Wooo HOOO!

And I've got a LOT of games and a LOT of systems, my friend.

i just read the section talking about it... so basically, FS uses 2d6 (positive/negative) then you add whatever score to it... where Rune uses 1D10 and functions like Ars Magica (so i am told)..

ok, i think i can handle this..lol

i do play Rune, so no use trying to explain it..lol

how do i figure out shot costs?

is it just a trial and error thing, or is there sort of a guideline list to follow by?

When you roll "boxcars" (two sixes), then something special or dramatic happens, and you reroll both dice. If the next roll is positive, then it's usually considered a critical success. If negative, then a critical failure.

There are also some rules for snake-eyes, but I don't recall the particulars offhand... I think double ones means your gun jams, or if you're using arcanowave, you make a mutation check.

Shot costs are easy. Any standard action takes 3 shots. Making an attack, rolling a skill check, or running across the room is 3 shots. Certain actions take fewer shots, such as active dodges (parrying, diving behind cover), snapshots, putting a fresh clip into a pistol. Really long actions, like reloading a revolver, brain surgery, etc., take more shots.

Note: rolling for initiative in Feng Shui is not like making an attack or skill roll. It's a "closed roll", which means you don't reroll and add sixes, and you only use 1d6+Speed. (The 1st Edition Daedelus book actually used open rolls for initiative, but that was a little unfair/obscene for some people.)

uh, yeh, ok..lol

i just need shot costs... it was a bit vague, thats all... i did read more on the rolls... the problem comes from the fact that it talks about information, before giving it to you...

like for instance it talks about shot costs, but doesnt go into detail about them until later on in the chapters.. its just an odd layout i guess

But I'll bet YOU don't have a prototype homemade working model of the hand held gravity distorting utility tool like I do, do you? Huh? Do you?! HA! I thought not!!

couple questions now

if a character doesnt start with sthicks from the template, he can only get them with experience.. right?

in the start of the Fu chapter,, it mentions that you get fu shticks eqaul to your kung fu or chi ratiing... what if after creation, a templated character that started with 0 chi, got more chi... like say 3... would that allow him 3 fu scticks.... or would he be able to pick them up later in game, by way of experience?

A new PC starts the game with only the number of schticks listed on his archetype, yes. (So, for example, Killers start with 5 Gun schticks.) They can buy more schticks using XP later on, yes.

>"in the start of the Fu chapter, it mentions that you get fu shticks eqaul to your kung fu or chi ratiing"

I think you've misread; you get the starting number of Fu schticks listed on your archetype (just like other schticks), NOT a number of Fu schticks equal to your Chi. (Your chi is spent to *use* the individual schticks, but that's not the same thing.)

Just as Gun schticks above, new Fu schticks are bought with XP.

So the Killer, who has a Guns of 15 and no other combat skills, his passive dodge is 15.

If you've got an archetype with multiple combat skills, like a Magic Cop with a Guns of 13 and a Martial Arts of 12, then you use the highest.

The justification (or at least the thinking behind it) is that characters are always trying not to get hit regardless of what else they are doing, and this is part of their combat training. So any combat skill confers this passive ability.

There are some exceptions when characters use a parry as an active dodge, but it doesn't come up all that often.

hey... would it be possible for you to post me some samples of a PC doing a snapshot action.... i didnt fully understand it from the book....

ok... i know you can reduce the shot cost by doing an action recklessly... but a few samples would make me understand it a bit better

It would be something like "firing from the hip". Your Killer gunslinger doesn't take time to aim or even bring the gun up to normal firing level, but rather opens fire just as the weapon clears his holster. This would make the action faster, but less accurate.

Perhaps instead of aiming carefully at the Mook's vital parts, your ninja leaps across the bar, recklessly hurling throwing stars in the general direction of the enemy as he's in mid-air. Again, faster, but less accurate.

Per the rules, it takes three shots to throw an object. But what if your Ex Special Forces guy simply -kicks- the live grenade back towards his opponent instead of picking it up first? Snapshot!

Your techie sweats over the ticking bomb. Normally she could suss out the proper connections to cut, but with only a scant few seconds left on the timer, the techie just starts snipping wires frantically in hopes of diffusing the C-4. Snapshot.

For example, if a character has only 3 shots left, if he attacks he uses all three shots and doesn't get to act again for that sequence. If the same character attacked with a 2-shot snapshot (-2 AV), then he gets to act again on shot 1 with a full 3-shot action.

How the action is described is up to the player, but in general a snapshot means the character isn't taking as much time to aim or prepare for the action, firing from the hip, feinting a move, etc.

kinda like the reflex throw at the end of big trouble in little china..lol

ok not exactly... lol.... when i first read that section, i first thought of matrix bullet time.... but i was pretty durn sure i read it wrong..lol

alrighty, thanks...lol, im planning on getting an FS game going this sunday... i'll have some fairly creature players... a few who complain about a game being all combat, but seem very interested in FS because of the actual story and descriptive element to it.

i will be adhering to the "oh... i hit it.......ME: oh... really... ok roll... you miss"... thing.... i really like that whole part about raising the difficulty when someone just says "i hit him"... instead of describing it... i have one player whos notorious for playing martial artists in other games (D&D and Ninjas and Superspies)... and generally will just say "ok im going to hit him..." at least in N&S he uses whats listed in his martial arts.. but still "I hit with with a ... umm... lets see.. a crescent kick.... whats that?"... its obnoxious sometimes.... though..lol, i know what it is, i have taken Taekwondo for many years

did my first actual Feng Shui game today... only had two players (one played a ninja, the other a karate cop)... i ran them through an abridged version of the first half of Baptism of Fire, from the book...

all in all, character creation took about 35 minutes, game tiome was about 3 hours, with a 15 minutes pause between the first fight, and the next section..

im heavily modifying the plots and all, to match an idea i had.. nothing major, and no major departure from the style, just some different plot hooks here and there..

things went well... the only questions i have are:

1.) on skills it has an equals sign, and the book says that cant go above that certain rating at character creation.. others have a "Max" number by it... do those "Max" ratings mean they can never go higher than that?

2.) is it just me, or can you get some wildly high martial arts skills very quickly...the guy playing the karate cop has a +10 in the martial arts skill, and a +8 coming from agility... so thats a fairly high bonus..lol

uh... that doesnt make sense then...

the eqauls sign (as mentioned in the book) says that the skill cant be raised above that in character creation... never says its eqaul to that... if that was the case, then why would it list something like:

Martial Arts +9 (=12)

the base skill is +9... and cant go higher than 12... or am i totally off on this..

To be honest, the bonus is hardly worth remembering- only the AVs are used for rolls and improvement through experience. The only time the bonus is significant is for subskills (like surgery) which I've never had call to use anyway.

ok...

im not sure which of my questions you are answering though.... i have to assume you are trying to answer both..

the base skill is +9... and cant go higher than 12... or am i totally off on this.."

A couple of examples:

A character template has REF 5, and Martial Arts +10 (=15).

So, your Action Value is 15, and the skill 'bonus' is +10. But, if you use points during character creation to raise REF to 8, then you have:

Martial Arts +7 (=15)

So the bonus actually goes down if you raise the stat when you create your character.

Example 2:

A template has MND 5, Fix-it +3 (9) [Max 10].

If you increase MND to 7 during character creation, then you will have:

Fix-it +2 (10).

HTH

you have an interesting way of doing things... i would have never thought to penalize the skill just because someone puts points in the base stat...

im going to go back and read that section of the book today... and see whats going on...

It's not really a penalty to the skill per se. The bonus value - +10, or +7, or whatever - doesn't matter in comparison with the total. You don't improve skills by increasing the bonus value, you improve them by increasing the total (AV).

It's to prevent players from taking, I don't know, a Killer, and then putting 4 points into Reflexes (I don't know if Killers can put 4 points into an attribute, I'm just writing off the top of my head here), and ending with a 19 in Guns. Which would make them so much more badass than other characters it would totally imbalance the game.

its a bit hard for my to think, thats all... hope this doesnt get anyone angry or anything..lol

so basically, that little max, or cant go higher than thing, says that the AV cant go higher than that... or is that the actual restriction on the skill

The "=" sign means that when you create the PC, the AV is already that number, and cannot be raised higher.

For example, the cyborg starts with a Ref of 5 and a Guns skill of +8, so her total Guns AV is 13. On the archetype, it's listed as "=13", which means that it cannot be raised above this, even if you increase the cyborg's Reflexes during PC creation (and it would be useless to give her more Guns skill levels, since this would do nothing as well).

This is different than "max" in that the archetype starts with an AV -lower- than the listed max number, and you may raise a number to that max, just not *beyond* that max.

For example, Big Bruiser has a Ref of 5 and a Guns skill of +3. His current Guns AV is therefore an 8. However, there's the note of "[Max 10]" after this, which means that you could raise the total Guns AV two more points, by either increasing his Ref to 7 or by adding two skill bonuses to his Guns skill. Either way (or a mixture of both) would raise the Guns AV to 10, which is the max possible, but you couldn't raise it beyond that.