spooky_squirrel

Until the book that Mason keeps hinting about drops, this is probably the best route. Notice, track, pistol, melee, and counterspelling would be the areas of focus from my point of view. Notice and track make you good at investigations that involve finding people. Pistol and some form of melee (even unarmed combat) bridge the gap between someone who can find people and someone who can kill/capture them. The only thing that's missing for being a low ranking Witch Hunter is something that gives you even just a slight edge against magic users. That's where counterspelling comes in. For jumping from lower-mid to -mid-higher ranking, the abilities and advantages the hunter would need would be more focused on detecting active magic affects at range, resisting magical effects (individual or party), appraising soulstones, charging soulstones, and maybe even having some Sanctioned Spellcaster assets (or being one). But that's where @veydan's remark comes in: Fated players can (and should) talk to their FM about this beforehand. The stuff I mentioned above is for the FM to chew on when they're incorporating the Fated's destiny (as determined by the Fated character's player) into various challenges during the session and especially during the Epilogue. It will shape how the story/campaign goes and can provide a different starting point for the campaign altogether (zombies in the sewers, rats in the basement, etc. get benched in order to run something more like Ironside's introductory fluff in M2E: tracking down a rogue spellcaster who has been murdering people).

Nice. The only other thing I would add for comment is that if you're not using a custom/fancy base or modifying the base to have better contact points with the bottoms of her feet, it might be a good idea to drill up through the bottom of the base into the bottoms of her feet and use a small pin. It isn't needed for a model that isn't going to be handled or going in and out of carrying cases, but with the points of contact being so relatively small compared to the rest of the model, it helps avoid having to sticky/reglue her to her base at the start of a game.

The idea of the exp at the end of the session, whether the mission was successful or not is that characters learn and grow, whether they succeed or not. Even grievous bodily harm doesn't stop character growth (though death might if the party cannot figure out how to revive or raise a fallen team member).

Yeah, I prefer to use the margin of failure approach because that allows more freedom with the TN setting as well as allowing pursuit-based card cycling without setting the Fated up for failure. For instance, if I've got an Arcanist Drudge trying to evade Guild patrols (using Stealth, a Training skill challenge), the player will be able to cycle cards if they don't have a hand to succeed with by cheating to inside the margin range (failed a skill challenge, draw a card), which plays into the stoic and determined nature of the Drudge Pursuit: continuous effort will eventually pay off. If that same Drudge has no trouble on the first few stages of the Ongoing Challenge, I can use the fact that that Drudge has an augmented arm or to make them stand out a little bit more to justify bumping the TN. If they're really struggling (no successes and one of several failures was a critical failure), I can open up the door for them to do something to improve their odds, like throwing a tool into a far corner to create a distraction and justify reducing the TN.

Then the group needs to be very, very careful about their route selection and clothing. The Fated character with the double full arm augmentations should keep their shirt on, and the people with soulstone jewelry might want to keep them in their pockets. As for what's okay and what isn't, that depends heavily on where the patrols are and what the patrol's mission is: a detail pairing that's entirely up to you. Unless the patrol has magic sniffers along, they probably won't notice active magical effects in the area. Unless the players are doing something that makes their augmetics obvious (polishing them to a high shine and walking around with them exposed near light sources), the patrols won't necessarily notice them. Bear in mind that your group just needs to avoid margins of failure, so if the Ongoing Challenge is a 8 success/2 fail challenge and the TN is 10, they just need to make sure they don't fall below a 6 on their total if they cannot pass (cheat fate for at least a 6 total). This avoids the fail tick and gives more time to the team members who are doing well at the Challenge.

On top of @solkan's remarks here: If you are looking to bump difficulty for Fated characters walking around with obvious augments or active magical effects, there's plenty of in-theme ways to do that. Active magic effects can be sniffed out by Guild Witch Hunters and various Arcanist assets. Augmentations and pneumatic weapons can draw attention from Union enforcers (if you're not a known Union affiliate) or Guild investigators from Hoffman's Amalgamation Division (if you're not a known Guild affiliate). If you decide to have the patrols have attached auxiliaries that look for things your Fated crew has, it provides a basis for bumping difficulty.

Double checked: some of the card cycling is Dramatic only: magic users and guard specify "during Dramatic Time", where Drudges, Overseers, and others all do not specify time. The ones that don't get cycling during narrative do get it on duels that they're likely to be using in combat--which can turn them into card-cycling beasts in an intense combat.

Absolutely; I think it's an important distinction that goes with @Sernus suggested: people with a background in other RPG systems will need to unlearn what they used in those systems and approach with an empty cup. One of the things that helped me with bridging the gap from D&D to TtB is what I summarized, so if you think it'll help share it In dramatic and narrative time the other thing that they can be doing is looking at their Pursuit's "On The Pursuit" ability. When I get home I'll double check, but I think all of the base Pursuits allow Fated to draw a card when they fail a specific skill check. Sure, it's limited, but it's going from 3 cards to 4 for failing a skill check related to their Pursuit. It makes sense (to me) for a [Pursuit member] to constantly being doing stuff related to their Pursuit. A Tinkerer is going to be constantly messing with things. An Overseer is going to be constantly trying to manage things. Do they stop after they get their card? Well, as you suggested, they can keep working through the deck to force a reshuffle to draw another card. One failed skill check and one time through the deck during Narrative Time prior to Dramatic Time puts everyone at 5 cards (barring skills/abilities that grant additional cards). If they built their Twist decks correctly, the worst hand they can have is A-2-3-4-5, which gives them at least one card (if not 3 or more--it depends on their Acting Value*) that they could Cheat Fate against a peon-ranked non-Fated Character and land that hit. Everything else follows from there. Entering into Dramatic Time with A-2-3 in hand and an AV of 1-2 means that you're counting on top-decking the hit against a peon with Df 6. For your Fated crew's combat characters they might want to consider Rapid Fire or Flurry as a General Talent. Top-decking a value less than 4 from a deck of 54 cards three times in a row has a probability of approximately 1.15%, where doing it twice in a row is approximately 5.45% (that roughly 1/20 that would be a botched roll in D&D, though card probability works differently than dice probability). Any other abilities that allow flipping more cards can help too. Reminded myself: shuffling the deck when switching to Dramatic Time also draws a card, which means that the Fated who've been active during Narrative Time will be at a significant advantage with as many as 6 cards in hand during Dramatic Time. I need to double check whether the card cycle on failed checks is Dramatic Time only or not. I'm glad that two of your players started thinking about creative solutions to combat early on. Hopefully the other two catch on fast and realize that it's not just pushing minis and rolling dice (or burning Feats/abilities for effects). * I have to put in a caveat here, because the way traits and skills are picked, you can potentially create a 0-rank character that has an AV of 5+. This can skew a Fated character dramatically and will skew how combats go once they get into position to do their thing. For the sake of enjoyment of the game and development of the character, it's a rough start unless there's some kind of balancing things going on as well. For example, I flipped a tarot spread that gave me a +3 physical trait to allocate (which means that the other traits are 0 or worse) and +3 skill to allocate, which went into Speed and Martial Arts (potentially with trigger) respectively, but the character has no training of any kind in firearms and other weapons. He'll be a monster if he gets in close (hitting peons on a Black Joker), but he's useless at range and has a bit of a glass jaw. Two min damage hits from standard-issue pistols/rifles will start applying critical damage effects. To challenge someone like him without making things too hard on the rest of the group: having some peons plinking him with firearms from a rooftop or cliffside will do wonders to encourage him to spend time getting tougher or learning a firearm. This sort of thing lets you keep your peon-level combats at peon level (Target Numbers of 6-8 as described in my earlier posting). It will also encourage more team work, as he'd die trying to climb the walls/cliffs or otherwise traverse the obstacles between him and the shooters by himself, and creative approach to combat, as he'd die if he gets caught in the open.

Don't forget that Anna can help with blocking their pushes/places. That with a couple MLH can force your opponent into dealing with Anna before your master. Emissary's markers can also be used to block charge lanes.

Burning aside: Carlos has a 3" engagement and a solid charge range. This lets him get places and lock down regions of the board. He can bring Stunt Double, Practiced Production, or both (depending on what you need him to be doing for the schemes). For 1 AP and a 7+ (top deck or cheat) you can discard a marker 8" away from him, which means that with his (0) push and Walk of 5 he can quickly maneuver from a central position to deny your opponent a VP for schemes like Leave Your Mark. PP needs no introduction: if you need a scheme marker somewhere on the table, this will get it there for you (within certain limitations). This makes him generally useful. Add in the only Burning you should be counting on (his own, on him) and he becomes much tougher (up to Armor +2) and can potentially hit much harder (min damage 5 on a single hit). This makes him quite good at holding a single point. For example: in GG2017 you could put him on the cold Guard the Stash marker and force your opponent to give up the strategy or split their forces, making it so that the cold marker is actually quite warm, even as the bulk of the fighting and maneuvering is still on the hot marker (assumption: you and your opponent focus most of your forces on one Stash Marker and just have a token model or two camp near the other to score it during the early game; the one you're actively fighting over is hot, the one you're both camping on is cold; after the crux turns where momentum shifts to favor one crew over the other, this no longer applies). Carlos in Grab and Drop Kaeris might seem a bit of a liability, as he wants to keep his burning as long as he can and doesn't need the help dropping scheme markers. He could potentially help support it with his own abilities however (not as cost-effective as using Malifaux Child to copy Kaeris' fiery play or even The Firestarter's), but if you're hiring him it should be for a job that plays to his strengths for the scenario (3" engagement, 7" charge/5" walk, 4" push, 40mm base, Armor +1/2). In Purifying Kaeris, you don't need a card left in hand to support Stunt Double if he's close enough to Kaeris, and you can take advantage of his walk/pyre marker interaction without having to spawn a pyre marker of his own first.

With regards to time spent looking up stats: you'll end up wanting to have a crib sheet with their specific weapons baseline stats on it. That way you'll know at a glance what the damage spread is. It falls on your players to keep track of their triggers during the game (if they have any, you'll also want to know what they are, but you'll be using that information for planning encounters). It's also not a bad idea to have their base AV for each attack type on the crib sheet. Your players should have this information as well, and I'd be sorely tempted to figure out ways to motivate them to keep track of this kind of information (especially since they asked for combat). It sounds like your Session 1 ended up doing something that I would normally put into a Session 0 (pre-campaign session where characters are generated and Fatemaster/Fated talk about what they'd like out of the campaign): sample combat. That being said, now that they've gotten a taste of it, they'll be better prepared to take advantage of "okay crew, you're about to head into your area of operations and your contact has forwarded you X script apiece (or otherwise opened their armory). Any last minute shopping trips?" hints from you. If there's some redesign/redistribution of starting stats going on, they'll be better able to handle a straight-forward fight. D&D (and other similar systems) don't really have a taking cover or focusing your efforts mechanism that's native to their system. You have concealment spells/abilities that make it harder to hit in the first place by adjusting your target number and buffing spells/abilities that make members of your group do more with their turn, but there's nothing that is available to nearly everyone that can put other people on negatives/positives to do things. Years of *Ming in other systems can get in the way of merely playing, especially if people are used to the idea of level 1 encounters being "rat problem in the basement, go knock them out and build up some reputation and experience towards real challenges" or similar kinds of encounters (though, to be honest, Malifaux Rats in the basement are a serious problem, expect missing children and small adults). Part of that is because of something I mentioned in another thread: D&D (and similar) systems are meant to be epic-type campaign systems where the Heroes (PCs) are noticeably more powerful than the average person, even at level 1. In TtB, Malifaux is populated by very capable denizens, and often the only edge a Fated person has over a non-Fated peer is being Fated. That all being said: why were they having trouble hitting? Were their hands terrible for cheating fate with? A peon has a a TN of 6-8 to hit normally, and if your Fated crew divided up their Ranged/Close Combat focus according to who would be most successful with each mode, then they should have AV of 1-3 (if not better, depends on their stats spread and whether or not they put at least one rank of (weapon) in). This means that they should be hitting on an average of 5 (3 best case, 7 worst case). It could be that they need to rethink how they break their group down for combat. The Fated with a -3 Grace should probably not be shooting at things, even if their Df seems too low to be on the front line as a melee fighter. Once your Fated and you are more used to the system, you'll find that using the expected average flip of 7 to determine how difficult something might be becomes easier and more reliable. That is: something that has a TN of roughly 7 above the AV of the people doing it is going to be roughly a 50-50 thing for them to be able to do. In combat, this means that if the attack value of their opponent is Fated Df + 7 and defense value is Fated AV + 7, then the match is roughly even (except for weapons, toughness, and triggers) between the Fated and their opponent. Of course, one of the survival-oriented rules of combat is to never get into a fair fight. That's where the Fated will need to figure out how to work together to reduce/remove threats even as you use various tools as mentioned by @explorator and @EnternalVoid to keep the encounter both challenging and memorable.

I'd love to see a variant of the Mobile Toolkit that is a little more stable looking. Instead of a bipedal upright, something that's on 3-4 legs that looks more like a walking toolbench?

Ramos has some interesting tricks up his sleeve, especially with his new Wave 5 upgrades. For your other masters, here's some things I've found in my experiences with them (yours may and likely will vary, because meta drives things): Prior to Wave 5 Ironsides looked like a beater, but was typically better off playing as a controller unless your opponent played into her strengths instead of weaknesses. With Wave 5 she can go into full beatstick mode without counting on your opponent doing something silly like being engaged with her. Not being required to tick down Adrenaline every turn is big, as is being able to tick up Adrenaline every activation (without the Emissary it's +1, with and within the range it's +2). This lets you accumulated Adrenaline on your own, which she then spends to do things like get a (2) attack as a trigger on a (1) attack, or teleport into base contact with an enemy as a (0), or even dump all of her Adrenaline to fully heal (upgrade). Barring running into things that turn off your triggers and healing, she can be a lot of physical pain for the opposing crew. Even if you do run into those things, she can still play as a controller, pulling models into and out of position. This mode of play is one of the reasons I like playing her into table quarter strategies. Mei Feng is another master that looks like a beater when you're looking at her attacks and triggers. That can be misleading, as she doesn't have the resilience to be on the front line and doesn't normally hit hard enough to guarantee clearing out the sort of things that will be rushing into her. It doesn't help that she can (base card) rail walk and trigger a kick (built in), thus starting off the series of attacks with a non-linear threat vector that can reach around corners if someone is close enough to a scrap marker or friendly construct. Otherwise, her charge range is a 10" threat from whereever she ends up declaring the charge at. Being immune to paralyze and slow is just icing on the cake. However, I've had better success using Mei Feng as a denial controller than as a beater. In this mode of play, she's hanging out with her crew Venting Steam a couple of times to keep them under some serious antimagic/antishooting protection. This makes it so that luring and shooting crews are forced into burning more AP to achieve the same results they would normally. Every AP they spend not working the strategy and schemes is an edge to you, provided your crew is doing its job. At some point the denial aspect won't matter any more, and then it'll be time to cut loose and let Mei Feng bully/kill support models or scheme runners that have gotten within her threat range or to complete a scheme that requires greater mobility. Colette, prior to her errata, was typically misused as an AP battery for the likes of Howard Langston. I say misused because it focused entirely on her Prompt ability and ignored everything else that she does. This may be an unpopular opinion with people who feel that being able to prompt a min damage 4 nimble model 4 times and giving it reactivate is not an over-the-top ability, but I suspect that if your concerns are about boring play, you'll probably find yourself enjoying the post-errata Colette. There are a lot of things that she can do, moreso with her Wave 5 upgrades. She can still potentially summon doves and explode scheme markers for additional AP in her crew, she can still prompt, she can still teleport herself or another showgirl a not-insignificant distance up the board, but she can now use her (0) attack as a (1) attack and hand out Slow at the cost of a scheme marker. If you're running with A Lady's Secret the triggered attack doesn't have the scheme marker cost and can reach out further, letting you get potentially more of an AP edge by slowing a second model. Moving away from prompting beaters/shooters, Colette likes to have minions (showgirls too, but we have some seriously good minions) working for her, even before her Wave 5 upgrade that gives them Focused +1 just for activating near her. Combine that with the new (0) from the same upgrade and you're not just multiplying your own AP, you're dictating one of your opponent's minion's AP if they get close enough to end up being a participant in the show. Do that to something that was slowed and you own their activation. Colette's also one of those masters that can still be clearly winning the game even as everything in her crew dies, the only schemes that you get hurt on with her crew box are ones that require you still being alive and in certain regions of the board. Anything that involves scheme markers and interacting with things? She has that down cold. All three of these masters introduce some kind of control to the board in a way that can be headache-inducing in your opponents when they're trying to figure out how to work around what you can potentially be doing and still effectively work against what you are actively doing. Ironsides with positioning control, Mei Feng with denial, and Colette with AP, positioning, and scheme control. For me these kinds of controlling effects can make the game a lot more interesting and interactive. An interesting use I've been exploring with Ramos is using his summoned spiders as teleport nodes for Blade and Claw (on Joss). The full set up requires hiring in a Raptor for turning people like Johan and/or Joss into Beasts, or otherwise hiring a crew that's got a Beast beater or two on the onset. It's kind of counter-intuitive to the whole "Ramos runs constructs" assumption, which makes it more interesting for me off the bat, but it also means that you've got some highly mobile beaters that aren't necessarily relying on Ramos' various auras for effect. Luther (Blessed of December) wasn't getting positives from Under Pressure anyway, so using Joss to fling it further up the board lets it hop into things that thought they were safe. Similarly, if Joss has been turned into a Beast by the Raptor's trigger, Joss can fling himself up the board as a (0), giving him extended, non-linear threat. The first time I played that at a tournament, my opponent was caught flatfooted. It both extends your charge range and lets you potentially place in range to use your (2) attack instead of taking a couple axe swings, and Joss also being a Construct can use himself as a node for another Beast in the crew. Once Vogel hits the street, he's going to be running alongside Joss in this mode of play. As @Jordon mentioned, Ramos himself can be dialed up for damaging things as well, which really makes things interesting.

Knuckledusters make it so that you're more likely to get good damage results from hitting with a Pugilism or Martial Arts attack. Things like this should also be on the Fatemaster's radar when trying to figure out what a crew of Fated can handle (the balancing act that @EnternalVoid mentioned), as they don't change the damage track and may or may not be applicable to the fight. The same Fated character that can knock out 2-3 Enforcers before being in trouble when using force multipliers like Knuckledusters might not hold up so well against a pair of them without. There are other things to be mindful of, including abilities, powers, and triggers that give bonus actions or shape the battlefield in unusual ways. The group's brawler gaining fast or being pushed into melee range prior to acting (thus allowing them to flurry) can be extremely dangerous to opponents on the field. On the same token, their being hit with Slow, not having cards to discard for abilities, or being hit with other interesting conditions can make them about as threatening as a pillow fight--that is, it'll take an unusual amount of effort on their part and bad luck on your part to get seriously injured.

With Heatwave affecting duels, it might be worth putting together a controlling kind of crew for pulling models out of position or otherwise messing with their ability to contribute to the scenario. Amina Naidu comes to mind with her ability to lure, to force targeting, and to turn things into peons. Similarly, Performers might find some time on the table with Kaeris to help exploit those lowered stats and put models on negatives or lure them out. If you're running with Carlos and one of these aggravating models dies near him, you get Reactivate on Carlos. Just in case he wasn't getting enough work done for you. With regards to the Emissary: it's 10 stones of some beating ability plus whatever the upgrade you take grants--I never got any use out of instinctual on Kaeris, though I've gotten plenty of use out of the Conflux upgrades for Mei Feng and Ironsides (the push and 1+ Railwalk marker allows me to use the Emissary like a jackhammer and with the new upgrades for Mei Feng can open up some shenanigans; Toni getting people pushed into her before she activates spikes the adrenaline higher, and she can use her lure effect to pull the Emissary 10" up without worry, giving it an effective threat of 22"). Ramos' Conflux is essential for getting him on board with everything that Ramos can do (Under Pressure, for instance)--but it's a 10 stone model. If it doesn't have a job on the table that plays to the scenario or supports the main effort in a meaningful way, it's not be the right tool for the job.

My recommendation would be to generate some random scenarios and look at how you would accomplish them. Then you can really start looking into variations on Sandeep that don't revolve around some kind of mindless bog standard "bring mages, bring henchman, bring token Gamin". Shastar Vidiya Guards are surprisingly hard hitting and give a little extra control in the form of friendly pushes (as a (0)), but I have yet to put more than one on a table at a time. Their sticker price of 8 stones really encourages me to diversify my crew more when I'm bringing one of them. They bring two characteristics that can work really well within Arcanists: M&SU and Academic. Given that this is for Sandeep, you care about that second one more. However, you can still get some mileage out of the first one if you have reason to bring someone like Johan. The question I would be asking when you're reaching for this guy is what role is he filling? I'll use him as the Frame For Murder patsy, a counter-puncher, or as an insurance agent with his push and the Well Rehearsed upgrade, depending on what I need for the scenario and crew he's joining. Large Steam Arachnids are interesting, to say the least. As minions they can make some use of Sandeep's Beacon ability, and with their own special abilities and a nearby scheme or scrap marker can copy abilities with a positive twist. If there are scheme marker schemes in the pool, your opponent will need to be careful about their own placement of scheme markers. You won't be surprising them with a 6" place and destroying the scheme marker for bonuses, since the marker consumption is also a (0) action, but you can be using it to turn your otherwise short ranged spider into an interesting Luring machine or Arcane Storm battery. Raptors as Practiced Production nodes are dead, long live the Raptors. Don't despair however, as Raptors can still let you peak at your own deck if they scratch up a friend and you've got a low Mask to pitch to the cheating effort. I do this with the Shastar Vidiya Guards and cheat down defense instead of relenting, just so that I can draw the card that the Raptor stacks to the top. Still want Practiced Production because you're loving Carlos? No problem. Another construct on my list of things to consider is the Soulstone Miner. Its ability to come up in strange places lets you still use it as a PP node, and even if you don't need that, it's got some nice utility. For instance, it ignores armor and is significant. Similar to the LSA, it's a minion, so if it's close enough to Sandeep, it can borrow some abilities. Sandeep's Conflux makes the Emissary a Gamin, Kandara can trade upgrades with said Emissary (why? I don't know.. but she can). But let's stop running through the catalog in the blind. Flip some cards for some schemes, then ask yourself whether you want to play Visions, Commands, or Weakness limited (or none of the above). In the past year various players have developed a preference for Visions or Commands and they've tailored their approach to that preference. Commands Sandeep uses his summons and a hired beater or two (as well as Sandeep himself) to go beat on the opposing crew while hired models like Wind Gamin go complete some schemes. Oxfordian Mages are just bodies in the machine for that, and not very quick ones at that, so you might look at putting in something(s) that are quicker and better at scheming if you're going this route. I like Ice Dancers for this role. Visions Sandeep uses his crew to distract while his summons run the schemes (kind of the opposite of Commands). The change here is to move from a gunline distraction to something that is more in-your-face. If it were me, I would be sorely tempted to take my Colette's Show on Ice and replace Colette with Sandeep, but I'd still want to make sure that I was working with the schemes and strategy in mind. Weakness Sandeep is very new and takes him away from being a summoner. I'd have to play with it more than a little to get a sense of what it might do into various scenarios. He can still pop out Banasuva, but he has to be attacking with his Gada (in its weaker mode) to do so. Since he's not summoning outside of that, your crew is going to be scheming and distracting. This will give you an idea of what the job of the crew will be (scheme, distract, or both) while leaving you the freedom to hire for the scenario. Need a really tanky minion to hold a marker for a bit? We've got a couple good ones like Rail Workers and the Large Steam Arachnid. Need something to help knock down summoned zombies or rats? Envy's gatling gun is quite vicious. Need to get to a Symbol of Authority to tear it down right now? Kudra and The Firestarter are both ludicrously quick. Even without summons, Sandeep has a lot of tools that he brings.

Playing in the grey area is exactly where the Fated and Fatemaster work together to create a story. Here's some cross-system comparison from my own observations over the years: In later editions of D&D the heroes (PCs) are deliberately set aside as being above and beyond mere mortals. It lends itself to a more "heroic" or "epic" campaign, but the story value suffers for it. The focus becomes the acquisition of wealth and power at sword-point (hence one of its less flattering nicknames: murder hobo), often with players knowing that even the local law enforcement and military forces are merely mortals (read: 0 level characters). Older editions of this system were worse, as not only did you get treasure and gear at sword-point, it was the only way to gain levels (advance your character)--which turned the most cooperative/productive gaming sessions into a "how many mobs can we grind for exp and treasure before our game session ends?" The game system that TTB reminds me of the most is Shadowrun (in terms of look&feel). The PCs are gifted and/or talented individuals who get picked up to perform special missions that require a certain degree of skill, certain degree of deniability, and a certain degree of expendibility. Your character abilities are largely seen as threats to the existing authorities, the existing authorities can bring a ton of weight to bear, but the existing authorities are also likely to turn a blind eye so long as you're more useful than threatening to them. You're surrounded by other people who, due to similar circumstances, also have some degree of talent or ability in shady areas (they just aren't Fated) as well as people who are simply just trying to make ends meet. Character growth comes from how you complete the mission or not (skills and experience) and whether or not you fulfill a Destiny Step (stats and powers), which has no bearing at all on whether or not you can even kill a fly. You could easily play an Overseer that completes the full pursuit and gets into an advanced pursuit without ever killing anything. The group's Convict might never actually steal anything or kill anyone (their criminal past is break and entering or forgery, not robbery or murder), yet they're an indispensable member of the group, complete their Destiny steps, and manage to get up to Henchmen-level power over the course of the campaign. There are other game systems where the thing that many younger players (especially) were attracted to also happened to be on the taboo list. As an example, when the Star Wars MMO hit, a lot of people joined as Jedi-type characters and found themselves being hounded by other player characters who were looking to collect the Imperial bounty on Jedi. In Malifaux there's a similar kind of animosity from the Guild towards magic users in general; Resurrectionists and Arcanists in particular. These differences help make memorable stories for some people. For them, the most successful stories don't revolve around some super-powerful being who has no weaknesses kicking ass nonstop. It gets old and predictable when there is nothing that challenges the protagonist. Instead they're along the lines of: Not all gaming groups go for that flavor, and that's why it is there exists a Game-/Dungeon-/Fate-master fiat. The FM works with their gaming group to see what they want to get out of the game, and it falls on the FM to figure out how (if) they're going to go about it. You'll note that there's no hard and fast "if you're caught with a soul stone you will be questioned, arrested, and possibly summarily executed by the Guild" in the rules anywhere (yet, the upcoming Guild book might provide guidance along these lines). It's in the flavor of the game world, sure, but that's the character of Malifaux. Even if guidance along these lines does come along, it's up to the FM to enforce it if they want it. If the questions regarding accessibility and legality of soul stones in Malifaux are because you're looking to run a Malifaux campaign, then as the Fatemaster it falls on you to figure out how you want to handle it in the stories you shape with your gaming group. You may find that your group just wants to go zombie/monster hunting and not deal with any of the grey areas that come with the turf war between the major factions. If this is the case and you want to ramp up your group's power level so that you can play big game hunter until it's no longer interesting, you can design your game to facilitate this quite readily by using a game mechanic; for instance: the Fated are affiliated with the Guild and get special dispensation for equipment and magic usage. You might also find that it makes it very hard to get your group to follow a planned story line or greatly upsets the balance of the game, frustrating your efforts as the Fatemaster to run an interesting campaign. Prior to running a campaign, you (as Fatemaster) will want to sit down with your gaming group (the Fated) and talk about expectations and desires for the campaign. This Session Zero is a great time to introduce new players to the creation process and talk to them about what they would like to get out of the campaign and expect out of the Fatemaster. This will also be where you describe your expectations of the group and make notes on what types of characters were created and what aspects of the Malifaux world most interest the players of your group. This is also where you and the players talk about how you (as the Fatemaster) will be handling the world of Malifaux, to include Guild/Union reactions to open use of magic and availability of things like weapons, ammunition, constructs, artificial limbs, grimoires, and soul stones. If the questions are because you have a Fatemaster that is being strict with soul stones, that's a conversation for you to have with your Fatemaster. A number of us feel that struggle makes the story, scarcity adds value, and difficulty adds flavor. It may feel harsh and restrictive if you're not used to this kind of storytelling, but the stories and the game sessions tend to be very rewarding in ways that cannot be recorded on a character sheet.

@Angelshard brings up a good point: dealing with Joker flips is a test of skill as well. Can you adapt to something going horribly wrong for you or well for your opponent? Are you flexible enough in your thinking to switch to Plan B? These are two questions that when answered are marks of proficiency in the real world (especially in career fields that are life or death).

Why are you blaming Wyrd for something that is ultimately Fatemaster discretion? It sounds like you're mistaking a feature that helps balance out the power of magic for a bug. In this same subforum there are questions about how to handle balancing various spell effects so that the Fated who have those spells/powers can actually have a challenge. The extreme suspicion, jealousy, and paranoia about magic use and items that enhance it is one of the costs of using magic. It's not unlike how augmented limbs have costs beyond the initial buying price, and similar to them, it's Fatemaster discretion how those costs are enforced (monthly maintenance, social challenges, interaction with the Guild and the Union, etc.). It is a design feature that allows Fatemasters to present a challenged to the Fated that takes more than "okay, I use these three soulstones and cast this spell while standing in the Guild Elite Division HQ, after the party's Oxfordian Mage boosts all my stats to 5 for a 24 hour period. If I get wounded, I'll use this fourth soulstone to heal" to solve. @EnternalVoid posed the question on what motive would an average person have for a soul stone, and proceeded to provide three possible motives for an average person to have one and why that motive might not be enough for the average citizen to have one on them on a day to day basis. Fated characters are not average people, but if your Fatemaster is sticking to the look and feel of Malifaux as presented in the various books and fluff, Fated characters have reason to try and not draw the wrong sort of attention. As for the gallery of NPCs: the ones that use magic openly that are not Guild sanctioned are branded outlaws by the Guild, and should they find themselves caught are very likely to end up Witchling spawn after being interrogated by Sonnia. The ones that openly carry soulstones either have a small army backing them up, or end up dying to someone who does. If an NPC is using magic where the Guild cannot see, they may (again, FM discretion) find themselves running afoul of other factions or people. This is Malifaux. Bad Things Happen.

One thing: from Colette's fluff, merely being caught with a soulstone is enough for Guild witch hunters to take you in for 'questioning'. Colette went to a lot of trouble to get her stone into the pocket of someone that was going to kill her so that the Guild representatives at her theatre would arrest him instead of her. They didn't end up taking him alive.

The problem with this approach is TOS is designed to interact with things completely differently. One of each suit potentially gives you multiple triggers/effects on an action in TOS, and only potentially give you mixed suits for a single trigger in M2E. Damage flips in M2E work off of range of the card itself, where damage in TOS is determined by differential. The jokers provide the potential for a wild swing, which is great for narrative play and can make a game turn much more interesting. If I have substantially more skill than my opponent, I still have to worry about jokers coming up. If I have substantially less skill than my opponent, that same risk will keep them playing cagey-like and can take the sting out of my loss. As others have pointed out: there are people who are drawn to Malifaux because of how it handles and generates randomness. I'm one of them. I stopped playing WH40k for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that the game tilted very heavily with whoever took the first turn. WM/H was more interesting because it had more back-and-forth (as long as both players were playing to their strengths with optimized lists), except for the bit where rolling so few dice means that a relatively short string of above or below average rolls would tilt the game very heavily very fast with no chance of recovery. It's really frustrating to be doing everything tactically correct but have every action fail because dice don't self correct their probabilities. With card probabilities working the way that they do, sure, I can have many actions fail because the cards just aren't coming up right, but that's self-correcting in a way. If I have a bunch of low cards in hand or turn up early in the turn, the probability of getting high cards later in the turn is higher, so I have reason to play in a way that cycles my deck faster. The cheating fate mechanic also helps--but I can also see why there's special cheat interactions on jokers for this reason. It helps with the narrative play and keeping the game interesting. Admittedly this goes hand-in-hand with some of the things I left unsaid in the thread that talks about Byes and tournament pairings: wild swings, even if only happening once or twice, affect a couple things: The outcome of a game if the wild swing happens during a crux moment, such as attempting to swing momentum during an otherwise close match, the impact of skill in overall standings when games are run similar to single elimination (best of 1) within a tournament setting. In this way, those wild swings are not unlike general random value generation; enough games smooth out those wild swings and help differentiate between skilled and lucky players, but limited games make each swing more significant.

That's what I end up looking at. Highly skilled mercs doing a babysitting job or milk run get paid 2 scrip per day on the job. Therefore a single 10 script soul stone amounts to the same pay they would get for about a week's worth of being a bodyguard or running errands; assuming that your client likes you enough to keep you around for that week and you're covering your expenses from a previous job. Otherwise stealing that single 10 script soul stone is roughly the profits of spending a week and a half trying to keep an idiot alive in the Badlands or running various low impact errands. If you're not one of those highly skilled mercs, but you're still a merc, you might still get hired for that job at that rate, but your competition field is wide and fierce. You might only get a couple days' worth of work like that per month. Hopefully you're a good hunter or have friends with resources to cover room and board for the rest of the month; not to forget any dues you might have for certain faction memberships or fees that you end up paying to not end up spending time explaining to the Guild that you're just an honest freelancer helping out honest citizens. If you're not a merc at all, you don't get that kind of pay. Per the fluff, a lot of people are tempted to risk their lives becoming a merc for the pay increase over common work, to include guardsmen, entertainers, and tradesmen. The advantage of being a laborer (or entertainer or tradesman) of some sort is that your room and board comes with the job, so whatever little bit you are paid amounts to profit (unless you're having to cover dues and/or fees encountered in the course of trying to do the work expected of you). Someone who has enough financial liberty to buy a soul stone to wear about town is a walking target. I use "driving a nice car" as an example because if you're a native of one of the slums and have that kind of money to throw around, Law Enforcement (typically Guild, but may be 10T or Arcanist depending on where exactly) will assume you didn't get it through approved channels, even if you are one of them. They may even assume that you have it in that part of town for the purpose of using or recharging it. Modern era Earth, if you have a nice car in a poor part of town known for its various troubles, police and some locals will assume that you're profiting from those troubles, even if you saved up honestly earned money for months (or years) to afford that nice car. Their base assumption is that you got it by doing something wrong and that you are using it to continue doing things that are wrong. Back in the Malifaux context, and accounting for the context that @solkan describes: even if you earned honest wages enough to buy the soul stone, all the misery of the Gunpowder Wars, the Guild control over Earth, and the woes of Malifaux are linked to that soul stone. From the point of view of the denizens of the slums and rougher areas (especially Contract Towns), you either are profiting or are looking to profit from their troubles. Those who don't care if you got it through approved channels or not may be looking to acquire it for themselves.. and they know they can guarantee it being charged by murdering you while you're wearing it, then taking it off of your corpse. These sorts of reasons contribute to it being a bad idea to walk about wearing soul stones. Maybe the better example than "a nice car" is walking around with a genuine Rolex in a bad neighborhood. If you've got the influence, connections, or just plain prowess/meanness to keep from getting randomly mugged, that's great. But you have to sleep some time.

Neil Henry can get more attacks just by being in a crew with Rail Workers--the ability had to account for that in some way, especially with how Rail Workers, Neil Henry, and Kang would all interact with each other (and Neil Henry can carry Hard Worker on himself to make things even more fun). It requires some considerable set up, which might not matter a whole lot. Then there's also the consideration of whether or not Sandeep is still in range after the second push. If you're sitting in a cluster of Academics and maxing out your Resonance and are using the Nemesis Mage to do the pushing, you get 6 inches per push (triple negative on damage) minimum. After two pushes, Sandeep is 12" up from where he started, unless you're having to push him around obstacles. Doing it without damaging at all is a big deal though. They can die very quick, especially if you put them up on the front line. If you play them midfield as a supporting gunline/controller they perform much better. Your observation that they don't like to be engaged is correct. Similar to pure gunline models, they need some standoff to maximize their firepower and effectiveness. However (and especially since we're in a newly released model thread), that's a discussion for elsewhere. You can use the Steamfitters to give them armor to make them more resilient, but this might not be the best use of the Steamfitters. Kandara might find use in my Mei Feng crews, especially if I'm looking to borrow triggers from other attacks and apply them to the Tiger Claw ability (though to be honest, it has the most potential triggers on its own). Kandara being able to get into peoples' faces and make them burn only makes things nicer for Mei Feng's attack run.

In an area where generic households only have 1-2 script per month for spending money?

In most of Malifaux City, walking around with soul stone accoutrements is a terrible idea. If you're in Guild-patrolled areas (so-called "safe zones") like the Downtown area and you're not a well-known Guild member, it's inviting scrutiny from the Guild. The range of assumptions will go from potential Arcanist to idiot rich person, with people looking to target either one. If you're not in those safer areas, it's like driving a really nice car in a rough neighborhood. Locals in general are looking at you as showing off, local thugs see a payday, and local law enforcement see you as someone doing illegal activities. It ties into what @Mason mentioned above with who controls it and how "law" is handled in Malifaux.