to-life realism (which gets you in trouble in fantasy games anyhow). Though honestly, as the GM you could always let people convert Stress to Lethal, or even flat out change damage types to lethal, or create a new weapon quality that says "...even though this weapon deals Stress damage, DR applies as if it were Lethal," all of those are pretty quick fixes if you don't like the way it feels, nice thing about Fantasycraft, they aren't going to run home crying if you don't stick to all of their rules in your game.

[Rei Malebario]

Edit: Also, I think a lot of this is chosen for flavor or dramatic appeal rather than outright true-to-life realism (which gets you in trouble in fantasy games anyhow). Though honestly, as the GM you could always let people convert Stress to Lethal, or even flat out change damage types to lethal, or create a new weapon quality that says "...even though this weapon deals Stress damage, DR applies as if it were Lethal," all of those are pretty quick fixes if you don't like the way it feels, nice thing about Fantasycraft, they aren't going to run home crying if you don't stick to all of their rules in your game.

Oh, I know. I already wrote about a page worth of house rules. I changed the damage type of razors and rapiers to lethal and bullwhips and scourges to subdual and gave them all a custom quality: "Low Penetration. All DR is doubled against this weapon."
I just found it extremely weird that they were written up in this way in the first place.

[ArawnNox]

@pawsplay- Standard Characters don't track subdual and stress damage seperatly. All damage gets totaled together when determining their damage save DC. The only effect is whether they die or go unconcious.

@Rei Malebario- On the topic of the lethality of those weapons: You can always accept a -4 penalty to your attack roll to deal lethal damage instead of subdual or stress. You don't need the style feats to do so, they just let you do it without the penalty.  If I'm not mistaken, you'd need to whip the hell out of a person, causing a lot of damage to their skin and pain before they'd succumb to their wounds. Sounds in line with the idea of stress damage to me. The razor, well, sure, but you'd have to draw it across a major artery first. Otherwise, you're going to be slashing at their flesh again. The rapier, yes, this one can very easily kill, however, bare in mind that only the last 3 inches of a rapier's blade is actually sharpened. You will cause a lot more nonfatal cuts and slashes than any fatal wounds, unless you thrust at the body.
Now, as for these weapons' ability to ignore DR. Well, with the rapier, that makes perfect sense. It is a piercing weapon, first and foremost, and it's not hard for a skilled fencer to slip that blade inbetween the gaps in platemail where there is less protection.

This also does tie in to the above comment about damage and NPC types. That barbarian is dealing 1d6 stress with a razor (which he likely doesn't have supporting feats for) against the troll. Well, if the troll is a special NPC, okay, that'll chip away at the troll's ability to stay in the fight. However, the troll is going to have to fail at least 5 will saves as the shaken penalties stack up before he finally passes out. Now, if it's a standard npc, then that stress damage is pointless. He'd be much better off keeping his greatsword out (which he probably has feats for) and just slugging away at the Troll until it drops.

And the Tarasque? Well, be that as it may, you still have to hit it first and not die in the process. >.>

Edit: I hope you mean that you gave the whips "Low Penetration". I mean, on a rapier? Really? I'd have to contest that.
Further Edit: Why gimp the whips so much? I'm personally impressed with Crafty's boosting of the weapon to make it viable for combat. What happens when you get that player who wants to emulate Indiana Jones or Zorro? He's going to be put out by your houserules.

[Deral]

@Rei Malebario- On the topic of the lethality of those weapons: You can always accept a -4 penalty to your attack roll to deal lethal damage instead of subdual or stress. You don't need the style feats to do so, they just let you do it without the penalty.

I don't disagree with anything else you've said, but until this bit is errata'd it might technically still be considered a house rule, the book says:

A special case applies when an attack inflicts subdual or lethal damage. In this case, the attacker may choose to convert the damage from one of these types to the other. This decision must be made before the attack roll is made, as a –4 penalty is applied to the check. The resulting damage is converted to the chosen type and reduced to 1/2 normal (rounded up).

But for the record I let my players do it as well.

[Rei Malebario]

Further Edit: Why gimp the whips so much? I'm personally impressed with Crafty's boosting of the weapon to make it viable for combat. What happens when you get that player who wants to emulate Indiana Jones or Zorro? He's going to be put out by your houserules.

He'll still be able to do everything with a whip that Indy does. He won't be able to knock heavily armored opponents unconscious with it but I can't remember seeing Indy doing that either. In fact, Indy does most of his fighting that I can recall either with his fists, improvised weapons or his revolver and uses the whip mainly for pulling off cool stunts. So I think the Indy fan player will be quite pleased that I've brought his signature weapon more into line with how it works in the fiction. (I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about Zorro so say much about what he does with the whip although given the time and place where the series is set, I doubt he fights many heavily armored opponents with his whip.)

[pawsplay]

Since the rapier basically is designed to cause "pain" and knock people out, according to the designers, I'm pretty certain in my mind it should have been subdual, AP 2, but that debate is outside the scope of this thread.

Instead, see this thread:

http://www.crafty-games.com/forum/index.php?topic=3287.0

[tfwfh]

FWIW, I think of the Rapier in the book to be more like an actual fencing foil than a traditional rapier, and the Razor Sword is what you think of when you hear rapier.

@Malebario, Fantasy rpgs always have a hard time working with armor.  The fact is that steel plate mail is in a league all by itself.  The designers have rather wisely ignored that for the sake of fun, and just put it at the top of the scale defined by all the other armor you find in historical/fantasy fiction.  So, before you go adding a bunch of house rules to have things work more realistically with plate mail, you should consider what the effects will be on the other, much more common types of armor as well.  The whip, scourge, fencing foil (rapier), and razor blade make plenty of sense as stress damage against anything other than full plate, and the behavior of stress damage in ignoring DR makes sense for these weapons against any armor other than full plate as well.  To address your problem with regard to the Tarrasque and other big scary monsters, it would make plenty of sense to have DR from natural sources be effective against stress damage.

Edit: Razor sword, rather than scholar's sword.

[pawsplay]

If a standard NPC takes damage, and some effect causes a second source of damage, do they make two saves, or one for the total damage?

[Crafty_Alex]

If a standard NPC takes damage, and some effect causes a second source of damage, do they make two saves, or one for the total damage?

From the same source (such as, fire and stress damage from 1 attack)? I would rule save against total damage caused, applying any effect of failed Damage Save per the attacker chooses (thus, fire - which would kill on a failed save - and stress - which would knock out on a failed save - would let the attacker choose which happens).

[Kerebrus]

quesions for a tuesday (the curious circumstance of having a monday night game).

Darting Weapon and Knife Basics - we are going to be applying a level of common sense solution here, but as written, Darting Weapon only works when you wield a single weapon, and Knife Basics says all your Knives are considered armed at all times - therefore the only way to really use Darting Weapon would be to only carry one Knife.  On a related note, carrying a shield and weapon should negate the use iof Darting Weapon as well, since a shield is a Blunt Weapon.

Prizes - We did not find a written mechanic for a prize that no one in the party is particularly interested in.  Selling it and redeeming it for its reputation cost (split among the party) is our current front runner of ideas.

Page 205 - Attack Check Modifiers - Size is included as an attack check modifier (but then references affecting defense... odd).  And on 206 the size modifer is not included in a character's Defense.  This is a bit odd.  Does Fantasy Craft run contrary to the D&D roots here?  Do characters get a size modifer to Defense but not Attack?  Do two Huge critters just have a really easy time hitting one another while two diminutive critter flail about missing one another?

[Kerebrus]

another one
I know that space in the book was tight, so why did you Crafty Guys print the same feat three times?  Darting Weapon, Two Weapon Fighting, and Two Hit Combo all use the exact same Mechanics for the same effect.  The only difference is that they are in different feat trees.

[Crafty_Alex]

another one
I know that space in the book was tight, so why did you Crafty Guys print the same feat three times?  Darting Weapon, Two Weapon Fighting, and Two Hit Combo all use the exact same Mechanics for the same effect.  The only difference is that they are in different feat trees.

They are actually not the same, though the mechanics are very similar. Two weapon fighting applies when you hold a weapon in each hand, and you must make an attack with each weapon (rather than the same weapon as you do with Darting Weapon). Two Hit Combo only applies to unarmed attacks, and so made sense in the Unarmed Combat tree.

[ArawnNox]

quesions for a tuesday (the curious circumstance of having a monday night game).

Darting Weapon and Knife Basics - we are going to be applying a level of common sense solution here, but as written, Darting Weapon only works when you wield a single weapon, and Knife Basics says all your Knives are considered armed at all times - therefore the only way to really use Darting Weapon would be to only carry one Knife.  On a related note, carrying a shield and weapon should negate the use iof Darting Weapon as well, since a shield is a Blunt Weapon.

Well, the knives on your person are considered armed, but not actually armed. I think the idea is that you always have a weapon ready due to the ability to draw your weapon really quick, like the anime or cinimatic trick of slipping a knife out of your sleeve. For the sake of Darting weapon, you can say you're fighting with only one dagger for the sake of this feat, but honestly, the Two-Weapon line of feats would be an easier fit.