If a character loses one of their special archetype Items due to a Consequence during a heist (eg the Cutter has her Fine Heavy Melee Weapon knocked into a canal when disarmed, or similar), is the item replenished automatically during the next Downtime?
Or do you need to do something special to obtain a replacement?
I’d probably just ask the player to describe how they’re gearing back up. Give me a 30 second montage, even if it’s just “I have a storage unit which is my backup armory.”
I’d assume that if it’s on the sheet, it means they can get another one pretty easily.
Now if the Fine Heavy Melee Weapon had sentimental value (“My family’s ancestral blade! NO!!!”) that sounds like an XP-worthy complication…
The Hound’s pet is kind of a special case. I might make training a new one a brief LTP, maybe an acquire an asset depending on the level of use and attachment that was previously shown? Otherwise if the crew has reasonable access to stuff, I usually just let it reappear. My group has a long history with Mutants & Masterminds, where devices bought with character points are easily replaced, rebuilt, or found.
Great question. It kind of falls in line with another item question: “do your weapons upgrade tier when your crew advances tier?”
As usual with Blades, the best answer to the question is that it depends on your group and your goals for play. :/
If I’m not sure about something, I like to throw it to my players. “Hey cutter, so you lost your weapon. Would it be interesting if getting a new one is a thing? Or Do you keep a spare?”
My personal thoughts on the matter are pretty much just in line with the mantra “say yes or roll dice.” If it’s important and there’s interesting outcomes and risks at play, then roll for getting it. Otherwise you got the new item automatically.
Roll or not, you can bet I might use that replacement item as a vector in a devils bargain down the line. “you know that gun you got? Yeah turns out it was stolen and the owners been tracking it down.”
My gut says the fact is on their sheet means they can lose it and gain access to another easily, so they recover it automatically during their next downtime action.
However, I could see a case for it being recoverable mid-score too.
As the GM, I frequently destroy equipment as consequences. Roll a 4 while trying to open a ghost door for a rapid escape? You succeed, but you’ll use up your Arcane Implements to do it in time. You’ll have to restock before the next job. For anything that’s not fictionally special, I just allow restocks without bothering to detail it, the same way that the Leech can restock any common alchemicals as long as they have access to a workshop or a supplier.
I would treat it differently depending on the kind of Blades game I was running. If it was pulp heroics style, those details are glossed over as fairly irrelevant to the story your cooperatively creating – and like those above, it would be recovered quickly. However – if we’d previously established at the start of the campaign that it was going to be a grittier, survival type game, then while assets may be abstract in the rules – the resource management of them requires roleplaying and hard choices. Then lost equipment must require time and effort to recover and everything is more of a struggle. It just depends on the kind of Blades game everyone prefers.
One of my player’s Spider is sitting with a consequence of “no booze” for 4 sessions now, after spending his Fine bottle of whiskey in an attempt to impress Bazso Baz… Due to the way it was described as fictionally as specifically being hard to import Dagger Islandy Whiskey, we decided he needed a down time action to acquire more; but he hasn’t bothered yet.