Talk:Mano a Mano

Streamlining Manufacturing and Modification

• maximum total CP of the item or character after modification = (ability + time + circumstance) x technology
• Ability ranges from 0 to 4 (higher is possible only if the template has a manufacturing bonus for some reason)
• Circumstance ranges from -2 to +2
• Time modifier should never be more than +4 (difference between no ability and mastery)
  • -2 if you spend about an hour working on it
  • -1 if you spend the whole day
  • 0 if you work on it for a week
  • +1 if you take a whole month
  • +2 if you have a year to finish it
• Technology is measured in CP/modifier

 20 Stone Age
 50 Ancient
100 Industrial
200 Modern
500 Futuristic

Free Natural Weapons

Characters with any natural weapons should automatically have an unlimited number of blunt natural weapons with about half the reach of the second-longest natural weapons, such as biting, head-butts, knee and elbow strikes.

Theoretically as long as you have the speed and mobility, you can fling SOME part of your body to bash, whip or slap your opponent, but this is mostly about simplification. Humans have many natural weapons which would be tedious and wasteful to include in their template. We don't have to justify including/excluding heads, knees and elbows or lumping them together with weapons that have very different reach.

CP for bows and guns

Reach (range) CP for bows and guns should be 3 or 4 CP per meter. (5 to 7 times cheaper than for hand weapons.)

Power CP for bows and guns should scale with the rate of fire, but this leads to a complicated formula:

Power CP = 30 * (power - heft) * (shots) / (shots + reloading), where shots is the number of times you can shoot without reloading and reloading is a measure of the time it takes to reload. There should be a minimum Power CP, like 6 * (power - heft) or shots and reloading should have maximum values (you can have weapons that can shoot more than 10 times and take more than 5 turns to reload, but it doesn't necessarily save any more CP.)

Instead we could have CP for the number of shots you can fire without reloading and the number of turns it takes to reload:

  CP    shots         CP  reloading

   0  10 or more       0   1 turn
  -5      9          -20   2 turns
 -10      8          -30   3 turns
 -15      7          -40   4 turns
 -20      6          -50   5 turns
 -30      5          -60   6 turns
 -40      4          -70   7 turns
 -50      3          -80   8 turns
 -70      2          -90   9 turns
-100      1         -100  10 or more

The loud noise, flash and smoke of firearms should probably have a small negative CP value, but this is a minor issue.

Extra reach CP

Should extra reach CP be 2 CP/tenth of a meter for the natural weapon with the most extra reach and 1 CP/tenth of a meter for the natural weapon with the second most extra reach? What about negative extra reach?

Proof-reading version 2008

Remove sections from the following list if they have been proofread since 1 January 2008. Add sections if they have been significantly changed since their last proofreading and need to be proofread again.

• Game Design
  • Occupations
    • Description
    • Requirements
    • Advantages
    • Liabilities
    • Occupation Examples
  • Abilities: How good is this list? To what degree should a game need to customize it?
    • Movement Abilities
    • Combat Abilities
    • Stealth and Detection Abilities
    • Transportation Abilities
    • Communication Abilities
    • Other Abilities
    • Disabilities
  • Equipment: Make sure these lists are up to date and make sense. The new example template (human) should give us a solid point of reference.
    • Equipment Lists
    • Equipment CP
    • Armor - example armor list
    • Hand Weapons - example hand to hand weapon
    • Missile Weapons - example long range weapon list
• Character Creation
  • Description
  • Build
  • Character Abilities
  • Choosing Occupations
  • Character Equipment
  • Encumbrance and Movement
  • Extra CP
  • Make a Character - Character Generation Example
    • Choose the Type of Character You Want to Make
    • Dimensions, Modifiers and Abilities from the Template
    • Natural Weapons
    • Use the Remaining CP to Customize the Character
    • Occupation and Equipment
    • Movement, Encumbrance and Toughness
• Action
  • Damage
    • Armor
    • Stun, Damage and Toughness
  • Rounds
  • Movement
  • List of Actions
    • Hand to Hand Attacks
    • Thrown Weapon Attacks
    • Archery and Marksmanship Actions
    • Grappling Actions
    • Other Actions
  • Attacking
  • Grappling
  • Archery and Marksmanship
  • Stance and Position
  • Mounted Combat
  • Combat Example
• Character Development
  • Changing Occupations
  • Inventory Management
  • Manufacturing and Modification
    • Difficulty Modifier
    • Success Modifier
    • Time Modifier
    • Surgery
    • Make an Item - Equipment Generation Example - needs a rewrite
    • Modify Weapon Example - needs a rewrite
    • Artificial Character Example - needs a rewrite
    • We need to add an example of a character modifying a character.

Where else do we need to add examples?

Character Creation and Development Limitations

Sex

Characters can be male or female unless the setting, templates or occupations change the sex options. Some creatures might have different sexes or no sexes. Male and female characters might have different templates.

Age

Characters can be youths, adults or old people within normal size variance. To make a small child character, the mass and length can be less than the template's variance suggests, but health and power should also be reduced.

Disabilities

Players should have the GMs permission to make characters with extra disabilities. Characters should not have more than two disabilities. The consequences of disabilities should not be easily avoided.

Abilities

A new character can have any ability unless it is a disability or has special CP. If the ability has special CP, and the character's template has the ability, then he can develop that ability. A setting might change this rule. For example a superhero game might allow a new character to choose abilities with special CP (like flight) which are not among his template's abilities.

PCs vs. NPCs

PCs and NPCs can be made from any template allowed by the setting. Many settings have more NPC templates than PC templates. The setting might also limit certain occupations, templates, abilities or equipment to PCs or NPCs only.

Equipment Limitations

How can you decide what what equipment a new character should start with?

How can a character acquire new equipment?

Mechanical vs. Organic Characters

Mechanical

This ability has a special CP of 10. A mechanical character does not heal, but can be repaired using craftsmanship or abilities which allow characters to modify mechanical characters. 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. Mechanical characters can be repaired more quickly than organic (non-mechanical) character's heal.

The CP value of being mechanical is low because of the substantial disadvantages. Mechanical characters recover from stun like normal characters. Even a simple machine can often correct temporary mechanical problems, especially autonomous and semi-autonomous robots with redundant systems like space probes. Should this ability have a modifier? What would it mean? Are there degrees of being mechanical? 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.

Compact Character Sheet

A character can be summarized by listing only a basic description, abilities and combat stats:

• name
• mass in kilograms followed by "kg"
• length in meters followed by "m"
• sex, template and occupations
• total modifier and name of each ability
• total agility followed by "Agi"
• total speed followed by "Spd"
• total toughness followed by "Tgh"
• total power followed by "Pwr"
• ground movement followed by "m ground"
• water movement followed by "m water"
• climbing movement followed by "m climb"
• air movement followed by "m air" if the character can fly
• quantity and name of each piece of equipment, natural weapon or armor. Weapons and armor (natural or equipment) have a extra stats between parentheses ("(" and ")"):
  • reach followed by "m"
  • sharpness ("blunt", "sharp" or "padded")
  • half power followed by "-", full power and "Pwr"
  • heft followed by "Hft"
  • combat bonus followed by "Cmb"
  • dexterity followed by "Dex" if the item is a natural weapon with manual dexterity.

Example

Modre, 60 kg, 1.0 m, male Sabretooth Penguin Robber, 2 swimming, 3 one-handed weapons, 1 fishing, 2 craftsmanship, 4 Agi, 1 Spd, 5 Toughness, 2-4 Pwr, 2 m ground, 10 m water, 1 m climb, 3 claws and teeth (0.5 m, 4 Cmb, 2-4 Pwr, S Shp, 0 Dex), Ice Blade (1.5 m, 7 Cmb, 3-6 Pwr, S Shp)

This format might be useful for characters who will not change, but need combat stats, a few abilities and some description, such as non-player characters (NPCs) in an adventure module.

I personally would much rather have the NPC on the other character sheet so as a GM I could use the character more easily. I am not sure that I would suggest that game designers use this as the default NPC character sheet for adventure modules.

I am trying to imagine the adventure module so hard-pressed for page space that it necessitates all of the NPC stats being squeezed onto one or two lines of a paragraph. It would either be a very short book or have an exceptionally large number of NPCs.

It should not be part of the Mano a Mano rules unless we decide that it is useful, which we haven't. We'll have a better idea whether it will be useful as we start making NPCs.

Editing Character Sheet

If you change the character sheet format when editing any of the following, you must update the others:

• Blank Character Sheet
• Example Template
• Example Character

Be sure you know which character sheet you are updating:

• The template creation example includes both the blank character sheet and the example template.
• The character creation example includes both the example template and the example character sheet.