2d20 Player Guide Questions

Achtung! Cthulhu
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A Stiff Drink talent mentions Recover Actions, but I can’t find the rules for recover actions.

The Submachine and Machine Guns table lists several weapons as Unwieldy, but I can’t find that weapon quality. Is it the same as cumbersome?

The Lifesaver talent says “You reduce the difficulty of any Medicine skill test made to stabilise a dying character or revive a character by 1.” I can’t find any rules on reviving characters.

The Like A Shadow trait says, “you increase the resistance of the consequence by +2.” What is the resistance of a consequence?

The rules specify that a Facility counts as two Truths, but it doesn’t explicitly say that Kits count as 1 Truth (although, it is implied since they give permission or reduce difficulty like Truths). That seems odd to me.

In Carrying Capacity, the rules start by saying that the character can carry 1 Manor and 3 Minor items. Then, under Major Items, it says they can carry 2 Major items. I’m guessing this is the same (you can convert a Major to 3 Minor items). But the wording is vague and confusing.

When you use up a gun’s ammo—you can’t fire it, right? Are kits the same? When you use up their bonus momentum, you can’t use them any more? Or can you still use them to gain permission/bonus on an action?

On page 39, it says “Injuries removed by magical means always result in a scar.”, but the Balm of Belenus ritual says that when it’s miscast, “Any injuries healed immediately become scars.” Implying that they don’t become scars when it’s cast properly.

In the magic section, it says that traditional spellcasters “can only learn spells which are specifically part of their tradition but may also perform rituals.” However the ritual section then says that anyone can attempt a ritual. It’s clear that spellcasters have an advantage over no spellcasters—but do traditional spellcasters get any advantage over researchers or dabblers when casting rituals?

The introduction talks about Dubois’s pet demon, so I expected to find a trait (or possibly a ritual spell) that would let me create a similar character, but I didn’t find anything. There also aren’t any rules for supernatural or super science equipment. And I believe one of the other characters in the intro had something like that as well. Will these be covered in future books?

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I took the liberty and posted links to this thread on Discord, MeWe and Reddit encouraging everyone to post their questions about Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 here in this thread.
That way we might get a single place to look for rules clarifications from the start.

Other 2d20-based RPGs didn’t have that and so answers are all over the place, often very hard to find. With this new release it could be different. So I hope some other questions (and answers and clarifications by the development team) will show up here, soon.

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This was renamed to the Catch Breath action (p.29 of the Player’s Guide)

This is a legacy issue: a reference to a mechanic that was removed from the game.

Reviving a character during an action scene (as opposed to normal recovery from injuries) is left to the GM’s discretion.

Consequence tracks are essentially an inverted form of Extended Task (the track gets added to when you fail or suffer complications, as it ticks towards some bad outcome like being caught by sentries when sneaking around). They are covered in full in the GM’s Guide.

Yes, skill kits count as Truths, as do most forms of Belongings, as noted in the first paragraph under Belongings on page 110.

Yes, they’re the same - 2 Major Items, or 1 Major and 3 Minor items (or 6 Minor items).

Kits remain functional even without resources - you can still use the rest of your first aid kit even if you’re out of bandages.

Ignore the line on p.39 about injuries removed by magic automatically causing Scars. They have the same chances of resulting in a scar as any other form of healing.

Anyone can attempt to perform a ritual that they know and have the instructions to perform. Traditional casters, arguably, have better access to a selection of rituals common to their traditions, but that’s left to GM’s discretion.

The GM’s Guide contains a sizeable arsenal of supernatural and superscience equipment, and numerous additional battlefield spells (for disciples of Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth) and rituals which the GM can make accessible to players at their discretion.

There’s no singular way to create a character with a pet demon, but there are plenty of occult options.

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Is there a maximum of courage? a character with courage above 5 is very powerful and being a spellcaster it is very difficult to get tired of doing magic or receive mental damage

The talent OCCULT SCHOLAR staks w will bonus ??

thanks

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There’s no upper limit to Courage, and Courage from a high Will stacks with other sources.

However, it is worth remembering that the Costs of spells often have other effects; particularly dangerous spells often have Piercing (allowing it to bypass Courage), and they should always have the Drain effect, which applies Fatigue (reducing maximum Stress), which Courage does nothing against.

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Hi,
3 quick questions on rituals from me :

  • How to stop rituals : my comprehension is that there is no real way to stop a ritual being conducted, except to kill the spellcaster. In fact, adding complications may cause the ritual to be miscast early, which may - for certain spells - still be beneficial (though less than if it was cast properly) to the one conducting the ritual. Is that right ?

  • Disrupting a ritual : p.156 states that there are two ways to disrupt a ritual : either (i) disrupt with a skill test (in which case you may add complications to the ritual if succeeded) ; (ii) attack the spellcaster, in which case you may add complications to the ritual on top of damage with 2 momentum. Is that right ?

  • Assisting a ritual : must the assistants do skill checks to add their power, or is that automatic when the main ritualist successes on its own skill test ? I am confused by the sentence “NPCs assisting other NPCs in a ritual add up to half of their power (rounding up) to the primary spellcaster but do not score an automatic success”. Could you please explain what you mean by that ?

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Absolutely stopping a ritual once it’s started is tricky - a dead caster means that you follow the rules for Abandoning a Ritual (p 157), though as the caster is dead they can’t actually attempt at the test to disperse the ritual’s energies (so the ritual miscasts). If there are multiple participants, you might (GM’s discretion) allow one of them to try and take up the ritual or allow it to fail safely.

When you’re dealing with magical energies of that sort, a failed ritual is likely to be messy. Once you’ve completed one or more steps, the majority of ways that the ritual can fail will result in miscast.

That’s correct.

Assistants provide assistance in the usual sense - they roll a d20 against the relevant stat + skill and contribute any successes they generate to the test they’re assisting. NPCs assisting a ritual also add up to half their Power (round up). I believe the line about an automatic success is a legacy reference to an old mechanic that doesn’t exist any more.

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@Rikiwarren,

To answer your question about Dubois’s pet demon (because this is something I have been thinking about too):

From what I understand there are two ways of doing this:

1.You simply let them take a demon like Sarah Walker’s dog, Crook, in the Quickstart (A Quick Trip to France). Using the Survival Talent ‘Companion’ and making it a demon instead of a dog.

2.Magic. Take one of the options they already have and do a very small amount of flavour changes, or homebrewing if some of the numbers don’t make as much sense.

The first idea is to have the creature brought into the game using the Call Of The Depths spell (From the GM Guide). But instead of summoning a Reefbreaker you would summon a small winged demon instead (with a stat change and possibly a reduction on the cost if the stats are lower than a Reefbreaker).
Plot-wise this could come from the player trying to persuade the creature to join in the battle or some kind of meta cost. There could be reductions on the cost based off of Truths on how well the two of them might get along.
The creature would act with the same rules as the Reefbreaker. Performing basic actions on its own, and more complex ones with persuasion checks (to make sure it understands what the instruction is, or maybe it has a bit of a rebellious streak). Failures to this could result in the creature ignoring the player, or if it suits the plot, attacking the player.

Alternatively you could use a ritual to summon the creature with the Summon Mythos Creature Spell and then force them to use the Compel spell every so often (maybe in order to keep it tied to our plane of existence) as an upkeep.

There are other spells that could fit, such as Birth Of The Overlords, Wave Storm, or Create Die Gelfallen. But they would have to be modified for flavour.

Hopefully this helps!

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Hello. I am still new and cannot start a new thread so hoping I can piggyback on this one! :smile:
I am looking for clarification on some Background Truths from a game mechanic perspective. For example “Jack of All Trades”. What is the effect of having that truth? Thanks in advance!

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@Modiphius-Nathan For Spellcasters, Under their attributes, Bonus Damage.

A Will of 10 gives 2 Bonus Damage. Does this mean the Spell Caster gets 2 extra Damage Dice when rolling effects form his spells?

The Specific type of Spellcaster (ie Research depends on Reason). If that Attribute also had Bonus Damage due to it’s score, is this additional Damage Dice as well.

Will of 10 gives 2, and a Reason of 10 also gives 2. That would be 4 additional Damage Dice. Is this correct?

If his power was 4, with these additional damage dice, he could roll the effect form the spell, plus these 8 additional damage dice?

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Counting Will as a universal bonus damage for spellcasting is in error, a legacy of an older draft that never got corrected. It was replaced by different spellcaster types using different attributes to grant bonus dice to Power, and using Power to define damage for offensive spells.

So, a Research spellcaster has a base Power of 2. With a Reason of 10, that’s increased to 4. If casting a spell which inflicted 4+Power [CD] damage, the spell would deal 8[CD] damage.

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Excellent!!! Thank You!

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What does a Medic’s Bag (an optional piece of equipment for a Boffin) do? Is it the same as a First Aid Kit?

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Sort of. If you look at pg 111, you’ll see that there are two kits described under First Aid kit. The first one is the general issue one, and the second one is for medics. Medic’s bags are better stocked than a First Aid kit, but (unless I missed something) they seem to function identically, though I’d imagine that a GM would rule that you can do more with a Medic’s bag, as per its description.

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A different question: I’m new to the game: is there any more guidance on test difficulties? The list of examples on P17 is quite light, it’d be great to get more examples, or where a typical default difficulty would sit? I assume difficulty 2 might be a typical default position to work from?

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In 2d20 Difficulty 1 is the default Difficulty. Only if there are circumstances that make things harder the Difficulty will rise. (Exceptions are to be found in the rules for ranged weapons and some other topics. But if there is nothing else stated, it is Difficulty 1 as default.)

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Thanks, that’s super helpful :grinning: