Talk:Scratch

movement abilities should be more useful when escaping

Movement abilities are not as useful as they should be when escaping. Only hold and getting incapacitated can prevent you from escaping. The movement ability bonus to agility does not help you avoid holds, and you lose the bonus once you are held. Ideas for making movement abilities more useful while escaping:

• add movement abilities to strength when you evade
  • This is my favorite of these options.--BFGalbraith 01:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
  • What if it also added to your intelligence while evading?--BFGalbraith 01:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
    • it would make it harder to delay you with a distract action while evading
      • evading the distraction makes narrative sense
      • this helps you escape because delaying prevents escape
    • it would make it harder to panic you with a surprise or delay action while evading
      • does not help you escape - panicked characters can still evade and escape.
      • keeps you from having to evade again or escape next turn
      • does evading a surprise make narrative sense?
      • does evading intimidation make narrative sense?
• hold against an evading character has to roll higher than both agility and strength
• hold always has to roll higher than both agility and strength

describing actions that can only be used once per encounter

Should we define "unrepeatable" actions as actions that can only be used once per encounter, or should we just say that the action can only be used once per encounter in each case?

stuff to do when delayed

Allowing delayed and incapacitated characters to attempt simple actions can make the game more fun for players whose characters are not otherwise able to do anything.

Things that already happen on your turn while you are delayed:

• The -2 agility from engage ends - sweet!
• The +2 agility from take cover ends - d'oh!

Things we might add to the system:

• hold the character who is holding you
• take cover when you are delayed by your own shooting or blasting attack (or maybe you can only STAY in cover if you did it before shooting or blasting.)

I like the above two, and don't like the two below.

1 Death-per-say and grid movement are irrelevant to what we are working on this right now, which is TDW.

2 On the other hand, the big risk of getting someone in a hold in real-life is that they can also grab you, immobilizing you as well, even if they have an inferior hold.

3 Also it totally makes sense for someone to be using the same cover they had before, even if their projectile weapon has a lot of kick or takes a while to reload.--BFGalbraith 04:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

grid movement when you are delayed by your own moves

• Being delayed by your own knockout, shooting or blasting shouldn't keep you from moving.
• Getting delayed by a hold action should keep you from moving.
• Should being delayed by a distract action keep you from moving?
• Should we distinguish delayed vs. delayed + immobilized with technical terms?

balance between abilities

Here's how I estimate the approximate value of each ability at each level. This scale is adjusted so that 1 level of an attack ability is worth 1. It's not exactly the same as the CP scale.

ability	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	explanation
toughness (1½ / level avg from level 4 to 10)	-15	-5	0	3	5	7	9	11	12	13	none of the other abilities are useful when you are incapacitated attack abilities are less useful when you are injured Toughness is especially valuable at low levels when you have a high risk of getting injured or incapacitated by each attack.
attack abilities, craftsmanship, healing	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	+5 for your first attack ability because it doubles attack power when healthy +5 for healing (potentially heals several points of damage.) +1 for craftsmanship versatility?
stalking abilities	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	+1 for your first stalking ability (surprise action) Stealth and detection give you an up-front initiative bonus. The huge detection bonus to initiative makes up for the difference between the value of agility and intelligence.
movement abilities (¾ / level)	¾	1½	2¼	3	3¾	4½	5¼	6	6¾	7½	+5 for flying because non-flying characters can't hit you with close range attacks when you evade or use a long range attack +½ for swimming because non-swimmers and long-range attacks can't hit you when you use swimming to evade swimming gives you strength instead of agility, but both attack and agility in water
command (2½ / level avg)	3	5	7	9	11	13	16	19	22	25	If you have 2 minions, you can do 3 actions per turn You can cause up to 12 damage in a single turn (knockout) You can cause up to 9 damage every turn (blasting)

command is overpowered

Here's my logic for evaluating command ability: At level 10 you can have two 5 CP minions with 1 attack ability level and 4 toughness. These are probably the optimum attack-oriented minions, or close to it. They have above-average, normal-for-PCs toughness. They let you attack three times as often, tripling your success rate. the average success rate for attacks is 55%, so tripling that adds 110%, or in other words it's like 22 attack ability levels. Adding 3 more levels for the intimidate action (10 vs. intelligence at level 10.) gives a total value of 25.

This is probably an over-estimation of the value of command ability. Command ability minions cannot be healed, and they can be injured more easily than a powerful PC (the sort that would have 10 command ability.) Also note that the value of command ability above level 10 slows down to 1 / level. Still, it seems like each level of command ability is almost twice as valuable as each level of attack ability.

are movement abilities powerful enough?

• movement ability levels are less valuable than attack ability levels
  • agility does not protect you against all attacks
  • evade is only used in tight spots
  • movement ability holds do not cause damage like wrestling

distraction abilities

You should be able to add ANY ability level except for toughness to a distract roll (close range delay attack vs. intelligence)

Pro:

• distract does not currently have an ability bonus
• toughness is by far the most useful ability
• players can have fun inventing their own tricks for distracting enemies

Con:

• vague narrative
• a player can throw a random ability at an enemy, leaving other players scratching their heads about what happened.

This is a sort of "attack by role-playing."

Some abilities seem more suited to distract than others: acrobatics, detection, stealth, command seem much more appropriate than craftsmanship and healing. In between are the combat abilities and other movement abilities. --BFGalbraith 04:54, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Movement abilities seem like they would be useful for distracting in environments where they can be used to evade. If these were the ONLY abilities that could be used for distraction, this would help balance the abilities (downside: stealth could not be used for distraction) --SerpLord 14:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea of only using movement abilities for distraction. While it does not explain why some abilitiy's can NOT be used for distraction, it does not do a greater evil, which is to have an explaination-defying selection of abilities do distraction. IMHO this is our best choice so far for haviing ability bonuses apply to distraction. --BFGalbraith 04:15, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

more realistic healing options

games without healing ability (dinosaurs and prehistoric animals)

hardcore

• HP never goes up during combat
  • damage always represents injuries that take a long time to heal.
  • It never represents physical or psychic pain, suffocation or stunning effects that people can recover from during combat. (This could make the rule incompatible with some settings or other optional rules like skills.)
• healing still used in combat with death rules?
  • does first aid remove the healer from combat?
    • NO, either you can use healing as a combat action or you don't use healing until hostilities stop. This is all about how you interpret the duration of combat.
      • If you insist on a very quick flow of combat without pauses for maneuvering and orientation (combat takes seconds), then there is not time in a battle to treat multiple injured allies, and it is not necessary or even appropriate to treat injured allies during combat.
      • If combat turns are more like camera shots in an action movie and clashes in a real fight, which are interrupted by pauses and maneuvers that vary in duration (combat takes minutes), there is time in a battle to treat multiple injured allies or treat an ally and then return fire at an enemy.

milder

• you can only be healed from being incapacitated once per battle. We could give this state a name, like convalescent or wounded.
• we could also limit each healer to healing one character form injured to healthy once per battle.

healing between battles

• everybody heals to stamina + 1 between battles (balance and stability - game designers know you will have most of your HP when you enter a battle.)
• make toughness roll to heal yourself to full HP
• make healing roll for each ally to heal them to full HP

healing skills

• special healing skills might be able to heal you when normal healing actions cannot.
• special toughness skills might allow you to be healed more often.
• toughness skills that help you be healed?

optional death rules

realistic or brutal games like Resilience might have death rules that add dramatic tension and character expendability.