new FM with questions

[TeeCee]

FMing my first game tonight.
Have questions regarding using "untrained skill".
When a player has to make an Unconscious check, but doesn't have the Toughness skill, does that player automatically fail their Unconscious checks?
Also can players still attempt skill checks even thought they don't have the skill by using only the Aspects stats? ex shoveling coal using Might instead of Athletics?

[durek]

Ya this is the same problem we are running into.
Combat seems very deadly. We played 2 Penny Dreadful One Offs and failed both times tonight. One only one of the 3 of us had the skill needed to complete the Ongoing Challenge the other 2 just stood around doing nothing. The other we got overrun by NPCs. The TN for NPCs seem very high considering the players flip all the the cards so we get all the high cards usually in negative twists lol and all the low ones also.

Is there any youtube video tutorials or something? Are we also doing something wrong?

[Steamtastic Vagabond]

Firstly, when using a skill untrained, you can still use your aspects, but the flip is impossible to cheat. And combat is meant to be put in the Fated's favour since they can trade cards they flip for cards from their hand.

[EnternalVoid]

Well a couple pursuits have ways to manipulate ongoing challenges, but one of my favorite being the Overseer as his is on his (0) pursuit.  He can discard a card and use Leadership instead for a number of round depending on what card he dropped.  That all said it is a good idea at character creation to get a decent spread of skills if possible, don't just load up on combat or social skills.

If you are having trouble in combat consider cover, going Defensive, or using Focus when you can against people in cover.  You should try to avoid having negative flips to attack as much as possible while trying to get any positive flips to your defense if you are worried about incoming damage.  Sometimes a fatemaster needs to look at what his players can do and consider knocking a NPC off the attack or knock the Rank down a notch if the players are not up to the challenge.

[Sernus]

13 hours ago, Steamtastic Vagabond said:

Firstly, when using a skill untrained, you can still use your aspects, but the flip is impossible to cheat.

I believe this is no longer supposed to be the case in TtB 2.0.  The explicit requirement to have at least Rank 1 in a Skill to be able to Cheat Fate from the TtB ver 1.0 Fated Almanac isn't included in the new Core Rules.  Fated should be able to Cheat a flip, whether they have any Ranks in the active Skill or not, so long as there are no  Fate Modifiers (and the Black Joker hasn't been flipped, of course).

[Mason]

19 hours ago, Sernus said:

I believe this is no longer supposed to be the case in TtB 2.0.  The explicit requirement to have at least Rank 1 in a Skill to be able to Cheat Fate from the TtB ver 1.0 Fated Almanac isn't included in the new Core Rules.  Fated should be able to Cheat a flip, whether they have any Ranks in the active Skill or not, so long as there are no  Fate Modifiers (and the Black Joker hasn't been flipped, of course).

This is correct.

In 2.0, you can cheat fate even if you don't have any ranks in a skill.

You can also make flips using a skill even if you don't have any ranks in it (though your rank in the skill is considered to be a 0, of course).

 

On 9/3/2017 at 0:23 AM, durek said:

Ya this is the same problem we are running into.
Combat seems very deadly. We played 2 Penny Dreadful One Offs and failed both times tonight. One only one of the 3 of us had the skill needed to complete the Ongoing Challenge the other 2 just stood around doing nothing. The other we got overrun by NPCs. The TN for NPCs seem very high considering the players flip all the the cards so we get all the high cards usually in negative twists lol and all the low ones also.

Which Penny Dreadfuls were you playing through, out of curiosity?

[Amdor]

On 9/4/2017 at 5:35 PM, Mason said:

In 2.0, you can cheat fate even if you don't have any ranks in a skill.

Can I ask for the reasoning behind this change? I liked the old system, being able to cheat only on trained skills made even the rank 1 skills important.

[solkan]

3 minutes ago, Amdor said:

Can I ask for the reasoning behind this change? I liked the old system, being able to cheat only on trained skills made even the rank 1 skills important.

I'm pretty sure the questions behind this thread are one of the big reasons.  Otherwise, you get in to a situation where everyone needs to take a rank of Toughness, Scrutinize, and a few other core skills just to avoid getting killed by a bad flip.

[Amdor]

11 minutes ago, solkan said:

I'm pretty sure the questions behind this thread are one of the big reasons.  Otherwise, you get in to a situation where everyone needs to take a rank of Toughness, Scrutinize, and a few other core skills just to avoid getting killed by a bad flip.

I'm sure you're right. It's a simple way to solve a lot of questions, especially with derived aspects, such as "Can I cheat my Defense if I don't have Evade trained?"

I still want to hear from an official source if this is the case, mostly just to get insight on their thought process. I'm fine with it being changed and our group is going to be house-ruling a couple of things anyway.

[Amberleigh]

46 minutes ago, Amdor said:

I'm sure you're right. It's a simple way to solve a lot of questions, especially with derived aspects, such as "Can I cheat my Defense if I don't have Evade trained?"

I still want to hear from an official source if this is the case, mostly just to get insight on their thought process. I'm fine with it being changed and our group is going to be house-ruling a couple of things anyway.

Mason is the writer of the rulebook.

You can cheat any flip unless you have flipped a Joker or are at a -ve flip

[Mason]

2 hours ago, Amdor said:

Can I ask for the reasoning behind this change? I liked the old system, being able to cheat only on trained skills made even the rank 1 skills important.

Ease of play, mostly.

I've run a lot of game (a lot of games), and watching players realize that they can't cheat important flips ended up being a point of annoyance that really wasn't pulling its own weight. It led to players having to spread their skill points across skills that didn't match their character's backstory, simply so that they could cheat a bad flip on an important skill.

Opening it up meant that players could go back to focusing on skills that made sense for their character without having to worry that playing "fluffy" would come back to screw them over later.

Having 0 ranks in a skill is hard enough. Compounding it with denying the player access to one of the core mechanics of the game felt like too much of a penalty.

[Amdor]

Thanks @Mason

Yeah, being denied cheating can be quite devastating if you're not aware of it. And cheating is still only as good as your hand.

[Lithaine]

I think you could also make the argument that it is fluffy  - cheating fate could imply you came out ahead in a situation where you shouldn't have otherwise, such as not being skilled (or being actually bad) at something. By sheer luck (aka cards in your hand), you stumbled across the clue or dodged the bullet.