Demolitionist Advanced Pursuit

[J4bberw0ck]

This has been mentioned before but I never saw it answered, so here goes. One of my players wants to follow the Demolitionist advanced pursuit, but it looks like her 3 ranks in Explosives already let her craft most of the stuff she can make with the first talent. Does anyone have an official word on tweaking this?

 

Personally, I think the description of the talent holds the answer. It says that the Fated learns to make explosives out of common household items. What if the talent allowed you to craft explosives without having to pay the cost, as long as there are sufficient resources nearby?

This could be ludicrously powerful though, so maybe it can only be used a number of times equal to your rank in Explosives per session, or equal to the number of Demolitionist talents you have?

 

Along these lines, it’s been said before that explosives are waay too expensive. We’re talking about one-use items which, if thrown, could miss. I would think it should be something like 0.25-0.5 scrip for a flaming bottle, 1-3 scrip for dynamite, and maybe 5-8 for a demo charge? The simple fact that they cause blast damage means they’re also a danger to other Fated, so they can’t be used all the time.

What do y’all think of these tweaks?

[Steamtastic Vagabond]

Keep in mind that the demolitionist still has the 4 other talents. You could just skip to step 2 if the first talent has been made redundant.

[J4bberw0ck]

Well sure, but I believe every other Advanced Pursuit has 5 steps. I'd hate for my player to feel cheated (must not make cheating fate pun...).

[Steamtastic Vagabond]

Alright then, perhaps half cost explosives then, or some sort of discount on explosive making for step 1.

[Bazlord_Prime]

Did anybody (@J4bberw0ck) find a compromise here? I was looking at having a Demolitionist character in an upcoming campaign, and noticed - with a bit of confusion - all those points you mentioned. 

Demolitionist Step 1 allows you to do exactly what the Explosives skill already allows you to do, but only if you already have the Explosives skill anyway. And it seems to cost more. So that first Talent step in Demolitionist is worse than useless - it actually makes things cost more, and gives you fewer options - you'll just use the Explosives skill for everything you want to make, and disregard the Talent (Explosives skill also provides Triggers, so...). 

I'm assuming that Explosives skill in v1.0 was quite different? I don't have those books. 

I think I'd just rewrite that first Demolitionist Talent so as to give a plus flip to all Explosive skill crafting attempts, and scratch the suggested costs. 

[solkan]

I dug out the old Fated Almanac.  In that book, Explosives was the skill used to deploy Explosives. In the crafting section, Alchemistry was the skill in the crafting section used:

Quote

Associated Aspect: Intellect

The Alchemistry skill is used for mixing chemicals in order to create more complex compounds. These include acids, alcohols, explosives, medicines, and poisons. Such concoctions need to be created in a laboratory, which often takes up a large amount of space.

In 2nd edition, explosives gets removed from that list, and Explosives becomes the crafting skill.

Honestly, I like a modified version of the previous suggestion for what to do with "Explosive Secrets".  Like Jaberwock suggested, the character can craft the specified explosives with the flimsiest implausible explanation.  They become the McGuyver of explosives, although the crafting is still limited by time.  

Regular people need to use a crafting station to use a crafting skill. and would suffer penalties without one (like if they were trying to make a Molotov cocktail on the fly during an encounter).  Wave that, and the price, if they can explain implausibly what they're doing.

Although, for the sake of that use, probably rename the crafted items:

• Small Bomb.  1/1/1 and characters damaged gain Burning +2.
• Big Bomb.  (As Dynamite)
• Bigger Bomb.  (As Demo Charge)

Because, really, that flaming bottle is really limiting in concept when there's all sorts of things that a crazy person could mix together and throw to get to explode.  Same for dynamite--that's way too specific, when there are recipes for pipe bombs.