When the first edition of Spycraft was released, I became a big fan. It wasn’t merely a case of taking the 3rd edition rules under the Open Gaming License and creating espionage-oriented classes and feats. It fine-tuned the rules and added some interesting game-play options. The second edition of Spycraft evolved further into a toolkit, with more optional rules and sub-systems that could be mixed and matched to support whatever type of modern-era espionage or paramilitary game you wanted to play.
Fantasy Craft is Spycraft for fantasy. Rather than a direct clone, it’s a fantasy game created from a spy game created from a fantasy game. It’s actually one step further; it’s Spycraft turned into a generic rules set (called Master Craft) and then turned into a fantasy game. It keeps the toolkit paradigm of Spycraft 2.0, and this PDF is only slightly less daunting at a tight 402 pages.
Because of the length of the book, and because it’s getting a lot of coverage elsewhere today, I’m going to focus on the character creation options. Yes, this is an Idiot Review, as I’ve only read it and not played it, but I think I have enough experience with 3.5 and Spycraft that I’m not entirely talking out of my hat.
Attributes are point-build; you get a certain number of points to generate your scores with costs listed on a table. The default score is 8, costing 0 points, so unless you ding the character with a lower score to get more pointsstarting characters are going to have scores from 8 to 18.
There are 12 playable species — what you probably know as “races” — to choose from. Dwarf, elf, giant, goblin, human, ogre and, orc are pretty standard. I think having goblins and orcs as player character races is pretty neat, although we’ve seen this before in Iron Kingdoms and Shaintar. Drakes are, well, small dragons. Not dragon-like humanoids. Big things with wings and breath weapons and nasty pointy claws. Rootwalkers are ents, or treants, or whatever term you prefer for talking tree-people. Saurians are reptile-folk. Unborn are constructs. Pech are halflings and gnomes rolled into one, for those people who don’t really understand why you need more than one small-people race… er, species.
My favorite bit with species is that there are species-specific feats, as well as “splinter race” feats. A saurian can be dragonkin, a deep one (they call it frogman), or chameon, with specific abilities for that sub-species. An ogre can be an oni or a troll. Giants can be fire, frost, etc. And yes, pech can be hairfoots (hairfeet?) and gnomes, if you want to break them out and make them distinctive. It really lends a lot of variety and flexibility without re-inventing the species from scratch for every variant. I’ve griped before about their being 3 types of elves in the 4e Player’s Handbook to the exclusion of other races, and Fantasy Craft handles it well. Species: elf. Want to be a wood elf, high elf, dark elf, etc? Take the feat that gives them that sub-species’ distinct abilities. Easy-peasy.
Specialties acknowledge that your character probably did something before becoming an adventurer. They’re almost like NPC classes, giving the character a Feat and some skills or proficiencies. If you put species and specialty together you basically have an NPC, like dwarf dragoon or elf corsair. It’s not super-powerful stuff, but it can be useful, and gives player characters some abilities that players might not choose otherwise.
Action dice were my favorite mechanical bit from Spycraft. Based on your class, you can add these dice to your rolls or certain actions. For instance, I might be a low-level fighter, but my character should be able to hit that orc. I roll my d20, but I can also spend and roll an action die and add that to my total. 1st level characters start with 3 dice, at d4, and as they gain in level they get more dice of larger size (6d20 at 20th level). Some people will see this as power creep and hate it, but as the action dice can only be used for what your character should actually succeed at given their concept it’s not so bad, and even at 20th level you can burn through 6 “gimmes” pretty fast. What I like is that it can be used for tactical advantage by players who like that style of play, or to reinforce roleplaying by characters so inclined.
There are 12 classes: Assassin, Burglar, Captain, Courtier, Explorer, Keeper, Lancer, Mage, Priest, Sage, Scout, and Soldier. There are also Expert and Master classes that build upon these.I was kind of upset at first that the old standards (fighter, cleric, thief, wizard) had been messed with, but you really can do anything here that you can do in the baseline fantasy game and then some. You get class abilities at every level, Base Attack Bonus, saves, and all that you expect in a 3.5 based game. There are also two level-dependent abilities scores, Lifestyle and Legend. Lifestyle is a bonus that adds to your Panache (appearance) and Prudence (savings). Yes, the game assumes that as your character goes up in level they get better-looking clothes and stuff and sock some money away for a rainy day! Legend adds to your Reputation, which you gain along with XP based on the menace level of the monster you beat. No more of this “I’m a 12th level character who’s beaten 3 dragons but I still have to take lip from the shopkeeper” crap. Again, it provides both roleplaying reinforcement and a sort of tactical advantage.
Multiclassing is both available and encouraged, but there’s a core ability you only get from the class you begin with (i.e. every character only gets one). If you start out as an Explorer and later become an Assassin, you don’t gane the Assassin’s core ability. That works for me, and does provide some small advantage to the character that stays single-classed without completely screwing over the player who wants a character with a broader set of abilities.
Overall, I like Fantasy Craft. Because it’s 3.5 based, it’s relatively easy to cherry-pick what you like and drop it into and legacy 3.5 game, Pathfinder, and so on. Or vice versa, if you want to use this as the core and plop bits from other 3.5 material in here. Recommended.
Want to learn more about Fantasy Craft? Read on…
Drop by Crafty Games today!
Like
James Raggi is known for being f’n METAL, but he is also (in my opinion) 
Aye, lads and lasses, next Saturday, 19 September be both 
