Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Terraism" data-source="post: 5359583" data-attributes="member: 278">Wow, I'm impressed this thread got brought back to life.I like that it's getting feedback and tweaks.  If it helps anyone, I can tell you a few things from experience - I've been using these rules for about a year and a half now, and they've gotten significantly more playtested.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The unbalanced condition is triggered most often, unsurprisingly, by someone fumbling a roll.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It's not a huge effect, and Alex is right - nobody will spend a standard to inflict it using Minor Feint.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Once, I've had someone take advantage of the minor feint + action point + disarm, and it worked out pretty well.  It was a fun circumstance, but we'd like to see it more.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The rules are neat, but don't see use.</li> </ul>So in the last six months or so, we've been trying it with some variations.  It's definitely been a slight power-up, but it's been good, too.  Here's what we've been working with now:You can see, the unbalanced condition no longer provides a defense penalty. Instead, it makes it harder for you to maneuver around and easier to push around. The biggest reason for this was because of the *significant* change to Minor Feint, below.Yup. It's now actually a minor action, but only usable once per encounter.  It also uses any ability score, so it's not significantly low for, say, your average fighter. We'd tried working in Charisma and all, and even Bluff, but this has worked best. Furthermore, it requires you to have already hit that turn - which means, in the vast majority of cases, you've unbalanced them but can't follow up. Spend an action point, though, and then the other options are available.What we've found here is that it sees play from most people at least once every other fight. Most classes don't have [a lot of] uses for their minor action, especially early on, and so it gives people something to do with it.  Even if they don't follow up with another maneuver, it's been interesting tactically, just shutting down OAs or setting someone up for a push from the group.The other three powers have changed a bit, as well.Disarm is still a standard action. Of the three, we've found it to be the most powerful, as it can severely limit most targets for the rest of the fight. We've also dropped the "you can be holding the item" option, as it completely removed an opponent's chance to do the "dive for his sword" type thing.  We've also noted how it effects creatures with a natural attack (and weapon-using monsters, really, for the DM.)Trip has been boosted slightly.  It's now a move action, which means it's actually got the virtue of being the only maneuver that can be used in the same round as forcing the unbalanced condition (without spending an action point), though that does require three successful rolls.  Reasoning is that prone, while solid, isn't a huge condition, and honestly, people just never used it.  That said, given that it's as easy to use at is, it has a penalty for missing.Sunder has been changed the most.  It's now a triggered free action when you hit an unbalanced target - you can weaken yourself for the triggering attack in exchange for adding the debuff. In play, we've found that sometimes the damage is worth cutting, and sometimes it isn't - in either case, it's actually helped reduce grind slightly. I'll admit, it is more fidly, and it helps that we're playing an online game using a tabletop program where I can just drop the negative onto the token and not have to worry about remembering it from round to round.These changes have been definitely "in progress" lately, and we're still not sure if they're the final version, but they've worked much better than in the original post, and they actually see use.  We've also been talking about some way to allow them to be used at range - archer trick shots, an arcanist heating up the pommel so that the target drops it, that sort of thing - though it's not been worked out yet.</blockquote>

Verification