Mason

45 minutes ago, Gnomezilla said:

Is there any mechanical penalty as well, for ‘spamming’ and failing to raise Voice of the People, or is backlash up to the fatemaster?

It has a cap on what it adds to skills  (+3), though you can still build higher to get a nice supply that you can burn off for other effects.

She has an avatar vignette in Twisting Fates, but otherwise, you've hit all of her story points, I think.

The correct version is:

During a game, the Fatemaster should keep track of which Skills each character uses, often by just noting them down under the character's name on a piece of scrap paper.

At the end of the session, each character gains 1 Experience Point (XP).

After the characters have gained their XP for the session, the Fatemaster chooses two Skills from that character's list and presents them to the character as possible avenues for advancement. The character also has the option of advancing in certain Skills as determined by their current Pursuit.

Once the character has looked over their possible options for Skill advancement, they choose one Skill to advance. If the character does not have any Ranks in the chosen Skill, they gain 1 Rank in that Skill without having to spend XP.  If the character has 1 or more Ranks in the Skill, they may spend a number of XP equal to the Skill's current Rank to increase its Rank by +1.

Then the character can spend 1 XP to learn a Skill Trigger for any of their Skills with 3+ ranks.

If you want your character to advance in Social Skills, you can either attempt lots of Social Skills in the hopes that the Fatemaster will choose one as a possible advancement opportunity, or you can choose a Pursuit that will all you to advance in Social Skills (such as Performer).

"Each time this character adds an Alteration Immuto other than the chosen Immuto to a Spell or Manifested Power, increase its TN by +1."

The penalty is per instance of the Immuto.

If you add the Increased Damage Immuto once, the damage of the spell increases, and the TN of the spell increases by +2, plus an additional +1 from your Tradition Magic.

If you then add the Increased Damage Immuto a second time, the damage of the spell increases again, and the TN of the spell increases by another +2, plus an additional +1 from your Tradition Magic.

Thus, a character that adds two Increased Damage Immutos to her Spell would have its TN increased by +4, or by +6 if she used Tradition Magic (unless, of course, she chose Increased Damage as her special Immuto, but let's assume that she did not).

8 minutes ago, diki said:

Can you use a 1-AP action to take a 2nd 0-AP action?  (and subsequently a 3rd)

No.

53 minutes ago, Le gob said:

Additional question, what is the actual size of a wall of muscled human?

I left it deliberately vague to account for multiple variables, one of which is regional and ethnic variations in "normal" height. I don't want people feeling like they have to take the Talent if they want a character of a certain height, and what's considered tall for one group might be considered average for another.

There's also a temporal issue involved. Through the Breach takes place about 110 years ago, and a century ago, people were shorter than they are now. For instance, the average height of an American Man back in the TTB days was 5'7", compared to 5'10" now. We also got a whole lot wider, on average.

If I put down a height that was appropriate for the time period, it'd seem less extreme today.

Anyway, long story short, the extreme of "really tall" has been deliberately left in the hands of individual players and Fatemasters.

It's intended to allow characters to jump a certain distance within the parameters of their normal Walk Action (as gribble mentioned earlier).

Apologies for the vague wording!

3 hours ago, Griautis said:

As the title says, does Wall of Muscle affect melee unarmed attacks? 

Yup.

5 minutes ago, sandchigger said:

Unlike the previous previews, I'm pretty meh about this one. Honestly, this seems like a way to gamify something I would rather leave to Roleplay. YMM, of course, V.

I'm a firm believer in quantified social mechanics. If you have stats that define how charming, intelligent, and tenacious your character is, then in my opinion, the game should work with those parameters in some way or another.

Plus, we already have other social pursuits in the game, and since they're in the minority compared to combat pursuits, I'm pretty happy with adding another one (or two...) to the list.

That being said, different strokes for different folks and all.

6 minutes ago, Pyrflamme said:

Pretty sure these previews are leading up to a Guild-but-applicable-to-other-factions release.

Yup. A Through the Breach book called Above the Law, which focuses on the Guild and Guild-related things.

Staaaaaaaaahhhhhhhp

If you can't have an army of death robots to boss around, what's the point? 

(props to Smite for the awesome art and character skin)

6 hours ago, Rossbert said:

I suspect it is as I was afraid of, my copy being just the Fated Almanac is obviously quite dated as of now.  Does Wyrd participate in the Bits and Mortar program?

At the moment, we do not.

Animate Construct

Effect: Target inanimate construct comes to life as a subordinate character under the caster’s control for 1 hour. If it does not have a Rank Value, its Rank Value becomes Minion (5). When this Spell ends, the construct becomes inanimate but may be later reanimated.

As Lithaine notes, there;s no limit to the number of constructs that a character can have animated at one time.

14 hours ago, TemplaroftheMS&U said:

 

The Neverborn book was named in the Resser book, that would put the assumption that it was next in line. However it didn't happen that way. So it will eventually be here.
Patience. Maybe even after the Guild book, but I wouldn't be surprised if a Ten Thunder Book came 1st, followed by Neverborn and lastly Outcasts.

No Outcast book. Their stuff is just getting woven into the other books; Under Quarantine had rats and the blight, for instance, Into the Steam had Freikorps Armor, and the Commander from Above the Law would work great for anyone wanting to set up a Freikorps-like strike force.

Though there's a case to be made about the core book being the Outcast book, I suppose...

7 hours ago, EnternalVoid said:

He might have been questioning page 176 in the skills under Alchemy Rank 5 "Philosopher Stone, small homunculi"

Ah!  Gotcha!

We don't have stats for homunculi yet, but I would probably base them on a Gamin until the stats are released.

39 minutes ago, pgholland said:

So does this mean the original schedule of books (including From Nightmares) has been pushed back? Or simply got rid of?

Above the Law is the next TTB book expansion book.

The Neverborn book will be along at some point after that.

On 10/27/2017 at 10:15 PM, gamefreak180 said:

Such as is there a section for creating homunculus or something similar? If so which book?

Not as such, though if you're a Mage (from Into the Steam), you can get a Totem. That's probably where I would start with it.

On 10/27/2017 at 10:15 PM, gamefreak180 said:

The samurai would they be different if they had other shoulder mounted weapons that were not machine guns or is that their shtick and they only use machine guns. (Thinking of twin grenade launchers probably just one with a higher capacity make it where each round is in its own barrel)

Nope, that would be pretty cool, actually. No reason that a samurai couldn't change stuff around.

On 10/27/2017 at 10:15 PM, gamefreak180 said:

If only machine guns is there a way to do permanent elemental weapons potentially with the use of soul stones (Thinking of making a group of samurai representing the 5 Chinese elements or something variation of those elements . Or the 3 guys from big trouble in little Chinatown)

Nothing for permanent enchantments in the rules per se, but you can cast Elemental Weapon on the gun and use Immuto to increase the duration out to a year. Alternatively, if you're an Engineer (from Into the Steam), you could do something similar with one of their Inventions.

On 10/27/2017 at 10:15 PM, gamefreak180 said:

Also who summons golems is that a spell or power not in the 2e core book? There is a section on page 403 talking about summoning golems?

Silent Ones (an Advanced Pursuit from Into the Steam).

13 hours ago, Sunspotter said:

I'm sad the bulging muscles of my Von Schill Expy cannot, in fact, generate enough vertical force to launch him back to an upright position

Well, you can... it's just probably a Manifested Powers. 

22 minutes ago, Detris said:

For example, a party member is struck with an attack and does not have Twist card high enough to avoid the hit.  I believe that I should be able to place one of my Twist cards down for him to use to avoid the attack provide I have a Twist card that would be high enough and the party member would have a Twist card to discard.

That is the correct way to read it.

15 hours ago, Inefficiency_Expert said:

Public relations eh? Like possibly the fine reporting staff of the Tattler? 

Also Hoffman is sad that his division did't get a mention in that list.. well that and that his brother is a cyborg zombie monster, mostly that bit.

Exactly like that.

Guild Guard are the most prevalent faction, followed by an equal distribution for the Death Marshals, Nephilim Hunters, Witch Hunters, and the Department of Public Relations. Amalgamation Office comes after those, followed by the pretty rare Elite Division.

Just now, sandchigger said:

Sure, I get that. But there's a much bigger difference between a witch Hunter and a Guild guard than there is between bayou gremlin 1 and bayou gremlin 2.

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.

57 minutes ago, sandchigger said:

I'm kinda against it because sometimes you want a single unit group where everybody works for the Witch Hunters.

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.

Just now, TemplaroftheMS&U said:

True but in the fatemaster almanac there was an NPC called a "bag man"  that worked with the Marshal's I was hoping for something more along those lines. Not a Marshall but a supporter of the Marshals or Witchhunters. Kinda like the new Monster Hunter model - someone who picks a faction of the Guild and gets bonuses for dealing with that groups enemy.

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.

1 hour ago, gribble said:

Ok, thanks. So if a spell requires more AP to cast than you have available in your current activation, you can't cast it at all?

Do you have a page reference in the book? I'd like to be able to read up on it myself to be sure I understand how it's supposed to work.

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.