Action 1 Errata (Good / Fine gear)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Seems really weird to me too to confuse quality ratings with having a larger kit. Wasn't there already First Aid Kit vs. Doctor's Bag?

Not in Action 1, no. Just First Aid and Crash kits. Note that the latter is 10 lbs, and gives +2 to First Aid for half the weight at the same cost as a Fine First Aid Kit (as well as providing basic equipment for Physician skill and improvised equipment for Surgery); so there doesn't seem to be a good reason for a Fine First Aid Kit at all.

Variety and quantity of tools, as well as specific other items (e.g. morphine over aspirin) are not the same thing as quality. Just seems like an inappropriate/confusing misuse of language and game terms.

In game terms either better made tools or more appropriate specialized could give skill bonuses. I don't think the action movie genre is well served by meticulous detail about exactly you have in a set of lockpicking tools...

The items for which quality affects weight applies are:

• Lockpicks
• Disguise Kit
• Bug Detector
• First Aid Kit
• Full Sized Digital Cameras

All of which seem to be big boxes full of stuff that it would be boring to specify, and for which having a variety of specialized tools could give an abstract bonus.

[Varyon]

Outside of magic, in general there are many things where extremely high quality tools don't actually give a bonus to use, but having a large selection of tools would. For a simplistic look, it would be hard to justify a screwdriver giving a bonus for being really well designed, but having exactly the right screwdriver for a given job could justify one. A higher-quality kit thus has more screwdrivers to insure you always have the right tool for the job.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

A times-20 weight multiplier comes pretty close to making gear simply unavailable in practical terms, unless the team is always operating close to home ("CSI", maybe?), or the GM is willing to be pretty generous with that anticipation suggestion, and you never hit two different tasks or locations instead of just one, without first returning to base to pick through your stuff again.

That's what Gizmo (which I previously mislabeled as "Gadget") is good for - you can use it to pull out any item you own, regardless of if you even brought it into the country with you, even if you just went through a thorough search that would have found it.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Varyon

That's what Gizmo (which I previously mislabeled as "Gadget") is good for - you can use it to pull out any item you own, regardless of if you even brought it into the country with you, even if you just went through a thorough search that would have found it.

"A Gizmo must be small enough to fit in an ordinary coat pocket"

That's frequently going to be a problem with a 20x weight version...

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

"A Gizmo must be small enough to fit in an ordinary coat pocket"

That's frequently going to be a problem with a 20x weight version...

As I noted, Gizmo is being used to pull out the right tool, not the entire kit. As GM, if the characters knew beforehand what tools would actually be needed for a job, I would have no objections with them only bringing those along and still getting the full bonus, so using Gizmo for the same effect should be fine.

I'd missed the "coat pocket" limitation. Personally, if someone brought along an undefined disguise kit, I'd allow them to use Gizmo to pull whatever disguise they actually needed out of it.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

"A Gizmo must be small enough to fit in an ordinary coat pocket"

That's frequently going to be a problem with a 20x weight version...

A lockpick kit (as an example) includes a number of picks and rakes (or skeleton keys at lower TL) that fits most locks well enough. A fine kit includes more specialized items, so you are less dependent on tools that work well enough for most locks.

I'd allow a use of Gizmos to pull out the one item (to add to the general kit) that would allow a single use of the Fine kit bonus.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Varyon

As GM, if the characters knew beforehand what tools would actually be needed for a job, I would have no objections with them only bringing those along and still getting the full bonus, so using Gizmo for the same effect should be fine.

Yeah I was thinking about that. Maybe allowing an IQ-Based roll to select a set that has the weight of a basic kit but gives the Good or Fine bonus for a single known specific task and otherwise a -2 to all other tasks?

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Yeah I was thinking about that. Maybe allowing an IQ-Based roll to select a set that has the weight of a basic kit but gives the Good or Fine bonus for a single known specific task and otherwise a -2 to all other tasks?

If they know who they'll be disguising themselves as, the model of lock or bug they'll be facing, yes. For cameras and first aid kits, it's simply a matter of choosing what you want to be prepared for.

I'd allow it as a sort of "optional specialty" kit for such situations.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by RyanW

If they know who they'll be disguising themselves as, the model of lock or bug they'll be facing, yes. For cameras and first aid kits, it's simply a matter of choosing what you want to be prepared for.

I'd be inclined to treat cameras just like lockpicks or bug-finders, in that I'd give them the bonus for a specific planned shot (i.e. get a close-up of an occupant of a specific restaurant table from a prepared position in the building across the street). I'd be disinclined to allow it for First Aid at all, since the skill is highly abstracted to bandaging and healing 1d HP for nonspecific injury.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Yeah I was thinking about that. Maybe allowing an IQ-Based roll to select a set that has the weight of a basic kit but gives the Good or Fine bonus for a single known specific task and otherwise a -2 to all other tasks?

A good, properly abstract way to do it might be something like the following. If you have a Good or Fine quality kit, you may put together a smaller version - equal in weight to a Basic kit - that has a limited number of uses at the bonus for the kit, and is at -2 (or half the penalty for improvised tool use, whichever is better) for "free" uses. This requires an IQ-based roll against the appropriate skill, modified by the amount of intel you have on the situation (Action! might have guidelines, but I lack those books, so I'd say -5 for no intel, -2 for basic intel, +0 for good intel, +2 for detailed intel, +5 for crazy-prepared intel). You get a number of uses at the given bonus equal to Margin of Success (treat MoS 0 as MoS 1). For characters using Fine kits, they may trade in any +2 use for two +1 uses. Optionally, a character may reduce Margin of Success by 2 to reduce the general-use penalty to -1, or by 4 to reduce it to 0. As another option, you can allow characters to adjust the weight of the base kit for a penalty/bonus for packing it. For weight reduction, every -1 is -10% to weight. For a weight increase, Good gear gets a +2 at each of x1.5, x2, and x3; Fine gear gets a +1 at each of x1.5, x2, x3, x5, x7, x10, and x15.

Thus, you don't need to bring along a truck full of disguises, and the players don't have to meticulously plan out each disguise that will be used. You can refresh your kit upon returning to wherever you have the bulk of it stored, but probably shouldn't be allowed to make another roll until a day or so has passed (to prevent players from going until they roll a 3 for the maximum possible number of uses).