Anyone have this yet? It's only the pdf available at the moment, but i wondered if anyone has had a look-see yet. Ceasar Slaad?

More generally, is FantasyCraft any better (or worse) than generic 3.5E D&D or Pathfinder?

Quote from: One Horse Town;414571Anyone have this yet? It's only the pdf available at the moment, but i wondered if anyone has had a look-see yet. Ceasar Slaad?

Why of course. :cool:

To break it down, the book is about 3/4 fluff (consisting of three mini-settings) and 1/4 crunch. (Page-wise, it's more like a 2:1 ratio).

The settings are:
Cloak & Dagger - A Mediterranean (Greek-Roman) inspired game with an emphasis on politics and subterfuge.

Epoch - Is a primitive era setting with principally Meso/Native-American feel, and a bit of Irish legend, and Howard and Frazetta style heroes. It features primitive heroes in a world of dark magic, angry spirits, and raging demons.

Sunchaser - The closest to traditional fantasy of the lot, featuring a world where humans have escaped servitude from goblins and emerged in a world where they are newcomers. It's a feudal era game where there are various kingdoms that must cooperate for survival.

Of the three, Epoch is my favorite as my tastes have turned a bit to sword & sorcery of late. But Sunchaser does remind a bit of my own homebrew, which also featured a human race fleeing to a new world.


The rest is crunch, some of it in the forms you should be familiar with for d20: classes, feats, specialties, tricks, and campaign qualities. No new magic or gear; those are in other books.

There's are two new base classes. The Martial Artist (which previously appeared in the Call to Arms series of PDF supplement) is pretty much what it says on the tin. Unlike the 3e/PF version, it's a REAL fighting class, not a watered down power-monkey.

The other is brand new, the Emissary. It's largely here because of Cloak & Dagger, but can fairly fit in any campaign with investigation and subterfuge; it's a spy/investigator type. For those familiar with Spycraft 2.0, it's primarily based on the sleuth, but has little bits of the snoop and cleaner tucked into its optional class abilities.

Expert classes are similar to the prestige classes of most d20 games. The ones here have all previously appeared in the Call to Arms series:

• Bloodsworn - bodyguard/yojimbo type
• Force of Nature - a character with an affinity with a certain element, and a pretty kickin' combatant. We have one in my freeport game. She's a lot of fun.
• Gallant - a noble warrior who blends talent for combat on the field with that of combat in the courtyard
• Monk - adds many of the mystical features of the D&D monk, with an interesting "vow" system.
• Deadeye - a sharpshooter, either with bow of firearms
• Monster Slayer - also what it says on the tin.

Master classes are short classes that can only be taken at high level, and include the Wind Knight (rides flying mount), Dragon Lord, Regent, and Spirit Singer.

Feats are a nice mix of combat and other sorts of feats. Many of them also appeared in previous call to arms products.

Some are all new, however. The biggest chunk of these are the Species Feats. For those not familiar with Fantasy Craft, instead of charging you levels to be more powerful sub-species, they use feats. For example, in the core book, to be a dark elf you take the Spider Nation feat. There are a bajillion ways here to make your character very different. One poster on the crafty board posited, for example, how to use the feats therein to make what is essentially Wall-E (Unborn, basically constructs/golems, are a race in FC.)

Tricks are little add-ons for actions that your character can learn that aren't quite worth a feat. There's a bunch here, many of them ported from a Spycraft 2.0 sourcebook called Practice Makes Perfect. If you play the game and have ever lamented that there is no FC equivalent to the D&D weapon finesse feat here, your prayers are answers... and then some. There aren't just tricks to let you use dex to attack, either. They have them for all the stats. Deceptive Swing, for example, lets you use your Charisma modifier on  melee attack rolls.



I'm not that much in the market for a new setting myself, but many feel a game isn't complete without a setting to run it with. Well, here they are! I still may use them myself in my plane-hopping River of Worlds game. For those who learn by example, they do make nice illustrations on how you use the system to assemble a setting.

Even if you don't plan on using the settings, there are also some salvageable bits--both crunch and concepts--in the settings. (Like the species feat in epoch that lets you turn the FC Ogre into a Yeti. )

For me (and I imagine, many others), this is mostly a fairly concentrated little crunch book. I've already put 3 of the classes to work in my games, and I am starting to consider how I can use some of the feats and races.

The species feats have only the most stripped down bit of a concept about them... I am having a bit of fun figuring out where the various splinter races might fit in the world.

Quote from: ggroy;414589More generally, is FantasyCraft any better (or worse) than generic 3.5E D&D or Pathfinder?

Let's just say when I play me biweekly pathfinder game, I sure miss some things about Fantasy Craft. :cool:

I don't know how much more to say without breaking into an impromptu review (again...).

Just a few basics facts:

• It's crunchier (and more customizable) out of the starting gate. You get a specialty, which gives you about a race-worth of abilities. Its another tool to make your character more unique. Humans also get a talent which is almost a race-worth of abilities in itself. So instead of being a human fighter or elven rogue, you might be a grizzled aristocrat soldier or elven criminal explorer.
• Magic optional. Whether it even exists in the game is one of several campaign qualities (little modular rules to tweak the flavor of the game) We spent most of my Freeport game without a spell-using character.
• Also doesn't share many other D&D 3.x conventions. No full attacks, no attacks of opportunities, for example.
• Skills are important and character roles are not exclusively balanced around combat. Some are better at combat, some have other strengths.
• Action dice are implicit part of the game.
• Magic system is different, though many spells are familiar. Mages use point based; priest have few spells but gain higher level powers faster or might not have spells at all. Mages lag about one spell level behind their D&D counterparts, but have unfettered use of low level spells at high level.
• NPCs use different (less restricted) creation method than PCs and are scaleable.

Now, I do feel Pathfinder & 3.x are more approachable by beginners. I also feel like magic is richer in 3.x, though I hope the forthcoming Spellbound supplement addresses this.

Though FC is flexible, I don't think it ever really gets as gonzo on the high power end as D&D 3.x does.

That's the digest version I can think of at the moment. Feel free to ask more if you are curious.

Thanks Caesar Slaad!

Sounds pretty good - i like the Epoch setting you've described.

I only have a few of the expert class pdfs, so i'll only be doubling up on some of those.