Budoman

So this has come up in game. Do people notice someone casting magic - say an illusion? Can a spell be cast if the caster is tied up? What if they are silenced or blind? Does this depend on the school of magic? How close does the person need to be to a Grimiore to use it? Is the Grimiore actively used? Do Immutos affect any of the above?

Just one thing to note, if your children are younger, TtB is a fairly adult themed game. Every faction has an evil thread to it and there is a large horror aspect to the game.

I want to thank Ampers&and for his comments. Mostly what you say there as far as scaling encounters is something I do. My comment is not that I can't balance an encounter it is that as a Fatemaster, I have to do pretty much everything you have listed. In other systems I really only have to know the group level and then just pick a monster of that level and I don't need all types of calculations and figuring stuff out for my party. In those other systems if they are optimized I can just pick a monster 1 or 2 levels up but the work is done and it allows me to focus on story instead of encounter prep. And let's face it, if you ever have DM'd or Fatemasters there as some times where life gets in the way of prep. So if it is hard, then you just throw something in and hope the players don't die. That there are all these steps to balancing an encounter, is precisely my point. I want to focus on story not on balance, the system should be easier to run. If I'm doing a lot of prep steps and then having to adjust a lot on the fly something is wrong. I also should say we just ran the big in Northern Aggression but this time I had cuddle'd the character's starting equipment to legacy items, they still took down the big guy in 2 rounds without breaking a sweat. The scenario was more balanced and dramatic with changes I mentioned in my first post compared to other people on the forum saying the first 2 players took down the big guy before the other two could even act (and thus were completely left out of dramatic time). I still think the encounter went too quickly for what it should have been. This is exactly what I am trying to avoid. And when I say progression is broken - this is exactly what I'm getting at. The equipment and progression both work to create these exact issues that you mention. I can't give players something better than starting gears because it makes everything even more difficult to manage on the encounter side. Even if I do all the steps Ampers&nd says at the table, the encounters are not really working well. As for this: This is not the core problem. People keep assuming that I or the players have some drive to make this D&D but this is not at all the case. Several of the players don't like D&D and Pathfinder, and in fact, the ones most calling for wealth or some better progression for this are ones that dislike these systems the most. They want a progression in wealth because it comes from roleplaying the world of Malifaux. The Guild is about money and power, the MSU is maybe more about power - but since soulstones cost a lot of money they are about money too. If you are a stitched/gremlin/neverborne money likely isn't motivational, but for the humans breachside it absolutely is. Why do the miners go to the mines? This isn't Call of Chulthu where the players are there to learn secrets, some may be - but a Mercenary is all about the script, and getting better gear like the Freicorps. Many many humans are there to either build power or wealth. What I am saying is the system has made it difficult for me to let them do this. Not all the players come to table wanting the same things, some want to just explore but some want to become as wealthy powerful as a master and start their own faction as a roleplaying goal. It would be great if I could accommodate this so they could roleplay becoming a master. I'm also puzzled why people commenting on this tread want to make this game so you just keep your starting weapon and that's it. They imply that rewards for players are somehow bad or not supported by the system. Yet in the stock adventures the players get paid and get loot drops. Progressive rewards is the only way to make the second reward actually rewarding. If you give a great gun and then a mediocre one, the mediocre one is not much fun to get. But this works nice if the Mediocre gun drops first. The game obviously supports some of this, why else release a list of artifact weapons if they aren't meant to be found. For some players it is easy to to do progressive loot drops. Any player that can use a soulstone can always use a better one. Any player that can use a grimoire can use another. But a mercenary gets that first gun and then is stuck. So in the real game at the 6th or so session the mercenary player at the table asks why do only the mages get cool rewards, where is mine?

I don't see this from the book or the rules. The rules discuss resolving only one player's fate step each session. So this would really only be true if you had only 1 player. But if you have 4 players it would be 20 sessions which makes more sense from the rules - it allows a character to fully develop 2 pursuits or 1 full pursuit, an advanced pursuit and some of a third. of course you could have any mix you wanted of pursuits not just the options above. But for 3 players you could still do 1 full pursuit and 1 full advanced in the 15 sessions you'd get from resolving fate.

I somewhat expected, pushback on this. But I do not feel my topic was truly addressed by any of the replies. My two main points were that the rules and system make it difficult to reward my players with equipment or money and that it is difficult to balance encounters because there is little to no guidance or system for this in place to help me as a Fatemaster balance an encounter to my characters. I am not saying the whole game is broken, just these parts of the game and I do believe broken is the correct term for what we experienced at the table. Our first groups fatemaster, did just what Shadowopal suggested and limited the cash severely in the game. So at the 6th session when the MSU offered the charaters 20 script for a job. The players told the MSU and the fatemaster to shove it, they are not working for those wages. So the fatemaster's planned session fell apart and the game mostly disbanded until a new fatemaster took over. Wanting more power and loot and engaging battles are common themes that many if not most gamers coming to the table generally expect. If the system can't accommodate them then it has abandoned a large part of the table top community. This isn't in just pathfinder or D&D but name any offline or online RPG and you will find elements of progression because these are the basic drives for most people. This goes for real life as well. Someone just taking up guitar generally can't afford and it is not worth to them to buy a $5000 guitar, so they will get a $250 one. It sounds okay but it could be better. However, for a professional musician, high quality equipment is worth it and the extra quality makes a difference. But this type of equipment progression doesn't exist in a significant way in the TtB economy. This is not real advice. So if and when some of the TtB players get upset at not getting rewards, I should just tell them screw off this game isn't for you. I am trying to get more people interested in the game not chase them away. I live in a city of 2 million people. Of that maybe only a dozen show up to Malifaux miniatures weekly. Five show up for Through the Breach, but according to this, I should tell them, sorry if you want rewards for your character you are out of luck. That sounds broken to me. So does anyone have some positive suggestions on how to balance the games economy and encounters so I can keep these players interested?

What is funny is that the Fatemaster's kit is set up with a Fatemaster Screen, but if you never make a secret flip, why do you need a screen?

In the prologue, you don't have to be particularly specific on fates or twists in the plot. A lot is already revealed with telling the players where they are going and why they are going there (i.e. the task or quest). If they are going to Malifaux city - as a player this may not be the best time to level Dabbler or Graverobber. If you a raiding a guild stronghold, you can expect combat. If someone is missing in the countryside, you may not know what to expect, but likely magic would be ok; maybe some investigation skills. You do not have to reveal everything in the prologue, just the general thrust. Location and quest is usually pretty good. Have an NPC with some intelligence about where they are going they can ask questions to. The Prologue for the Sixteen Tons one shot adventure is pretty much "You are working in a coal mine in the town of temperance. Stuff will happen in the mine - when you are working there. Good luck." As for the fate steps, don't let the story resolve this. It won't. If you've gone several sessions and no one resolved a step, this is a problem. TtB is more difficult to run than other RPG because the Fatemaster needs to be creative in making this happen for each character. The best advice for this is to get each players Fate Steps in advance and then plan out an aside encounter during the session where the fate happens. Force this into the story - it is their fate. That being said the early steps can be very minor happenings. Literally a light casting shadows of a character on a wall for one particular fate step. The Northern Aggression module has a number of fate step resolutions, it is helpful because you can see how simple they are. Don't make it too big until maybe the finale - or build up to it. TtB really needs a book of Fates that has several small story resolutions for each fate step to help out the fatemasters. Maybe something for a second Fatemasters almanac or a free publication since it's is hampering people trying to play the game. Fates are a difficult dynamic for even experienced GMs and requires a lot of creative story writing. If you spend time on prep, you should spend some extra time here. If you want to be really on the ball as a fatemaster, write out a generic next fate step story encounter for each of your players in advance then if the one you plan on resolving doesn't show, you can sub in another. As an example of fate step - one player had "When the accounting passes you by" so for this I started the session by sending the the players on a train and had the boss give them an envelope with the tickets for the train. When they got to the station everyone had a ticket in the envelope except that player at with point I read their fate "When the accounting passes you by". This seems simple in retrospect but I took over from a fatemaster who had a lot of trouble figuring out how to resolve this particular step. But these steps mean whatever the fatemaster decides it means. You are the fatemaster after all. Note: edited for grammar

The big problem with pursuits is that they have several essentially non-combat pursuits, which is strange since this RPG is derived from a combat only miniatures game, and I can guarantee that in a session there will be combat. So Pursuits that start off without a weapon are at a disadvantage. It is even more disadvantageous to players that want to go into magic but don't start out as such because they cannot just purchase a grimoire. If you look at really any other RPG every class is a combat class, in TtB it is just a maybe. This was actually really confusing to the first group that I played with, but it became evident after a couple play session that combat will happen so everyone went combat classes - only that the people who started that way had the most fun in combat because they were the most powerful. There are some hidden drawbacks to several classes in that they only align with certain factions and have mortal enemies of others at the outset. If you are any skill or weapon class, you are pretty much welcome wherever you go. If you are a dabbler or tinkerer, you already have the Guild as a lifelong enemy unless you are a part of it. If you are a graverobber, you really are only welcome with the ressurectionists, although the Arcanists may also tolerate you as long as you do not actually raise the dead (but whats the fun in that). One other complaint is that several advanced pursuits are buried in the Fatemaster's Almanac so as player I didn't even know about them in the fatemaster mentioned them after several sessions.

I apologize in advance for the very long forum post, I tried to condense it but there is a lot to this post needed to explain my point. I played a Through the Breach campaign with 4 other player over the course of about 6 months. I generally like the game. I like the card system, this works well instead of dice, I like the idea of fates and I enjoy the world. However, once the characters began leveling, the scaling became an increasing problem. This seems like a major design flaw in the game. RPGs are generally based around two fundamental rewards for the player characters. One is leveling the characters so they increase in power, the second is being able to hand out increasingly cooler and better loot as the character get stronger. Both of these are in the game but both have big problems from my perspective. The first is with increasing powers of characters. One issue is that fated characters, per the book, are extremely strong out of the gate. More so for the combat classes than others. I just ran the Sixteen Tons adventure as a campaign starter. In this seesion three first level characters took out 8 minions and an enforcer without resting and it was about right. But if characters are that strong to begin with, then what is the point of peon level monsters. In our previous games, a third level mercenary that we had did enough damage that they could drop a henchman in 1 round. Should I start throw in Masters at level 4? So with a level 5 group, how strong should an opposing group be? In most other RPG systems there are tables in the gamemaster guides for this. The guidance in the book is not really guidance – it basically says, just throw some monsters at the group and see how strong they are, then adjust. The problem with this approach is that players come to each game with new talents. So how much stronger are they now? The old test no longer applies. So you spend the game testing again – but when you are done, the session is over and now they are even stronger. The encounter balance really needs to be thought out more. Right now the system drops all the heavy lifting onto the fatemaster. It makes it difficult to run the encounters in a balanced way. I’m sure there is a lot of thought put into the balance in the miniatures game. Why not here? The second issue is the economy. A guild script is about $20 (per the Sixteen Tons book). The 25 starting script, basically gives a character whatever weapon they want, maybe 2. If you limit script, the players get angry. If you don’t limit it they become powerful early and have nowhere for you to take them as they progress. You basically have to start dropping artifact items to give them something better. There is no building or progression of loot. The loot is what makes a RPG fun for many players. The overpowered mercenary that I mentioned above had the most power rifle in the Fated Almanac from the outset. With this character's talents, even though the rifle is single shot with a long reload, the character could instantly reload it with a speed loading and specialized skill talent combo. This player started complaining (justifiably) that better guns were not dropping, but there weren’t better guns to go to. The player already had basically the strongest one in the Fated Almanac and had it at the outset. I could make up an artifact gun but the character was already overpowered. There should be some progression of wealth. A level 5, what wealth should a character have? At level 12? If you have someone join a game late how much should they start with? Then comes the issue of soulstones being out of reach of most character’s wealth but needed for magic classes and especially for tinkerers. Yet if you drop this the characters have so much money, they could retire. So I have some house rule solutions that I am using as a workaround for economy aspect of the game and help give some structure to leveling. These home rules are as follows (I would like your comments): Because the society in TtB is controlled by the heavy hand of the Guild's tyranny, weapons and martial equipment are heavily controlled by the Guild and anyone who has a lot of weapons is a potential threat to their power. Other factions, while not agreeing with the guild, generally go along with this because they have their own suppliers and keeping weapons away from the common people keeps them strong as well. So for the average Fated, armor is 5x the book value, weapons are 10x, and modifications are 20x the price (because people cannot openly practice weapon making without trouble from the Guild). Mundane gear and ammo pricing is unchanged. I allow classes that would start with a rifle etc. to start with a legacy firearm (they come through the breach poor). I haven’t quite figured out how best to deal with skill kit pricing or starting pneumatic limbs for say a drudge. For the weapons, this does a few things for the game dynamic. First, people actually use the legacy weapons. Second, it makes it meaningful to get a hold of decent weapon, and even more meaningful to have that weapon fully modded and awesome for them to find an artifact. In other words, it gives a progression to the gear and lets it progress with the character and allows the players to take jobs for good script without them owning everything they need at 3rd level. Last it lets the Fatemaster make more use of the lower level monsters early on because it is a fair challenge for the Fated with reduced gear. I do not have a good solution for balancing encounters. It doesn’t seem the Fatemaster's book's advice works. I generally have to consider my characters good at combat even from the start. If anyone has a points system or good advice on this, it would be nice to have a formula or table based on the character level and monster level to balance this. What is a normal encounter for each level and the number of players? What is an Epic encounter?

Page 108 of the Fated almanac. Each Session, resolve one or more character's fate step and award 1 XP to every player. A fatemaster can award extra XP (up to 3) for significant milestones. In our games, some sessions had more than one player resolved fate (usually by coincidence with the story), sometimes no fate step(to slow the game down from multiple resolutions previously) - but tried to average to 1 player fate step per session.