Consumable Item Cards in Settlement mode…

For Settlement mode, are consumable items like food, drink, chems, grenades, etc. gone after you use them in a game? Or can you equip the card (with the proper settlement structures/upgrades) in the next game?

Hey,

I think needing to buy the same single item after every game would be a bit much.

In Settlement Mode, any consumable items refresh in between games. Other than that, the consumable items behave exactly the same (needing to buy each one you take into a game, them running out etc).

Don’t forget that these items follow the rules for Maintenance Sheds or Lockers, so they will need somewhere to be stored in between games.

Thanks!

So if I found a grenade using the structure, I pay for it using the store, I equip that grenade on a model, wich throws it in the game, could I buy one or two/three grenades for the next game without find them?

One Grenade. Because you have found one Grenade in the first place.

Ok, so the consumables work like perks, you have them, and you decide if you pay for them when you do the roster

Precisely. On a one to one basis.

So using your Grenade example, you’d have one you could use at any time but any further Grenades, you would need to find.

1 Like

It’s an interesting piece of information which I think contradicts how settlement mode works in the app now. I have found this on campaign handbook pg. 19:

Example: The Sole Survivor entered a battle with a Hunting Rifle (the Item always available to them), 2 Stimpaks and 3 Boost cards. During the battle, the Sole Survivor used neither Stimpak, used 2 Boost cards, and found a Bolt-Acton Pipe Rifle.

This implies that if they would’ve used one stimpak it wouldn’t require a maintenance shed to keep it but it wouldn’t be in the card pool for the settlement phase.

Is there any rule where this is clarified or it’s more like an errata thing?

So you can buy and sell the same item, and you would have the same item available without risking your caps? This is a bit strange in Settlement Mode…

Well, if you sell the item, you discard the card for good, you wouldn’t be able to sell it and then stick it back into the maintenance shed/stores or whatever.

When you pay the caps cost to equip an item you have drawn and have structures to keep and equip it….in a game, that isn’t coming out of your settlement caps, as I understand it… it’s just to make sure you know how your list adds up to your opponent’s list, right? I mean, you’d go broke pretty fast if you had to fork out the 500caps to participate in the next game…

The ruling does seem a little odd, but perhaps it represents you having found the plans/recipe/etc to build it and you replenish it when you can…even though your resource points don’t get spent to do so (hey that might make for an interesting house rule!) though drinking that Sunset Sarsaparilla and having it available to take again into the next battle is a bit funny from a logical point of view.

But then custom ammo and things like a flashlight…I mean, unless it’s powered by a mini fission reactor, those batteries aren’t going to last forever…

The whole reason I asked this here was because one of the players in our campaign drew a vertibird signal grenade….the card doesn’t say discard after use, so as written, I think you could even use it multiple times in one game? He asked if he could take it again in the next game if he saved it and had the structures to do so, and I looked it up and honestly couldn’t answer him.

1 Like

I would not be agreed with having the same consumable/limited use item always available…
If you “have” the card (once), you can pay once to add a “use” on that card, so you are limited to the numbers of cards, it could not represent how many you could make in your workbench with your plans, that way you could add any quantity you could afford when you have the card.

If you don’t use that item in the battlefield, you could sell it, losing the “endless” card with its paid “use”, or you need to use a Shed, getting back the “endless” card without the paid “use” and no caps.

If you use that item in the battlefield (the paid “use”), would you still need to have a Shed to store this “endless” card? and could you even sell this card if you don’t have enough energy, or if you prefer another item? This would be really weird from my point of view.
Maybe you can buy the item, you can use it in the game, and you don’t need any Shed to use the same item again in the next Battle, but taking back that item wich would be available later without using a “physical space” (Shed) would be weird too.

I cannot see the logical way of playing Settlement Mode this way, even more when this Mode seems to add a good RPG component to the game, and even more with Homestead.

It was my understanding so far that any and each item you get via structures are 1 piece of item. Whether it’s a weapon or a stimpak, you have 1 of that. If you have more than 1 of a consumables and assign it to the same unit you use counting tokens but it’s more like a simplification of physical card usage.

I agree with DK-dark especially from a narrative standpoint that if you use a stimpak you just discard the card and in the next settlement phase you can find a new stimpak (or other aid item) with your structure(s).

Settlement mode is a constant debate between me and my friend whom I play with. He’s always complaining that you have to spend so much caps/energy on structures like stores and maintance sheds and lockers just to keep/use your hard earned items. But the topic of consumables were never a debate: if you use it during the battle it’s gone.

1 Like

I think consumables sit in a weird spot regardless of how you slice it in Homestead or Settlement Mode.

You either have a slight narrative wrinkle with the fix suggested earlier or you have a version which makes more ‘story sense’ (each single consumable is unique so needs to be found individually) but severely hampers characters or players that want to use consumables, as they have to search for every single item.

I’d rather have the latter as it empowers players to do things, rather than prevents them.

Agree. Especially because we have structures like Cooking station and Drink/First Aid item stations to build. If every time you draw an item from these structures and you ‘unlock’ it it would mean that after a while you cannot draw any new item from that specific item deck only duplicates.

1 Like

This is like having a more realistic experience, like in the new Survival Mode, or not. As using limited use items in multiple models units instead of linking the individual item to an individual model.

So then how does it work for a unit like a Raider Psycho who starts with 4 grenades, or the Raider Psycho Outlaw who starts with 4 Molotov cocktails? There’s no way you will have enough stores or maintenance sheds to retain unused grenades and Molotov for multiple psychos in you force… their AI card says they always have access to these though, so can you just rebuy them (4 of each for each model?!) for the next game? And where do these unlimited supplies of grenades and Molotovs come from?…not to mention, the psychos really want access to the Psycho chem, as their namesake suggests, but it is not on their unit card, and not on their AI card, and you run into the same problem if you have multiple psychos that want to not use their psycho, and save their chem after the battle to use in a future battle…you’ll be constantly fishing for psycho Chems in the ‘Use Settlement’ phase and that’s AFTER you invest in a chem workbench and/or multiple First Aid stand structures.

But those items are Standard Equipment, they have that minimum access, and they cannot be retained or sold. If not…
Maybe some Raiders units should have a native access to some chems.
In any case, that chem is not a Limited use item as Grenades are

1 Like

Oh that’s interesting, I assumed a chem was a consumable like a stimpack, or a food or drink item…Is that not the case? Can you take a chem more than once in a single battle?

They are Limited use items, the difference is the effect, stimpacks are instant and drugs are diminishing. You can have 1 item with diminishing effect active at any moment, so you could carry 4 Psycho, but you are not going to be able to spend them in a single game (maybe 2, a Psycho every 3 rounds). They cannot be shared too.
In the videogame, you could use alcohol and drugs without any problem, but here only 1, and you need to use those items in a single model unit.

1 Like

I guess the point i was trying to make was that having to spend 60 caps to retain a card you picked up in the last game, and then 150 caps to be able to take it into the next battle, if it’s a single, single-use (limited-use) frag grenade, that’s a ton of investment to just lose the grenade after tossing it (I get that it makes logical and narrative sense)…but the Raider Psycho gets to take 4 frag grenades into every game because it is standard equipment listed on it’s AI card…which makes zero logical or narrative sense when you think about how rare this stuff is in the wasteland….and taking into account the complex settlement mechanics in the previous example just to hold on to and equip a single grenade that’s gone forever if you toss it.

Maybe 2 as Standard would be logical, they are pillagers

1 Like