Fantasy Craft Q&A Thread!

[Deral]

Just to look for another opinion, what do you think would be the best way to incorporate cooking fluff and crunch- as is cooking anything requires a day's downtime, and you've got to be at least a reasonable cook to manage three meals (read:uses of non-ration meals) for four people, people in a day's downtime check is anywhere from on par with to quite a bit tougher than Foraging, which returns the same result in less time.

But, lets say the party sits down for a few hours' rest and one character, lugging around a cook's kit and some ranks in Craft (cooking), wants to make food for the party, what do you all think would be the best way to handle this. Now a few hours to pull cooked food from absolutely nothing (as I guess the check suggests) is pretty tough, but even with raw materials, as written, this isn't possible (barring taking all three Crafting gear feats, which, for cooking? Yikes).

I'd had a few ideas, but now I'm thinking maybe I'll have the player spend some prior downtime crafting meals, since they last for an adventure, then having them kept in an "uncooked" state, and allowing him to pretty much pull out these "finished raw materials," cook them up in a RP's moment and dish them out, but I'm interesting in seeing what y'all might do for solutions.

Most Food choices can be Improvised using the rules for improvisation. At which point cooking goes from taking too long,  to not taking long enough (6 seconds to make a hearty meal? WTF?). Obviously some common sense should be applied.

Also note that most of the penalties that are associated with Improvising an object don't really do much to food. Oh no, the error range on your Eat check goes up! We're doomed!

Yeah, I checked out Improvisation, but the fact that it loses the penalties (or they really, really hurt, if you kind of force them to go off: Untrained Will Saves!) and is really, really fast. Still, I might allow some kinds of simple food to be improvised, but I doubt anything complex would make sense at all.

[Lizard]

Also note that most of the penalties that are associated with Improvising an object don't really do much to food. Oh no, the error range on your Eat check goes up! We're doomed!

Heh. Activating an Error on an Eat check could mean the eater is Nauseated or Sickened or whatever the FC condition is until the end of the scene.

[Deral]

Also note that most of the penalties that are associated with Improvising an object don't really do much to food. Oh no, the error range on your Eat check goes up! We're doomed!

Heh. Activating an Error on an Eat check could mean the eater is Nauseated or Sickened or whatever the FC condition is until the end of the scene.

How many action dice is the GM going to spend when you bite your tongue eating?

[prototype00]

Query, if a giant character had the wrestling mastery feat and gained access to the clothesline unarmed attack trick (fort save or be sprawled), if he tramples someone, does that someone save twice against the damage, and if he fails the save becomes sprawled?

prototype00

[Daedalus]

Speaking of giants, more specifically elemental heritage, certain elements (fire, ice, light) allow a character to change their unarmed damage to the corresponding element without suffering a -4 attack penalty.

Do they still do half damage, according to the rules on p. 209 for converting subdual into lethal?:
"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)."

The reason it confused me is due to the wording of the feats: "...convert your unarmed damage to fire damage without suffering the normal –4 attack penalty."  There usually wouldn't otherwise be a penalty besides the fact that it would normally be impossible, so I surmise that maybe the attacks do half damage?  Otherwise it doesn't seem that the clause concerning the attack penalty is even necessary.

[Mister Andersen]

When i think of acid damage, i think of Aliens - it's not something that just goes away on a failed save, it's sticking on you. It's just like being set on fire - just because you fail the save doesn't mean the fire goes out. Armor and lots of gear has more than 1 save before being destroyed, and until the acid neutralizes, it should be able to eat at the stuff.

Re-reading a couple times, I am now confused by how Acid Damage works on armor in general.

In particular, the second block: "Acid is particularly destructive against armor, which makes a Damage save once per round until the acid damage reaches 0. If even a single Damage save fails, the acid’s remaining damage is applied against both the armor and the character within in each round."

In a standard attack, if a character is hit, the character takes damage, not his gear.  I could not find anything anywhere that indicated a character could have his armor hit with acid without the character also being hit by acid.  It DOES say just before Acid Damage that "some damage types, such as acid, also damage a character’s gear or surroundings."  If I am taking Acid Damage from an attack and the GM decides that the damage also applies to my armor and it fails its save, am I now taking twice the damage I would have had I been standing there naked (once from the base attack and once again from the failed armor save)?

I had originally understood, seemingly incorrectly, the Acid Damage block to mean that your armor makes a save when you are first hit by acid and if it saved it was fine, but if it failed it had to continue saving each round for the acid damage.  But that doesn't seem to be the case.

How then would acid damage be applied to just the armor?  Would I need to make a called shot?  if I don't use a called shot, is the armor free from needing to take Acid Damage from the attack?  Or should I just make sure to use my acid attacks against the lightest armored guys on the field in hopes their armor will fail the save and I can do double Acid Damage to them?

My understanding of how acid damage works:

Let's say we have a character -- Kevin -- wearing partial studded leather (DR 2, Soft 2). He cops 12 pts of acid damage.

1st round he suffers 12 pts of damage, which his armour reduces by 2 to 10.
2nd round he suffers 6 pts of damage, which his armour reduces by 2 to 4.
3rd round he suffers 3 pts of damage, which his armour reduces by 2 to 1.
4th round he suffers 1 pt of damage, which his armour reducees by 2 to 0.

However, that 12 pts of damage requires his armour to make a save. Being Hard 2, that means he gets 2 saves (DC 10 + 1/2 damage) before it's broken (and thus stops working) and 4 before it's destroyed. Being Hard, each save is made with a +5 bonus. Being gear, each save usually ignores all preceeding damage.

This assumes he passes all saves.
1st round, his armour suffers 12 pts of damage --> DC 16.
2nd round, his armour suffers 6 pts of damage --> DC 13.
3rd round, his armour suffers 3 pts of damage --> DC 11.
4th round, his armour suffers 1 pt of damage --> DC 10.

Assuming he fails the final save:
5th round, his armour has only 1 save left until it becomes broken but suffers no damage.

Assuming he fails the 3rd save:
4th round, his armour has only 1 save left until it becomes broken & suffers 1 pt of damage on top of the standard save DC formula --> DC 11

Assuming he fails the 2nd save:
3rd round , his armour has only 1 save left until it becomes broken & suffers 3 pt of damage on top of the standard save DC formula --> DC 14

Assuming he fails the 1st save:
2nd round , his armour has only 1 save left until it becomes broken & suffers 6 pt of damage on top of the standard save DC formula --> DC 19

(yes I know it's ordered backwards but it makes it easier to see where the 1st point of failure cuts in, as the first failed save affects the DC of all subsequent saves).

Going back to the damage Kevin suffers and factoring in worst case armour failure:
1st round, armour fails 1st save, Keven suffers 12 - 2 = 10 damage.
2nd round, armour fails 2nd save & becomes broken no longer granting any DR, Kevin suffers 6 damage.
3rd round, armour fails 3rd save, Kevin suffers 3 damage.
4th round, armour fails 4th save & becomes destroyed, Kevin suffers 1 damage.

[trechriron]

The Mage Armor Spell adds +4 to defense?  I would have thought it granted DR.  If you were to grant DR instead of defense bonus, what DR would you suggest?

[mach1.9pants]

How do you make a balanced encounter? Each NPC can have an almost infinite XP value so is there an ideal XP amount per PC? Obviously the actual stats are modified by threat level but if I put a party of 2 1st level PCs against a threat level 1 Kaiju T-Rex they would quickly become toast.

Is it in the book somewhere? Some guidance for new (to FC) DMs would be nice.

[Psion]

How do you make a balanced encounter? Each NPC can have an almost infinite XP value so is there an ideal XP amount per PC?

There's some info on this on page 243-244.

[Arakor]

Okay ... new FC advocate, new post.

I'm getting a handle on things and my eyes keep creeping over to my bookcase where I have several sourcebooks that are crying out to be converted (Mystara, Aerth, Known Realms).

On pg 84, the book talks about Edge and how it is gained and spent during combat. Then on pg 94, some of the Chance Feats talk about spending Edge. Beyond that, there's no more discussion of it, not even in the Combat chapter.

Can someone enlighten me please?

[Deral]

Okay ... new FC advocate, new post.

I'm getting a handle on things and my eyes keep creeping over to my bookcase where I have several sourcebooks that are crying out to be converted (Mystara, Aerth, Known Realms).

On pg 84, the book talks about Edge and how it is gained and spent during combat. Then on pg 94, some of the Chance Feats talk about spending Edge. Beyond that, there's no more discussion of it, not even in the Combat chapter.

Can someone enlighten me please?

Beyond that, those are all the rules there are for edge (it explains pretty straight forward how it works), the idea for edge is just the ability to kind of build up (in so many words) abilities, usually for use in combat. The Crafty guys here have used it before to represent combat styles- other things as well, I'm sure. I think the idea is that the rules are in the book likely because they don't like adding extra rules in supplements, but they have a lot of plans for it.

But really I think that's all there is to it.

[Crafty_Alex]

Okay ... new FC advocate, new post.

I'm getting a handle on things and my eyes keep creeping over to my bookcase where I have several sourcebooks that are crying out to be converted (Mystara, Aerth, Known Realms).

On pg 84, the book talks about Edge and how it is gained and spent during combat. Then on pg 94, some of the Chance Feats talk about spending Edge. Beyond that, there's no more discussion of it, not even in the Combat chapter.

Can someone enlighten me please?

Beyond that, those are all the rules there are for edge (it explains pretty straight forward how it works), the idea for edge is just the ability to kind of build up (in so many words) abilities, usually for use in combat. The Crafty guys here have used it before to represent combat styles- other things as well, I'm sure. I think the idea is that the rules are in the book likely because they don't like adding extra rules in supplements, but they have a lot of plans for it.

But really I think that's all there is to it.

Yep.

[Crafty_Alex]

Speaking of giants, more specifically elemental heritage, certain elements (fire, ice, light) allow a character to change their unarmed damage to the corresponding element without suffering a -4 attack penalty.

Do they still do half damage, according to the rules on p. 209 for converting subdual into lethal?:
"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)."

The reason it confused me is due to the wording of the feats: "...convert your unarmed damage to fire damage without suffering the normal –4 attack penalty."  There usually wouldn't otherwise be a penalty besides the fact that it would normally be impossible, so I surmise that maybe the attacks do half damage?  Otherwise it doesn't seem that the clause concerning the attack penalty is even necessary.

To convert any damage to any other type of damage, you suffer two penalites - -4 to hit and 1/2 damage. Elemental heritage lets you convert your damage to a specific type without the -4 attack penalty; the half damage clause still applies.

[Crafty_Alex]

I cannot find the answer to that question using the Search tool, but I doubt it hasn't been asked yet. The Edgemaster gains Display of Arms I, that allows him to use Prestidigation instead of Impress for Perform checks. Though, Perform as it existed in Spycraft has disappeared in FC I think. Or am I missing something?

"Perform" should read "Influence" instead. Rather than the narrower "show off" ability, our intent was you could cause someone's disposition to shift....at the tip of your blade

[Crafty_Alex]

If you have Martial Arts and have chosen Charisma as your stat, does this apply to Grapple checks, which are an "attack" action?

No, because Grapple uses an Athletics check, rather than an unarmed attack check, to determine effect.