Some crew questions:
1. Can Cohorts participate in Downtime Activities?
Because I can’t figure out where to use Adept Gang or certain type of Experts(like scholar, engineer, artificer etc). Can they do LTPs, rituals, craft things or stuff(with one of the PCs present? I know they won’t give you a free downtime)?
2. Does NPC contact you get on character/crew creation count as having same Quality as your crew tier?
3. How do you handle non-Cohort vehicle?
Vehicle upgrades are available to all crews, but only Smugglers can create them as cohorts.
They have second upgrade box which give them Armor, which means they can get damaged. How would you repair it in downtime? How would you handle destroyed vehicle – do they get replacement? Etc.
Some really long responses, hopefully they help.
1. As far as I can recall, the book only mentions PCs getting two free downtime actions after each score, so cohorts are out of luck. Cohorts are useful during a score and in a flashback, but if the PCs want to use a cohort in downtime, they’d have to use one of their own actions (or buy one with coin or rep) first.
Also, the Smugglers’ special ability “All Hands: During downtime, one of your cohorts may perform a downtime activity for the crew to acquire an asset, reduce heat, or work on a long-term project.” implies that cohorts cannot otherwise perform downtime actions.
2. If you want, but not necessarily. The book doesn’t say, as far as I can tell, so you get to pick. My table’s crew of Assassins is on good terms with Irimina, a viscous noble–I have a hard time imagining a vicious noble being Tier 0. But maybe she’s only willing to put so much effort into helping the crew, say, relating to their tier.
Alternatively, let friends and contacts have a quality/tier that seems reasonable, but make their favors cost something reasonable as well. “You want the Tier 4 noble to help you out? Sure, but she’s expecting a pretty big favor in return … Do any of you have history with the Hive?”
3. A couple of things to consider here: Smugglers get [I think just the one?] vehicle as a cohort, and it gets a harm track, but otherwise vehicle harm isn’t explicitly tracked on a sheet. You still can (and probably should) track it within the fiction, but if the crew aren’t smugglers, it might not be that interesting to deal with fixing it up afterwards.
As far as I can tell, the book doesn’t mention repairing vehicles, so if the crew aren’t smugglers and/or their vehicle isn’t a cohort, then you can pick how to handle it. Some options: let it get fixed in the background for free; make it unavailable for the next score; charge coin to get it fixed; charge downtime actions, like Acquire an Asset or an LTP. Or keep track of damage as if it were a cohort, and use those rules. (Pick an option everyone feels good about, basically.)
Also, I’m not convinced that the line about adding armor is meant to invoke the Armor game mechanic–I think it’s meant to make you feel more comfortable riding in a carriage that’s being shot at when there are a couple inches of iron between you and the bullets. Consider also that the Reaver ability grants armor (the book puts it in bold, so I think this one is meant to count as an armor box) to the crew’s vehicles, but the crew can still purchase a second level in their vehicle. So you have to decide to treat that as Armor and +Heavy armor, or as in-fiction armor and game-mechanics armor. (Also the Cutter’s Leader ability grants 1 armor to cohorts, which feels like it’s not meant to apply here, but technically could.)
That being said, I can’t imagine any problems in using the cohort harm track and counting armor as Armor slots, if you want.
For vehicle destruction? Again, I don’t think the book mentions it. If it’s a major plot point (rival faction took out their vehicle to cripple them during a war, for example) then it might require an Acquire Asset roll to get back, or an LTP, or they might have to buy the crew upgrade again.
But if the table is less interested in the consequences of losing their vehicle, or if the adventure is more lighthearted (maybe they ramped their carriage into a canal–the question we should be asking is “what happened to the goats?”), then maybe just have it quietly replaced in the background. Tier might also factor in here, where a Tier 2 or 3 crew probably has an easier time finding a replacement carriage or boat than a Tier 0. Lots of options.
1. I took a tip (suggestion? Rule that was changed later?) from the YouTube videos. Basically, if the character involves a friend with their down time activity, they get a +1 die. Strangely, for my game, the players tend to either take who would be fun to be there with (“The Hound is far from insane- which is strange in my crew- I need to add some legitimacy to me consort”) or refuse to take anyone (“Its personal!”)
2. I treat it as one higher, if I need to treat it as any.
3. I think- this hasn’t come up- that I I would say the damage was repaired during downtime without a roll. If I thought it was important, I would give it a 4 part clock (plus 2 level of coolness) to repair the damage. simple wagon? 4 clock to repair. That wagon with the fancy trim (+1 level of coolness) and the hidden weaponry (+1 level of coolness)? 8 Clock.
3.5 If they bought it with a crew advance, they should get a replacement without issue. The replacement does not need to have the cool weapons or fancy trim the first one had. Make the scoundrels suffer for their mistakes!
1. You can lead cohorts in a group action or you can Command them. So if a PC wants help Studying blueprints from an expert engineer cohort, and then more help Tinkering to building the final device, the PC rolls their appropriate action and then adds dice for the tier of the cohort.
Regarding friends helping with downtime activities, it’s not just a suggestion from the youtube recordings, it’s in the rules on the first page of “Downtime activities”.
“For any downtime activity, take +1d to the roll if a friend or contact helps you.”
1. Yes. They can participate but not lead, as usual. Players define the projects. And they work on them using the usual teamwork rules.
2. Contacts don’t have an assigned quality based on tier. Quality is a thing that anything can have, and which may become the basis for a dice roll when you want to disclaim decision making. Otherwise, use an action roll. If you need a quality for things which aren’t “yours” in the same way as cohorts and stuff, judge it.
3. Things and people can get damaged either way. Use LTPs or cohort healing rules as needed to handle healing
Note that any crew can Veteran to take LPotF smugglers special ability. So vehicles acquired or earned with upgrade are just equipment until that ability is taken. I.e. it can be lost or broken like a gun could be, and doesn’t get armor unless it has it (which the ability provides a second route to armor, or an LTP might produce, etc).