DEFENSE... again!

[Gradine]

I'm curious about how Mental Defense is calculated. It seems the system can easily support the granularity of having specific effects target specific mental attributes (as physical attacks already do between Str and Agi). Though with low defenses being an issue I can understand throwing PCs a bone.

Spreading defensive skills throughout the professions is definitely a good idea. Giving everyone a free defense skill could be good or bad depending on what your general principles about the nature of PCs is. If every character should be an effective combatant, I think it might be a great idea for balance. If, however, you think there's room in the system for effective non-combatant characters, then I don't think it should be necessary.

 

[Morrus]

I'm curious about how Mental Defense is calculated. It seems the system can easily support the granularity of having specific effects target specific mental attributes (as physical attacks already do between Str and Agi). Though with low defenses being an issue I can understand throwing PCs a bone.

Spreading defensive skills throughout the professions is definitely a good idea. Giving everyone a free defense skill could be good or bad depending on what your general principles about the nature of PCs is. If every character should be an effective combatant, I think it might be a great idea for balance. If, however, you think there's room in the system for effective non-combatant characters, then I don't think it should be necessary.

It's something I've struggled with throughout this whole process. Every playtest reports that their players have created characters with 8000d6 to attack and 0d6 to read - pretty much without exception.

Not in my own playtesters, I add!

I think the key to that is adventure design. If you allow a fairly freeform system, munchkinism going to happen. The way to avoid it is to motivate payers through adventure opportunities. If adventures are all combat, players will create characters with 8000d6 attack rolls. And that's OK; it's a preferred plays tell.

But I feel there's room for adventures where science skills are a priority, and it's incumbent on me to make the example adventures like that. So I have some adventure work to do! Examples where being great at hitting things isn't as useful as being great at science or investigation.

 

[Morrus]

Great breakthrough yesterday, BTW! I discovered the following:

- Starting attributes at 3 rather than 2 works perfectly; this means that characters don't end up with 1d6 attributes. This should now be considered the default.*
- Allowing a DEFENSE skill choice on every career works perfectly. It does mean that characters need to be built with that from scratch.

*We played with a wild optional rule. Roll 1d6 for each attribute instead. It was kinda silly, but fun! Might be good for an A.C.M.E. game (see the N.O.W. appendix).

So, here's how it works:

[h=4]DEFENSE Skills[/h]
Any time you take a career/tradition skill, you may take a DEFENSE skill instead. These aren't specifically called out in the careers, but all DEFENSE skills are always available to all careers.

The current list of suggested skills (remember anything can be a skill - feel free to encourage your players to invent their own!) is:

Acrobatics (D)
Dodging (D)
Foresight (D)

Concentration (MD)
Meditation (MD)

Plus melee skills apply to DEFENSE against melee attacks (as does weapon quality), but not against ranged attacks.

You need to train DEFENSE. Otherwise you will get hit a lot. It's as important as training in weapons.

Optional rule we didn't try, but might be fun: allow running to be used as DEFENSE if you double-move in a round.