Talk:Mano a Mano

Mano a Mano 2009

• CP will be "spent" like money. During template and character generation CP can be tallied on scratch paper.
• Experience - whether measured in CP or smaller units - will not be on the character sheet.
• Speed, agility, power, toughness and ability levels should have a character creation limit which is less than the maximum levels characters can develop.
• Character creation and development limits can vary between campaigns (a superhero game for example.)
• If the consequences of disabilities are easily avoided, then they should not have a negative CP value. Players need the GMs permission to add disabilities which aren't built into the game's templates. Characters should not have more than two disabilities.
• Characters can be male or female unless the template lists different options.
• Characters can be youths, adults or old people within normal size variance. To make a small child character without changing the template, reduce the mass, length, health and power to less than the template's variance suggests.
• The occupations rules say occupations can come with equipment. In character creation we can suggest starting occupations as a way to provide starting equipment.
• In addition to equipment acquired by occupations and craftsmanship, we can also suggest that a game can have other ways to provide characters with equipment, like spending money and finding treasure.
• The occupations example shows characters being awarded with a certain CP-worth of equipment. Instead we should say something like "in this example each item is worth it's CP value in small silver coins. The knight is rewarded with equipment whose value in coins equals the robber's CP."
• We might want to call the "reach" feature "distance", "leverage" or "control" because heavy weapons and flexible weapons don't have it.

Success Rolls

Roll three 6-sided dice (3d6), two 10-sided dice (2d10) or a 20-sided die (1d20) instead of one six-sided die for attack and action rolls. The defense roll or roll against the action's success is replaced by a difficulty level which is 10 plus defense and difficulty modifiers. Roll modifiers should be twice as big and worth half as many CP. Automatic success happens when you roll 16, 17 or 18 on 3d6 (5% of the time), 19 or 20 on 2d10 (3% of the time) or 20 on 1d20 (5% of the time.)

agility

• average template agility is 6 (or do we want to go back to 0-centered agility?)
• maximum template agility is 12
• characters can have up to 2 more agility than their template
• each point of template agility is worth 15 CP
• each point of extra agility is worth 10 CP

abilities

• maximum template ability level is 4
• characters can have up to 8 more ability levels than their template
• each template ability level is worth 8 CP
• each extra ability level is worth 5 CP

circumstance modifiers

• -4 for very unfavorable circumstances
• -2 for unfavorable circumstances
• +2 for favorable circumstances
• +4 for very favorable circumstances

other modifiers

• +2 to combat modifier if a weapon has the reach feature
• +2 to grappling attacks if a weapon has the grapple feature

New Armor System

Because we no longer have a defense roll, we need a different armor system:

• shields are not armor but they give a defense bonus (probably 1, 2 or 3 depending on the size and strength of the shield)
• cover may also be changed to defense bonus.
• armor with less absorption will have less cover/defense bonus
• absorption might be replaced by a toughness bonus which is roughly equal to cover x absorption.

Option 1

Defense = 10 + agility + the cover of each piece of armor. Melee defense = defense + a weapon ability + 2 if the weapon has the reach feature. Full health = toughness + the product of absorption multiplied by cover for each piece of armor. (Or full health = toughness + the toughness bonus of each piece of armor.) Half health (replaces healthy) = full health / 2. (Alternate names for full health/half health could be durability/stamina.) Healing rules might need to change because people with armor can take more damage.

Option 2

Subtract the absorption of the character's armor from the damage of all attacks, unless the attacker puts in extra effort to get around the armor, which increases the difficulty of the attack by the the armor's cover. Notice that shields have no absorption, but shield cover may added to all defense rolls. Also notice that if we replace absorption with toughness (= cover x absorption) then this option would require us to find absorption by dividing an armor's toughness by it's cover. So other than having to multiply or divide by cover to find toughness or absorption, Option 1 and 2 are pretty easy to swap.

Option 3

Option 1 without adding cover x absorption to health. Attacks which are partially avoided by armor can be reflected by halving the damage of barely-successful attacks or converting the damage to stun. Or you could use random damage.

Option 4

Toughness subtracts power from an attack, if the attack roll is greater than it's cover. This is like the 2008 system, only the burden of random rolling is completely on the attacker, and it makes more sense since the attacker is trying to roll high (instead of rolling low like before with the defender.)

Compact Characters

Some games will have some characters who only need a little bit of information instead of full character sheets. A common example is stock villains and monsters which only need combat stats and sometimes a few special qualities or abilities. There are at least two situations where having a compact representation of characters can be useful:

1. Battle-on-a-page where two facing pages of an RPG book contain everything a player or GM needs to play one side (the "NPC" side) of a battle. Sometimes this will only require a single character who fits on one page with a full character sheet. But if it involves more than 2 characters and the information that fits on their character sheets, then a full sized character sheet won't work.
2. Book-of-beasties which contains dozens of creatures which need to be playable. Most of these creatures won't have equipment or need any kind of character development. On the other hand you may want templates for each critter. A full character sheet would allow you to have a character and template together, and there may be very little difference between a template and a playable character anyway.

One option is a compressed character sheet using abbreviations:
N Joe Person (Qua/Abi)lities Mod A adult S m T human / O / CC 3 kg Mas 80/80 kg / EM 0 kg Lng 1.8/1.8 m / Enc 0 Typ height / Grd 4 m Var medium / H2O 0 m Spd 1 / 1 / Air 0 m Agi 3 / 3 / Clm 0 m Pwr 4 / 4 / CP 200/200 Tgh 6 / 6 / Equipment/ND Features Mas Hft Pwr Cmb 2 hands hand 2-4 3 2 feet 2-4 3	N Barbarian (Qua/Abi)lities Mod A adult S m T human swordsmanship 2/0 O barbarian / CC 30 kg Mas 100/80 kg / EM 3 kg Lng 1.8/1.8 m / Enc 0 Typ height / Grd 4 m Var medium / H2O 0 m Spd 1 / 1 / Air 0 m Agi 3 / 3 / Clm 0 m Pwr 8 / 4 / CP 252/200 Tgh 10 / 6 / Equipment/ND Features Mas Hft Pwr Cmb 2 hands hand 4-8 3 2 feet 4-8 3 1 big sword sharp reach 2handed 10 5

Another option is a short, minimal list of stats:
Joe Person, adult male human, 80/80 kg, 1.8/1.8 m tall, 1/1 Spd, 3/3 Agi, 4/4 Pwr, 6/6 Tgh, 4 Grd, 200/200 CP, 2 hands (hand, 3 Cmb, 2-4 Pwr), 2 feet (3 Cmb, 2-4 Pwr)	Barbarian, adult male human, 100/80 kg, 1.8/1.8 m tall, 1/1 Spd, 3/3 Agi, 8/4 Pwr, 10/6 Tgh, 4 Grd, 252/200 CP, 2/0 swordsmanship, 2 hands (hand, 3 Cmb, 4-8 Pwr), 2 feet (3 Cmb, 4-8 Pwr), 1 big sword (2-handed, sharp, 5 Cmb, 7 Hft, 5-10 Pwr, 3 kg)

A different type of compact character is a "how to" format for beginning players:

Joe Human You can move 4 meters before or after attacking. Attacking with the hands and feet: Roll a die and add 3 to the result. (Add 4 for a strategic strike.) The attack succeeds if this total is more than the defender's total. Quick, strategic and cautious strikes, push and slam do 1 damage and 1 stun. Powerful strike, trip, wrench, choke and disarm do 2 damage and 2 stun. For a combo, do any 2 of the following: quick strike, push, hold. When attacked: Roll a die and add 3 to the result. (Add 4 if your last action was a cautious strike. Add 5 if your last action was evade or instant stand.) The attack fails if this total is greater than or equal to the attacker's total. If damage plus stun is more than 3, you can only do a single quick strike, push or hold. If damage plus stun is 6 or more you can't move or attack.

Barbarian You can move 4 meters before or after attacking. Attacking with the big sword: Roll a die and add 5 to the result. (Add 6 for a strategic strike.) The attack succeeds if this total is more than the defender's total. Quick, strategic and cautious strikes, push and slam do 5 damage. Powerful strike, trip, wrench, choke and disarm do 10 damage. For a combo, do a quick strike, push or hold with the big sword and a quick strike, push or hold with the feet: Roll a die and add 3 to the result. The attack succeeds if this total is more than the defender's total. A quick strike or push does 1 damage and 1 stun. When attacked: Roll a die and add 5 to the result. (Add 6 if your last action was a cautious strike. Add 7 if your last action was evade or instant stand.) The attack fails if this total is greater than or equal to the attacker's total. If damage plus stun is greater than 5, you can only do a single quick strike, push or hold. If damage plus stun is 10 or more you can't move or attack.

Random Damage Variant

For each successful attack roll the smallest number of six-sided dice whose maximum total is equal to or greater than the attack power. For example if the power of an attack is 10, roll 2 six-sided dice. The damage or stun of the attack is based on the damage roll or the attack power, whichever is smaller. For example if the power of a sharp weapon attack is 10 and the damage roll is 7, then the attack does 7 damage, but if the damage roll is 12 the attack does 10 damage because it cannot do more damage than the power of the attack.

Alternately you could use dice with different numbers of sides instead of six sided dice. For example you could use the smallest number of 10-sided dice whose maximum total is equal to or greater than the attack power, or you could use a 4-sided die for 1, 2, 3 or 4 power, a 6-sided die for 5 or 6 power, an 8-sided die for 7 or 8 power, a 10-sided die for 9 or 10 power, a 12-sided die for 11 or 12 power, a 20-sided die for 13 to 20 power, two 20-sided dice for 21 to 40 power and three 20-sided dice for 41 to 60 power.

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
• Clone character sheet in the Combat Example!

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.