Talk:Scratch

simplified healing

What if we simplified the healing rule so that characters can only be healed once per encounter, but healing always restored the character to healthy (stamina +1)? (I realize that there currently is no limit on healing, but a more complex healing limit than what I have proposed here is may soon be incoming.)--BFGalbraith 18:04, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

altered states

Players have suggested using a coin to keep track of whether you are delayed.

We could put checkboxes on the character sheet to remind players of states they may need to keep track of whether they are delayed or panicked, whether they have -2 defense from the engage action or +2 defense from the take cover action, and perhaps their initiative.

Initiative cards are another useful tool for keeping track of the order of characters turns (3x5 cards folded in half, with character names and initiative arranged in order of initiative.) State flags can be attached to initiative cards (i.e. stick a small post-it or sticky colored dot on the card to indicated delayed.)

shared initiative

In The Dark Woods and some other games, all characters controlled by the same player should have the same initiative. But in GM-ed games like Squawk, the GM will sometimes control groups of enemies that should have different initiative.

initiative groups

We should implement this by saying that each player has an initiative group and the characters the player controls are in his initiative group. This makes it easy for us to add multiple initiative groups for GMs in optional rules. For example:

Each person controlling characters has an initiative group. The initiative group contains the characters that person controls.

Initiative groups take turns during encounters. At the beginning of each encounter, roll a twenty-sided die for each initiative group to determine the order of their turns. This is the group's initiative roll. Groups take turns in order from the highest initiative to the lowest. If two groups have the same initiative, break the tie by rolling another die for both groups until one of them rolls higher. That group goes before the other.

Each character has a turn during each turn of their initiative group. The player controlling the group chooses the order of the turns of the characters in the group.

The above is good group terminology & rules. --BFGalbraith 16:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

initiative bonuses

How should individual stealth and detection levels affect an initiative group's initiative roll?

PROPOSAL #1: lowest stealth bonus + highest detection bonus. (example: in a group of three characters, one has 2 stealth, one has 3 stealth, and one has 4 detection, so the bonus would be 2 x 2 + 4 x 10 = 44.)

This is a little bit more work to describe because than prop #2, because we have to say that each bonus only applies if it is the lowest, or highest bonus from other characters with the same ability. --SerpLord 20:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

PROPOSAL #2: sum of all initiative bonuses. (example: in a group of three characters, one has 2 stealth, one has 3 stealth, and one has 4 detection, so the bonus would be 2 x 2 + 3 x 2 + 4 x 10 = 50.)

This is the easiest one to describe. The description of each ability currently says it adds a bonus to the character's initiative roll. We would simply change this to say it adds a bonus to their initiative group's initiative roll. --SerpLord 20:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

IMHO this is a far more simple question that suggested above. Group initiative is based either on your weakest link (because his clumbsiness gives away group location,) or it is based on your most proficient member (because he's your most effective scout.) --BFGalbraith 16:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Prop #1 is the closest rule to the weakest link or most effective scout phenomena you are describing. --SerpLord 20:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

PROPOSAL #3: the highest initiative bonus of any character in the group. (example: in a group of three characters, one has 2 stealth, one has 3 stealth, and one has 4 detection, so the bonus would be 40.)

This is even trickier to describe than prop #1 because you have to create a new value called initiative bonus for each character (Currently each ability adds directly to the initiative roll.) Then you have to compare each character's initiative bonus to choose the best one. --SerpLord 20:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Balance issues with stealth and detection become more sensitive when the formula ignores all but the highest bonus of any character in a group.

I don't think balance between initiative abilities justifies the complexity of the other group initiative rule proposals, nor do I think that complexity will adequately address those issues anyways. --BFGalbraith 16:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

See my assessment of the complexity above. Excessive complexity and imbalance are both unacceptable. (If we have to sacrifice some balance for simplicity, we do have the option of adjusting the bonus multipliers - but I don't see that helping at the moment.) --SerpLord 20:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

SITUATION #1: A player controlling one PC and 1 or 2 minions. The player designs the minions.

• If we choose proposal #1, the player will need to give both his minions stealth if he wants to use his own stealth bonus to initiative, and he can only use the best detection bonus in his group.
• If we choose proposal #2, the player can distribute his abilities any way he wants without worrying about the way initiative is combined.
• If we choose proposal #3, the player can only use the best initiative bonus in his group.

SITUATION #2: A player or GM controlling two or more identical NPCs. The player/GM does not design the NPCs, and even the game designer is limited because the NPCs must be identical.

• If we choose proposal #1, we would just use the bonuses of one of the NPCs.
• If we choose proposal #2, the initiative bonus of the group would be the group size multiplied by the individual initiative bonus.
• If we choose proposal #3, we would just use the best bonus of one of the NPCs.

SITUATION #3: A player or GM controlling two or more NPCs of different types. The player/GM does not design the NPCs, but the game designer can give each type of NPC any abilities he wants.

• This can happen in TDW when a bigger team fights a boss controlled by a smaller team.
• It will not happen in Squawk if we give each enemy type it's own initiative group.
• If we choose proposal #1, we would use the stealth or detection bonus of either enemy, depending on which is worse or better.
• If we choose proposal #2, we would combine the stealth and detection bonus of the two enemies.
• If we choose proposal #3, we would use the highest initiative bonus from either type of NPC.

Prop #2 is the simplest rule, but in situations #2 and #3 it seems counter-intuitively biased toward larger groups.

Prop #3 seems simple to calculate, until you realize that you have to multiply all of the detection and stealth levels before you know which one is biggest. It's also the most complicated rule. In situation #2, this proposal would aggravate any stealth vs. detection balance issues that might exist. The complexity of prop #3 is an interesting paradox, because it is strategically simple. But simple strategy does not always translate to simple rules or less math.

Prop #1 requires the least calculation (choose worst stealth and best detection before multiplying) it has medium complexity and it does it intuitively favors small group stealth and large group detection. Prop #1 is particularly simple and intuitive in situation #2, which will be common in both TDW and Squawk.

holding the person who is holding you

Add "A character who is delayed can try to hold the enemy who held him." to the end of the hold action in the Basic Actions section.

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.

Now that wrestling holds do damage, this would allow a delayed character to do damage. --SerpLord 14:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

But this is a rule outside of the wrestling rules, and is not referring to the "healthy wrestling attack." It sounds like we are going to have to make a distinction between the HWA and other holds. --BFGalbraith 17:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

We already make that distinction when we say the hold does 1 damage when you are healthy. We could add and not delayed. (The location of rules has little significance to players. Players use the rules as they interpret them, not the way we intended.) --SerpLord 17:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Should you be able to do this whenever you are delayed or only when you are delayed by a hold?

You should always be able to attempt a hold on someone holding you, even when delayed (but being delayed should not give you some kind of special opportunity to hold, when you are not being held.)--BFGalbraith 17:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

This wouldn't just immobilize the attacker, it would delay them. Holding someone practically guarantees they will try to hold you back, since they can't do anything else. This means there is a chance (the target's wrestling, detection or movement ability vs. your strength) that you will be delayed whenever you successfully hold someone. Is it still worth the risk? --SerpLord 14:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Which abilities can you use to hold someone who is holding you? Normally you can use wrestling, detection or movement abilities to hold someone (if the terrain allows you to use the movement ability for hold, distract and evade.) --SerpLord 17:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Here's a proposal that (I think) addresses all of the concerns above:

If you have wrestling ability and you are both healthy and delayed, you can use wrestling to hold one character who successfully held you since your last turn. This hold does no damage.

• it does not do damage
• it is fairly easy to explain
• you can do it whenever you are delayed
• it only uses wrestling ability
• the risk to the attacker is limited because it requires wrestling ability
• the risk to the attacker is limited because it requires the delayed character to be healthy

The downside of this proposal is that characters who are injured or do not have wrestling ability are still unable to do anything when they are held.

taking cover while reloading

It 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. So should you be able to take cover when you are delayed by your own shooting or blasting attack, or should you only be able to STAY in cover when you are delayed by your own shooting or blasting attack?

You should be able to take cover when you do the attack, and you stay in the cover until your next attack. --BFGalbraith 00:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

You can also evade, heal or do nothing between attacks. Currently take cover is described as something you do before a long range attack. Can you take cover and evade, take cover and heal, take cover and do nothing? --SerpLord 15:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

That sounds perfect to me. --BFGalbraith 17:03, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

It might be easier to say what you CANNOT do when you take cover (close range attack) than list all of the things that you CAN do (long range attack, evade heal.) In other words you can stay in cover as long as you want, but you have -2 to long range attacks and you cannot do close range attacks from cover. --SerpLord 23:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

If you can take cover when you evade, people should do that whenever there is cover. --SerpLord 23:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

What about intimidate and surprise? Currently you can do these when you take cover because they are long range attacks. Does that make sense? --SerpLord 23:17, 2 June 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

Most of our ability levels are well-balanced. Increasing stalking ability, movement ability, craftsmanship or healing from level 1 to level 2 is worth about the same increasing an attack ability from level 1 to level 2. (Swimming levels might be a little underpowered.)

command levels are too valuable

At command 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. This might be worth as much as 20 attack ability levels, which is about twice what it should be. (This is probably an over-estimation, because command ability minions cannot be healed and they can be injured more easily than a powerful PC.)

We could reign in command by thinking beyond the individual encounter. Perhaps healing and replacing command ability minions is more difficult than healing and replacing PCs between encounters. --SerpLord 22:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

toughness is too valuable at medium levels

Characters with 1 level of attack ability have a strong incentive to increase their toughness up to level 7, 8 or 9 before they develop any other abilities. This means that instead of a more or less even distribution of a characters with 5 to 10 toughness at the end of the game, optimizing players will ALL have 9 toughness at the end of the game, and very low levels of other abilities that don't pay off as much per level.

We could 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 your toughness, stamina or the amount of damage you have taken. --SerpLord 22:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

level 1 abilities have very different values

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

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.