I’m going through the pdfs now (quite lovely) and had q couple of questions.
The Quickstart (and the combat rules on page 32 of the Player’s Guide) note that melee fighting attacks are made with agility + fighting (and ranged are coordination + fighting). But on page 47, with the attribute descriptions, under Brawn it says “Brawn is used to make melee attacks.” I presume that is wrong and should be “Agility is used to make melee attacks” under the previous attribute header?
The Learning New Spells section on page 154 – this is only for “battlefield” magic, right? Rituals do not need to be learned with 10 XP before being used? Or does a character need to learn a ritual with XP before using it? (If so, the rules are unclear on that.)
Also, on page 82 of the Gamemaster’s Guide, the sword-cane has, among others, the quality of “precise.” I can’t find that quality anywhere. Should it be deleted or was it left out of the new qualities listed in the guide? Thanks.
Doing my first read-through of the PDF. The sidebar for “Prone” on page 28 says that “Using the Hit the Dirt Ability to become prone increases the difficulty of being attacked by 2”. However, the specific rule for Hit the Dirt, on page 29 (where the sidebar also directs you) states that, when using it, you “can immediately … drop prone (which adds +1 to the difficulty of ranged attacks)”. That by itself isn’t actually how the prone rules are written (because of Reach), but it does imply you follow the normal rules for being prone (further evidenced by the following phrase, “in addition to the normal effects of being prone”).
While the page 29 rules for Hit the Dirt do provide benefits beyond being prone (can move a short distance in addition to dropping prone; gain +2 Cover and Morale resistance), difficulty increases are said to follow the regular prone rules (+1 difficulty to out-of-Reach ranged attacks, and presumably the regular -1 difficulty to attacks made within Reach) whereas the sidebar presents a different benefit (+2 difficulty to out-of-Reach attacks, +1 difficulty to in-Reach attacks).
Actually, the Prone sidebar feels rather wonky to me in general. The first two bullet points refer to how attacks are affected when YOU are prone. The last two bullet points refer to how attacks are affected against prone ENEMIES. This reads as redundant because the effects are almost identical (could be combined into “attacks against a prone target”) except that bullet point 2 adds that ranged attacks (against you) made by attackers within Reach are also at -1 difficulty (like melee attacks) while bullet point 6 doesn’t have that addition, indicating that is not the case for attacks against enemies. Which I think is not supposed to be the case? Splitting it up into “attacks against you” and “attacks against enemies” also creates the implication that bullet point 3, “You cannot take the Rush action”, only applies to you and not enemies.
Because I’m very much trying to avoid work, I made a table about it, just to highlight how the rules read now:
I don’t know how to create a new thread so I post it here.
In the players guide dying rules are: roll a challenge dice and if you roll an effect you die.
In the quickstart: you roll 1 challenge dice, +1 per turn. You die if you roll 2 effects.
What is the good rule?
With the QuickStart you cannot die on the first turn, since you cannot roll 2 effects with only 1 dice, but with the players guide you could die on the first turn since you only need to roll an effect.
Perhaps a better way to write the rule would be :“Ranged attack vs prone target increases difficulty by 1 (or 2 if using Hit The Dirt), unless within reach.”
Finally getting a chance to actually read through everything, after only glancing through it before, and I quickly remembered a part of the rules that I find really confusing - or at least confusingly written.
I really need some help understanding Extended Tests. I understand their intended purpose. I also understand the test difficulty, as well as resistance. Breakthroughs and the stress track are where things get hard to follow. I’m sure it’s just because of the way things are worded - and that the rules do not appear to include a complete example of an extended test that is carried out until completion.
The Breakthroughs paragraph states that the number of breakthroughs required is the magnitude and once you have earned that many breakthroughs, you have passed the extended test.
Then the Stress Track paragraph states that “the stress track represents how much work is needed to resolve the problem”. Which suggests that filling the stress track would mean the extended test is passed. Reading discussions of this mechanic for other games, it appears that’s not the case. The stress track seems to serve no purpose other than triggering a single breakthrough when filled. Is that right?
Then there’s the bit about generating breakthroughs and what they do. If I’m reading this right, breakthroughs are generated in 4 situations:
5 stress is inflicted by a single test
the stress track is filled
any stress is inflicted by a test when the stress track is already filled
the GM decides to award a breakthrough for any reason
Finally, do all breakthroughs generate one of those additional effects (difficulty reduction, resistance reduction, etc.) or can a breakthrough just count towards the magnitude and nothing else?
I looked at the section on Extended Tests in the GM section, but that wasn’t much better.
An important rules clarification about how Cover and Morale work in A!C (as opposed to other 2d20-based RPGs) from the Modiphius Discord:
Nathan Dowdell (he/him) 2d20 Dev
Yeah, it was a decision made fairly late in play. The idea being that, given the WW2 setting - lots of shooting, but very few people wearing armour - people would be taking cover a lot, and it would speed up play to just treat it as a flat value rather than dice. (the relative rarity of armour is also why characters get a bonus to armour from Brawn - characters needed to be a little more survivable than they already were).
Morale and Cover are treated the same as well - both are fixed values, there’s no random amounts of resistance in A!C
Can’t see how to create a new thread, so here goes…
I can find several references to ‘Morale’ being used, getting bonuses, being sapped,
But, where is Morale tracked on the character sheet?
Does everyone start with zero morale?
Am I missing something or has it simply been missed from the otherwise pretty character sheets and character creation?
tia
Morale is to Courage, as Cover is to Armour - as described on p.33 of the Player’s Guide, Morale is a form of “conditional” resistance, that applies on top of a character’s normal defences, and it reduces Mental stress inflicted on the character. Like Cover, it isn’t tied to the character personally, but rather comes about by circumstances, and can be granted by the GM, gained by spending Momentum (p 37 lists an option to buy up to 3 Morale for yourself or an ally by spending up to 3 Momentum, but it only lasts a turn), or there are a couple of talents (Seen Worse and Rousing Speaker) and spells (Ravens of Odin, Attenuation, and the ritual Baldur’s Shield) which grant Morale.
Morale is particularly useful for spellcasters, as the mental damage inflicted by casting spells is reduced by Courage and Morale.
One simple contradiction in the current Achtung!Cthulhu PG:
p.32 for Melee:
"Melee: Attempt an Agility + Fighting test with
a difficulty of 1, opposed by the target’s own Agility + Fighting test, also difficulty 1. "
p.47 Brawn:
“? Brawn is used to make melee attacks.
? Brawn adds bonus challenge dice ( ) to melee attacks.”
No statement about Agility being used in melee attacks is made there.
So: Are Melee Attacks in Achtung!Cthulhu governed by the Agility or the Brawn Attribute? Is there an erratum already?
Apparently the mistake is on PG p.47. Brawn is used to make melee attacks only by NPCs with the Brutal X property (GMG p.153).
AFAICS, finding this in the guides is not easy at all. Referring for it to the 2d20 System Reference Document is not really safe.
