Fantasy Craft Second Printing Q&A Thread

[Psion]

I agree with Sletchman. Haven't taken it for my Chance-monkey, and don't plan to, as it's the least attractive chance feat I can think of.

Both my groups chance monkey (explorer/sage/deadeye) and the semi-chance monkey (swashbuckler) took it, though it was admittedly low on the list for the "same as fortune favors the bold, but slower" reason.

[Tamdrik]

Oh, hey, I thought my chance feat sub-thread had died out.  I agree that changing Fortune's Fool from critical fails to errors has the same problem as before, just not quite as bad.  I'd be fine with any number of changes (or combination thereof):

1) Change to errors, remove cap
2) Change to 2d4 per failure (or error, for that matter, still capped)
3) Change to untyped (scaling) action dice... still probably fine with errors rather than crit fails
4) Change to when action dice are spent against you, remove cap
5) On critical fail, restore your starting action dice pool

For my chance-monkey priest, I still don't think these are necessarily particularly useful relative to other chance feats, but they are at least potentially more attractive to non-chance-specialists than Fortunate, and we don't want to swing too far in the other direction.

#5 is the most radical and scary-looking, but at least in my group, I don't expect to see more than maybe 2 crit-fails per PC per session, and they could happen early (no action dice spent), or the GM could elect not to activate the error if you're going to get a load of action dice in return.

[Takeru]

Hey all, another question.

Is there any way to make Knockout Poison USEFUL in a stealthy fashion? The base knockout poison takes a whole minute for it will kick in, and that's a minute that the person you just poisoned holler and yell and scream about intruders and for his buddies to raise the alarm. The instant poison stops that problem, but since the knockout poison is measured in incubation time, it would only knock them out for a manner of SECONDS 

Is there something I'm not seeing about this? Because it seems that a poison with a duration measured in however long it takes to kick in would be absolutely useless as anything but "Kill everyone with damage", and I kind of want the poison so I -don't- need to kill people, and because clubbing everyone over the head with a sap doesn't work the same way a Gas Pellet full of Knockout Gas would work on a group of innocent people.

Is there any way to make Knockout Poison worthwhile, or should I just stick with a batch of fast-acting numbing poison and hope they get KOd by subdual damage before they manage to raise the alarm? I suppose I could gas people and coup de grace them with a Sap, but at that point, I should just be using the sap to club people unconscious instead of bothering with the poison.

any help?

[TheMadGent]

Hey all, another question.

Is there any way to make Knockout Poison USEFUL in a stealthy fashion? The base knockout poison takes a whole minute for it will kick in, and that's a minute that the person you just poisoned holler and yell and scream about intruders and for his buddies to raise the alarm. The instant poison stops that problem, but since the knockout poison is measured in incubation time, it would only knock them out for a manner of SECONDS 

Is there something I'm not seeing about this? Because it seems that a poison with a duration measured in however long it takes to kick in would be absolutely useless as anything but "Kill everyone with damage", and I kind of want the poison so I -don't- need to kill people, and because clubbing everyone over the head with a sap doesn't work the same way a Gas Pellet full of Knockout Gas would work on a group of innocent people.

Is there any way to make Knockout Poison worthwhile, or should I just stick with a batch of fast-acting numbing poison and hope they get KOd by subdual damage before they manage to raise the alarm? I suppose I could gas people and coup de grace them with a Sap, but at that point, I should just be using the sap to club people unconscious instead of bothering with the poison.

any help?

The Venom Master trick allows you to lower the first incubation period of a poisonous attack to instantaneous.

[Takeru]

Thank you! I'll look into that, I didn't know there was a trick for poison.

[Krensky]

Also, I think you should carefully reread the rules for how poisons work, as this has the marks of thinking FC is like other d20 games.

If the NPC fails his save against a Fast-Acting Knockout poision, he doesn't wake up in a round, he gets another save. If he passes that he wakes up, otherwise he's unconsious for another round. This is where it's useful to stack the DC boosting upgrades.

[Crafty_Pat]

Fortune's Fool upgrade is in the new errata, which you can find over on the Downloads page.

[Tamdrik]

Path of Fortune II says I can activate criticals "without spending an action die", but does it have any effect on multi-die critical activations?  I'm assuming you can't automatically get a 4-die critical success for free, but does it reduce the cost by one for a multi-die critical?  Thanks!

[Crafty_Pat]

Path of Fortune II says I can activate criticals "without spending an action die", but does it have any effect on multi-die critical activations?  I'm assuming you can't automatically get a 4-die critical success for free, but does it reduce the cost by one for a multi-die critical?  Thanks!

A generous GM might allow that to reduce the cost of all criticals by 1.

A less generous GM might say that the ability only works with single-die expenditures.

I'm comfortable with either interpretation.

[Bill Whitmore]

Just got back from my FC game and we ran into a discrepancy in one of the Magic Item Essences.  I don't recall it having been mentioned before and a quick search in the forums and the errata did not turn up a solution, so I wanted to bring it up here.

The essence in question is Vitality, Greater.

In the Second Printing:
   Page 195 lists that essence as giving you +20 vitality.
   Page 198 indicates that essence raises max vitality by +15.

Which was it intended to be?

Looking at some of the other bonuses, Rep costs are mostly proportional with the Magic Item bonus, so we are currently running with 20 vitality, since it costs about twice as much rep as the 10 vitality version (25 instead of 12).

Thanks!

[Crafty_Pat]

Just got back from my FC game and we ran into a discrepancy in one of the Magic Item Essences.  I don't recall it having been mentioned before and a quick search in the forums and the errata did not turn up a solution, so I wanted to bring it up here.

The essence in question is Vitality, Greater.

In the Second Printing:
   Page 195 lists that essence as giving you +20 vitality.
   Page 198 indicates that essence raises max vitality by +15.

Which was it intended to be?

Looking at some of the other bonuses, Rep costs are mostly proportional with the Magic Item bonus, so we are currently running with 20 vitality, since it costs about twice as much rep as the 10 vitality version (25 instead of 12).

Thanks!

Where on page 196?

[Coyote0273]

Page 198, "This item increases your max vitality by 10 (or 15 for greater)

The table on 195 says 10 and 20 respectfully.

[Crafty_Pat]

Page 198, "This item increases your max vitality by 10 (or 15 for greater)

The table on 195 says 10 and 20 respectfully.

Ah, sorry. Still haven't had my morning coffee. 

I would go with cap raised by 20 for now (which is a little different than +20). I'll let you know if something blows up or Alex corrects me (if he doesn't do so here).

[Bill Whitmore]

I would go with cap raised by 20 for now (which is a little different than +20).

To me the table is meant as a reference, so saying "+10 vitality" or "+20 vitality" should be fine as those tend to be a synopsis of the effects while the text descriptions give some more specifics on the effect.  It was the 10/20 vs 10/15 that was throwing me for a loop.

10/20 fits the pattern for magic items better.

+2 Edge is 8 rep, while +4 is 15
+3 MPH is 10 rep, while +7 is 20
Threat Range: +1 threat range is 10 rep, while +2 is 20
+1 save bonus is 8 rep, while +3 is 25

You also get the same thing with the Charms, as they are a straight X Rep / Bonus so if you double the bonus, you double the costs.

Since Vitality, Lesser costs 12 and Vitality, Greater costs 25, it would seem appropriate for its effect to double along with the cost.

[gilim]

Not sure if it came up someone else, though I had a look and couldn't find it.

With glint of madness, you get a free threaten when you take down an opponent.
Saurians with desert clutch and ruthless humans get the menacing threat quality.  Meaning they get to target 3 opponents with their threaten maneuver. 

Do these work together for the free threaten?  Or is it specifically only one other opponent?

Menacing threat is hard to qualify for, so it seems like it should be effective.  But is it too much?
For the saurian it is a 2 feat combo, one of them requiring lvl 1 commitment.  For the human you are passing over much better talents to get it. 

Thanks