Crew rules seem to indicate that when a cohort has quality higher than 1 (say..4), and that adding a type (which I can do twice in a single crew advance) means that cohort now has 4d in doing the Things covered by the new type(s) when it was previously 0d.
[Q1] Is that right?
That would make a highly invested cohort a way to get dice in lots of actions. Which, I guess it’s all in the level of detail you want for cohorts too, and I see reasons why this might be intentional design to keep bookkeeping down, but it would stretch the narrative a bit for me for that hypothetical to happen, so I am wondering if all is right here, and if so –
[Q2] how to sidestep or overcome fictional dissonance that if it comes up?
That’s my reading of it as well. Either 0d or [Quality]d. Which seems a little weird for a Quality 4 Expert, but maybe okay for a Quality 1? And yeah, it does seem like a good way to get a lot of dice, but then, the guy might have bad day and take a bullet to the face, so. Risks.
I imagine that as the crew ‘levels up’ a cohort, their background and personality are going to get fleshed out more. If you start out with a Cultist, the crew probably isn’t sending them out to do Thug-related things. But if they add Thug later, you could say they had previous experience in this area, and it’s not too dissonant if it just didn’t come up previously.
If it DID come up, then you might argue that really a 25% chance of success isn’t THAT bad. And perhaps they had some natural talent for Thuggish-ness, and after a week with dedicated trainers, they’re really coming along. (And maybe don’t give the cohort access to all of their dice for a bit, if the table has trouble believing they could improve so drastically so quickly.)
My group hasn’t gotten a cohort, so I haven’t had to address this yet. I think the training angle makes more sense if the crew is improving the cohort with a long-term project, but with advances, not so much. Maybe flashback style? Like, the cohort has been training all along, but only now that the crew can afford to add a Type does all that training pay off.
Heh, you and me are on the same wavelength. Personal opinion – two-type cohorts are the hottest thing. Everything gets better if it’s also a Rook.
You could just limit it like that – two types max, don’t go crazy.
Alternatively, you can indeed spend 4.5 advances on bulking up one of your cohorts in that way – but that’s roughly 8 sessions, which is a lot of time to think about how to make this thing work. If you’re spending that much effort on this thing, that’s now your crews deal. Explore it!
You can also just follow the fiction-first rule and have the players making the right moves in fiction be a prerequisite for getting the right advance. So you recently gone up a tier, and your crew of Bandits has stolen some severosi ghost horses. +/Rover, and hand everyone out highwaymen bandanas.
Also, cohorts have no stress to spend. So unless a PC is along with them – they might be powerful, but will also lead to complications and have occasional failures.
If this guy is as good as the PCs, isn’t he possibly going to think about going into business for himself sometime?
you could gate keep it with master training. Put the different cohort types under the different training. If the PCs can’t get 4 dice in a skill, doesn’t make much sense for a cohort to be able to.
Am I crazy, or did the Quality of a Cohort used to be limited by your tier?
You could also tweak the “add a new type” cost to be as many crew upgrades as the cohort’s current quality. That way they don’t just suddenly go from non-thugs to supreme badass thugs; it takes significant investment in training, materials or whatever.
You could say “If it doesn’t make sense in the fiction, you can’t do it.”
So when your team’s arcanist, Grey Sally, wants to add “sparkwright” to her wheelhouse, maybe all it takes is a training montage and inhaling the right ghost essence. When she wants to add “bodyguard,” the group has to come up with long-term training plan and/or some trauma, in order to make it justifiable.
Ask your players how it happened, why it makes sense, and then be a fan of their answer.
This rule is being modified a bit in the final release. Here it is now:
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Add an additional type to a gang by spending two crew upgrades. When a cohort performs actions for which its types apply, it uses its full quality rating. Otherwise, its quality is zero. A given Cohort can have up to 2 types.
Your cohorts have Quality equal to your Tier. (Some crew upgrades will add the “Elite” feature to a Cohort, which gives them +1d when they make a roll for a given Type.)
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Some crew types now start with a cohort and an “Elite” upgrade (like the Breakers), so they begin with a Quality 1 cohort, just as they do in the current rules.
I really like that version. Thumbs up, will start using immediately.
I like that a lot. I think overall it makes cohorts easier to use and less micromanagey. Great change!
I agree, that makes a lot of sense. Most everything else scales with tier. Should that first line read “Add an additional type to a gang or expert”?
It does mean that for most crews, getting a cohort early won’t do a lot for them. Which feels appropriate–probably the PCs should be the ones establishing their crew early on, not a buffed-up NPC.
Steven Dodds Yes, it should read “gang or expert.”
+Steven Dodds (for some reason tagging you not working) yes at quality 1 its fine, however at higher quality and with more types is the subject I am talking about.
“Didn’t come up previously”? but that does come up as soon as you talk about the cohort’s type, so… I don’t see how it could have been avoided.
Daumantas Lipskis “4.5 advances”? More like 4 upgrades; and that many is easy to get, since crews always get 2 upgrades for each advance. Also, this gets worse as more upgrades are spent on the cohort.
Aaron Berger re: needing Mastery to get more than 3d. That came up too, and I wasn’t even considering that with my question. I am inclined to agree though. If the PCs can’t get 4 dots in something, neither should the cohort they are training.
Mike Pureka re: limit based on Tier. I don’t think there is, or ever has been, such a limitation. And I only half-like the one you are proposing. I think cohorts should be able to surpass the PCs tier in dice
Will Scott I don’t agree this is the solution. Why would a player bother using an advance on that if it also means they have to justify it in reverse fictionally? The upgrade itself covers the player in that regard, and we should catch up the fiction up to account for the mechanical bonus they just got, but not also add more fictional burden to the players in order to spend their XP.
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I think the fiction of a training montage is a fine answer in some cases, but I also think it’s insufficient without some limits on the rate at which a cohort can advance (PCs can’t advance this quickly, why should NPCs?). I have less of problem with the cohorts being better than the PCs, than the rate at which this can happen in a story, and the way it can easily sidestep the usual progression leading to fiction that is stretched thin in most cases (and downright unbelievable in extreme ones).
My thoughts are to institute a small houserule which would limit number of types and quality per cohort equal to the crew’s Tier +2. Like, if you are Tier 0 your cohorts can have 1 type and 1d quality, and at tier 1 they can each have 2 types and 1d quality, or 1 type and 2d quality.
Also, a global limit of 3 unless Mastery Training upgrade is marked.
Mark Cleveland Massengale Well, apparently there soon will be a limit of quality to Tier. 😉
EDIT: I got hasty in my reply. Had to edit it a little to reflect that quality does in fact cost 2 upgrades. My concerns should now be accurately expressed above though.
Thanks John Harper for the update. I like those changes
Mike Pureka yea, and to my concern, there is also the option to go Elite with them. Frickin genius. And hey I said I like half the idea 🙂
John Harper again I worry needlessly. I do wonder if this was a flashback to when you game-tinkered like a bouse, or an “action taken during the score” though 🙂
Mark Cleveland Massengale It’s a reversion to an older rule, but trying to keep the current crews intact as much as possible. Sean Nittner and I have been going through everything looking for inconsistencies, and it highlighted the need for Tier to regain one of its former purposes.
Okay, so I am not seeing anything you aren’t already on top of, or that I can’t easily tweak.
Oh yea, Tier – no longer rolled for Reduce Heat. so that means.. crap I need new thread
John Harper quality equal to tier for cohorts makes a ton of sense. We should look at that for other things which have quality ratings (Vehicles, Hunting Grounds, Product, etc). I can see there being reasons to go both ways with those. Making them all equal in quality to your tier is simpler, but allowing the to scale independently allows a crew to focus in one area and not in others. I think that simplicity should win out though, and if a crew wants to get a something that is higher quality, they can do long term projects to make that happen.
Yeah, I’m conforming a lot of those into the same Tier scale. Same goes for acquiring an asset, for instance.
(Poor means Tier -1. Standard means your Tier. Fine means Tier +1. Exquisite is Tier +2.)
Hunting Grounds, Territory, etc. don’t have quality rating anymore, so they’re not affected.
John Harper oooh, that opens up some new options for moves. Something like “Your Tier counts as one higher when acquiring assets”, etc.
It also implies some interesting effects for the Spider’s Jailbird ability where you’re considered +1 Tier while incarcerated.
Sean Nittner given your thoughts on “independently scale focusing” on crew things… would there be a place for a “+1 Quality to Burglary Hunting Grounds” as a Crew Upgrade? or is that too underwhelming to cost a crew upgrade in regards to something compared to upping a cohort. (Some crews might focus more on grounds, than cohorts?)
Answering this might help w/ where you were going w/ the cohorts/vehicles/grounds/products thing. 🙂