Talk:Mano a Mano

2008-01-25T18:56:44Z

70.1.178.190: /* =Bigger is Better */

==Modifier Range==

proposals:

* template agility ranges from 0 to 6 instead of 0 to 8
* template abilities range from 0 to 2
* extra ability modifiers range from 0 to 4
* templates can have disabilities, but total disability modifiers cannot be less than -4
* when two disabilities affect a roll, use the worst one instead of adding them together
* negative circumstances modifiers are not added together or added to disability modifiers. Just use whichever is worse. If two negative circumstance or disability modifiers have a compound effect which is significantly worse than the individual circumstances, then the compound effect is a third circumstance with a worse modifier which is used instead.
* positive circumstance modifiers are also not added together. Use whichever is best. They are added to agility, ability, move modifiers and whatever negative modifier applies. Significant compound effects of two positive circumstances are treated as a third positive circumstance with a better modifier.

Effects:

template agility ( 0 to 6) proposed limit
extra agility (-1 to 1) current limit
template ability ( 0 to 2) proposed limit
extra ability ( 0 to 4) proposed limit
disability/circumstances (-4 to 2) proposed limit
+ move modifier ( 0 to 3) aim (+2) and strategic attack (+1)
----------------------------------
worst case scenario (-5 vs 18)

* 5 points of negative modifiers (circumstances, disabilities, exceptional clumsiness.)
* 4 points of positive circumstances and taking time to aim a bow or gun.
* 8 points from the template (I'd discourage ninja template with max agility + ability.)
* 6 points in player's control (extra agility, extra abilities and choice of moves.)

The proposed size table has 0 to 6 agility instead of 0 to 8. General categories have been replaced by single specific examples (mammals) with CP values (for the agility, health and power on this table). The CP values are not exactly correct.

{| style="text-align:center"
| rowspan="10" width="200" valign="top" align="left" |
Health, agility and power are all related to a template's size. The following examples should help guide template creation, but some creatures will be stronger or weaker, quicker or clumsier than their mass would suggest.
! CP !! style="width:4em" | Agility !! style="width:5em" | Health !! Power !! style="width:7em" | Mass !! align="left" | Example
|-
| -400 || 6 || 0 || 0 || 20 g || align="left" | mouse
|-
| -300 || 5 || 1 || 1 || 300 g || align="left" | rat
|-
| -200 || 4 || 2 || 2 || 5 kg || align="left" | cat
|-
| 200 || 3 || 5 || 3 || 80 kg || align="left" | man
|-
| 1600 || 2 || 10 || 6 || 500 kg || align="left" | horse
|-
| 7100 || 1 || 20 || 12 || 8 tonnes || align="left" | elephant
|-
| 22700 || 0 || 50 || 20 || 50 tonnes || align="left" | whale
|}

:This is great, we should use it.

The following table is a proposed extra ability modifier scale.

extra ability modifier : description
0 : Barely exposed - has used the ability without developing proficiency
1 : Novice (Technical Certification) - has started to seriously develop the ability
2 : Student (Bachelor's Degree) - average ability for someone involved with the subject
3 : Expert (Master's Degree) - better than most people who develop this ability
4 : Champion (PhD) - might be the best in the world

:Good examples, but titles (student, expert, champion) and certification (technical or degree) don't always couple tightly with ability. Do we want to use examples in the system or just provide a 0 to 4 range and leave it open to interpretation?

===Can we limit ranges to prevent worst case scenario?===

We could avoid the "worst case scenario" if we get the total range down to 4. (So no two characters will be totally outside each other's range.) which if we used the above ability range, we would have perhaps 2 levels of ability (0 = student, 1 = Master) +/- 1 extra agility, and +/- 1 template agility. Special moves and circumstantial modifiers would still give many moves a 0% or 100% chance of success. To prevent an automatic success or failure by limiting modifiers we would have to drop some modifiers, impose total modifier limits or have fewer modifiers which stack together.

===Automatic success avoids the worst case scenario===

chance automatic success when:

1 in 6 attack roll is 6
5 in 36 attack roll is 6 and defense roll isn't
1 in 12 attack and defense rolls are same even number
1 in 12 attack roll is 6 and defense roll is 4, 5 or 6
1 in 36 attack roll is 6 and defense roll is 1

* 1 in 6 is like a 0 to 2 range of modifiers
* 1 in 12 is like a 0 to 3 range of modifiers
* 1 in 36 is like a 0 to 4 range of modifiers

===Bigger is Better===

Big characters with more power and health should beat small characters with more agility.

Big characters with a 1/36 chance of hitting a small character need enough health to take all the hits the small character dishes out before the big character gets lucky and smashes the small character. In other words the big character's health should be something like 50 times more than the small character's power. The difference between these characters' modifiers is about 4 points. Combined with similar rules for characters whose agility is only 1, 2 or 3 points apart (requiring 3, 6 and 15 times as much health) we get something like this:

* a character with 0 agility should have about 100 health and 50 power
* a character with 1 agility should have about 50 health and 30 power
* a character with 2 agility should have about 15 health and 10 power
* a character with 3 agility should have about 6 health and 4 power
* a character with 4 agility should have about 3 health and 2 power
* a character with 5 agility should have about 1 health and 1 power
* a character with 6 agility should have about 0 health and 0 power

Big characters with a 0% chance of hitting small characters need to be invincible. This means armor with 6 cover and as much absorption as the small character's power. We should also consider the weapons the small character might use to increase his power. The difference between these character's modifiers is about 5 points so the absorption of a character with 0 agility should be the maximum power of a character with 5 agility.

If a character with 5 agility has 1 power, but medium or high variance he can double or even triple that with extra power. He might even be able to increase that power to 4 or 5 with the right weapon and still have the full benefits of 5 agility. A character with 6 agility and 0 power might be able to increase his power with a weapon that has 1 or 2 power. We haven't laid down any limits on weapon power yet, but let's assume that an elephantine character needs at least 1 absorption and a whale sized character needs at least 2 or 3 to achieve proper invincibility. This extra absorption helps to make up for the fact that characters only 2, 3 or 4 levels smaller than them also might use weapons to increase their power a few points.

This absorption makes also makes the big characters extremely difficult, but not impossible, to kill by average characters. Consider humans with 3 agility, 6 health, 4 power sharp weapons fighting an elephant with 1 agility, 1 absorption (6 cover), 50 health, and 30 power blunt weapons. The humans use powerful attacks, hitting 13/18 times, doing 3 damage with each hit for an average of about 2 damage per turn. The elephant uses a strategic attack, hitting 5/18 times, taking out one human every 3 or 4 turns.

* Against one human the elephant will probably take the man out in 3 or 4 turns, having taken about 7 damage. Fighting one human at a time the elephant could take on 3 in a row and only take 21 damage. Around the end of the 4th fight the elephant's damage would pass half of his health and he would be limited to quick attacks which only succeed 1/6 of the time. He could probably still kill a couple more humans before being completely incapacitated by the 7th human.
* Against 2 humans simultaneously, the elephant would typically take 15 damage before taking out the first human and 21 damage before taking out the second. But at the start of a second fight in a row against a pair of humans, the elephant would lose the ability to do strategic attacks, and be nearly incapacitated after taking out one human.
* Against 3 humans the elephant would take about 21 damage before taking out one human and lose the ability to do strategic attacks a turn later. The elephant would be nearly incapacitated before taking out the second human, and the third would probably defeat him, although there's some chance the elephant could kill all the humans or that all of the humans could survive.
* Against 6 humans the elephant would take 12 damage per turn, and have a 50% chance of taking out at least one human, maybe a 20% chance of taking out at least two, and small chance of taking out 3. If he got really lucky he could take them all out.
* Against 12 humans (if they could somehow all reach the elephant at the same time without interfering with each other - a dubious proposition) there would still be a nearly 50/50 chance of someone being killed before the elephant was dispatched.

Speed might also be taken into account. If the big guy has half speed he needs double health to make up for fewer chances to hit.

===CP limits range===

Character points can limit the range of modifiers two ways: by reducing maximum modifiers, and by increasing minimum modifiers.

To find the maximum modifier we have to look at the player who is tweaking his character for maximum combat bonus. We won't choose the template with the best modifiers, but with the best modifier-to-character-point ratio. He may also take advantage of some disabilities, so we need to add maximum negative CP to the total CP limit. On a scale where +2 has more than twice the CP of +1, the player will prefer a bunch of +1 modifiers to a few +2 modifiers. If agility has twice the CP of a combat ability, this character will try to put 1/3 of his CP into template agility (depending on what templates are available), 1/3 into extra agility, 1/6 into template ability modifier (again depending on what's available) and 1/6 into extra ability.

Suppose the player is making a 2500 CP character. Ideally 800 CP would go into template agility, 800 into extra agility, 400 into template ability and 400. Suppose he finds a template with 600 CP of agility (6) and and 600 CP of ability (3) then suppose he puts 200 CP into extra agility (1) and 1000 CP into extra ability (4). His total modifier is 6 + 3 + 1 + 4 = 14.

To find the minimum modifier we cannot look at the player doing the opposite tweak: minimizing his combat bonus, because that player frankly could give a crap about his chances in a fight. Instead we should look at a character who makes combat bonus a very low priority, perhaps dumping his last 100 CP into getting +1 to some combat ability. This character will have a very average template to minimize CP - the game will probably not have templates which are clumsy AND weak. So his minimum template agility is -1. This suggests that the minimum total modifier for a character who is not designed for fighting but not designed to be an easy target is 0.

0 to 14 is not a very tight range. It is tighter than -5 to 17, and it can probably be improved by changes to the CP scale. Remember that the tweaker splits his CP as evenly as possible between the 4 ways to increase his combat bonus: template agility and abilities and extra agility and abilities.

:Somethings should not be very expensive, compared to roll modifiers Power should be fairly low cost, and health should be even cheaper. Roll modifiers like Ability should be expensive, and even more general roll modifiers such as agility should be very expensive indeed.

==Mechanical vs. Organic Characters==

Being a mechanical character is an ability with a special CP of 0, no levels and no modifiers. A mechanical character does not heal, but can be repaired using craftsmanship and abilities which allow characters to modify mechanical characters. Mechanical characters can be repaired more quickly than an organic character heals. Mechanical characters do not require surgery rolls when they are modified.

Characters who do not have this ability are called organic characters. The main difference between mechanical and organic characters is how they are affected by trauma. (A very complex robot which can heal itself but can be easily destroyed by an attempted modification might not have the mechanical character ability.) Mechanical characters do not decay as quickly as organic creatures, so they can be easier to resuscitate from fatal injuries.

:There is a question as to weather or not the characteristic of being organic vs. being mechanical should have a Character Point value. For the time being we are just trying to balance out the advantages so that this characteristic is character-point neutral.

:How fast can mechanical characters be repaired? Are repairs more like modifications or like medicine/healing rolls? If mechanical character ability had a level it might be a bonus to being repaired.

:Do mechanical characters recover from stun like normal characters? I would lean toward "yes" as there are lots of temporary mechanical problems even a simple machine can work out itself, especially autonomous and semi-autonomous robots with redundant systems (NASA probes often recover themselves after the ground crew writes them off as down for the count, and they usually have minor problems which require adjustment and slow down the mission but don't cause lasting damage.)

==Combat Abilities==

Currently we only have two kinds of combat abilities:

;Weapon Proficiency: Abilities which modify combat modifiers are weapon proficiencies, because you have one combat modifier per weapon. Weapon Proficiencies can be as specific as a single weapon or as broad as you like (you could have a weapon proficiency which applies to all weapons) but they apply to any use of the weapon's combat modifier.

;Athletic Abilities: Athletic abilities improve your health, allowing you to fight longer even when you get hurt. Your best two athletic abilities affect your health, and it doesn't really matter which athletic abilities they are.

The most obvious thing missing is abilities that affect ''how'' you fight with a given weapon - abilities which give you an advantage to using certain classes of actions over others. For example experience competing in wrestling might improve your grappling more than it improves your striking ability. How would these abilities work? Would they add another column to the equipment list, or would they give you special modifiers (like the Grp, Atk, Par modifiers.) or would they be added directly to combat rolls? Would we have some combat modifiers be independent of the equipment list, and not affected by which weapon you use?

==Limitations==

We need to expand the coverage of limitations. Mostly these are setting/game design decisions that affect character creation and development.

* Template limitations not currently on the template:
** Sexes (based on template? Should templates have a "sexes" property?)
** Age limits (minimum age described by template, maximum age limits)
** natural abilities: I removed the following text from game design/templates/abilities: "If the ability cannot be improved by exercise or experience or can only be improved to a certain level, the ability should have a '''limit''' (Lim). This limit is the maximum number of ability levels a character of this template can develop in this ability." It seems like there are some circumstances where it would be appropriate to have this limit, for example a character might be a robot which cannot be trained to do tasks it has not already been programmed to do.
* CP Allowance
** How much CP for heroic characters?
** How much CP for super-heroic characters?
* Equipment
** starting equipment (character creation)
** shopping (character development)
* PCs vs. NPCs
** templates
** occupations
** abilities?
** equipment
* Character ability level limits?
** character creation
** training
** occupation-limited abilities?

The rest are GM-preference/style/playability/best-practices limitations:

* Maimed characters/missing limbs - the rules currently say you need the GM's permission.
* Disabilities
** A game should allow no disabilities beyond those built into the templates, or at least have limitations like one disability per character, no more than -1000 CP of disabilities, and only those disabilities that have unavoidable consequences.
** A game with a GM may have a bigger disability list because he GM can moderate the role-playing of those disabilities. Players need the GM's permission to give characters disabilities beyond template disabilities. The GM may have stricter limitations than the game requires, not allow some disabilities, or decide on a case-by-case basis.

==Ability Checks in Combat==

At times a GM might ask players to perform an ability check during a round of combat. My opinion is that players should not add their ability bonus to the check unless they specifically have established that they are using the ability. If the check is called before the player's turn and the player stated the use of the ability before the beginning of combat. The player would be allowed to add their ability bonus. If the check is called after the player's turn then the player would not be allowed to add their ability bonus the unless they specifically use at least a quick action to use the ability. --[[User:Ulrich|ulrich]] 11:00, 2005 Jul 2 (CEST)

:A classic example is watching out for traps during combat. If the traps are so well hidden that an ability roll is required, at least one of the PCs should spend a whole turn looking for traps instead of fighting. If the story requires the characters to fall into a trap, it should be impossible to find (or impossible to avoid if you do find it.) If this is not a good time in the story for the characters to fall into a trap, or if the characters have been specifically looking for traps as they go along, it doesn't make sense to ask them to make routine checks for traps. --[[User:SerpLord|SerpLord]] 15:17, 8 December 2005 (CET)

RPGnet - User contributions [en]

Talk:Mano a Mano