Talk:Scratch

describing abilities

The things an ability "could represent" should be text a person making a character could copy or easily paraphrase as a description of his own character's abilities if he cannot think of anything better.

Acrobatics could represent good balance, climbing, or jumping or an aptitude for maneuvering around obstacles. It can also represent using equipment which helps a character do those things.

Low levels of swimming ability could represent trained human swimming ability and natural talent. Higher levels of swimming ability could represent special equipment for maneuvering in water (like fins) or a streamlined body more suited for swimming.

Flying could represent natural, magical, psychic or artificial means of flying through the air more-or-less unrestricted. This can include fantastic jumping and running abilities that seem to defy gravity.

Healing could represent elite first aid training, injections just as adrenaline or stimulants, magical health restoration powers, healing potions, or other fantastic ways of healing people during combat.

Craftsmanship could represent mastery of high technology such as robotics or electrical engineering, more primitive forms of technology such as auto mechanics, metalworking or woodcarving, and any other technology related ability that could influence the abilities of other characters.

balance between abilities

Up to about 6 hit points, toughness is more valuable than most other abilities.

What if

• EVERYONE had 6 hit points? So what if hit points was 5+ toughness?
  • This would have the same effect as simply giving characters more CP and a minimum toughness of 6 - except that now there is no flexibility to create PCs, NPCs or monsters with less than 6 toughness.
  • As our HP levels have ballooned from an average of 2 (when all characters just had "healthy", "injured" and "incapacitated" states) to an average that rounds up to 10, the difference between attack abilities matters a lot less. Fighting is supposed to be better for fighting off multiple attackers, but now you have to hit a guy 3 times before he's even injured. That means you have to focus on one guy for several turns before the advantage of being able to split your attacks between enemies makes any difference.
  • Another side effect of ballooning hit points is that shooting and knockout ability used to keep the value of toughness in check. When average toughness was 3, then even a fairly tough guy with 5 HP could be taken out by a single attack, and a super tough guy with 10 HP could be taken out in two. More importantly, low HP was a kind of deterrent against shooting and knockout attacks because of the overkill factor. With average toughness constantly increasing anybody who can be taken out by a single shooting or knockout attack seems weak and only a guy who can take three of them seems really tough. With such big numbers and long cycles of repeating attack rolls, toughness is no longer an ability that MIGHT save you from some attacks, it's the thing that ALWAYS saves you. (Compare to agility or strength which only offer unreliable protection against random die rolls.)
• instead of that, the ability was stamina rather than toughness, so that spending 3 CP would get you 6 toughness and therefore 6 hitpoints? (On a 1 to 10 scale, this would make our HP scale 2 to 20 instead of 1 to 10, making it rarely necessary to have more than 9 stamina.) Also, if this rule were adopted, we might want to switch the names of toughness and stamina so that toughness is still the ability name.
  • Doesn't solve anything because each CP would give you twice as many hit points.

• Minions should only heal one health-state between encounters. So if a minion was incapacitated, he only has 1 HP at the beginning of the next encounter. If he was injured, he is only bare-healthy, and he only has full HP if he was still healthy at the end of his last encounter.--BFGalbraith 18:26, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

• We should reign in toughness by thinking beyond the individual encounter. For example suppose sorcerers in TDW automatically heal up to stamina + 1 between encounters. Then they can make a detection, craftsmanship or healing roll to regenerate themselves to full HP. (Note: toughness was not in that list.) If we want to be even more brutal, we can have the difficulty depend on... the amount of damage you have taken. --SerpLord 22:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Having at least 1 level of certain abilities adds extra value.

• (~5 levels) your first attack ability doubles attack power when healthy
• (~5 levels) healing potentially heals several points of damage
• (~5 levels) non-flying characters can't hit flying characters with close range attacks when they evade or use a long range attack
• (~1 level) craftsmanship versatility
• (~1 level) your first stalking ability (surprise action)
• (~½ level) command ability intimidate action
• (~½ level) non-swimmers and long-range attacks can't hit character who use swimming to evade
• (0 levels) other movement aiblities

more realistic healing options

Note: the three main scratch projects right now (TDW, HoW, Squawk 2nd Ed.) are fantasy/sci-fi with lots of explanations for "unrealistic healing." IMHO this rule may be decided on in the not-near future.--BFGalbraith 14:31, 20 June 2011 (PDT)

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.