some questions on TC core

[deejay]

Thanks to everyone who created this amazing revival. I have some queries after reading that I cannot answer for myself. Any help appreciated.

1) The Gun Tool skill trick for Aim seems to break the pattern with similar tricks which add a Skill to a different Skill. Normally they add to a specific Skill, not any Skill, and cost Momentum. Look at the Physical Actor trick for Athletics for comparison. But Gun Tool works only once a scene and does not require justfication at all in a narrative sense, which is glaringly strange. It seems to be saying I could use Aim in place of any Skill, paying no Momentum, and giving no reasonable explanation for how my Aim is relevant. Am I missing something?

2) What are the costs for Enhanced Edges? They have prerequisite dots, but no dot ratings themselves? So I am figuring they can never be bought at character creation and must be acquired with 6xp later. Is this the intent?

3) Connections confuse me. Each Path has three types, community, contact and asset. However I could not find any asset connections given in any of the path descriptions. They all seem to be contact connections or community connections. Players choose one community connection from each Path, and get one dot in a Contact connection. But no asset connections? How does the player acquire asset connections?

4) I only get 1 Skill trick, even if I have multiple Skills at 3? Do I acquire a trick automatically when I get to 3, or do I just unlock that potential?

[johntfs]

1) You spend a point of Momentum and get to add your Aim skill dots into a dice pool for one roll once per scene no matter how otherwise silly that might be. Example: Talent Billy Ray Forrest with his Intelligence of 2 and Enigmas of 0 is not the best person to solve the riddle that will open a locked door. He smacks himself in the head a couple of times with his .45 Auto and that jogs his memory (via his Aim 4) to recall that shootout during a Lord of the Rings movie. He speaks the Elvish word for "Friend" and the door opens.

2) Yes and no. Psions/Psiads/Talents and others with specifc assigned Dots can't do it. Novas, however, with the pool of experience they get to build a character, could potentially do so. And presumably if a GM wanted to do something like total the XP costs of bonus skill dots, that bonus Attribute point and bonus Edges in Step 6, then put that into XP costs, you could have a situation with somebody having reduced skills/etc and using the XP to buy Enhanced Edges at the 6 xp cost.

3) Contacts are pretty confusing to me, too. As near as I can figure (and plans, Devs or anyone else, correct me if I'm wrong), when you put a Dot into a Path at char creation, you get a Connection. That's an actual person with a name that your character has at least a semi-positive relationship with. At that point they sort of get their own three "Paths" to define who they are and what they can do for you. Community defines their "origin" as what group they're part of. Contact gives you a single Dot and a single Tag. Access is a bit more nebulous and seems to relate more to objects and places associated. So taking Billy Ray again:

Billy Ray was a member of Marine Force Recon based out of Camp Legeune. His base Connection is with the Force Reconnaissance Company, his old unit, based there. His Contact is Steve Tasker a buddy from the unit who now commands it and thus has the Influential Tag. In terms as assets, Billy might be able to convince Steve to let him "borrow" a weapon, explosives, etc. Or just let him have a very, very, very safe place to stay the night. Contacts are there to help enhance various skill rolls, so it would be between me and the GM as to what Steve might be able to help Billy do.

4) You get one skill trick for free at either character creation or once one of your skills reaches 3. After that your can purchase one skill trick for each dot that a skill is above 2. So, Billy Ray, above with his Aim 4, could have two Aim skill tricks.

4-b) You also get the chance to purchase Specialties with any Skill that is above 2 dots. These Specialties allow a character to apply dots above 2 in the specialized skill as an Enhancement to other skill rolls. Billy Ray, a Sniper skilled with Rifles is trying to Persuade a captured guard to tell him where in a complex a prisoner is being held. He aims the rifle while doing this. The sheer conviction and skill with which Billy wields the weapon helps scare the guard into spilling the info. Unlike certain Skill Tricks, you'll need to convince the GM that the skill really is somehow relevant.

Honestly, I'm considering reworking this to something like "A Specialty gives you a +1 Enhancement when using the skill as long as it involves the specialty. Billy Ray gets a +1 when shooting a Rifle and that's pretty much it.

[deejay]

Thank you, this helps, but I am still unclear on 3) I guess it will become clearer to me eventually.

[Bunyip]

Most Connections from Paths don’t have to be rigidly defined. Take the Marine Force Recon example above and say that’s his Society Path.

Community - the character knows various other marines, particularly those in his unit and others he deals with. They’re likely to help him out if he asks - within reason - as a brother marine.

Contact - this is the person you’re particularly connected to in the Path. For our character, it’s Steve Tasker, his buddy in command. He can ask Steve for favors ‘as a friend’ and Steve is more likely to help him out than the community, even on the tough asks. You can have one Contact per dot in the path, or fewer contacts who are more strongly connected to the character and more likely to help.

Access - the character’s a marine and can use this to justify access to the various things marines may have access to. If he needs weapons, military vehicles, medical care, training facilities, etc. he can try and get access to it. You don’t have to define this, the player can justify to the ST to be able to roll to see if he can access the things.

Does that help?

[johntfs]

Most Connections from Paths don’t have to be rigidly defined. Take the Marine Force Recon example above and say that’s his Society Path.

Community - the character knows various other marines, particularly those in his unit and others he deals with. They’re likely to help him out if he asks - within reason - as a brother marine.

Contact - this is the person you’re particularly connected to in the Path. For our character, it’s Steve Tasker, his buddy in command. He can ask Steve for favors ‘as a friend’ and Steve is more likely to help him out than the community, even on the tough asks. You can have one Contact per dot in the path, or fewer contacts who are more strongly connected to the character and more likely to help.

Access - the character’s a marine and can use this to justify access to the various things marines may have access to. If he needs weapons, military vehicles, medical care, training facilities, etc. he can try and get access to it. You don’t have to define this, the player can justify to the ST to be able to roll to see if he can access the things.

Does that help?

For me it makes things a little clearer but I admit that there's still some fog. I think I get Contact. Billy asks Steve for some favor and rolls Presence + Path (I know it says "Appropriate Attribute" + Path but the basic point of this is to openly convince people to help you out and that seems to fall under Presence). Whether the roll succeeds or fails, Steve's rating as a Contact goes down by one Dot for the rest of the session/Act. Billy might be able to restore it by fulfilling an Obligation to Steve so he can leverage it again later. Meanwhile Billy's Connection is with other marines. He might get some information/scuttlebutt on their recent deployment and perhaps even scare up a few bodies to help curbstomp that A-hole drug dealer over on Fifth Street. Leveraging Asset might get him a Humvee or a Barret Rifle. Meanwhile he gets as many potential uses of these as he has dots in Path or specifically in Contact.

Assuming some successfully adventuring gives Billy enough XP to raise his Society Path to 3, he might put one more Dot into Steve, getting him the informant tag. He might then use the third Dot to develop Janine, an NSA analyst privy to stuff Steve couldn't think about getting. To leverage Steve at that point, Billy would roll Presence + Contact 2 for Steve or Presence + Contact 1 for Janine.

[deejay]

Does that help?

yes, thank you, it does, but to get it all to stick I think I will have to re-read this book many times, often I am thrown off by things being mentioned that have not yet been explained, or fully explored in examples. Overall, I have been scratching my head a lot over this system, there are many things I need to go back and read over although what I do get I like a lot.

[1001100x02]

Most Connections from Paths don’t have to be rigidly defined. Take the Marine Force Recon example above and say that’s his Society Path.

Contact - this is the person you’re particularly connected to in the Path. For our character, it’s Steve Tasker, his buddy in command. He can ask Steve for favors ‘as a friend’ and Steve is more likely to help him out than the community, even on the tough asks. You can have one Contact per dot in the path, or fewer contacts who are more strongly connected to the character and more likely to help.

As I read the contact rules, at ● you have one Contact rated ● with a single tag. At ●●, your contact is now rated ●● by virtue of the overall increase in the path's rating but they still have only 1 tag. The extra ● you get as part of your 18 XP spend can then be used to increase the contact's rating to ●● with 2 tags or create a 2nd contact rated ●● with a single tag.

This comes from

Initially, each connection has the same dot rating as the overall Path

and

Each dot in a Path costs eighteen points of Experience and provides three dots for distribution among the related Skills, two dots for distribution among the related Edges, and an additional dot to place into the Path’s contact connection.

Of course then there's this bit

A character gains a number of points to use to create her Contacts as she has dots in her Path. She can spend these dots on either gaining additional Contacts, or making a single Contact better. Each Contact begins with one dot and one tag (see list of suggested tags below). Each additional dot placed in a single Contact adds an additional tag.

The language here is poorly phrased and doesn't seem to have been paid any attention since it was flagged in the errata thread back in 2018. and again in 2019.

At the very least I think you need to change the terminology so that connections aren't rated, they have a number of uses per session equal to the path's rating.

[1001100x02]

Bumpity Bump?