OK, so here's some general things to get people started: ---- STATS ----- Stats work roughly like D&D/Pathfinder, same six stats. It's a 36-point point buy from 8, with some of the buy values being different from Pathfinder (generally you get a significantly better return on having a lot of stats set at "OK" than in a lot of point-buy systems). If you hate math, here are some templates: Flat Stats:13 13 13 13 13 13 Split Stats:10 10 10 14 14 16 Specialist Stats: 8 10 10 10 14 18 Low-weakness Specialist:10 10 12 12 12 17 All the usual +2/-2 racial stuff is in the background system, your talents give you a stat tweak, your specialty gives you a feat, and both usually give you some sort of scaling skill bonus with the occasional minor ability thrown in. They're a good way to give your character easier access to cross-class skills, e.g. you're building a face-man but want access to the investigation skill. The only stats that deviate much from the standard d20 version are Intelligence and Charisma. Many combat tasks, maneuvers, etc are accomplished by skills, so Int has a bit higher relative value to begin with-- even a straight combat character can probably unlock a few extra combat strategies by boosting it to 12 or so. Additionally, intelligence can give you additional skill focuses without having to invest skill points, see next session. Similarly, in addition to the usual uses, Charisma affects how much gear you can get. ---FOCUSES AND BACKGROUND--- There are four "focus" skills: Drive, Cultures, Profession, and Science. You start with 1 focus in each skill and get to add one for each point of int bonus you start with, to whichever skill you like. Essentially, these focuses function as proficiencies if you don't actually have points in the skill, e.g. if you have no points in drive but have the standard ground vehicle focus you're assumed to be able to drive a car without rolling anything unless an actual chase/obstacle course happens. If you do have the skill trained there are nonproficiency penalties like with weapons. If you're reading the description on "Profession" and aren't sure how actually having points in that is useful, there are basically three things: profession(spy) or whatever you want to call your actual espionage job lets you roll at the end of the mission to try to get a bonus (this can backfire), you can substitute a profession roll for a craft or knowledge check relevant to one of you profession focuses (useful if you don't have that craft skill trained or your wisdom is high) if the DM thinks it's a simple enough task that full training in the craft skill isn't necessary, and you can roll it to disguise yourself as a member of one of your focus professions, which is occasionally useful (not the same as the disguise skill, it doesn't conceal your face, etc, people just believe that you're a school-teacher or whatever). Generally, if you aren't actually putting points in the skill, Profession focuses are like interests, they sort of officially note elements of your character's background that you think you should occasionally be allowed to actually take advantage of in the game. It prevents the Old Man Henderson thing-- you can write a 300-page backstory where you're everything from a pro hockey player to a nuclear physicist if you want, but none of it comes into play except the things you buy as interests/professions. --- GEAR --- Similar to the focus system, the gear system is designed to prevent players from just accumulating powerful items and throwing off the game balance, and also to keep them from getting stuck with non-ideal gear, by essentially making gear another part of your character's stats: Mission Gear: There's a column on your character sheet that lists "gear picks". You get the listed number of items from the specified parts of the gear tables at the beginning of each mission. You don't have to pick the same thing every time, and you don't have to pick until after the mission briefing (sometimes an official "briefing", sometimes just whenever the GM declares that the action is starting). Additionally, you get a number of picks equal to your Charisma bonus from a set of categories depending on who you're working for. The basic 'quality' of your gear is determined by the mission caliber, and there are various abilities that can slide your gear caliber up or down from there. Personal Wealth: You also have a "wealth" stat listed on your character progression chart, which gradually increases with level. You can divide this among three categories (every category starts with one "free" point). Lifestyle can affect how people react to you at lower levels and how many houses and/or yachts you have at higher levels (recommended at least 3 for 'social' focus characters to avoid appearance penalties). Possessions allows you to create a list of static gear (you can change it between missions but not during the mission briefing like with mission gear) that you just happen to have access to regardless of the mission caliber, useful if you want to have, say, decent body armor along on low-level missions. Spending cash is exactly what it sounds like, you happen to generally have (cash)^2 * 100 $ on hand to spend on the mission (not necessarily literal cash, it's just assumed to be whatever form is convenient). Common items: Pretty much what they sound like. Roll of duct tape, some zip-ties, two turntables and a microphone, iodine tablets, swiss army knife, etc. Any useful thing that your character has on hand/easy access to in the context of a mission. Since it's basically mundane stuff limited by how thoroughly you plan ahead, you get a list of these equal to your wisdom. The GM has the right to tell you that something is too good to be a common item and make it a gear pick instead. Reserve items and requests: If you have a positive wisdom modifier, you can "reserve" gear slots by leaving them open, a number of slots equal to your wisdom modifier. If it's a mission gear slot, you can spend an action die to roll a check and get something delivered to you later in the mission. If it's a common item slot you can roll a check to totally have remembered to have brought one of those things retroactively. This is another one of those things where charisma comes into play-- it's very hard to succeed on mission gear request checks if you're not a charisma-positive character. --- COMBAT --- Spycraft combat is much broader than Pathfinder/D&D. The main thing to watch out for is that HP is just one of the lines of attack and defense, there are mechanics in place to break enemy's willpower (stress damage), or tire them out (subdual/fatigue damage). This means that there are situations where the attacking stat is based in constitution, or the defending stat is a multiple of wisdom rather than HP, etc. And for HP damage, armor acts as a soak instead of increasing AC, so that's different. Combat is also usually avoidable, there are mechanics for talking people down, turning would-be combat into a chase scene, seducing/befriending targets into letting their guard down, and so on. A lot of these can involve the stress and subdual mechanics as well, which can get pretty funny when you get good enough at them to, say, cause your interrogator to pass out from fatigue when you're the one tied to the chair. A specific thing to watch out for is that you can't use strength as a dump stat and "Just use guns". Firearms have a recoil mechanic that make them difficult to use without the listed strength value. Not impossible, but still. If you screw up enough to drop a low-physical stat character into combat, you're going to have to come up with a clever idea or alternate route to victory. --- NOT COMBAT --- Spycraft has mechanics for pretty much all the dramatic conflicts you're find in a movie that don't involve faces and the punching thereof. They all rely on the same general meta-idea, where you and the GM/NPCs each have a list of strategies limited by your gear and skills, then roll against each other with skills and bonuses/penalties determined by the strategies until a "lead" stat hits either zero (predator wins) or ten (prey escapes, fails to break under interrogation, etc). The one that tends to cause the most trouble to newer players seems to be the literal chase scene one, since that's the primary method to avoid combat and spies tend to run away at least long enough to set up favorable terrain instead of duking it out. The Drive and Athletics skills are good for this, as are a lot of the "Chase" category feats. If you want to be lazy the smuggler character idea would fit pretty well with the Explorer class, which has a minimum result floor on athletics and thus tends to win foot-races against low-skilled NPCs. There's also always Wheelman, but it's more of a combat character other than the pimped car thing.
