Blades in the Dark: Game Questions – Page 67 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Hi there! I have two quick questions, folks…

1) Acquire Asset says on a crit result you get an “exceptional” item. Alchemy rules refer to certain alchemical goods as “exquisite” items for the purposes of Acquire Asset. Safe to assume that “exceptional” and “exquisite” are meant to be one and the same?

2) A Tier 1 crew with Weak hold starts a war. As per p.56, this temporarily reduces their hold by 1 and can knock them down a Tier, so they become a Tier 0 crew with Weak hold for the war’s duration. When the war ends and the lost hold is returned to the crew, what does their new status become?

a) A Tier 1 crew with Weak hold

b) A Tier 0 crew with Firm hold

c) Something else

Thanks, everyone!

This is about as minor as it gets but.

This is about as minor as it gets but… In the quickstart (v6) the Lampblacks list the Fog Hounds as allies, but in Vigilantes the Fog Hounds list the Lampblacks as enemies. Intentional?

My group is having a bit of trouble understanding the “acquire an asset” downtime action.

My group is having a bit of trouble understanding the “acquire an asset” downtime action. Specifically, what constitutes an asset? From the different examples scattered across the book, I’m thinking it could be everything from a useful item to a witch doctor or whatever. This all seems fine. Our problem is that in the description on the rules reference for downtime, it specifically says “temporary access to an asset” – which makes sense from a mechanical perspective in terms of balance, since it just costs one downtime action, but in terms of the fiction it seems a bit more vague. It makes total sense if the asset is an NPC, but if it’s some sort of item it gets a bit weird. We can try to justify it by having the asset be something of limited quantity, or something that expires after it’s used. And if that doesn’t make sense in the fiction maybe we borrow it?

Say I roll to acquire an asset, and add 1d from my Thieves’ Pack Rats special ability, to try to acquire some heavy armor for some members of our cohort. We roll a 5. Boom! We have it! Should we just resolve how that’s temporary in the fiction? (because that maybe doesn’t sound super fiction-first – kind of like picking a mechanic first, and then making sense of the fiction afterwards, which gets a bit murki) – or should we handwaive it and say that no, it actually IS a permanent asset? – or should we use a different mechanic, like a project clock or something, to do those kinds of permanent gear acquisitions? Sorry for the super long nitpicky post, it really isn’t a big deal, we were just looking through the book for a long time for some clarification on this and didn’t find anything.

Any advice on a good approach for putting some pressure on the crew from other factions that they have angered and…

Any advice on a good approach for putting some pressure on the crew from other factions that they have angered and lost favor with, but not dealt with? I’ve been using entanglements, but I’m at a point where I feel their adversary needs to bring the fight to them to get their attention.

Has anyone done an attack against a crews assets? How would you establish that and still give them an opportunity to participate? Is there any particular rules there I’m missing?

It seems like I could set the scene and put them in a spot, then let them do the planning and engagement to determine how they want to go after it, and treat it as a score. Allowing flashbacks to fill in their prep gaps as usual.

In the crew upgrades listed in the crew sheets there is a section with “quality” items, and it is probably because…

In the crew upgrades listed in the crew sheets there is a section with “quality” items, and it is probably because english is not my first language, but I don’t see clearly the difference between Gear, Implements, Supplies and Tools.

Could someone help me understand what kind of items would be in each category? (a couple of examples would help 🙂 )

So there is this issue that has come up in our group that I have not been able to answer in a good way.

So there is this issue that has come up in our group that I have not been able to answer in a good way. The advancement of your gang / crew happens through the crew advancement track and you “pay” for your upgrades (or cohorts / permanent assets) with your crew xp. But what about long term projects? My players have been trying to acquire permanent assets, item upgrades and so on by starting a long term project and filling out the clock. So far I have shut that down, since I am unsure if that is the intended game mechanic here and pushed them towards projects that have different goals and rewards. Is there an official answer to that problem? I am a bit scared that allowing long term projects to acquire crew upgrades might screw up the normal progression system.

Ran my first session of Blades in the Dark using the quick start adventure and had a few questions that we weren’t…

Ran my first session of Blades in the Dark using the quick start adventure and had a few questions that we weren’t able to answer.

Are there descriptions of the Hound’s Ghost Hunter abilities? I assume ghost-form is the same as on the ghost playbook, but a search of the document found no other mentions of mind-link or arrow-swift.

In regards to the quality of something (an item or gang), are the tiers listed? I see fine mentioned a lot as +1 quality, but the playbooks all reference elite cohorts at +1 quality. Is elite the same as fine in this instance? Is there a rank better than fine?

It was a lot of fun, though most of my players are having a hard time breaking away from habits they’ve formed from playing Pathfinder and D&D for many years.