Talk:Mano a Mano

Proof-reading version 2009

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
  • 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
  • Manufacturing and Modification
    • Maximum CP
    • Surgery
    • Make an Item - Equipment Generation Example
    • Modify Weapon Example
    • Artificial Character Example
    • Character Modification Example

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:

Option 1

Add the absorption or cover (whichever is less) of the character's body armor, helmet and shield to the character's defense modifier. The product of absorption multiplied by cover is added to the character's toughness. This also increases the character's healthy value (half of the new total toughness.) This means we need to replace the armor area system with:

• ranged defense = 10 + agility + cover or absorption of each piece of armor, whichever is less
• melee defense = ranged defense + best weapon ability + 2 if the weapon has the reach feature
• total toughness (?) = toughness + the (cover x absorption) of each piece of armor
• healthy would be total toughness / 2

Healing rules might need to change because people with armor can take more damage.

how can we simplify the math on this? Would renaming "healthy" and/or "toughness" make this system more narratively intuitive?

Option 2

Instead of using the cover or absorption as a defense bonus, subtract the absorption of the character's body armor from the damage of all attacks, unless the attacker explicitly aims the attack at the uncovered areas, which increases the difficulty by an amount equal to the armor's cover plus the cover of a helmet and shield if the character is wearing them. Optionally shields can be an exception to this rule: the absorption of shields is ignored but shield cover is added to all defense rolls.

Option 3

Since we have to have separate defense stat on the character sheet anyways, have each piece of equipment with an armor aspect simply add to the defense stat.

Q: What about attacks that are only partially absorbed by armor? A: Bring back half-effect, so that in the core rolling mechanism, if the two opposing values are equal, the attempt is half-successful.

Q: How can we avoid having division in the combat round? A: We can say that half-successful attacks do all stun (or half-stun if the weapon is sharp. Alright, so this won't get of all division per say, but any division having to do with half-damage.)

Q: What about half-damage from Padded weapons? A: Who cares, it's a padded weapon, come on.

Option 4

Cover is the difficulty of trying to get around a layer of armor. If the layer is not intentionally bypassed in this way, the absorption of that layer is subtracted from the damage of the attack.

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.