Mason

The Witch Hunters frequently dip into the Guild Guard to supplement their numbers, though, and they consult with the Death Marshals if they're going after someone who might know some necromancy. They might even get into an argument over whose sphere of influence it falls under! And, of course, you want someone from Public Relations tagging along to get the details and tell the "true" story of what happened before those annoying rag sheets start printing lies about the Guild again. The Guild are an organization, and while they have specialized departments, those departments all draw upon each other to keep people safe and advance the Guild's agenda in Malifaux.

You can certainly tell your players "just ignore that, you're all Witch Hunters" without breaking anything. The intent of the book is to promote more "mixed division" groups, though, similar to how Into the Bayou promoted groups of Gremlins that hailed from different families.

Ah, gotcha. Well, no worries; Above the Law has a stupid amount of information about Malifaux City, the Guild, and the Special Divisions. Characters created using the Ram's Head Tarot start the game as Guild employees belonging to one of the various special divisions. There's plenty of room in the Guild for all sorts of characters, and the Death Marshals are comprised of more than just our favorite coffin-wielding half-zombie dudes.

Characters generate all of their AP at the start of their turn. Most characters generate 2 AP. If a character with 2 AP tries to cast a spell requiring 3 AP, they can't do so (as they don't have 3 AP to pay the cost of the action). It's just like if a character had 1 AP left and wanted to take the 2 AP Charge action; they simply would not be able to declare that action, as they don't have the AP to pay for it. They wouldn't be able to carry their AP from the current round over to the next round to pay for it on the following round. The Oxford Method lets characters "carry over" the AP of their Spells into the next round, but that's very much a "breaking the standard rules" sort of ability.

The Death Marshal advanced pursuit is already available in the Core Rules.

That is correct! Our Marksman lady is just a bit overzealous, it seems. But yes, the Take Aim talent works with any weapon, such as the Harpoon Gun or your average pistol.

Defiant is just a TTB keyword that signifies "this Beast can't be a Primal's animal companion."

There are a few useful Talents in there for non-firearm weapons, but overall, not really. I've got the bow-type-stuff slotted in for the distant Ten Thunders book.

There's a section on Fatemaster Characters (pg. 312), but there isn't a detailed "this is how they are created" section. Because Malifaux (and Through the Breach) tend to be so individualistic and character-driven, there aren't really any hard-and-fast rules for what abilities to give a FM character (such as "minions get hard to wound, enforcers get hard to kill"). If you want to make custom Fatemaster Characters, I would suggest choosing one of the stat blocks in the book and then adding or removing some skills and abilities, swapping out some weapons for other weapons, or just reskinning a character to look like something else. And, of course, you can always come here to the forums if you want people to look it over.

Doesn't Death Contract trigger upon the model being killed or sacrificed? Rising Sun says that when Huggy would be killed, he's not killed and is instead buried, so that would prevent Death Contract from triggering. It would still work if Huggy was sacrificed, of course, but then he's not coming back from Rising Sun...

No. Huggy isn't a Tyrant or an ex-Tyrant. We've explicitly stated such in a few different places.

The Fatemaster Screen was made back in 1st edition, before Prone was really a thing. There was a Drop Prone Action that did the same thing, but it wasn't quite the same. The most important thing to remember about Prone is that it isn't a Condition, so you can't Shrug Off being on the ground, for example.

At the moment, we don't have a release date for that book. Sorry!

Nope. Above the Law is going to go into more detail on the civilized areas of Malifaux City (geographical, social, political, etc.). The Neverborn book is going to be Knotwoods and Badlands.

Per page 171, the default Aspect for Toughness duels is Resilience. If a rule asks you to make a duel and doesn't specify which Aspect is added to the duel, it's assumed that you use the default Aspect. Thus, for Unconsciousness tests, the character uses Toughness + Resilience.

Plus, if you're just playing for fun, you can always just play with the basic strategies and schemes. Gaining Grounds is mostly just the tournament format.

You just take ranks in Counter-Spelling and there you go. You don' t even need ranks in a magical pursuit to learn skills like Sorcery or Necromancy or even to cast spells. The magical pursuits just make such things easier.

I already have their stat block written out for the next book.

The "Honor Among Thieves" one-shot is a heist adventure, if you're shopping around for some adventure structure ideas.

Just as a note, it's "Twist Deck" and not "Twisted Deck."

It's pretty much just for Gremlins, save for human characters who flipped the Black Joker (i.e., raised by Gremlins) on the Cross Roads Tarot. The other options, though, such as the pursuits, talents, and magia, are available to non-Gremlin characters.

Pretty much what's been said above.

The Deflecting special rule should not lower the character's Defense. I'll add that to the list for the next update in a few months. That is correct. The abilities are separate. The Oxford Method is a very good Magical Theory for those who intend to rely upon Manifested Powers instead of Spells.

Not everything you do as a Fatemaster necessarily has to be written down in a book. Especially since most of the Neverborn stuff is in a book that hasn't been written yet. If the story requires a Neverborn to be in disguise and in charge of a bar, then just have a Neverborn be in disguise and in charge of a bar. The exact mechanics probably aren't going to be super important to the story, are they?

Woes have a tendency to appear as human from time to time (Pandora, Candy, Kade, Tannen, etc.), and even Nephilim have a few spells to that effect (such as what Lilith and Mr. Graves used to appear human).