Worlds

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 * image = fcsidebar-7-worlds.jpg
 * update = 2013.01.16
 * Settings = Sunchaser Cloak & Dagger Epoch The Realm

Is there a default or assumed setting for FC coming out in the future?
The Adventure Companion contains three sample settings: Cloak & Dagger, Epoch, and Sunchaser. The adventure compilation Time of High Adventure has a fourth setting titled The Realm that assumes the presence of a theocracy hostile to arcane magic.

Just to be certain, the entire party (and not each individual member) roles for treasure after combat, right?
Correct.

What's the story with the Lich template? Most undead won't suffer any damage from cold and will never see the fatigued or shaken conditions except in very particular situations.
The story is it was a conversion of a D&D trope, and as such I was trying to meet a great many expectations of what a lich is and how it works. As you note, there are still particular instances where these conditions and damages may apply - Liches are roundly immune to those rare circumstances. Achilles Heel can be interpreted as (1) not technically overcoming damage immunity since a character with damage immunity would never suffer the damage in the first place but it's the additional lethal damage to goes along with it, or (2) a specified exemption always trumps a general rule (such as a poison intended to affect characters with the Plant type).. I'm sure if you look very carefully, the NPC chapter in FC has a dozen little holes - places where type and qualities cross over in ways that are not perfectly optimal, where through sleight of hand with math you can find a "more powerful" version of an NPC than someone who doesn't know the "trick", and so on. I address this directly in the section "The Art of (Not) Killing the PCs." That entire chapter is written with the core presmise that the GM is not out to be a douchebag; not out to build the most deadly NPC to "beat" the party with, not out to give the party as little XP as possible for overcoming the bad guys, etc. IMO it's totally futile to even try and build an RPG if you can't at least count on the core principles of collaboration between players and GM - to have fun with friends and share a story. Otherwise I'd just be back writing first person shooters again...and we all know what sort of roleplaying experiences those offer! So if the Lich template could have been 4 XP less...would it really make any difference in play? I thought round numbers actually provided for greater ease in applying templates than optimization.

===The campaign quality Beneficent Universe grants a first step along a path to all gaining an Alignment. Though not stated I assume this also grants a single casting level if you have none (as per The Gift).===

Yes.

Would a Sage 10 / Priest 10 (Path of Fortune V) combining both instances of Proven Worth that combination grants increase his party's starting action dice by 2?
First, these instances of the proven worth ability are identical - they're just coming from different sources. Technically, they would not stack and gaining the ability a second time would do the character no good. At my table, I'd likely let the character's contribution rise by 1 die. However, I would not change or lift the limit imposed by the base ability text (the whole party would still be limited to no more than 3 dice from all instances of proven worth party-wide).

Path of Fortune Step IV: Does the whole party gain a +4 to Action Dice rolls?
Path of Fortune IV applies the results of steps II and III to everyone in the party, as it says.

===I'm at a loss to understand why the GM must spend action dice to add the Hearty Heroes or Luck Abounds campaign qualities.I'm under the impression that campaign qualities that benefit the heroes and GM alike are 0 action dice or Permanent. Why, if the effect is primarily beneficial to the heroes, should the GM be the one spending the action dice?===

The reason is you are changing the game environment. Permanent qualities are not necessarily beneficial (though most are "harmless" like Sorcery) - rather, they change how characters function and thus cannot be turned on or off after a campaign starts. 0 AD qualities encourages the GM to change the environment at will, which can make things a little confusing for the players if done too often or too liberally. The expenditure of an action die is not an punishment for doing so - rather, it's a reminder something has changed.

I'm confused. The XP per career level chart doesn't support the amount of XP the book indicates is appropriate for an adventure
"As a rule, the sum of these awards should fall between 750 and 1,000 XP for a single adventure, though you can go as high as 1,500 XP for a truly landmark outing. Assuming you stick to these numbers, your party should level approximately once per adventure through Level 5. After that the rate should drop off to about once per two adventures until Level 11, then remain steady at once per three adventures until the late game (Level 17).

Unlike D&D XP isn't divided amongst the party, its the amount every character gets. Also, XP is multiplied by the adventure's threat level &mdash; ignoring Menace, you multiply that number by the average party level. So at level 1, 1000 base XP adds a 1000 to your XP total, making you second level. At level 2, it adds 2000, making yo third level. At level 3, it adds 3000, making you fourth level. At level 4 it adds 4000, making you fifth level. etc. See "Applying XP" on page 342.

===I was looking at the Nature's Fury tables and notice that the wind entries refer to a penalty to hurled attacks. This seems like a holdover from SC 2.0, where hurled included bows; certainly it should include bows in FC, yes?===

Yes, it should.

===If I'm rolling for Treasure say, 1C & 1L, but have roughly described the weapons and armour their foe was using and they wanted it, would you allow them to pick that up instead of rolling? Also, with the Destroyed and Spoiled entries &mdash; is it a case of saying what they received and "better luck next time"? How does this tie in in with the Adventurer's Luck feat?===

Treasure Rolls are in addition to whatever gear you assign the NPC. The treasure entries are rolled once for the whole group. I usually go around the table letting players roll for treasure in turn, based on my end-of-adventure tally. Not all "treasure" is valuable. Sometimes stuff gets broken in the fight or was only valuable to the monster. With the feat, the party get 2C and 2L and the NPC's assigned gear.

===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?===

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.

If you use the Sorcery: Difficult Magic campaign quality, does that include non-arcane magic? Like say a Priest casting a divine spell-like miracle? Or someone using The Gift and their level 0 spells?
'''In my particular campaign, Sorcery is Difficult, but also Potent. So it's hard to cast, but for those that can cast it, it's very powerful. Campaign reasoning is that as technology is becoming more common, magic is being harder to cast and use. When it comes to the divine magic, if miracles isn't affected the same, their spells would be quicker to cast, but less potent than the harder arcane spells. Which works within the same thematic reasoning as well.'''

Normally, I wouldn't apply the Sorcery sub qualities to Miracles as the two are independent Campaign Qualities. However, the whole purpose of Campaign Qualities is to modify the game to fit with your vision of the world. If technology interferes with divine powers in the game than apply Difficult and Potent magic to spells from Paths. If technology doesn't interfere with divine powers, then don't. So long as everyone knows which way it is working for that specific game, you're golden.

If using Path of Air/Fire II to convert your melee and unarmed attacks to one of those elements, do you still take a minus 4 penalty to hit and deal half damage?
Yes. The intent of that section is to prevent the weirdness. By default and per the RAW, the game only allows conversion between lethal and subdual, excluding all other types. The odd rule may allow for it at some point, of course, and there's always the logical allowances by world and story, which is why the rule is just a wee bit fuzzy. It promotes you playing outside the box.

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?
Yup, that's the rules as written. A lot of tables however seem to prefer to ignore it in favour of the usual auto fail/success from the parent OGL/d20 ruleset though, including the possibility of gaining an error on what would otherwise be a successful check.

===A character in my group had to Cheat Death and he rolled a two with a Tragic Fate. He has no skill foci, but he is a Priest. How would it work with a Priest losing 2 spells? Does he just get off as being lucky?===

GM's call. They could lose their Alignment and have to find a new one &mdash; something along the lines of "My god has foresaken me, I shall find another!" &mdash; or simply reroll the result. Note that if you engage the A Crisis of Faith subplot, the Priest will be forced to do without half of his class abilities until its resolved.

===With legal trials, the example tells us that Brungil has to succeed with 3 (for theft) out of 4 Challenges (for the antagonistic court), each with a DC of 20, to escape punishment. Why does an antagonistic +1 courtgive you better odds to succeed at a trial? I'd have thought it would be more difficult to get off?===

What the section is saying is the following:
 * Kangaroo: You need a critical success
 * Hostile: You have 3 chances to get 3 successes
 * Antagonistic: You have 4 chances to get 3 successes
 * Neutral: You have 5 chances to get 3 successes
 * Amiable: You have 6 chances to get 3 successes
 * Friendly: You have 7 chances to get 3 successes

Page 338 takes about and Progress and Precision tasks, not exactly sure how to use a Precision task.
A precision task is one where there are multiple ways to succeed. A bank robbery you might need to find the codes to the alarm or locate the plans to the undercity to find a hidden entrance to the bank. Doing either of these things is the first challenge. Then you crack the safe or tunnel into the vault, or blow up the door. Then you have the loot. That's only a two stage challenge but I hope it demonstrates the idea. Each stage has one or more options, only one of which needs to be completed to move on to the next stage.

What's Scripting Peril? Page 339 lists a bunch of options, and page 340 has some text on things called Events like Combat, Damage for Failure etc.
Stuff to liven up what would otherwise be a series of skill rolls. While you're cracking the lock, a guard comes by. Shut him up before he can trigger the alarm! If you're tunneling into the vault, you might have damage from a minor cave-in. Cracking the safe is quiet but takes the longest time. Drilling is a bit louder (more chance of guards) but quicker. Blowing the door is certain to attract company but you might be loaded up and gone by the time they get there.

How long is a scene?
Scene length's an ambiguous thing. They could be as small as one combat/social encounter, or as long as an entire dungeon complex. Make them as long as you need to. Depending on how difficult you want to make this run, you might switch scenes every combat encounter, or wait until they get to a 'boss' type encounter, or even wait as long as until they get back to town. Season to taste sort of thing.

Is it OK to make a Temporary campaign quality a Permanent quality instead?
Yes. All temporary qualities can be permanent, but not the other way around. Just be aware of some potential pitfalls of using a quality like Bold Heroes when combined with something like the Lady Luck's Smile feat. If action dice explode on 1 and the 2 highest results, d4 action dice become the best action dice around outstripping even the d12 action dice in terms of pure bonus, as they will continue to explode until a 2 is rolled. Coupled with the Fortunate feat, they will always have d4 action dice available, no matter what level they reach. Practical experience with this has pretty much shown that this character is almost guaranteed to succeed on those rolls where the d4 action die is added to the roll. If this is problematic, you might consider having Fortunate's dice match the standard die size due to level or alternatively make all AD in d6s regardless of level.

===Dishing out xp is giving me a major headache. They've broken it down to objective chains, or escalations, they say "The party only receives one XP reward in each chain" (page 337), then they say "Each step in an objective chain gets its own escalating XP reward" (page 337). Whatever happened to saying 'here's your 1000xp' at the end of a session?===

Answering the last question first: technically, nothing. You can still do that if you like. Okay so using the examples from the book:
 * A. Sabotage brigands’ weapons without notice
 * B. Shoo away brigands’ horses without notice
 * C. Set traps at 1–2 hideout exits without notice
 * D. Set traps at 3–4 hideout exits without notice
 * E. Set traps at all the hideout exits without notice

If you structure it like that, it's only 1 objective with multiple paths to a solution. The party only gets XP for one of them, if they set 3-4 traps and shoo away the horses they'll only get the XP for one (the largest xp reward) however you could instead structure it as 3 separate objectives making it look like this:
 * A. Sabotage brigands’ weapons without notice
 * A. Shoo away brigands’ horses without notice
 * A Set traps at 1–2 hideout exits without notice
 * B. Set traps at 3–4 hideout exits without notice
 * C. Set traps at all the hideout exits without notice
 * B. Set traps at 3–4 hideout exits without notice
 * C. Set traps at all the hideout exits without notice

It's now three different goals. In which case if the party shooed the horses, sabotaged the weapons and set some traps they would earn xp for each of them because they're not all in the same objective list. However the key thing is that you should just do what makes you feel comfortable, if you don't like the complex escalating objective chains you can just hand out 1000xp at the end of the adventure. You can even skip XP altogether and level up the party when you feel that they should -- Relevant section is on page 342, Applying XP: Whenever you apply XP, it must first be multiplied by the adventure’s Threat Level, including any adjustments from Menace (see page 334). The result is added to each character’s total. XP is never divided between party members. }}