Foes

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 * image = fcsidebar-6-foes.jpg
 * update = 2013.01.16

The description of Blindsight states that the character sees all hidden characters up to 10 increments without restriction, so do they see everything independent of intervening terrain, or walls?
The key phrases in the ability's description are "operates like vision... ignores ambient light penalties and cannot be blinded" and "sees hidden and invisible... without restriction." So, basically, it's like regular sight without the chance of being restricted by blindness and ignoring hidden/invisible style effects. As such, it arguably does not penetrate walls, disguises, or other intervening terrain because it still operates fundamentally like vision and walls and disguises do not make you implicitly hidden or invisible (they could, but then there's things like shooting through walls that are possible, which IMO would lead me to say that someone behind a wall is not necessarily hidden since they can be attacked). Things like tremorsense are more like radar/sonar, detecting everything around you, which is not how our blindsight functions; true seeing and the like for seeing through disguises and illusion.

Non-scaling NPC's. How do you assign experience with this campiagn quality in play? Have I missed it in the book?
XP would be based on the threat level you assign the NPC, as normal.

If I have an Npc with Class ability (Scout - Trophy Hunter), as well as the npc ability Favored Foes (animal), is that npc's threat range with regards to attacking animals increased by 5 altogether?
Against standard Animals, yes. For Special character Animals, rare though they might be, it'd only have the benefit of Trophy Hunter.

===Is the reference to the blast rules in the description of the Cone area upgrade (pg 239) intended to be a reference only to the shape of the cone, or that any attack (including one has to assume, save attacks) with the cone area upgrade tapers off like a blast radius?===

It's just a reference to the shape - a way of getting double mileage out of the diagram.

===What's the story with the Lich template? I suppose I can see justification for some of the immunities as just safety catches, but most undead won't suffer any damage from cold 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 &mdash; 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 &mdash; 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 &mdash; 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.

Can player NPCs have spells with Prep costs as long as the xp value = 1/4 cost is factored into their final cost?
Don't see why not.

===Effectively a special NPC with health III gets 15 vitality per level, equivalent to a soldier with con 16, so about as high as any party member is likely to have. Anything more and the NPC seems super-human, but if they're a standard a strong breeze will generally kill them.===

This is deliberate, because generally, a special NPC is getting ganged up on by 3-5 special characters at once. Think about that &mdash; that's 3-10 incoming attacks, spells, trips, and other offensive actions per turn. Our experience is that in 2.0, big bads were simply killed too fast to have anything resembling the climax of a film or TV episode. Mobs of standards go one for one against the party, so they don't face as much individually, and should go down easy anyway, so the scale works OK there. But special characters need to be able to last more than 2 rounds if they're going be part of anything remotely resembling a challenge or a match to a coordinated, skillful team.

===When converting an OGL stat blok, does the FC initiative grade become equal to the original bonus +2? or do you actually look up the initiative bonus +2 on Table 6.1 and locate the Initiative grade that way (as you would the Attack grade)?===

Nope, just whatever the NPC's OGL bonus is +2. Init doesn't scale at all in D&D, so we needed to use a static number to determine grade.

Are the effects of the Superior Jumper quality affected by the cap due to height?
I would most often run no, but I could see some cases where the opposite would be true for certain creatures, so as is often the case with the NPC/monster-building rules, the final ruling is up to each GM based on the critter at hand.

Can NPCs gain bonus action dice from feats or class abilities?
An NPC doesn’t have and can’t gain any stat, option, or ability unavailable during NPC creation. This includes but isn’t limited to Origins, Subplots, and Lifestyle. NPCs don't get action dice on their own. They spend out of the players or GM's pool. And unless an ability that grants an action die is listed under the index cost page, they don't get access to it.

Terrifying Look specifies that it increases the Will save DC's from stress damag but standard NPCs only make generic damage saves. How do these interact?
Those abilities apply to relevant NPC Damage saves (e.g. terrifying look would raise the DC only when the NPC suffers stress damage).

===Can players activate a multi-die critical failure on villains? Do they get any say in what effect that might have? Can they hear what the potential effects might be before committing to spend the action dice? For that matter, does that apply to single-die activations?===

Absolutely players can activate a crit failure by the villains. The GM usually determines the effect, often by using a chart in the book or one of their own design. Whether or not you hear the potential effects would be up to the GM. It would apply to any activation of a crit fumble for a NPC. But if as a group, you spent 3 dice and the GM only dropped his initiative by 3, I'd ask for a stiffer outcome or to get 2 of the Action Dice back. Typically for 3 AD spent a weapon will break or the villain get seriously wrong information or completely buy into the story you are telling him. I've had players crit succeed vs the villain crit fail on a skill test of diplomacy, intimidation, sneak vs search or notice. Players faces really light up in moments like that.

===When a special character with tough ignores a critical hit, does that mean they take normal damage, or no damage? What does it mean when a standard ignores the effect of a critical?

A special ignores all damage from a single critical hit once per scene per grade; any other mechanical effects keyed to being hit would however still be triggered. Similarly for a standard character their accumulated damage score doesn't change and would NOT be reset -- tough either allows the character to restart their damage tally in the event they fail a damage save, or it cancels out the automatic failed save generated by their opponent spending an action die -- but effects that trigger "on a hit" would still work.

If an NPC with baseline Cha 10 and the Devoted quality casts a spell, is the save DC 10?
Yes.

===Can a PC spend more than 1 AD on a threat against a Special Character with more than one level of Tough? The rules specifically mention this for Standard Characters, but don't address Special Characters with Tough.===

Definitely not. Spending more than one action die per check or effect is primarily limited to specific options already in the rules, plus narrative control. It isn't a way to circumvent or undermine defenses, abilities, and the like.

In a similar situation, what about a critical hit using one of the instakill tricks against a standard character who has toughness, could you spend action dice on top of that to cause them to lose more damage saves after the one lost by the trick?

That's a bit of a gray area, honestly. I might rule according to each situation.

Can an opponent with Frenzy, while in a Frenzy, move?
Sure! The movement should be logical to the character's state, of course (a Frenzied character probably wouldn't move away from an enemy, for example), but there's nothing stopping them from moving at all.

===Does Blindsight negate Blur?

I would rule yes &mdash; unless there was some mitigating reason why it shouldn't. (I'm not seeing one now, but there's always that possibility).

Is there any particular reason why an NPC's spells known don't count towards their XP cost?
Knowing a bunch of spells isn't actually a threat. Being able to cast them is, and they'll never be able to cast that 9th level spell. NPCs have to make exactly the same check as PCs. Plus, don't forget that PCs get their spells for "free" via Spellcasting ranks (so it's kinda like the NPCs follow the same rules).

Does Darkvision II let a character see without any light at all, or is a tiny amount of light required?
No light is required as the complete absence of light is one of the ambient light penalties the quality allows you to ignore. It however will not work in magical darkness.

===The GM introduces owlbears as a standard NPC threat. A party of five characters defeats three of them, which translates to 40 XP (3/5 of the creature’s full value of 66 XP). Why not just divide the 66xp by the 5 characters? We aren't specifically told what to do with awarding 66 xp for defeating Mother Wisdom Gristleclaw. Is that shared amongst the party as well, or is it given to each pc?===

Because three standard owlbears are not worth 66XP. For standards, the assumed encounter is 1 standard NPC per Special character in party. So 1 standard owlbear vs a 5 character party is worth 66XP / 5 or 13.2, rounded to 14XP. 3 of them is 3/5s or 39.6, rounded to 40XP. Each PC gets the full reward for defeating Gristleclaw.

Is it correct that a Special Character’s Con modifier is not totalled into its Vitality equation?
That's the way I run it. Special NPCs have toughness modifiers like tough, monstrous defense, and such that PCs don't have.

===Say I have 3 mobs (44, 34, 78 xp), and 3 separate obstacles the pcs gain xp for overcoming (40, 50, 70 xp). How are these totalled and how do they interact with the Threat Level to find the final xp total at the adventure's end? Are they all added together into one total, then multipled by the Threat Level, or is each individual entry multiplied by the Threat Level, and then they are all totalled together?===

Do whichever is easier. If you do the maths right, you get the same result either way.

Is Xp totalled for GM characters as on page 239, or not, as on page 240?
Per 239, the XP value of all gear on Player-created NPCs is total complexity divided by 10, rounded up while the XP value of all gear on GM-created NPCs is 0. Per 240, NPC XP value is the sum of the XP values for statistics, qualities and gear. With regards to GM NPC, the XP value of gear will always be zero.

===With the Soul Draining extraordinary attack, "A special character who fails the save suffers a –10 penalty to his maximum vitality". Seeing as it is deducted off his maximum Vitality, what if a character's maximum Vitality is 11, this power can't affect him? It's worded in such a way that it seems you deduct the -10 from his 'maximum' vitality only.===

His Maximum Vitality becomes 1 (11 - 10 = 1 (just for clarity)). Consider it "Current Maximum" if that makes it easier to process. His Maximum is 50, his Current Maximum is 40, he gets attacked and his Current Maximum becomes 30. The reason it reduces Maximum Vitality is because you can't just slap a cure spell on it and fix the problem. Nor will bandages fix it. It's more serious. And remember that once his maximum vitality reaches 0 or less, the character dies.

===An NPC only has an XP Value if they're a player-built follower, contact, or hireling, or the GM built adversary. So if the pcs killed that village militia man, or the coach driver, or the bartender, they don’t get any xp?===

No. Without a stat-block, said random citizen is going to be a push over for seasoned adventurers and really shouldn't teach them anything. It also discourages being bloodthirsty and treating everything as an XP buffet. If you gave them a good reason to fight the guy, then you should have thought about a Stat block in advance (including if you have the NPC in question be a massive asshole -- you gotta expect potential retaliation for that), but if it's just a carriage driver doing his job and charging a fair price who gets killed so they can save some coin then feel free to compplicate their lives. (I'm a fan of "Officer, we saw these guys get into his carriage and 5 minutes later he turns up dead." or "I know what you did, now it's time for some hush money.")

===Are the skills, such as with the Brigand template on page 245, considered 'Signature Skills'?

Yes.

===I'm creating a special NPC Goblin Shaman adversary. Do I use the Bandit template and apply the Goblin template, then pick spells? Or do I ignore all templates and start from scratch, having free reign to create him however I want?===

You can make your goblin NPC whichever way you prefer.

Do you apply attribute (Str etc) bonuses to the Grades for Initiative, Attack etc, or not? For example, the Ghoul has Dex 12 (+1) and Atk III. Do you add that +1 to the Atk III grade?
Attribute modifiers are applied to rolls, not grades. }}