Talk:Mano a Mano

New Manufacturing and Modification System

Creating Items and Characters

Characters can use some abilities to create stuff. Craftsmanship can be used to create armor and weapons from an equipment list or new weapons designed by a player or GM. Some games may allow characters to create characters. Characters created by other characters are called artificial characters. Examples from popular fiction include the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein, and Robby the Robot created by Dr. Morbius. Games where characters can create artificial characters will state which abilities can be used for this. For example, a character might use an ability called "robotics" to build a lunar rover robot.

Difficulty Modifier

When a character creates a new item or character, the difficulty modifier for creating that thing is one percent (1%) of it's character point (CP) value, rounded to the nearest whole number. For example, the difficulty modifier for creating a spear worth 1950 CP is 20. (See Game Design/Equipment/Equipment Lists and Game Design/Equipment/Equipment CP.)

When there is no appropriate template for a new artificial character, the player whose character is creating it may have to design a new template. For example, 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 this kind of item or artificial character is rare, add 1 to the difficulty. If the culture deliberately avoids creating this kind of item or artificial character, add 1 more to the difficulty modifier. For example robots might be unpopular in a high tech culture (+1 difficulty) or weapons might be forbidden in a pacifist community (+2 difficulty.)

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. For example, the Inca empire had many well-developed technologies for it's time, but it did not have steel for making certain types of equipment, like swords and plate armor. A character making those kinds of weapons among the Inca would have a +2 difficulty modifier as a result.

Success Modifier

The success modifier is the modifier of the ability used to create the item or character plus technology and tool quality modifiers from the following table. Add 1 to the success modifier if the character is in a culture where similar items or methods of creating characters is common. Add 1 more to the success modifier if the character is in a culture which specializes in making this type of item or character.

Modifier		Technology		Tool Quality
+0		Stone age		Makeshift / lacking materials
+1		Bronze age		Low quality / cheap
+2		Iron age		Typical / mediocre
+3		Steel age		High quality / expensive
+4		Industrial		State of the art / very rare
+5		Mechanized
+6		Cybernetic
+7		Futuristic

Time Modifier

If the success modifier is greater than the difficulty modifier, then 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

Modifying Items and Characters

2nd Option

A character cannot modify a thing that character created (because this additional modification was included in the original creation process.) Another character can only modify that same thing once (because that additional modification was included in the original modification process.) Otherwise, modifying a character, item, or weapon works the same as creating one, except: 1) 1% of the character points of the modified thing (after it is modified) are used for the difficulty modifier. 2) A time modifier of 2 or less takes 15 minutes, and all other time modifiers take only 1/4 as long as listed:

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

1st Option

Characters can modify items and characters if they have an appropriate ability. Abilities used to create items and characters can usually be used to modify them. For example, craftsmanship can be used to modify weapons and armor or a game might have a "robotics" ability that allows you to mount a gun on a lunar-rover robot. Determine the character points the modified thing will have after it is modified. Find the time modifier as if creating the modified item or character. If the time modifier is greater than 8, the character can't do the modification.

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.

The following table gives the time needed to make a modification based on the time modifier and the difference between the CP of the item or character before and after modification.

Modifier		1 - 100 CP		101 - 200 CP		over 200 CP
0		15 minutes		15 minutes		15 minutes
+1		15 minutes		30 minutes		30 minutes
+2		30 minutes		45 minutes		1 hour
+3		1 hour		90 minutes		2 hours
+4		2 hours		3 hours		4 hours
+5		4 hours		6 hours		8 hours
+6		8 hours		12 hours		16 hours
+7		16 hours		24 hours		32 hours
+8		32 hours		48 hours		64 hours

Surgery

If a 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)

We might want to make this into a more generic surgery rule which can be applied to both modifications and medical treatments (removing an inflamed appendix, tumor or parasite for example.) This would add lots of nice narrative tools, like a weapon which injects poison which has to be extracted with a difficulty 2 surgery roll, or a disease which requires surgical treatment.

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 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)