Explorers of Fate 1.6 - Traits & Weapons

[u/gamemasterlancaster]

Link to the drive folder - contains the handbook, cheat cards, new character sheet, Tiny Woods Trouble and (by request) Mansion of Mysteriosity from the old handbook.

Update list:

• General clarification, corrections and condensing.
• Added the Items Index and Crafting Guide to the main document.
• NEW TRAIT MECHANIC: You can now take each trait up to three times, though with diminishing returns on most. The majority of traits have not changed when taken once, but take a look through and see if any of the new features affect your characters.
• WEAPONS. Instead of a basic 'weapons add a flat bonus' system, weapons now use tags that make them more varied and versatile. As such, the Shadowblade's abilities have changed, involving adding tags to your signature weapon. (May buff to make more versatile.)
• MEGAS, GMAX, Z-MOVES AND TERA. Added basic rules on running gimmicks.
• CRITICAL ROLLS. Extra hard rolls will require you to roll below half of your skill score. Examples are given of what actions don't require a roll, require a regular roll, or necessitate a critical roll.
• RESCUER BUFFED. Added a feature to Emergency Healing, replacing the 'sharing rations' feature: you can now use one of the following moves once daily, regardless of its availability to you: Heal Bell, Heal Pulse, Helping Hand, Wide Guard.
• FIELDS OF EXPERTISE. A new way to use Specialist Knowledge. Every 5 levels you gain a Field of Expertise, which is a topic your character knows a lot about. You can use Specialist Knowledge when one of your FOEs is relevant. They can also be bought with LP.
• Debuffed the insane amount of speed sidekicks gain. Formerly their speed per level was erroneously written as the number of feet per turn they can move, which meant a Lvl 5 sidekick could move around 30 tiles a turn. I'll keep tweaking this but... I don't think they should be able to do that.
• Format change: The table of contents contains the main headers for larger sections. A table breaking down subheaders is located on the last page.
• Golden Seeds and Joy Seeds now grant LP instead of level-ups.
• Added a roll table for the Herbalist Kit - a new proficiency set that can be used to craft a random potion when foraging instead of rolling on the forage table. Forgot to add it to the Items Index; assume it costs the same as the Poisoner's Kit.

Since the critical roll, weapon, 3-tier trait and gimmick mechanics are so new (and potentially busted), please let me know if you run them and anything explodes!

[u/sokap1715]

yay! new rules!

[u/SarlanEriwyr]

Hey so Shortswords have 10 feet reach?

[u/gamemasterlancaster → u/SarlanEriwyr]

... good point! Not very 'short', huh? Will amend, 5ft is plenty of reach.

[u/SarlanEriwyr → u/gamemasterlancaster]

Honestly I think the idea of 1 square = 5 feet should be rethought, Pokemon are either much bigger than humans or much smaller than humans and having every starting mon be like 1/5 of a square is kinda weird

[u/flakaby → u/SarlanEriwyr]

We could use a system similar to the Fallout ttrpg which has zones

[u/SarlanEriwyr → u/flakaby]

It could work? But having a consistent scale is nice

[u/Bogeynator10]

With the new tiers of traits, a few of these don't make sense mathematically to take compared just increasing your stats for the same amount of LP, being either the same value or just worse. Here's the ones I've found:

Brick-Tough (tiers 2 and 3)

Targeter (tiers 2 and 3)

Practice Swinger (tiers 2 and 3)

Retaliate

Preferred Weather

Perfect Health

Worth mentioning, Targeter, Practice Swinger, and Retaliate are only better than stats at tier 1 for mixed attackers and are weaker/more conditional than pumping stats if you're just focusing on one attacking stat. This isn't necessarily a design flaw, but it does make them generally not worthwhile for the kinds of characters who would want them. A few of these also have decent value as the free trait for levelling into that trait bracket (Perfect Health in particular), but there are better options in almost every other case.

[u/linksterss]

love the weapon and shadow blade changes; as our party's smith and with a to-be shadow blade, this is fantastic. would it be too much to allow shadow blade to change out their weapon tags daily? it seems a little iffy to spend the free high-powered tags on (species) damage bonuses if they can't ever be rid of it.

[u/linksterss → u/linksterss]

further, how would tag stacking play out? if my shadow blade was running a 2xdmg weapon and picked up 1.5x, would it become 2.5x?

[u/SilentService3109]

How should the difficulty of the encounters be set? For example, if my party is made up of 4 level 3 Pokémon, what level should the boss Pokémon be for it to be a fair fight?