Hey Scoundrels.
Had a question about the mechanical interaction of two of the smuggler special abilities and wondered what you’d make of them. In question:
Like Part of the Family: Create one of your vehicles as a
cohort (use the vehicle edges and flaws, below). Its quality is equal
to your Tier +1.
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.
Would taking both of these special abilities mean that your vehicle would count as cohort allowing it to take downtime actions during downtime? If so, how would you play that out fictionally?
Cheers!
Presumably, establishing a vehicle as a cohort means it also has a crew to drive it around, in which case I’d say sure, that vehicle could have a Downtime action.
MAGICAL TALKING BOAT/CAR/BATTLE GOAT/GIANT BAT
D-d-d-dangerboat!
I would propose that it can, if you go on a score to get your vehicle possessed first.
Serious answer: like Eli said.
Joke answer: Wacky talking car, baby!
Another angle is a vehicle cohort could have a Downtime action indirectly, by helping the crew finish other activities so smoothly and hassle free that they have more time.
Like, all the crew’s boats have these niggling engine problems and hull leaks that are never truly fixed, just cleaned and patched every few days. Except the Night Treasurer (cohort), that boat stays fixed; she hasn’t stalled or leaked in weeks. Weeks! And she’s been going day and night while others are in dock. That really saved our hide when.
Two words: Possessed vehicle.
Oliver Granger I love that angle. Abstract it. I’ll pocket that one for sure.
Possessed boats and the helpfulness answers above are all great. It’s also entirely reasonable to interpret it so that you only trigger All Hands when, well, you have hands to set to it. Cohorts can be lost and it’s plausible for a crew that has All Hands to have no cohorts and it stands to reason that not all cohorts can perform all fictions that players might ascribe a downtime action too.
Follow the fiction. If the downtime action is reducing heat by paying off the cops, you need to send a cohort that can actually do that. Being creative and saying that the boat helps the main crew do that justifying the trigger is just fine, but don’t feel obliged. “One of your cohorts may” is very gentle language, and even were it not, if the fiction demands changes to how Downtime works or any other system to bring it to life? The fiction comes before the text.
P.S. To be clear, when I say don’t feel obliged I mean more obliged to offer than to accept. That is, there’s usually no advantage to not having the PCs trigger a special ability.
One circumstance where putting your foot down can be very clearly in service to the fiction is in providing contrast. If players previously only used the ability with a non-vehicle cohort which has since been taken away by consequences, getting the same benefit as before by establishing the preceding fiction without really doing anything weakens those narrative consequences.
So when I say don’t feel obliged, I mean if PCs are asking without much preference either way or you’re speculating without the PCs having asked. Otherwise, fiction is really flexible. You can almost always find a way to give them the bonus that doesn’t feel like cheating and adds to the fiction.
That sounds bananas to me (just giving it to them). First thought for me is that.. dont wanna kill all the fun here, but Vehicles aren’t even actually cohorts. when they are “created as a cohort,” they simply inherit the mechanical systems of cohorts of taking edges and flaws, and they even have their own set thereof to show how the vehicle isn’t a free agent like a character. So no, the combination of the two seem to me to combine to grant them some possessed thing too, the fiction comes first. PCs get action rolls, NPCs and everything else get quality rolls if needed but often it is better to just rule the effect of the action according to what is being used, and action roll to find the outcome. Cohort rules change those basic rules in specific ways, allowing players to lead them (and roll dice too for them in the action roll). All About the Family just gives the things it says in the special ability, not all the things that cohorts get.
Functionally, what they want is to add a type, like “spirit engine” to a vehicle created as a cohort. It’s.. weird maybe, and spiritual stuff seems like the answer. So sure, they can try, since I’d of course want to let the players to have their idea that a possessed vehicle could exist, and then do things for them better than a typical cohort- but I’d think that has to be the product of actions (and hence rolls, likely using Attune) with possible consequences, before even being in position to do it. And I’d argue they’d have to spend downtime activities on this as a long term project to keep this benefit around. That is, typically I’d require an action roll for even one instance of this – so a suitable project seems only fair. And an opportunity for that would be sought out or made available to facilitate the project’s realization.