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
• 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 battle

How should we describe actions like intimidate and surprise that can be used once per battle?

words describing the action:

• _____ is a "prepared" action - we were using this in the skill system. It's meaning is not obvious.
• _____ is a "singular" action - multiple meanings (alone and unusual)
• _____ is an "unrepeatable" action
• _____ is an "uncommon" action
• _____ is a "unique" action
• _____ is an "infrequent" action

words describing the battle:

• _____ can be used once per "battle".
• _____ can be used once per "combat".
• _____ can be used once per "encounter".

Words describing the action are more terse, but every term we define like that makes the system a little more difficult to understand, and moves words from the "natural language you can use any way you want" to "technical terms that refer to specific game mechanics."

My favorite of all the above is "encounter" because there are fewer situations where a player would want to use it to mean something other than the technical meaning. Worst case scenario: "I'm going to use intimidate every time we fight one of these enemies in our next encounter with the horde." Here the player is using "encounter" to mean an event which contains multiple battles where you can use the intimidate action once per battle. But the words "battle" and "combat" can be misused in the same way. --SerpLord 16:30, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

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.)
• grid movement when you are delayed by your own moves
• optional death rules while incapacitated (these rules don't exist yet)

What if delayed characters could still do bonus actions?--BFGalbraith 04:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

the only bonus actions now are engage and take cover. Engaging without attacking is useless. Taking cover is already mentioned above.--SerpLord 16:42, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

imbalance between abilities

Here's how I estimate the approximate value of each ability. 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.

toughness is more valuable at low levels (normal human toughness is 3)

-15  1 toughness
 -5  2 toughness
  0  3 toughness
  3  4 toughness
  5  5 toughness
  7  6 toughness
  9  7 toughness
 11  8 toughness
 12  9 toughness
 13 10 toughness

Abilities:

• -5 no attack ability
• 7 minions + intimidate (command ability)
• 5 heal (healing ability)
• 5 flying + evade or long range attack
• 1 surprise (stealth or detection ability)
• ½ swimming + evade

Ability Levels

• 1.5 each toughness level (averaged between 4 and 10)
• 1 each level of attack ability, command or craftsmanship
• ¾ each level of stealth or detection
• ½ each level of quickness, acrobatics, flying or swimming
• ¼ each level of healing

Toughness is so valuable because none of the other abilities are useful when you are incapacitated, and 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.

Most characters have an attack ability, so I listed not having an attack ability as a -5. If you do not have an attack ability, you basically have half as many attacks or half as much attack power when you are healthy.

With flying and long range attacks you can avoid close range attacks.

Having 1 level of healing ability gives you a 60% chance to heal allies. Each additional level increases the chance of success by 5% or in other words by about 1/12 of the value of 1 level of healing ability.

If you have 2 minions, you can do 3 actions per turn, dishing out up to 12 damage in a single turn (knockout) or 9 damage per turn (blasting.)

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.

Quickness, acrobatics and flying ability levels are less valuable than attack ability levels because they only increase your agility, evade and catch bonuses. Agility does not protect you against all attacks, evade is only used in tight spots, and catch is a weak alternative to hold.

While you are in the water, swimming levels are very useful because they can contribute to both attack and defense. This compensates, to some degree, for the fact that strength is not used as much as agility.

strong swimmers

Swimming should give you strength.

Pro:

• Swimming is by far the least useful ability.
• Even small human swimmers are pretty strong.

IMHO this is a weak narrative. The way I would put it is "swimming is endurance oriented, and so is grappling, which is why it gives you a strength bonus."

swimming makes you slippery, which is why it is anti-grappling :-) Seriously though human swimming does take both strength and endurance, but human walking and running takes even more strength and endurance (as land animals we are just more optimized for moving on the ground than in water.) --SerpLord 15:05, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Con:

• Some small swimming creatures are not strong.

But Swimming ability gives a significant combat bonus, so that as an ability it doesn't really work for small fast swimmers anyhow. --BFGalbraith 04:50, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I see no reason a small creature like a stingray or piranha could not have a high attack bonus, especially if they did not have an attack ability so they only have swimming vs. agility as their single basic attack roll. --SerpLord 14:51, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

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)

Making distract more effective by adding an ability level to it would make support abilities and detection a little more useful, because they give you intelligence.

Though it makes sense to use command ability to distract, that ability is already very powerful.

It makes sense to use attack abilities for distractions, but they are already quite powerful, and delaying attacks are part of what separates wrestling from other attack abilities.

It's not obvious how detection could be used to distract an enemy. (I agree that it's also not obvious how healing or craftsmanship would be used to distract.)

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)

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?