Talk:Scratch

movement abilities should help you escape

Only hold (wrestling or movement ability vs. strength) and getting incapacitated (attack ability vs. agility and damage vs. toughness) can prevent you from escaping.

Movement abilities seem to have a modest effect on your chances of escaping, because you do not get the movement ability bonus to agility when you are being held, and agility does not keep you from getting held.

rules that might make 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

term for actions that can only be used once per battle

Characters can intimidate and surprise once per battle. What key phrase should we use to indicate an action can only be used once per battle?

• "prepared" action - we were using this in the skill system. It's meaning is not obvious.
• "one time" action - sounds like it can only be used once ever.
• "single use" action

"Prepared" is nice because it's only one word. --BFGalbraith 05:22, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

More one-word options:

• "singular" action - multiple meanings (alone and unusual)
• "unrepeatable" action
• "uncommon" action
• "unique" action
• "infrequent" action

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:

• optional death rules while incapacitated
• 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
• What if delayed characters could still do bonus actions?--BFGalbraith 04:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
  • engage - not useful while delayed
  • take cover - you should not be able to do this when held, but maybe you can do it when you are delayed by shooting or blasting.
  • surprise - hard to do this when held, but maybe you can do this when you are delayed by your own moves.
  • intimidate - hard to do this when held, but maybe you can do this when you are delayed by your own moves.

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 (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 (in addition to the value of each level)
 -5  no attack ability
  5  flying + blasting or shooting ability
  5  heal (healing ability)
  3  each command ability minion
  2  intimidate (command ability)
  2  surprise (stealth or detection ability)
LEVELS
  1  each level of attack ability, stealth, command or craftsmanship
  ½  each level of quickness, acrobatics, flying or detection
  ¼  each level of swimming or 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 rang 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 command attacks (each minion plus intimidate) on your first turn (in addition to a normal action.) So having command and two minions is about as valuable as 8 attack ability levels.
• Stealth is the most popular ability that gives agility because players feel like the big up-front initiative bonus is very useful.
• 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.
• Detection has that popular initiative bonus, but intelligence is the least used defense.

I think all attacks vs. intelligence should be bonus actions. (They may now be, I am not sure.)--BFGalbraith 04:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Why? (They are not - distract is not a bonus action.)

• While you are in the water, swimming levels are the most useful (except for low levels of toughness and command) because they can contribute to both (close range) attack and (agility) defense. Unfortunately, swimming is not useful in most battles.

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?