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)

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.

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.

• GMs often control enemies of the same type.
  • They are usually controlling enemies of 1 or 2 types.
  • Occasionally they will control 3 or 4 types of enemies.
• GMs often control characters who are coordinating their attacks.
  • Which is why they have groups of enemies instead of a separate initiative for each individual enemy.
• GMs often control only one monster in a battle.
• As a GM, I would prefer to play all my monsters at once rather than juggle multiple initiatives.
  • But sometimes having all the monsters go at once is too much.
  • Splitting enemies into groups organizes the GM's work (only control one type of enemy at a time.)

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

• 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
• 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.
  • Might be tricky to describe the rule
  • Balance issues with stealth and detection become more sensitive
• 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

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
  • This is my favorite of these options.--BFGalbraith 01:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• 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

holding the person who is holding you

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. So you should be able to hold someone who is holding you. 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. --BFGalbraith 23:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

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)

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)

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

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

ability	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	explanation
toughness	-15	-5	0	3	5	7	9	11	12	13	none of the other abilities are useful when you are incapacitated 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.
attack abilities, craftsmanship, healing	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	+5 for your first attack ability because it doubles attack power when healthy +1 for craftsmanship versatility? +5 for healing (potentially heals several points of damage.)
stalking abilities	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	+1 for your first stalking ability (surprise action) 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.
movement abilities	¾	1½	2¼	3	3¾	4½	5¼	6	6¾	7½	+5 for flying because non-flying characters can't hit you with close range attacks when you evade or use a long range attack +½ for swimming because non-swimmers and long-range attacks can't hit you when you use swimming to evade swimming gives you strength instead of agility, but both attack and agility in water
command	2	4	6	8	10	12	14	16	18	20	If you have 2 minions, you can do 3 actions per turn You can cause up to 12 damage in a single turn (knockout) You can cause up to 9 damage every turn (blasting)

how overpowered is command?

At 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.

The command ability values above assume the value of being able to attack twice as often is 10 and the value of being able to attack three times as often is 20. This is probably an over-estimation of the value of command ability. Command ability minions cannot be healed, and they can be injured more easily than a powerful PC (the sort that would have 10 command ability.) Attack abilities double the damage you can do when healthy and this only gives them a value bonus of 5.

are movement abilities powerful enough?

• I have valued movement abilities at ¾ of the value of attack ability levels
  • agility does not protect you against all attacks
  • evade is only used in tight spots
  • movement ability holds do not cause damage like wrestling

Does the fact that only movement abilities and stealth give you agility make any difference? --BFGalbraith 17:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Agility is a very important defense that you can only increase with those abilities, but you can use an attack ability every single time you attack and you cannot choose which defense you will use when you are attacked. --SerpLord 20:11, 31 May 2011 (UTC)--

What if movement abilities are the only ability bonus for distract? --BFGalbraith 17:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Then the value of a movement level would be agility + frequency of terrain type × (distract + hold + evade). Here's the frequency of terrain types in The Dark Woods:

• 5/9 areas have quickness movement
• 6/9 areas have flying movement
• 5/9 areas have acrobatics movement
• 2/9 areas have swimming movement

I would guess that most games would have quickness movement in 8/9 areas, but otherwise The Dark Woods is typical. This suggests that terrain-specific advantages can be used most of the time with quickness or flying, a bit less often with acrobatics, and only rarely with swimming. If we allow movement abilities to be used for the distract action, would this be limited by terrain type? If so, then it would significantly increase the value of each level of movement ability except for swimming. --SerpLord 20:11, 31 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)

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)

I like the idea of only using movement abilities for distraction. While it does not explain why some abilitiy's can NOT be used for distraction, it does not do a greater evil, which is to have an explaination-defying selection of abilities do distraction. IMHO this is our best choice so far for haviing ability bonuses apply to distraction. --BFGalbraith 04:15, 31 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?

optional death rules

realistic or brutal games like Resilience might have death rules that add dramatic tension and character expendability.