Talk:Mano a Mano

New Item Generation System

Creating Armor and Weapons

Difficulty modifier

When a character creates new weapons or armor, the difficulty modifier of creating that item is one percent (1%) of it's character point (CP) value. For example, the difficulty modifier for creating a spear worth 2000 CP is 20. (See Game Design/Equipment/Equipment Lists and Game Design/Equipment/Equipment CP.)

Success modifier

Add the modifiers from the character's craftsmanship ability, technology (industry and resources available to the character) and tool quality to determine the success modifier. (See the chart below.)

Modifier		Technology		Tool Quality
+1		Stone age		Makeshift / lacking materials
+2		Bronze age		Low quality / cheap
+3		Iron age		Typical / mediocre
+4		Steel age		High quality / expensive
+5		Industrial		State of the art / very rare
+6		Mechanized
+7		Cybernetic
+8		Futuristic

Time modifier

If the success modifier is greater than the difficulty modifier the time modifier is 0. Otherwise the time modifier is the difficulty modifier minus the success modifier. Use the chart below to find the time required to create the item based on it's time modifier. If the time modifier is greater than 8, then the character cannot create the item.

Modifier		Time Required
0		15 minutes
+1		30 minutes
+2		1 hour
+3		2 hours
+4		4 hours
+5		8 hours
+6		16 hours
+7		32 hours
+8		64 hours

Creating Artificial Characters

Artificial characters are characters manufactured by other characters. Examples from popular fiction include the monster created by Dr. Frakenstein, and Robby the Robot created by Dr. Morbius. Creating artificial characters works like creating a weapons & armor, except:

• The difficulty modifier is 1% of the new artificial character's CP. For example, creating a new artificial character who will have 2000 character points will have a difficulty modifier of 20.
• A more appropriate ability is used in the place of craftsmanship. A game which allows characters to create artificial characters needs to state which abilities can be used for this. For example, if a character might use an ability called "robotics" to build a lunar rover robot.
• Players may have to create a new template if there is no appropriate template for the new artificial character. The new artificial character may be a unique life form or machine. If the artificial character requires a new template, increase the difficulty modifier by 2.
• If the character is in a culture where artificial characters created with the same ability are common, add 2 to the success modifier. If the character is in a culture which avoids creating artificial characters, add 2 to the difficulty modifier.
• The difficulty modifier is increased by 2 if the type of technology being used to create artificial characters is undeveloped compared to the culture's other technology.

Artificial Modifications

Characters can modify the physical characteristics of a weapon, a piece of armor or even another character:

First find out weather or not the modification can be made. Determine the character points the modified thing will have after it is modified. If the character making the modification to the thing could not create a thing with that many character points, then this character can't do the modification.

The time it takes to make a modification is the difference between the time it would take to make the modified thing and the time it would take to make the original thing. If the character can create the modified thing in less than an hour, the character can make the modifications in 15 minutes. Otherwise use the time it would take to create the modified weapon and the CP value of the modifications to find the modification time on this table:

time to                        CP value of modifications
create     1-100  101-200  201-300  301-400  401-500  501-600  601-700  701 or more
1 hour      0:30     0:45     0:45     0:45     0:45     0:45     0:45     0:45
2 hours     1:00     1:30     1:45     1:45     1:45     1:45     1:45     1:45
4 hours     2:00     3:00     3:30     3:45     3:45     3:45     3:45     3:45
8 hours     4:00     6:00     7:00     7:30     7:45     7:45     7:45     7:45
16 hours    8:00    12:00    14:00    15:00    15:30    15:45    15:45    15:45
32 hours   16:00    24:00    28:00    30:00    31:00    31:30    31:45    31:45
64 hours   32:00    48:00    56:00    60:00    62:00    63:00    63:30    63:45

If the thing being modified is a character:

• A more appropriate ability might be used in the place of craftsmanship. For example, a game might have a "robotics" ability that allows you to mount a gun on a lunar-rover robot.
• When character modifications affect things the character inherits from their template (such as limbs, natural weapons and armor, speed, agility, power, health modifier, etc.) use the template CP rules to determine the CP value of the modifications. For example, if an extra limb is added to a character the CP value is the difference adding the extra limb would make to the CP of the character's template.
• If character being modified is an organism, a medicine roll must be made to determine how much healing is required. If the roll succeeds, the healing does not affect the character's performance. If the roll fails, the character must spend an extra month healing. If the roll fails by more than 5, the character dies.

Difficulty		Type of Modification
0		no living tissue affected (sharpening claws)
2		no significant effect on organs, muscles or bones (implanting an explosive device.)
4		modifications to non-vital organs (removing an appendix)
6		significant muscle or skeleton modification (amputation, limb lengthening)
8		modification to vital organs or peripheral nervous system (heart transplant, new limbs)
10		major modifications involving centeral nervous system (add a new head and spinal column)

Make an Item - Equipment Generation Example

We will use our Modre character from the character creation example to make a new weapon. (See Character Creation/Make a Character.) Modre has craftsmanship ability with a modifier of 2.

1. Design the weapon

We decide Modre is making an "ice blade". The mass of the ice blade is 0.5 kilograms, worth -350 CP. We add 300 CP because the ice blade's leverage is 2 (6 power minus 4 heft) leaving -50 CP. We add 600 CP for 2 sharpness leaving 550 CP. We use 200 CP to get 1 meter reach for the ice blade, making to total 750 CP. In other words, Modre wants to make this Ice Blade:

Item Name	Special Modifiers	CP	Mass	Heft	Reach	Pwr	Shp	Cvr	Abs
Ice Blade	(no special modifiers)	750	0.5 kg	4	1.0 m	3-6	2

2. Determine Difficulty Modifier

Because the Ice Blade's CP is 750, Modre's difficulty modifier for making it is 7.5.

3. Determine Success Modifier

We start with Modre's +2 craftsmanship ability modifier. Modre is using stone age technology, relying mostly on things he can find floating around on ice bergs. We add a +1 modifier for his access to this "stone age" technology (for a total modifier of +3 so far.) The bone chisels he uses are considered "typical" for his stone age technology, giving him another +3 modifier and making the total modifier +6.

4. Determine the Time Modifier

The Time modifier is the Difficulty Modifier with the Success Modifier subtracted from it. Modre's difficulty modifier is 7.5, and his Success Modifier is 6, so his Time Modifier is 1.5 (7.5 - 6 = 1.5.) Since the Time modifiers are measured in whole numbers, we round Modre's Time Modifier to 2. Looking at the Time modifier chart, we can see it will take Modre 1 hour to make his ice blade.

Mechanical vs. Organic Characters

It's worth noting that there is a difference between Mechanical and Organic characters. The main differences are:

• Mechanical Characters do not require medical roles when modified to see if they survive the operation.
• Mechanical Characters don't heal, they are repaired, so:
  • They can be repaired faster then the required time for Organic characters to heal from injury, but
  • They don't heal on their own, they must be repaired before they can again be fully functional.
• Death is more permanent for organic characters, since their brain begins to rot very shortly after death. Mechanical characters can sometimes be more easily revived.

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.

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 to character creation and development in the Game Design section.

• CP Allowance (How much CP for heroic or super-heroic characters?)
• Sex (based on template? Should templates have a "sexes" property?)
• Age
• Templates (PC vs. NPC)
• Build (depends on templates. Dogs vary more than cats, and birds even less)
• Missing limbs
• 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 levels (character creation and training)
• Equipment (character creation and shopping)
• Occupations?
  • limitations are basically built-in to occupations
  • but the occupations section feels like it needs work
• Reach? (requires a rule allowing characters to have more or less reach than their template)

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. --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. --SerpLord 15:17, 8 December 2005 (CET)