We have run into a problem during Crew Creation with Thieves. Because of our character setup, we can’t technically take “Everyone Steals”, which actually fits quite well with the fiction.
I’m pretty sure that most Lurks worth their salt would take a pip in Prowl, Slip, Secure and Finesse anyway, so if you have a Lurk in your crew it rules out this (pretty useful) Special Ability.
Furthermore, the actual text pretty much rules out ever taking this SA past Crew Creation, because later in the game surely more and more people are going to have level 0 in the required Actions and Effects.
Would it be better to just have this either (a) not have the requirement to have Level 0 in the Actions / Effects or (b) boost the max level of these Actions / Effects.
I guess if the Lurk takes all three then they miss out on the benefit? The fictional tag of ‘Everyone Steals’ was enough of a grab for our first play through. It allowed for a few DB directly plugged into this hook, that we otherwise might have glossed over.
Maybe John Harper, there needs to be a little blurb on the non-mechanical advantages of special abilities, i.e.: their fictional power?
I’m also confused by this one. Why only at zero dots? I could understand it if there were escalating costs, but there aren’t.
Personally I would change the wording to something like “The skill chosen must be the lowest ranking of the listed abilities and effects” That covers it nicely if it is taken after crew creation, I think.
What about: Decide on the Crew and the Sa first, then you know if you get a benefit from it to count it in…
I agree with Pavel Berlin just do it. As long as the GM ok with it and the players are in agreement, you’re golden. 🙂
Given how the mechanics work, I think a Lurk shouldn’t take dots in prowl, slip, and secure. All 3 of these are great for sneaks and thieves, which is the problem. Since the player chooses the skill for an action, complimentary skills are bad because they overlap too much. A sneak could probably get away with just one of those skills 90-95% of the time if the player just gives some thought of how to sell their best skill to the action. Doing so adds more flavor to how they operate. The reason why a Lurk should care about everybody steals is because it garunteed that thier whole team have some skill in sneaking about meaning they will all be easily able to participate in teamwork maneuvers involving stealth.
Hmmm. Maybe the “must be zero” requirement is too nit-picky. I’ll think about dropping that.