Redefining Combat Styles

 Been going through a few old posts on the Livejournal, because folks have reminded me of stuff I've written. Thus, the reposts of old material (this is from 2009, but comes from some older ideas).

So, I was posting to RPG.net, on one of their many Palladium topics, and came up with an idea, based on my Weapon Proficiency idea.

For those who do not know it, my Weapon Proficiency idea is pretty simple:  At every level, you gain +1 to something.  This may be a +1 to strike, a +1 to Parry, or a +10% to range; the full list is in the pimp my skill monkey article.  If you spend 3 skills on a WP, you get the equivalent of 3rd level skill in the weapon, letting you add either 3 +1s or a +2 and a +1 (since you cannot have the same bonus on successive levels).

Now, for combat skills (and by these, I mean the Hand to Hand skills), I've got something similar, that obviously hasn't been playtested.  To gain Combat Training (so named because "Hand to Hand" leads to people asking why hand to hand skills help with shooting), you spend at least one skill; you can spend more, up to a limit set by your OCC Group.  For every skill you spent on Combat Training, you gain a +1 to one combat bonus at every level.

Thus, if you spent 1 skill on Combat training, you get a +1 to initiative, strike, parry, dodge, damage, or roll at 1st level, and another +1 at 2nd level.  If you spent 3 skills, you get  +3 to spend at 1st level, +3 at 2nd, etc.  Spending one skill gives you automatic parry, and 2 combat maneuvers (different kinds of kicks or special attacks).  Each additional skill adds 2 combat maneuvers.  This is in addition to a basic punch and snap kick.

The are two limitations on this.  First is that no one bonus can account for more than 2/3rds of your total, except if you've spent only 1 skill, and then only at 1st level.  The second is that each OCC is limited in how many skills it can spend on Combat Training, depending on its group. Men at Arms (e.g. Knights, Juicers, and Martial Artists) may spend up to 4 skills on Combat Training.  Scholars and Adventurers (such as PF's Squire class, the Wilderness Scout of Rifts, or Robotech's Civilian OCC) can spend up to 3 skills on Combat Training.  Men of Magic and Psychics can spend up to 2 skills on combat training.  RCCs limit at whatever they most closely resemble; a Lanotaur Hunter is Psychic, but they're really Men at Arms types at heart.  Dragons are Magic and Psychic, but they're also King of the Monsters... they get the maximum possible.

Now, this fails to account for a few different things currently integral to Palladium's system. 

The first is the Critical Strike; most Hand to Hand skills improve your chances of a critical strike at a certain level.  I'm not sure how to handle that; I think I may go with "Your critical strike improves by 1 at at levels 9, 14, and 19 - the number of skills you spent on Combat Training"... meaning a maxxed out Man at Arms will get a 19 CS at level 5, a 18 at level 10, and a 17 at level 15.  I'm not as thrilled with that option, since there are some characters whose concepts revolve around CS (like assassins).  While that can somewhat be addressed by them putting more of their bonus into damage bonuses, it's not quite a comfy fit for me.

The second is all of the special attacks... the Knockout/stuns, the Pin/Incapacitates, and the Death Blows.  My temptation is to simply make them available as skills, with a minimum level.  Knock-out/stun, for example, would be available at 1st level, but would require an additional skill to be spent.  Someone who doesn't want to learn it until later can put it off.  While it opens up the possibility of "My character, Mr. Uber-deathly-killing-machine, has spent 4 skills on combat, plus learned every special maneuver he can at 1st level", the hope is that said character will be so widely incompetent at anything that doesn't have an initiative roll attached that he won't be played.

Lastly (and only because I forgot it while writing other things in the article) is attacks per melee.  I'm personally in favor of their being fewer attacks per melee, and leaving everyone at 2 + their OCC bonuses does tend help with that.  It means that rounds take less real time, and gives low-action characters more influence on the combat.  For those who want more attacks in their game, I'd go with +1 at X level (perhaps, again, based on your class group, or total number of skills spent on Combat Training)

Just a thought that wandered across my brain.  It leads to more flexible and player-defined characters, while keeping the "Palladium-ness" of the game mostly intact.

Pimp My Skill Monkey

An import from my old Livejournal, an old article on how to radically change the Palladium Skill system to accomodate some newer ideas and streamline some other issues.

***

I got some great help from Stattick on the RPG.net. He helped with some of the concepts, especially as it relates to the attribute checks.

Pimp My Skill-Monkey

Peering into the old lock, Stattick slipped the picks from their leather case. Not seeing anyone... and certainly no guards, he peered into the lock, looking for the signs of a needle trap or deadfall. There it was... a tumbler that didn't belong. Working quickly, his deft fingers manipulated the picks into rearranging all but that tumbler. A small snickt as the last one clicked into place elicited a silent sigh. No trap, no alarm. Swinging the door open, he recoiled from the sudden klaxon-sound coming from the ward on the floor.
"Maybe I was wrong about there not being an alarm" he thought as he dove for cover, trying to remember everything he knew about wards.

Skills form an integral part of a Palladium character; in some cases, they define a character's capabilities as much as O.C.C. does. Despite their importance, skills work much as they did in 1983, and characters of vastly different physical and mental capabilities have identical skill percentages. What follows are some optional rules for all Palladium games, to add some spice to playing a skill-based character, give some use to attributes below 16 and, hopefully, speed both play and character creation. These rules are designed to be used either separately or together; Game Masters can pick and choose what parts of this article to use, and those choices won't affect the playability of the rules.

It should be noted that several rules mention "the average person." An average person is assumed to have ability scores of 10, the approximate average on a roll of 3D6. Averages for some races in some attributes will be lower or higher than this, but the average person always assumes a 10.

H1: Levelless Star Wars Saga

H1: Levelless Star Wars Saga

This is an edit of a previous work I did, that we bashed out on the Giant in the Playground message boards. I’m attempting to edit it for cleanliness and ease of use.

In theory, this will work for anyone using the classed version as well, but I'm going to assume you start with my classless system. You also keep the XP system as-is, but instead of saving it to buy levels, which carry inherent increases in defenses, HP, and the opportunity for feats, talents, and other improvements, you get a bonus feat, talent, or class feature every Z XP; the default is around 5000xp, but someone in the mood for a faster-gaining gameplay might set it as low as 1000xp; I wouldn't suggest going much over 5000xp, because that will lead to a seriously slow game. A happy medium might be 2000xp or so, but experiment with it. Some ambitious soul might want to assign varying values to different feats, talents, and other such things, but that's beyond my patience; they are generally equal in value in SAGA, and so can remain equal in value in H1.

There are some very OBVIOUS problems with this, and it goes back to the source of almost all SAGA problems: The Use the Force skill. If you leave it a skill, force-users simply walk all over the game, and it gets even worse when you stick everyone at level 1 defenses (plus whatever they get from feats). The simplest solution to this is to make it so Use the Force is not a skill... it is instead treated similarly to a weapon, wielded with Charisma. Someone with the Force Sensitivity feat is counted as proficient in that weapon, and may use it as outlined in the skills section as if trained in the skill. Someone without the Force Sensitivity feat may spend a force point to use the "Search Your Feelings" or "Sense Surroundings" uses of the skill (representing a momentary connection to the force). A new feat exists, "Force Focus", which gives you a +1 to Force checks; Greater Force Focus, to give another +1 isn't out of line, either.

Force points might be better addressed using my replacement rules, which give 2 blue "force points" per session, and 1 red "dark side point", with Force Boon giving you an additional point per session. If you don't like those rules, it will greatly hurt my feelings, but you might consider having Force Points refill every time a new feat/feature/talent is gained.

Some other things need to be addressed as well, but they're relatively minor. Toughness is changed from +1HP/Level to a flat +4 HP... about 1/6 the average person's 24 HP. Many feats have a Base Attack Bonus requirement; that's obviously eliminated, and I'm not seeing too many feats in the base book that are broken by that. I would also add some new feats; Ability Training and Ability Advancement from E6, for example, and I don't think Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, and Iron Will from the d20 SRD would be terribly unbalancing, especially if you allow Greater Weapon Focus to help counterbalance them. Most things that refresh with level (such as Force Points done not-my-way, or money from the Wealth Noble talent should be moved to a "when you get a feat" time scale. If they reference the character's level, instead use number of talents in a given tree, or number of bonus feats, whichever makes more sense.

In combat, it’s important to reexamine the Armor tree; armor becomes a lot more valuable when you don’t have a level-based bonus to defense for it to replace, and the mechanics of Armored Defense and Improved Armored defense become irrelevant. I would suggest making it so Armored Defense gives you a +1 to Reflex (above what is granted by the armor), Second skin gives you a +1 to Fortitude (again, above what is granted by the armor), and Improved Armored Defense gives you a +1 to Reflex for every trait you have in the Armor tree (replacing the bonus from Armored Defense).

The main balancing feature here is prerequisites, combined with a bit of opportunity cost. While BAB and level prereqs are obviously gone, other prereqs, such as specific feats or class features, are not. It should also be noted that monsters become a LOT nastier in this system... a 138 HP Rancor is nothing to sneeze at in base SAGA; in H1, it's going to eat you for lunch unless you can crush it with an pneumatic door.

Coalition Psychics

The Coalition States of Rifts Earth has in place a program by which they register and monitor psychics within their territory. While the CS is a Nazi-themed, human supremacist nation with ambitions towards genocide, this fairly reasonable step hasn't been explicitly taken by other nations. But something occurred to me in considering this... while it will let the CS adequately track "mutants" who have psychic powers, it can also serve as a registry of those who may give useful psychic information... be it those who can be conscripted for specific tasks, or hints of what is to come.

CS: Civil Society

An indeterminate number of years ago... not as much as ten, but more than four (based on the age of the notebook)... I wrote a lot of notes about the civilian society of Rifts Coalition States. While we know a lot about their military machine, life as a civilian is not well described. So, I wrote a lot of notes, with the idea of writing a longer article, or even a book. Since I'm not planning on doing much more with Rifts, I thought I'd share what I have.

This is very rough; it's simply outline notes for work I was going to do later. Perhaps I'll expand it, one day.

D6 and the Blaster-Proof Wookie [d6 Star Wars]

So, D6, the WEG system used to run their excellent Star Wars game, and later exported to a generic D6 system (the latter is available through Drivethru RPG, but they're down for maintenance as I write this, confound it) had a problem: damage and damage resistance.

In the 1e version of the game, any hit resulted in a stun, no matter how insignificant the hit. If you got stunned, you got knocked prone, and unable to act for the rest of the round. You could easily stun-lock the rancor with a weak weapon, just standing out of it's range and plinking it every time it tried to stand up.

In the 2e version of the game, you ran into another problem: The Blaster-Proof Wookie. Every time you were hit, you rolled your Strength to reduce the damage. If you rolled higher than the damage, you had no effect. This wasn't too bad, until you got to wookies, who could have a 6D Strength.... while the average blaster did 4D. Chances are, your wookie wasn't taking any damage at all.

Now, the generic D6 version introduced a new rule. Instead of basing your hand to hand weapon damage on your raw Strength, it was based on half your strength, or half your Lifting skill (which was based on Strength). The default rules are that you removed the pips (so 3D+2 was considered just 3D), cut the number of dice in half and rounded up (so 3D+2 Lifting became 2D melee damage). Personally, I tend to count the pips and divide by 2, with a full die counting as a pip itself (so the aforementioned 3D+2 would be 11 pips... 1D is 3 pips, 2D is 6, 3D is 9, plus 2), and that works out to 5 pips in DR, or 1D+2; it makes every increase potentially meaningful.

Somehow, I also reached the conclusion that this applied to damage reduction as well, but through the Stamina skill, not Lifting. I cannot, for the life of me, find where this might be, and suspect it might be a house rule that we cooked up. But it neatly deals with the problem of the Blaster-Proof Wookie.

A Wookie with 6D Strength and no improvement in Stamina has a 3D damage resistance roll. Still sizable, and he's likely to resist most of a 4D blaster shot... but he's also wise to take cover. If he ups his Stamina to 8D,  he's likely to resist all of the 4D blaster (4D v. 4D), but he's still likely to want to take cover, just to be sure.

Now, you may be trying to tie this back to my just-posted rules for improving skills in D6 through use. Which you should. But, using Stamina (or Lifting, for melee damage) in this way is unlikely to increase your skill, because of the very high thresholds involved; you still base your threshold off the base skill, not the reduced skill. So the average human, with a 2D Stamina, has 1D Damage Resistance, but getting XP for Stamina requires passing a 10 Difficulty check... between the Wild Die, character points, and Force/Fate points, it's certainly POSSIBLE to hit a 10 Difficulty with 1D... but it's going to be rare, and you might be better off just spending the CP necessary to flat out improve your Stamina when you get a chance.

Use-based Improvement [d6]

So, an argument on Dragonsfoot lead to me spending some time on my Star Wars and D6 Space books this week, and then another discussion on Giant in the Playground lead to me working out a system for auto-improving skills in D6... skills that, like skills in the Elder Scrolls games, automatically increase as you use them more.

Set a threshold, and any difficulties above that threshold are added together, and once you achieve a certain amount of "XP" in a given skill, then it goes up by a pip, and then you start your XP over. Using WEG's D6, I might go with something like

Skill/Threshold/XP
1D/5/20
2D/10/40
3D/15/60
4D/20/80
...usw

So it would work out that 4 very hard checks (average of 5 or better on your D6s) would improve you by 1 pip. It would take 12 such checks to improve you by a die (4D->4D+1->4D+2->5D). You could achieve it faster by doing harder things, but those things would be VERY hard for someone of your skill. You don't get any XP for doing easy things repeatedly, and this only applies to skills, not the attributes themselves.

Now, this would mean you reduce the awarding of Character Points (since mundane advancement is taken care of), but it also means that they and Fate/Force points play into advancing skills and abilities, since adding a +1, a die, or doubling the dice on important and difficult rolls makes it more likely that you'll succeed, and thus gain XP in that ability. You can also include them as a "training system"... so the pip-increases from use happen automatically, but if you want to improve your blaster skill and haven't been taking enough really hard shots (once you hit 5D in blaster, you either have to be facing an excellent dodger, a jedi who is trying to deflect your shots, or making extreme long range shots through cover), you spend CP like normal.

Now, this is going to run into problems with attributes and force skills. I tend to treat Force "skills" as being more akin to attributes, with force "powers" being treated like skills... if you have a 3D Control and learn a Control power, you have that power at 3D, and can improve it independently of your Control Skill. As such, I'd lump Force Skills and Attributes into the same category as only being able to improve through active training... pretty much any time you're using an attribute, you're actually using a skill under that attribute.