Hi there

I'm running The Enemy Within and see that Jade Scepter Cultist have the "Velvet Parlance" action. As Lure of Power is the only expansion I dont have, I wonder if anyone can tell me what that action does?

Also, can anyone help with some suggestion for an appropriate replacement action that does something in the vein of Velvet Parlance?

Thanks!

It just generates bonus white dice that can be used like Cunning points (and/or Aggression points if you rolled really well). It's one of those buffing actions that doesn't tend to see a lot of use. Success rates in the game are high enough that it's usually better to spend your turn actually doing something, rather than spend your turn making a subsequent action just a little better.

I suppose you could swap it out for Big City Bravado or Inspiring Words or any of those other abilities that just add a fortune die or two to other rolls.

I'd recommend just giving the NPCs an extra point or two of Cunning instead. It'll accomplish roughly the same thing (small boost to one or two rolls), but be much faster and simpler at the table.

Ah alright, thanks for the advice. I think I'll just give them some extra cunning then.

Am I the only one who thinks the whole Ketzenblum encounter is way too easy for the players? Adeles action pretty much requires her to be hidden, which will only happen once if she's lucky.

Of course I can just make it more difficult, it just seems fairly easy as written

Yeah, I upgunned Adele significantly. She's rather weak as written. All the NPCs in this game are squishy, but she just doesn't stand a chance if she goes toe to toe against even modestly combat-oriented PCs. For a named NPC to survive past the second round of a battle in this system, they need a lot of soak or a tactical situation that prevents the PCs from reaching them in the first round. PCs in that situation will correctly assess the cultists to be mooks, and gang up on Adele first. Either change her soak, give her better actions, or increase the cultist count.

Parts of the campaign feel to me like the authors had too much 1st & 2nd ed experience, and not enough 3rd ed under their belts. They seem to underestimate the success rates of attacks in general. Many of the battles list events that happen on the 10th turn, like the city watch showing up, or the building collapsing. I've never seen a battle in this edition last anywhere near that long. Unless you've got an ironbreaker in your group, any battle that lasts past the end of the 4th turn is probably a TPK.

I also think the adventure assumes 3 PCs, all drawing random starting careers so you're lucky if even one of them is any good at fighting. While that's very typical of 2nd ed, it's not necessarily the case with 3rd. If you've got more of a D&D-ish party with a wizard, a priest, and a heavily-armed dwarf, you'll probably need to compensate. My group had all that plus a Pistolier, so the only opponents I didn't have to upgrade was the Book 3 finale and one Beastmen fight in the travel sections.

I agree, the encounters are quite easy. However, I try to give my players a quite hard time with critical wounds, insanities and diseases, so even though they might have some easy fights, they are quite worried about injuries as they are very hard to get rid of.

I think in the Adele encounter I'll let her try to stay hidden and use her blade to inflict some serious harm. After that she'll probably take a severe beating and attempt to run and return sometime in Altdorf. Knowing my players they might run after her into the streets, where she'll certainly be aided by the city guard and claim that the players are in league with the dark powers. That should be interesting, and quite dangerous

Thanks for the advice!

Almost any NPC or other key baddie needs supporting fodder/blockers etc. to not get swamped, whether you use them as additional foes or just narratively to give extra soak (e.g., I had a vampire essentially soak wounds with minions who would throw themselves in front of attacks to ensure the vampire enough screen time to measure up to billing).