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<blockquote data-quote="GMMichael" data-source="post: 6232465" data-attributes="member: 6685730"><p><strong>Chapter 8: Conflict</strong></p><p></p><p>Your training is almost complete, Grasshopper. Once a character has a concept, abilities, skills, perks, equipment, hero points, and even a spell or two, he's ready to take them into combat. However, Modos is about more than just fighting. Conflicts of any nature can be resolved with the contents of this chapter, broken down into four sections: general, physical, mental, and metaphysical. The general section covers what conflict is and the rules that apply to all conflicts. The physical section covers material-world combat, and general combat rules. The mental section discusses awareness, sneaking and detection, and psychic combat. Last, the metaphysical section covers NPC dispositions, followers, and rules about magic in conflict.</p><p></p><p><u>General Conflict</u>[sblock]</p><p> Conflict is what happens when roleplaying fails. Both players and GMs should act out every situation whenever possible, because roleplaying is what makes the game's participants feel most in-touch with the game world. To put it another way, a player can close his eyes while roleplaying, shutting out almost all of the real world, and letting in as much game world as possible.</p><p> And then there's a conflict - a roleplaying failure. Either a player and GM disagree on an outcome, or a player and another player disagree.</p><p> Luckily, PCs and NPCs are well-equipped to handle the conflict. Their character sheets are stocked with statistics and ideas that, when mixed with polyhedral dice, make conflict resolution easy. The skills and related abilities that they can use are covered in the following sections. For now, let's look at how to handle a conflict in Modos RPG: the contest.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Contests</u>[sblock]</p><p> Contests are a type of roll used to determine when a character finds success in a (roleplaying-) conflict. Contests have the following features. They:</p><p></p><p>- always have an opposing roll</p><p>- are always rolled with a d20</p><p>- are made with skills or abilities</p><p>- are subject to difficulty modifiers</p><p>- grant success to the higher result.</p><p></p><p>The GM calls for a contest whenever the outcome of something is in doubt, or cannot be roleplayed. A contest can be between a character and another character, or a character and fate. Either way, the character making the contest rolls a d20, adds the ability modifier of the ability most relevant to the contest (the "ability modifier"), and adds the skill points ("skill") that he has in the most relevant skill. If a character does not have a relevant skill, the skill portion is treated as zero. The result is called his contest. Then his opponent rolls a contest with his ability modifier and skill. Whoever has the higher result after the application of difficulty is the winner, or decider, of the conflict.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Difficulty</u>[sblock]</p><p> There are times when external or intrinsic factors have an important influence on the outcome of contests. This is represented by the difficulty modifier, or difficulty. Difficulty is a bonus or penalty added to a contest, which generally ranges from 0 to 20, with the following modifiers given as a guideline.</p><table style='width: 100%'><tr><td>Category</td><td>Modifier</td></tr><tr><td>Too easy</td><td>Auto-success</td></tr><tr><td>Easy</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>Challenging</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>Difficult</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>Unlikely</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>Impossible</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>Divine</td><td>20</td></tr></table><p> Table 8-1: Difficulty</p><p></p><p> When a character has no opponent, but he's attempting something with dubious outcome, he still rolls a contest. The GM decides: to an average person, how difficult would this attempt be? He cross-references the answer with the modifier on the difficulty table, and rolls a d20, adding the difficulty modifier. The result is the number that the player must exceed with his contest in order to succeed.</p><p> </p><p>When a character faces an opponent, the opponent provides the difficulty with his opposing contest. However, outside cirumstances can raise or lower each side's results. For example, a character shoots at an NPC. Normally, this is resolved by a fight-missile contest versus a parry contest. But if the attacker spent an action aiming, he might gain a +4 difficulty bonus to his fight contest. Or if the defender is tied to a post, he might apply -12 to his parry, since it's unlikely, but not impossible, that he'd be avoiding the attack.</p><p> </p><p>Difficulty is also an umbrella term for conflict modifiers. Various things can and should provide an advantage to one side or the other, or both, in conflict. While the GM is welcome to calculate the effects of each difficulty modifier, it's easier to do two things: make a judgment call, and award a bonus to the side with better odds. </p><p> </p><p>For example, Supraman and Aquifer are having an argument, which they would be happy to roleplay out, but they're in the Under-Channel Vortex (a massive pool of psychic energy) and the winner of the argument is likely to win the right to use Cerebral with Dr. X this evening. Supraman is wearing a psi-crystal (beneficial) and Aquifer ate focus-root for breakfast (beneficial). However, Aquifer is moving faster through the vortex, and is having psycho-connective distress. While this is a very complex situation, the GM's job is just to ask: who's in the better position, and how beneficial is that position? The GM calls for persuade (the most relevant skill) contests from each PC, grants +4 difficulty bonus to Aquifer, and lets the d20s ultimately decide.</p><p> </p><p>It's not always clear which contestant should receive a bonus or penalty. While it's generally easier to add rather than subtract (so the side with a better position should get a bonus), keep in mind that sometimes difficulty only applies to one side in a contest. For example, a police officer and a gangster are going to fight it out with fluids. The gangster is in a holding cell, so the GM decides that the police officer should receive a bonus to his fight-missile contests made with a mace-sprayer (the gangster will be spitting back). While the police officer has the advantage in this contest, a difficulty penalty actually belongs to the gangster because 1) the police officer isn't actually performing his contest better in the given situation, and 2) a bonus would mean that everyone attacking the gangster would get a bonus, while it would be simpler just to apply one penalty to the gangster's defense given his disadvantageous situation.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Take Half</u>[sblock]</p><p> With contests, damage, protection, hero points, initiative, and lots of actions, there can be a lot of rolling going on. In Modos RPG, there's a simple solution: take half. Whenever a die roll is necessary, you can skip the roll and just assume the result is half of the highest result on the die. This is just less than the average die result, but that's the price you pay for simplicity and saving time. To remind them to save time, players should list their take half results in each section of their character sheets that represent die rolls.</p><p></p><p> When a player takes half in a contest, the GM must make the opposing roll, not take half as well. If both sides were to take half, the outcome would be a certainty, and these situations don't call for contests. If a player decides to make the roll, the GM can roll or take half as desired. If a player opposes another player, either side is welcome to take half, but if both sides take half, one player is ensuring his loss or failure in the contest (and might need to be informed of this).</p><p> Rolling contests determines success. However, success can sometimes be a gray area, or require much effort to be achieved. The GM decides if any given conflict is a one-roll conflict, or an extended conflict.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>One-Roll Conflicts</u>[sblock]</p><p> Not every conflict deserves careful scrutiny. If a conflict is a particularly simple one, or the GM or players don't want to spend much time on the conflict, they can make one contest and move on. This is called a one-roll conflict.</p><p> Due to their abbreviated nature, the outcome of a one-roll conflict isn't always clear. For example, Jake (Agent 0002's undercover name) and Carl (Super-Snake's alias) are bartering at the flea market. No one wants to spend a lot of time deciding how much of a discount Jake gets when buying a Persian rug from Carl, so the GM decides to use a one-roll conflict. He calls for a persuade contest from each barterer. Jake's player asks to use profession-craftsman, since it's higher than his persuade skill and he's trained in making national-security blankets. The GM agrees, and the player rolls. The GM takes half on the contest, and Jake wins by a landslide, about 10 points.</p><p> </p><p>The player has won the conflict, but how much of a discount does that mean? The GM can apply degrees of success to the outcome to find out.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Degrees of Success</u>[sblock]</p><p> In any kind of contest, the result might be less clear than success or failure. To aid the GM in adjudicating outcome, he can use degrees of success to measure results. When the GM evaluates a contest, the opposing contests will either be equal, or one will be higher than the other. The GM may decide that the amount of difference makes for better (or worse) results. The amount of difference needed for a measurable change is a degree of success. These can be as small as one point, but a good rule of thumb is to use the difficulty table (Table 8-1) for degrees of success.</p><p> In the above example, Jake beat Carl by 10 points. That's at least two degrees of success, using the difficulty table's increments. The GM may decide that Jake has earned a discount that would be "difficult" to achieve, and he decides on 25%.</p><p></p><p> Degrees of success include a curious amount: zero. When a conflict has equal opposing contests, it means either a tie has occurred, or success has very narrowly been decided, and a reroll is necessary to determine who gets the narrow success, as decided by the GM.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Extended Conflicts</u>[sblock]</p><p> If the players in the above example were keenly interested in the details of an episode of bartering, or Jake and Carl decided to argue with fists instead of words, they would use an extended conflict.</p><p> Extended conflicts are conflicts in which either time or detail become important to the outcome of the conflict. To simulate these factors, extended conflicts use the following game features: rounds, initiative, turns, actions, and damage.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Rounds</u>[sblock]</p><p> A round is a conflict cycle. It is a meta-game concept, meaning that it doesn't really exist in-game; its only purpose is to allow all characters to act before another round begins. A round is composed of one turn for every character, and each turn is arranged in order of initiative. More precisely, each round is just a series of actions, as explained in the following sections.</p><p>[/sblock]</p><p><u>Initiative</u>[sblock]</p><p> In extended conflict, each character has a turn, and turns are followed in order of initiative. Initiative refers to how quickly the characters in a conflict are able to act. To determine the order of initiative (or just "initiative"), each character rolls a d20 and adds an ability modifier that reflects his ability to act quickly. This choice is up to the player, but will usually be the character's highest modifier. (If acting first is critical, using a low modifier could be grounds for a hero point award).</p><p> The resulting order, from highest to lowest, is the order in which characters take their turns. To change his initiative, a character can spend one action (of any type) not doing anything, called a "delay." This action cannot be used with a skill or for a contest; its purpose is to allow a character time to pick the right moment to act. When a character uses a delay action, he can freely decide after which other character's turn he would like his new turn to begin. If the character waits until a new round begins to take his turn, he can effectively move up in initiative by taking his turn at a higher point than his previous turn. If another character was also delaying, and two or more characters want to take their turn first in the next round, they should roll another intiative to see which one takes the first turn.</p><p> </p><p>It's not always clear when initiative should begin. Remember that extended conflict is for situations in which time or detail are important, so initiative should begin when this happens. For example, a barfight is about to begin. People are shouting, breaking bottles, and cracking pool cues. An initiative roll is not really necessary until the players want to do specific actions that might conflict with other PC actions, or NPC actions. When the details of who attacks, who defends, and who runs away become important, the GM should call for an initiative roll. However, if some characters have a clear time advantage over others, the GM can call for initiative and declare some of the characters surprised.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Surprise</u>[sblock]</p><p> If some characters get the jump on others, or some characters simply aren't aware that a conflict is beginning (see "awareness" in the mental conflict section), the late characters are surprised. Surprise can be handled two ways, depending on severity. If some characters just have an edge over others, which could be as simple as being the barfighters who are standing instead of sitting on stools for example, the GM can award an initiative bonus. +4 is a good, general initiative modifier. If some characters begin a conflict before others are aware of their intent, the GM may award one free action to be used immediately by anyone who isn't surprised. These free actions should be resolved in order of initiative, and before the first character takes his turn.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Turns</u>[sblock]</p><p> A turn is a segment of a conflict round, and it describes when one character performs his most concentrated effort of the round - when he uses most of his actions. All actions occur during turns, with the single exception of the surprise action. Characters can do three special things during their turns: they can delay, combine actions, and defend freely.</p><p> Delaying, described in the initiative section, can only be done on a character's turn, and it must be the first and only thing done on a character's turn. If another action must occur on a character's turn, like maintaining a spell, a character who delays must perform that action at his first opportunity after delaying, as a reserve action.</p><p> </p><p>These reserve actions, described in the following actions section, must be used individually. During a character's turn, however, he may combine actions. To combine actions, a character declares what one type of skill will be used, and how many actions he will combine. He then rolls one contest for each combined action, and keeps the highest contest to apply to all of the actions. The other rolls are ignored. For example, Conut the barbarian is really angry. He's going to conduct his super-smash against one enemy, which is what he calls his combination of five fight-melee actions. His player rolls five d20s, adding to each his physical modifier and fight-melee skill. The highest result is the contest he keeps for all five actions. The enemy must make a separate parry contest for each action, despite each fight having the same result. The enemy may also choose to do something besides parry, which might leave him undefended against Conut's damage. If, however, the enemy takes a reserve action that removes him from Conut's attack, Conut is still committed to using five actions, and any ineffective actions are wasted.</p><p> </p><p>A turn also allows characters to bend the rules a little for defense. Normally, characters have the opportunity to perform a single action all at the same time. This means that when it's not your turn, and an enemy attacks you, you can perform a defense at the same time, potentially saving yourself from damage. But when a character takes an action other than a defense, he's leaving himself open to attack! This is an important consideration to characters using reserve actions (actions during someone else's turn), but if it's your turn, you are allowed to defend against any and all attacks for which you have an action to use as defense. For example, it's Hrolgar's turn. He moves to chop a troll with his battle axe. The troll doesn't care about battle axes, so he just attacks right back at Hrolgar! Hrolgar doesn't need to roll a fight contest, since the troll isn't opposing his attack; he automatically succeeds. The troll needs to roll a fight contest though: since it's Hrolgar's turn, he's allowed to defend as long as he has an appropriate action available. The GM resolves every action taken during Hrolgar's attack, and then asks Hrolgar's player to roll parry if he wants to. This counts as Hrolgar's next action, and he can use the parry contest against anyone else attacking him during this action (so one defense can go a long way during a character's turn). If Hrolgar had decided to use Conut's super-smash, a combined five actions, he would not be able to defend himself until the last of the combined actions, since defenses during a character's turn must happen immediately after the attack that instigated them.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Actions</u>[sblock]</p><p> Reserve actions, combined actions, free actions, and surprise actions might sound complicated. Don't worry, it's very simple. An action is something you do that takes time or effort. Anything else is a non-action, and can be done freely as long as it follows rule zero.</p><p></p><p> Actions are always tied to an ability: physical, mental or metaphysical. Since all characters have each of these abilities, and some minimum amount of agency, all characters get three free actions at the beginning of each round. A free action is an action that a player or GM can tie to any of the three abilities, so it's considered "free." An assigned, or tied, action is an action that must be used with a particular ability or skill. These come from perks and high ability scores.</p><p> </p><p>Actions are usually tied to a skill; doing so grants a character greater odds of success in the form of skill points. Whenever a skill is being performed, there is at least one action necessary to make that skill happen. If using a skill or ability might take more than one action, the GM should consider the "sword swing" guideline for measuring action duration: the shortest action possible is generally the amount of time required to make a solid sword swing. Accordingly, lengthier activities should be divided into a number of actions equal to the number of solid sword swings that could be made during that activity. Note that if there are no sword swings being made, it's possible that time is not presently an important factor, and extended conflict rules are not necessary at this time.[/sblock]</p><p></p><p><u>Bonus Actions</u>[sblock]</p><p> Some characters get more than three actions per round. These bonus actions can come from different sources, like magic spells, perks, or abilities.</p><p></p><p> While spells and perks describe how they award bonus actions, abilities grant actions based on the ability score. Starting at 15 and every five points above that, abilities grant a bonus action tied to that ability. So, for example, a character with 25 physical gets an extra three physical actions each round.</p><p></p><p> Regardless of how a character earns bonus actions, these actions are included in the set granted to him at the beginning of each round.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Reserve Actions</u>[sblock]</p><p> Characters can take actions at any time: before, during, and after other actions or turns - as long as they have unused actions in that round. These unused actions are called reserve actions because they're actions that a character won't use during his turn; he has most likely reserved them to respond to the actions of others.</p><p></p><p> Reserve actions have some limits. They can only occur in response to an action by the character whose turn it is. When that character takes an action, he has effectively given every other character a chance to act. Think of it - each action - as a mini-round. Regardless of how many characters act in this mini-round, each character gets only one action - a reserve action.</p><p></p><p> Once everyone has announced their actions or has decided to wait to act, the GM resolves all of the actions in initiative order. Any characters taking reserve actions with a higher initiative than the current character's (who's taking his turn) are considered to act at the exact same time as the current character. Any characters taking a reserve action with a lower initiative are considered to be acting immediately after the current character. If some actions would render others moot or useless, the GM should pay close attention to the initiative order when resolving a mini-round.</p><p></p><p> For example, Merloon, Montana, and Number 2259 are fighting a security guard. The initiative order is Montana, security guard, Merloon, and Number 2259. It's Merloon's turn, and he casts a fire spell at the guard. The guard has reserved a free action for defense, so he tries to parry the spell. Number 2259 sees an opportunity to give himself an advantage so he uses a reserve action to turn off the lights (and use his motion-tracking goggles) while the guard is defending. But due to poor communication, Montana tries the same thing as Number 2259. Everyone has announced their intent, and the GM resolves the situation as such: Montana has the highest initiative, so he goes over and turns the lights off. At the same time, the security guard rolls a parry contest, and Merloon rolls a cast spell (fire blob) contest. The lights go out at the same time that Merloon fires his spell, so the GM awards no darkness penalties to the guard or Merloon. Merloon's contest is higher, so he deals physical (fire) damage to the guard. Finally, Number 2259 went for the lights, but Montana beat him to it, so Number 2259 just loses an action. Merloon may now continue his turn, or reserve any leftover actions for later in the round.</p><p>[/sblock]<u></u></p><p><u>Damage</u>[sblock]</p><p> When conflict happens in a roleplaying game, something is bound to get damaged. However, as it applies to the general conflict rules, damage is simply a progress indicator. If knocking out an opponent is your goal, adding damage to his mental damage pool increases your progress toward knocking him out. Or if your goal is to usurp a king, your damage might be considered "instability," and once the king has reached enough instability, he'll either abdicate or start a war.</p><p></p><p> Whatever damage represents, it is usually handled the same way. Damage is usually caused by weapons or spells, but only on a successful attack contest. To determine the amount of damage, a player rolls the appropriate damage die.</p><p></p><p> To prevent damage, many opponents will have some sort of protection. Protection has a corresponding die, just like damage, and the result of the protection roll is subtracted from the result of the damage roll. Protection cannot completely eliminate damage; if damage minus protection would ever equal zero or less, the result is instead one.</p><p></p><p> Sometimes a character will have the opportunity to deal multiple dice of damage at one time, like in a combined attack or magic spell. In this case, the player is welcome roll damage for each successful attack action at the same time, and add the results together. The defender should then roll a protection die (if he has protection) for each successful attack, and add up all the protection. Subtract total protection from total damage, and the result is the higher of this difference or the number of damage dice rolled.</p><p></p><p> For example, Dynamite Mike and Buster are boxing it out. Mike makes a combined attack of four fight-unarmed contests. Buster doesn't want to defend against all of them, so he reacts to the first one by taking defensive posture, and parrying one more. The parry contest is a success - it's higher than Mike's highest fight-unarmed contest. So the GM tells Mike to roll one damage die, and Buster to roll one protection die. Mike gets 6 and Buster gets 1, so Buster takes 5 physical damage. Buster succeeded on his parry, so there is no second die of damage. Then the GM asks for two more damage rolls from Mike, and two protection from Buster, to resolve the last two attacks. Mike rolls two dice and the result is 3, while Buster takes half (half on a 1d4 is 2) for a total of 4. 3 damage minus 4 protection is -1, for a minimum of 2. Since Buster moved to defensive posture, the damage result would be divided by 2 again, but since damage is already at its minimum level of one per die, Buster takes 2 more physical damage.[/sblock]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="GMMichael, post: 6232465, member: 6685730"] [b]Chapter 8: Conflict[/b] Your training is almost complete, Grasshopper. Once a character has a concept, abilities, skills, perks, equipment, hero points, and even a spell or two, he's ready to take them into combat. However, Modos is about more than just fighting. Conflicts of any nature can be resolved with the contents of this chapter, broken down into four sections: general, physical, mental, and metaphysical. The general section covers what conflict is and the rules that apply to all conflicts. The physical section covers material-world combat, and general combat rules. The mental section discusses awareness, sneaking and detection, and psychic combat. Last, the metaphysical section covers NPC dispositions, followers, and rules about magic in conflict. [U]General Conflict[/U][sblock] Conflict is what happens when roleplaying fails. Both players and GMs should act out every situation whenever possible, because roleplaying is what makes the game's participants feel most in-touch with the game world. To put it another way, a player can close his eyes while roleplaying, shutting out almost all of the real world, and letting in as much game world as possible. And then there's a conflict - a roleplaying failure. Either a player and GM disagree on an outcome, or a player and another player disagree. Luckily, PCs and NPCs are well-equipped to handle the conflict. Their character sheets are stocked with statistics and ideas that, when mixed with polyhedral dice, make conflict resolution easy. The skills and related abilities that they can use are covered in the following sections. For now, let's look at how to handle a conflict in Modos RPG: the contest. [/sblock][U] Contests[/U][sblock] Contests are a type of roll used to determine when a character finds success in a (roleplaying-) conflict. Contests have the following features. They: - always have an opposing roll - are always rolled with a d20 - are made with skills or abilities - are subject to difficulty modifiers - grant success to the higher result. The GM calls for a contest whenever the outcome of something is in doubt, or cannot be roleplayed. A contest can be between a character and another character, or a character and fate. Either way, the character making the contest rolls a d20, adds the ability modifier of the ability most relevant to the contest (the "ability modifier"), and adds the skill points ("skill") that he has in the most relevant skill. If a character does not have a relevant skill, the skill portion is treated as zero. The result is called his contest. Then his opponent rolls a contest with his ability modifier and skill. Whoever has the higher result after the application of difficulty is the winner, or decider, of the conflict. [/sblock][U] Difficulty[/U][sblock] There are times when external or intrinsic factors have an important influence on the outcome of contests. This is represented by the difficulty modifier, or difficulty. Difficulty is a bonus or penalty added to a contest, which generally ranges from 0 to 20, with the following modifiers given as a guideline. [TABLE] [TR] [TD]Category[/TD] [TD]Modifier[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Too easy[/TD] [TD]Auto-success[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Easy[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Challenging[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Difficult[/TD] [TD]8[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Unlikely[/TD] [TD]12[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Impossible[/TD] [TD]16[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Divine[/TD] [TD]20[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Table 8-1: Difficulty When a character has no opponent, but he's attempting something with dubious outcome, he still rolls a contest. The GM decides: to an average person, how difficult would this attempt be? He cross-references the answer with the modifier on the difficulty table, and rolls a d20, adding the difficulty modifier. The result is the number that the player must exceed with his contest in order to succeed. When a character faces an opponent, the opponent provides the difficulty with his opposing contest. However, outside cirumstances can raise or lower each side's results. For example, a character shoots at an NPC. Normally, this is resolved by a fight-missile contest versus a parry contest. But if the attacker spent an action aiming, he might gain a +4 difficulty bonus to his fight contest. Or if the defender is tied to a post, he might apply -12 to his parry, since it's unlikely, but not impossible, that he'd be avoiding the attack. Difficulty is also an umbrella term for conflict modifiers. Various things can and should provide an advantage to one side or the other, or both, in conflict. While the GM is welcome to calculate the effects of each difficulty modifier, it's easier to do two things: make a judgment call, and award a bonus to the side with better odds. For example, Supraman and Aquifer are having an argument, which they would be happy to roleplay out, but they're in the Under-Channel Vortex (a massive pool of psychic energy) and the winner of the argument is likely to win the right to use Cerebral with Dr. X this evening. Supraman is wearing a psi-crystal (beneficial) and Aquifer ate focus-root for breakfast (beneficial). However, Aquifer is moving faster through the vortex, and is having psycho-connective distress. While this is a very complex situation, the GM's job is just to ask: who's in the better position, and how beneficial is that position? The GM calls for persuade (the most relevant skill) contests from each PC, grants +4 difficulty bonus to Aquifer, and lets the d20s ultimately decide. It's not always clear which contestant should receive a bonus or penalty. While it's generally easier to add rather than subtract (so the side with a better position should get a bonus), keep in mind that sometimes difficulty only applies to one side in a contest. For example, a police officer and a gangster are going to fight it out with fluids. The gangster is in a holding cell, so the GM decides that the police officer should receive a bonus to his fight-missile contests made with a mace-sprayer (the gangster will be spitting back). While the police officer has the advantage in this contest, a difficulty penalty actually belongs to the gangster because 1) the police officer isn't actually performing his contest better in the given situation, and 2) a bonus would mean that everyone attacking the gangster would get a bonus, while it would be simpler just to apply one penalty to the gangster's defense given his disadvantageous situation. [/sblock][U] Take Half[/U][sblock] With contests, damage, protection, hero points, initiative, and lots of actions, there can be a lot of rolling going on. In Modos RPG, there's a simple solution: take half. Whenever a die roll is necessary, you can skip the roll and just assume the result is half of the highest result on the die. This is just less than the average die result, but that's the price you pay for simplicity and saving time. To remind them to save time, players should list their take half results in each section of their character sheets that represent die rolls. When a player takes half in a contest, the GM must make the opposing roll, not take half as well. If both sides were to take half, the outcome would be a certainty, and these situations don't call for contests. If a player decides to make the roll, the GM can roll or take half as desired. If a player opposes another player, either side is welcome to take half, but if both sides take half, one player is ensuring his loss or failure in the contest (and might need to be informed of this). Rolling contests determines success. However, success can sometimes be a gray area, or require much effort to be achieved. The GM decides if any given conflict is a one-roll conflict, or an extended conflict. [/sblock][U] One-Roll Conflicts[/U][sblock] Not every conflict deserves careful scrutiny. If a conflict is a particularly simple one, or the GM or players don't want to spend much time on the conflict, they can make one contest and move on. This is called a one-roll conflict. Due to their abbreviated nature, the outcome of a one-roll conflict isn't always clear. For example, Jake (Agent 0002's undercover name) and Carl (Super-Snake's alias) are bartering at the flea market. No one wants to spend a lot of time deciding how much of a discount Jake gets when buying a Persian rug from Carl, so the GM decides to use a one-roll conflict. He calls for a persuade contest from each barterer. Jake's player asks to use profession-craftsman, since it's higher than his persuade skill and he's trained in making national-security blankets. The GM agrees, and the player rolls. The GM takes half on the contest, and Jake wins by a landslide, about 10 points. The player has won the conflict, but how much of a discount does that mean? The GM can apply degrees of success to the outcome to find out. [/sblock][U] Degrees of Success[/U][sblock] In any kind of contest, the result might be less clear than success or failure. To aid the GM in adjudicating outcome, he can use degrees of success to measure results. When the GM evaluates a contest, the opposing contests will either be equal, or one will be higher than the other. The GM may decide that the amount of difference makes for better (or worse) results. The amount of difference needed for a measurable change is a degree of success. These can be as small as one point, but a good rule of thumb is to use the difficulty table (Table 8-1) for degrees of success. In the above example, Jake beat Carl by 10 points. That's at least two degrees of success, using the difficulty table's increments. The GM may decide that Jake has earned a discount that would be "difficult" to achieve, and he decides on 25%. Degrees of success include a curious amount: zero. When a conflict has equal opposing contests, it means either a tie has occurred, or success has very narrowly been decided, and a reroll is necessary to determine who gets the narrow success, as decided by the GM. [/sblock][U] Extended Conflicts[/U][sblock] If the players in the above example were keenly interested in the details of an episode of bartering, or Jake and Carl decided to argue with fists instead of words, they would use an extended conflict. Extended conflicts are conflicts in which either time or detail become important to the outcome of the conflict. To simulate these factors, extended conflicts use the following game features: rounds, initiative, turns, actions, and damage. [/sblock][U] Rounds[/U][sblock] A round is a conflict cycle. It is a meta-game concept, meaning that it doesn't really exist in-game; its only purpose is to allow all characters to act before another round begins. A round is composed of one turn for every character, and each turn is arranged in order of initiative. More precisely, each round is just a series of actions, as explained in the following sections. [/sblock] [U]Initiative[/U][sblock] In extended conflict, each character has a turn, and turns are followed in order of initiative. Initiative refers to how quickly the characters in a conflict are able to act. To determine the order of initiative (or just "initiative"), each character rolls a d20 and adds an ability modifier that reflects his ability to act quickly. This choice is up to the player, but will usually be the character's highest modifier. (If acting first is critical, using a low modifier could be grounds for a hero point award). The resulting order, from highest to lowest, is the order in which characters take their turns. To change his initiative, a character can spend one action (of any type) not doing anything, called a "delay." This action cannot be used with a skill or for a contest; its purpose is to allow a character time to pick the right moment to act. When a character uses a delay action, he can freely decide after which other character's turn he would like his new turn to begin. If the character waits until a new round begins to take his turn, he can effectively move up in initiative by taking his turn at a higher point than his previous turn. If another character was also delaying, and two or more characters want to take their turn first in the next round, they should roll another intiative to see which one takes the first turn. It's not always clear when initiative should begin. Remember that extended conflict is for situations in which time or detail are important, so initiative should begin when this happens. For example, a barfight is about to begin. People are shouting, breaking bottles, and cracking pool cues. An initiative roll is not really necessary until the players want to do specific actions that might conflict with other PC actions, or NPC actions. When the details of who attacks, who defends, and who runs away become important, the GM should call for an initiative roll. However, if some characters have a clear time advantage over others, the GM can call for initiative and declare some of the characters surprised. [/sblock][U] Surprise[/U][sblock] If some characters get the jump on others, or some characters simply aren't aware that a conflict is beginning (see "awareness" in the mental conflict section), the late characters are surprised. Surprise can be handled two ways, depending on severity. If some characters just have an edge over others, which could be as simple as being the barfighters who are standing instead of sitting on stools for example, the GM can award an initiative bonus. +4 is a good, general initiative modifier. If some characters begin a conflict before others are aware of their intent, the GM may award one free action to be used immediately by anyone who isn't surprised. These free actions should be resolved in order of initiative, and before the first character takes his turn. [/sblock][U] Turns[/U][sblock] A turn is a segment of a conflict round, and it describes when one character performs his most concentrated effort of the round - when he uses most of his actions. All actions occur during turns, with the single exception of the surprise action. Characters can do three special things during their turns: they can delay, combine actions, and defend freely. Delaying, described in the initiative section, can only be done on a character's turn, and it must be the first and only thing done on a character's turn. If another action must occur on a character's turn, like maintaining a spell, a character who delays must perform that action at his first opportunity after delaying, as a reserve action. These reserve actions, described in the following actions section, must be used individually. During a character's turn, however, he may combine actions. To combine actions, a character declares what one type of skill will be used, and how many actions he will combine. He then rolls one contest for each combined action, and keeps the highest contest to apply to all of the actions. The other rolls are ignored. For example, Conut the barbarian is really angry. He's going to conduct his super-smash against one enemy, which is what he calls his combination of five fight-melee actions. His player rolls five d20s, adding to each his physical modifier and fight-melee skill. The highest result is the contest he keeps for all five actions. The enemy must make a separate parry contest for each action, despite each fight having the same result. The enemy may also choose to do something besides parry, which might leave him undefended against Conut's damage. If, however, the enemy takes a reserve action that removes him from Conut's attack, Conut is still committed to using five actions, and any ineffective actions are wasted. A turn also allows characters to bend the rules a little for defense. Normally, characters have the opportunity to perform a single action all at the same time. This means that when it's not your turn, and an enemy attacks you, you can perform a defense at the same time, potentially saving yourself from damage. But when a character takes an action other than a defense, he's leaving himself open to attack! This is an important consideration to characters using reserve actions (actions during someone else's turn), but if it's your turn, you are allowed to defend against any and all attacks for which you have an action to use as defense. For example, it's Hrolgar's turn. He moves to chop a troll with his battle axe. The troll doesn't care about battle axes, so he just attacks right back at Hrolgar! Hrolgar doesn't need to roll a fight contest, since the troll isn't opposing his attack; he automatically succeeds. The troll needs to roll a fight contest though: since it's Hrolgar's turn, he's allowed to defend as long as he has an appropriate action available. The GM resolves every action taken during Hrolgar's attack, and then asks Hrolgar's player to roll parry if he wants to. This counts as Hrolgar's next action, and he can use the parry contest against anyone else attacking him during this action (so one defense can go a long way during a character's turn). If Hrolgar had decided to use Conut's super-smash, a combined five actions, he would not be able to defend himself until the last of the combined actions, since defenses during a character's turn must happen immediately after the attack that instigated them. [/sblock][U] Actions[/U][sblock] Reserve actions, combined actions, free actions, and surprise actions might sound complicated. Don't worry, it's very simple. An action is something you do that takes time or effort. Anything else is a non-action, and can be done freely as long as it follows rule zero. Actions are always tied to an ability: physical, mental or metaphysical. Since all characters have each of these abilities, and some minimum amount of agency, all characters get three free actions at the beginning of each round. A free action is an action that a player or GM can tie to any of the three abilities, so it's considered "free." An assigned, or tied, action is an action that must be used with a particular ability or skill. These come from perks and high ability scores. Actions are usually tied to a skill; doing so grants a character greater odds of success in the form of skill points. Whenever a skill is being performed, there is at least one action necessary to make that skill happen. If using a skill or ability might take more than one action, the GM should consider the "sword swing" guideline for measuring action duration: the shortest action possible is generally the amount of time required to make a solid sword swing. Accordingly, lengthier activities should be divided into a number of actions equal to the number of solid sword swings that could be made during that activity. Note that if there are no sword swings being made, it's possible that time is not presently an important factor, and extended conflict rules are not necessary at this time.[/sblock] [U]Bonus Actions[/U][sblock] Some characters get more than three actions per round. These bonus actions can come from different sources, like magic spells, perks, or abilities. While spells and perks describe how they award bonus actions, abilities grant actions based on the ability score. Starting at 15 and every five points above that, abilities grant a bonus action tied to that ability. So, for example, a character with 25 physical gets an extra three physical actions each round. Regardless of how a character earns bonus actions, these actions are included in the set granted to him at the beginning of each round. [/sblock][U] Reserve Actions[/U][sblock] Characters can take actions at any time: before, during, and after other actions or turns - as long as they have unused actions in that round. These unused actions are called reserve actions because they're actions that a character won't use during his turn; he has most likely reserved them to respond to the actions of others. Reserve actions have some limits. They can only occur in response to an action by the character whose turn it is. When that character takes an action, he has effectively given every other character a chance to act. Think of it - each action - as a mini-round. Regardless of how many characters act in this mini-round, each character gets only one action - a reserve action. Once everyone has announced their actions or has decided to wait to act, the GM resolves all of the actions in initiative order. Any characters taking reserve actions with a higher initiative than the current character's (who's taking his turn) are considered to act at the exact same time as the current character. Any characters taking a reserve action with a lower initiative are considered to be acting immediately after the current character. If some actions would render others moot or useless, the GM should pay close attention to the initiative order when resolving a mini-round. For example, Merloon, Montana, and Number 2259 are fighting a security guard. The initiative order is Montana, security guard, Merloon, and Number 2259. It's Merloon's turn, and he casts a fire spell at the guard. The guard has reserved a free action for defense, so he tries to parry the spell. Number 2259 sees an opportunity to give himself an advantage so he uses a reserve action to turn off the lights (and use his motion-tracking goggles) while the guard is defending. But due to poor communication, Montana tries the same thing as Number 2259. Everyone has announced their intent, and the GM resolves the situation as such: Montana has the highest initiative, so he goes over and turns the lights off. At the same time, the security guard rolls a parry contest, and Merloon rolls a cast spell (fire blob) contest. The lights go out at the same time that Merloon fires his spell, so the GM awards no darkness penalties to the guard or Merloon. Merloon's contest is higher, so he deals physical (fire) damage to the guard. Finally, Number 2259 went for the lights, but Montana beat him to it, so Number 2259 just loses an action. Merloon may now continue his turn, or reserve any leftover actions for later in the round. [/sblock][U] Damage[/U][sblock] When conflict happens in a roleplaying game, something is bound to get damaged. However, as it applies to the general conflict rules, damage is simply a progress indicator. If knocking out an opponent is your goal, adding damage to his mental damage pool increases your progress toward knocking him out. Or if your goal is to usurp a king, your damage might be considered "instability," and once the king has reached enough instability, he'll either abdicate or start a war. Whatever damage represents, it is usually handled the same way. Damage is usually caused by weapons or spells, but only on a successful attack contest. To determine the amount of damage, a player rolls the appropriate damage die. To prevent damage, many opponents will have some sort of protection. Protection has a corresponding die, just like damage, and the result of the protection roll is subtracted from the result of the damage roll. Protection cannot completely eliminate damage; if damage minus protection would ever equal zero or less, the result is instead one. Sometimes a character will have the opportunity to deal multiple dice of damage at one time, like in a combined attack or magic spell. In this case, the player is welcome roll damage for each successful attack action at the same time, and add the results together. The defender should then roll a protection die (if he has protection) for each successful attack, and add up all the protection. Subtract total protection from total damage, and the result is the higher of this difference or the number of damage dice rolled. For example, Dynamite Mike and Buster are boxing it out. Mike makes a combined attack of four fight-unarmed contests. Buster doesn't want to defend against all of them, so he reacts to the first one by taking defensive posture, and parrying one more. The parry contest is a success - it's higher than Mike's highest fight-unarmed contest. So the GM tells Mike to roll one damage die, and Buster to roll one protection die. Mike gets 6 and Buster gets 1, so Buster takes 5 physical damage. Buster succeeded on his parry, so there is no second die of damage. Then the GM asks for two more damage rolls from Mike, and two protection from Buster, to resolve the last two attacks. Mike rolls two dice and the result is 3, while Buster takes half (half on a 1d4 is 2) for a total of 4. 3 damage minus 4 protection is -1, for a minimum of 2. Since Buster moved to defensive posture, the damage result would be divided by 2 again, but since damage is already at its minimum level of one per die, Buster takes 2 more physical damage.[/sblock] [/QUOTE]
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