I'm trying to discern how the Surprise rules work exactly, because it's extremely ambiguous as-written.

From the Player's Guide:

"When attempting to sneak up on or ambush someone, you make a Contested Roll of your Finesse + either your Stealth or Ambush Knack, as appropriate, versus your target’s Wits + Ambush. If you win, your target is surprised for one Round.

"While surprised, your Passive Defense drops to 5. In addition, you cannot use any Actions, including Interrupt Actions."

This seems to imply that when you sneak up on someone, you have an entire round to act in which they're basically helpless. This is extremely powerful. It But the next bit muddies things:

"You are allowed to Hold any Actions you would have normally received until you are no longer surprised."

Since sneaking up on someone is generally done before a fight begins, anyone who is Surprised can't have any Held actions, because to my understanding, they haven't rolled initiative yet. Combat doesn't actually start until the sneak attack happens - the defender doesn't know they're being attacked yet. Furthermore, if the Surprise lasts a whole round, they can't hold their actions into the next round anyway.

Then there's an example, which doesn't help much:

"Example 3.29: Rodriguez has a Stealth Knack of 3. He tries to sneak up on a guard who has a Wits of 2 and no Ambush Knack. Therefore, Rodriguez’s TN is 10, and he rolls six dice, Keeping three. The guard’s TN is 15, and he rolls two dice, Keeping two."

The guard's TN is based on Rodriguez' Finesse knack, which isn't listed, but per simple math, must be a 3 (3 Finesse + 3 Stealth = 6k3). Since the guard doesn't have Ambush, I think his TN ought to be raised by 5 since he's making an unskilled roll. But that's a nitpick, so thus far, things make sense.

"Rodriguez gets a 21, and the guard gets a 12. Since Rodriguez succeeded and the guard failed, Rodriguez wins the Contested Roll, and the guard is surprised for 1 Phase."

The example now states that Surprise lasts for one Phase, rather than one Round, which is a huge difference. It seems to make sense that Surprise be counted in Phases rather than a whole round, though, since above it says you can Hold your actions until Surprise ends, i.e. later in the same Round. Again, unused Held actions are lost at the end of a Round

"If Rodriguez saved an Action to take advantage of his surprise, the guard will most likely die a quick death."

How can Rodriguez have a Held Action if they haven't rolled for initiative yet? If they have already rolled, it isn't mentioned. Does everybody roll initiative once the Ambush/Stealth action is taken?

In the example, would both parties roll Initiative as soon as Rodriguez decides to sneak? Then the guard's actions are all automatically held until the sneak roll is determined? Like, if Rodriguez' sneaking happened on Phase 4, but the guard rolled a 1 and a 2, are those the held actions?

Then, I suppose, they roll to determines whether or not Rodriguez successfully snuck up on the guard; if so, and he has another held action (let's say he rolled a 3 and a 4 on his initiative) he can attack immediately, because the guard is Surprised for one Phase - so the guard can't do anything until Phase 5.

But if Rodriguez didn't have a held action in this example - let's say he rolled a 4 and an 8 for initiative, and sneaked on 4 - then he'd roll to sneak up on this guy, and then ... the guard's Surprise would wear off on Phase 5, and he'd have two Held actions that he could use, right? So for most successful sneak attacks, the person doing the sneaking would HAVE to hold an action from a previous phase to make it useful? Because if you're not guaranteed to act again before the Surprise wears off in one Phase, the whole advantage is lost.

I'd normally be more willing to make this clear with a simple house ruling. But I'm eager to get other opinions, because the two alternative readings I'm seeing options offer vastly different outcomes.

Reducing someone's TN to 5 and leaving them unable to act, even with Interrupt Actions, is extremely powerful. Doing so for a full Round is very likely a death sentence. Doing so for a single Phase is still potentially very dangerous, but now has a lot of other complex requirements - including possibly leaving you at an action deficit if you miss that first sneak roll. It's an understandable risk for a potentially huge reward, but am I way off base with that interpretation?

Hi everybody,

While looking to make some premade characters for a one-shot, I was thinking about an untrained Sorte Strega but there are some details I don't fully understand :

1. Untrained Blessings and Curses makes the player roll a die so set the number of Lashes the Strega will take, does it mean that she can take as much as 10 Lashes on a single Weave ? Sounds a bit too much for me, even if I get the point that she does not master her magic and it can have desastrous effects, I think it would be more reasonable to divide by 2, rounded up, wouldn't it ?
2. The Strega can learn her Weaves trained or untrained, for 1 or 2 Adavantages points as the case may be. So does that mean that some of the Weaves are marked as trained and the others as untrained ? In that case, learning the first time untrained would get Read, 2 minors and 1 major untrained and the second time a third minor and a second major trained ?

Overall, I would be interested in knowing your opinions about this magic and how you people have been playing it or dealing it as a GM.

Thank you for your help.

Hello,

My question is this, if a character can have only 5 of the 7 traits why are all 7 marked at level 2 on the character sheet? Shouldn't they all be blank?

Thanks in advance

A quick clarification question to make sure that I am applying the rules correctly.

Since Firearms deal Dramatic Wound in addition to normal wounds, filling the Death Spiral should proceed in the following fashion.

A character with no wounds is shot for 1 raise. A single normal wound in the first section the the first dramatic wound are filled on their death spiral.

Then when they are stabbed for additional 2 raises, the empty normal wounds in the first sections are filled, they do not get skipped straight into second section just because a dramatic wound is filled.

So I've been running my second campaign after years of a hiatus (1st was around the time the kickstarter shipped). That first campaign, I kinda fiddled around to make the game work...but it never felt right to me. It left me wanting something that I could never figure out.

So when I started my second campaign, I was hoping I could come in with a different mindset and make it work better. I could not. I came here for help. Googled the heck out of questions....and I found this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/7thSea/comments/1j4jr65/struggling_with_consequences_and_opportunities_in/

While u/blusponge toots his own horn :D , his product sounded VERY useful. So I bought them.

HOLY HELL I wish I found these earlier.

By having a physical card deck to work with, I found myself laying out VERY satisfying combats and dramatic scenes. By putting the cards down in front of everyone, ALL of us could see the consequences and opportunities. So cut and dry.
In addition, it gives so many ideas on how to make a scene compelling and challenging. AND it lets me shoot from the hip to make things even more interesting.

For example, my players had to get aboard the Atabean flagship, the Onyx Deep, to grab the maguffin. They found it floundering in a heavy storm....about to sink. Just flipping through the cards, I can add a time limit (before it sinks), disorientation (heavy rain, darkness, and chaos), revealing a secret (that they were NOT part of the ATC despite the stolen flag they flew to get in close), and injury (I simply said there were going to be 20 wounds taken among them if they didn't try to mitigate them).

The funny thing is I didn't even know how I was going to rule the Disorientation if they didn't try to overcome it. I was thinking like they would each lose a die for their next roll.
And I could just add more and more stuff until I felt they were challenged enough.

Another thing that was cool was the players could flip through the opportunities deck and add their own stuff if they wanted.

Amazing work, my dude!

P.S. Here is a direct link for the product! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/217308/cards-on-the-table?keyword=cards%20on%20the%20table

Hello everyone! My name is Ellie and I'm a professional game master! After some changes in my schedule I'd love to start some new paid, professional high quality high passion 7th Sea groups with excited players. I know all the books (12 of them) by heart and I will teach and help anybody new to the system. I have many ideas for campaigns, both with a metaplot and tailored to a group of characters. I offer an inclusive, dedicated, passionate experience and to delve with me into the lore of my favorite system. For more details please contact me on DISCORD - Shyercaulfield And check out my Startplaying.games profile for prices and for more descriptions about me. https://startplaying.games/gm/7thsealover Thank you so much!

Title explains it all. I am looking to try this system, 1st or 2nd edition (though I have more knowledge of 2nd) and I am here to see if anyone has a game with an open spot

Guys what is the difference between a session and an episode?

Hi everyone, I'm gonna play 7th Sea for the First time soon as GM and I need some advices in: how can i build a background session? What part Of the Life of the character I should do, I can do all his Life until the events in the present, but It Will be very long and hard. Some help or advices? Thank you

Hello there! My name is Ellie and I am posting on behalf of a group of 3 players including myself looking for a refined, fun experience of 7th Sea 2nd edition.

I am a professional GM myself and a certified 7th Sea professor (obsessed fan who knows all 12 books by heart) and my other 2 friends are my long-time players. However, while my games are running, we decided we want to play another game, with the three of us as players together under another GM.

We like heavy RP games, with good dynamics between PCs, NPCs and players and GM, meaningful combat and drama and lots of plot twists and intrigue. We have a strange but fun dynamics together and are all LGBT. We also want to find a GM who knows the system rather well for a smoother experience for us all.

For more details please contact me on DISCORD - Shyercaulfield

Thank you so much and hope to hear from you!

As the title suggests, I've been wanting to play 7th Sea 2e for over a year, haven't managed to find a group to play with, and was wondering if anyone knew where would be best to look for an online group? I'm in GMT timezone, in case that makes a difference?

So considering it's 17th/18th century we know that they existed, what would be the best solution? Obviously best used against brute squads to damage multiple targets in a squad as opposed to having to be creative with firearms (like shooting down a chandelier, tree branch etc.)

I'd like to believe someone in the community has worked to make them fun but not trivial.

Specifically adding 5 to the target number.

Is this some sort of artifact from when the rules made more sense? I mean, the only thing I can do is add 5 points to a combat or a dramatic scene before the players roll?

So instead of adding their dice up to 10s to get raises, they need 15s? Thus making the ENTIRE SCENE harder rather than just one roll?

This is my second campaign using 2e and it STILL feels clunky as hell.

Hello, Freunden. I have a question for the lit of you. I recently found out that Cities of Faith and Wonder had a few things that didn't make it to the final cut, these things including Character Backgrounds for Iskandar, Ship Backgrounds, Sorcery for Iskandar, and Advantages for Iskandar. Does anyone know if there was anything (like above) cut from the rest of the book? I know Vaticine City has Advantages and Sorcery that made it, but I'm hoping for Backgrounds and or Ship Backgrounds from there or any of the above for the rest of the book. Thank you for the help!

I have an upcoming 7th sea campaign with some university friends. We are using the standard Corebook and Navigavia, an Italian expansion with new sorcery types. I wanted to play a Hexe character but there is this other sorcery from Navigavia that has some features that are thematically interesting for my Hero so I wanted to ask if, according to the rules, it was possible to mix sorcery advantages and, in a way, “multiclass”.

I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around 7th Sea as a system, and one part in particular really slows my games down:

Step 2: Consequences and Opportunities – After hearing the players’ Approaches, the GM is supposed to present the Consequences and Opportunities, including when they occur and any Time Limits.

In practice, I struggle with this step a lot. It slows down my games because I find it hard to come up with everything in advance. But then, when I read the Action Sequence Example in the rulebook, the GM doesn’t seem to front-load all the Consequences and Opportunities. Instead, it feels like they react more organically to what the players do.

So, am I misunderstanding how this is supposed to work? Should I be setting everything up in advance, or is there room to be more flexible? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi!
I was wondering - has anyone tried to perform a herculean task and create/sum up a 2nd edition timeline of Thean history? I mean, main events, wars, etc.
I know half of it is loosey goosey, the war in Eisen was over either five or twenty years ago, but it would be grand to have some kind of unified table for reference. Maybe someone tried doing that?

I recently acquired the final few books in print to get everything on this 7th Sea 2nd edition list:
Core Rulebook (2016)
Pirate Nations (2016)
Heroes and Villains (2016)
Nations of Théah Volume 1 (2016)
Nations of Théah Volume 2 (2016)
Crescent Empire (2017)
The New World (2017)
Lands of Gold and Fire (2017)
Secret Societies (2020)
Cities of Faith and Wonder (2022)
Land of 1000 Nations (2023)
Khitai (2024)

I've also backed the Kickstarter for the adventure module The Price of Arrogance.

Besides the 10 Adventures book, is there anything else currently in print for the 2E line?

Has Chaosium announced any plans for any new products for the game?

I'm looking for more ideas for moowoo tattoos. Anyone make any, or have some ideas?

I understand this is an existing product that just got translated, but my group loved L5R4, wants to try 7S, so I just finished reading it.

Spoilers:

I thought it felt a bit long, especially when there's a painful gross debuff stacking to make sure you never feel good about making progress. Doesn't seem like a suitable intro to the game since it whisks you away from home fairly fast. I have limited patience for tangled-web-of-conspiracy-who-can-you-trust scenarios just generally, so when they dropped one of those just before the home stretch I was like "ugh, no, skip".

Upsides, they seem to have thought about how to get the PCs to follow the story without feeling too railroaded, they try to give you enough about the NPCs that you and your group can understand what they want, and the art is uniformly nice.

They have a lot of sections where you can add flavor of three different types - supernatural, intrigue or progress - which seemed kind of neat. So you could get a scene like (I'm making this up)

• supernatural: a spirit attacks, if you defeat it it vanishes but [a letter] is left behind
• intrigue: the baroness sexily invites you to a game of cards, if you're debonair enough she gives you [a letter]
• progress: you find a mechanical puzzle box; if you manage to open it you find [a letter] inside

People with actual experience, what did you think?