News and Updates

Patch Highlights

Complications

We are replacing the old systems of Stabilization, Degradation, and Injuries causing Battle Scars with a new system called Complications.

Complications Whenever you take an Injury Severity 4 or greater, roll 1d10 and subtract the Injury’s Severity from the die’s value. If the result is 2 or less, you suffer a Complication:

• 2: Minor Battle Scar (A facial scar, a disfigured hand, partially scalped).
• 1: Disrupted (You drop whatever you are holding and lose your footing).
• 0: Debilitating (Gain a Major Battle Scar that lasts until Injury is healed) OR (Lose your sense of hearing or sight for the next minute)
• -1: Equipment Damage (A piece of Equipment on your person is damaged to the point where it no longer functions properly) or Traumatic Injury (Gain a new Trauma)
• -2: Bleeder (Injury increases in Severity by 1 every three Rounds until stabilized using an Intellect + Medicine roll Difficulty 6 with an Outcome of 4 or higher) or Stunned (Lose your next Action)
• -3: Major Battle Scar (Loss of hand, foot, limp, lost eye, etc).
• -4: Degenerating Injury (Injury increases in Severity by 1 level per hour until it is stabilized either by Powers or at a well-equipped medical facility such as a doctor’s office, vet’s office, or hospital).
• -5: Severe Battle Scar (loss of arm or leg).
• -6 or lower: Extreme Battle Scar (paraplegia, blindness) AND roll for an additional complication.

A reference for Complications is now included on the Character Sheet under Injuries. GMs should roll for complications before narrating the attack’s results.

Experience Changes

All of the following changes are retroactive and affect all Contractors. You may have to edit your Contractors to account for these changes. We know these sorts of updates can be inconvenient, and believe these changes will be the last for the foreseeable future.

• Gm experience is now worth 6 instead of 4.
• Attributes now cost x5 current rating Exp to increase instead of x4 current rating.
• New Contractor Exp increased to 150 from 145.

Will To Survive

As part of the Imbuing process, all Contractors gain a new ability called Will to Survive:

Once per Contract, if you would take an Injury that would kill you, you may reduce its Severity by up to 5 to a minimum of 5. You receive a Major Battle Scar and take one point of Mind damage. Do not roll for a Complication for this Injury.

This new one-shot-protection mechanic should balance the increased deadliness introduced by Complications and prevent “unfair” deaths resulting from extraordinarily unlucky rolls.

Playgroups

Worlds are now Playgroups. In every other respect, they are the exact same. We hope this renaming will make their purpose clearer to new Players.

Mechanics Changes

Sprinting

• Fast as fuck boyee All-out sprints now go 5 feet further.
• Hot Pursuit If you all-out Sprint towards a target, excess sprint distance can be used to “follow” them if they move before your next movement.

Golden Ratio is Now Optional

GM rewards for achieving The Golden Ratio is now an optional rule and can be toggled on or off in your Playgroup’s settings. It is defaulted to “on” for all existing Playgroups but must be manually enabled for all new Playgroups.

We expect this change to surprise existing Players who have not had any issues with The Golden Ratio. We are making this change because most would-be Players misunderstand the effect the rule has on the game and cannot be convinced that GMs aren’t going to bend the rules to try to kill a Contractor each Contract.

Firearms Changes

Firearms have been adjusted so that their rolls are now all at Difficulty 6. A couple small changes to Damage, Effective Range, and Difficulty modifiers have also been made to compensate.

• Handguns: Diff 6, +1 damage, 50 feet range
• Shotguns (shot): Diff 6, +1 damage, 50 feet range
• Shotguns (slug): Diff 6, +2 damage, 100 feet range
• Rifles: Diff 6, +2 damage, 400 feet range
• Heavy Sniper Rifles: Diff 6 (+3 if used without tripod), +3 damage, 1500 feet

Downtime and the Passage of Time

We have made some very minor changes to Downtime and the rules for the passage of time. These changes are mostly in preparation for some new features coming in the next Path to Beta patch.

The Passage of Time: A month passes in a given Playgroup’s setting each time a Contract occurs in that Playgroup. Injuries heal two Severity levels per month of time that passes. Playgroup leaders may speed up or slow down the passage of time as desired.

Downtime: Downtime is now defined as a Contractor’s time between two Contracts. A Contractor gets one Downtime each time they finish a Contract. If Contracts they were not invited to occur in their Playgroup, their Downtime may be multiple months long.

Torture

The Torture Limit has been clarified to better reflect that it covers any extended period of physical or mental agony, not simply being tortured for information.

Website Improvements

Character Sheet Improvements

• Added an expandable Weapons reference under Equipment. This is the first feature prioritized because of a poll on our Patreon!
• Added an expandable Complications reference under Injuries
• Added buttons to increase / decrease existing Injuries’ Severities
• Added new premade Battle Scars that can easily be used and customized, so GMs don’t have to write them all from scratch.
• Added an explanation of Will to Survive to the Combat Reference
• Made mouseover text more reliable in the Combat Reference
• Contractor taglines are now optional
• Fixed a bug that would occasionally cause saving a Contractor to show an error even though the operation was successful.

Other Website Improvements

• Fixed a bug where public Scenarios (Mushroom Hunt) would display as spoiled even though they weren’t.
• Properly aligned Quick Access dropdown in navbar for logged-in users on mobile