[Last Gasp] Mighty Warriors: Which Advantages and Skills Count?

[Icelander]

When using the Last Gasp rules, which of the following Advantages count for the purposes of 'Mighty Warriors and Action Points' in combat?

And are they limited in any way?

Ambidexterity
Combat Reflexes
Enhanced Parry (All Weapons)
Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction
Natural Soldier Talent
Very Fit
Weapon Master (All Muscle-Powered Weapons)

And do I count skills like:

Soldier?
Tactics?

[Angle]

Whichever ones you think appropriate. I'd probably have anything acquired as a product of training ad exercise count. And they're limited by the sphere they affect, I.E points from running only count for running.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Ambidexterity

Maybe, and only if the extra AP is being spent on "off-hand" attacks.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Combat Reflexes
Enhanced Parry (All Weapons)

These certainly seem legitimate for getting "Defense Only" extra AP.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction

Probably not, "getting hit a lot" doesn't burn any AP, after all.
EDIT: Looking back at the Pyramid Article, I see that getting hit does burn AP, provided you fail (or just don't succeed well enough) the HT roll. As IT:DR is already effectively giving you more AP - by reducing the amount lost when you're hit - bonus AP would be double-dipping here.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Natural Soldier Talent

Iffy - I'd probably allow it, but only for use of the skills it covers.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Very Fit

Specifically called out as only granting a bonus to recovery rolls, although I'd be tempted to let it count for AP burned on Move actions.
EDIT2: Scratch that, the bonus to recovery has a decent chance of causing the character to regain 1 additional AP than otherwise, making even letting it count for Move double-dipping. I'd probably still go with it if I used Move costs as-is (Douglas Cole had a post on his blog a while back listing how to reduce Move costs, so I'd likely go with that instead).

Originally Posted by Icelander

Weapon Master (All Muscle-Powered Weapons)

All Bladed Weapons gives you bonus AP for using blades, so I see no reason this wouldn't give you bonus AP for using muscle-powered weapons.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Soldier

Probably not - but Soldier might allow you to identify when during a battle it's safe to Do Nothing for a breather (possibly even giving you a bonus to the Recovery roll).

Originally Posted by Icelander

Tactics

Similar to Soldier, but if opting for the abstract "Tactics grants Rerolls" options, I'd be tempted to let a character turn, say, a failed attack into simply opting for Do Nothing to recover some AP.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Icelander

And are they limited in any way?

They're limited to "appropriate actions," probably almost always tied to skill use.

While as always, you do what you feel is best, here's how I'd judge these.

Ambidexterity: No. This is just the ability to use two hands.
Combat Reflexes. Meh, this one I'd say not likely, as it seems mostly emotional/perceptive.

Enhanced Parry (All Weapons): Yes, only for parries.
Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction: No way.
Natural Soldier Talent: For using skills contained in the talent, yes.
Very Fit: No. Very Fit is already defined benefit.
Weapon Master (All Muscle-Powered Weapons): Yes. Weapon master is an example in the article. If you're using your weapon to attack or parry, you gain the boost for this for 3 AP.

Soldier: Only if you're doing a physical thing with the skill, but not normal weapon use.

Tactics? Interesting! I'd make you roll it, once per flurry, and if you succeed you get a bonus point that flurry.

[Tomsdad]

I tend to allow "soldiering skills" especially for settings beyond melee combat where you want to model the tiring (physical and mental) effect of ongoing gun fights etc.

My rationale for this is to give professional fighters, an edge over less professional ones by dint of their training preparing them for combat situations in a more holistic way than just being better shots or better with a sword etc,

"train how you fight, fight how you train" etc.

Basically I want a less experienced combatant to be breathless and exhausted after a prolonged fight and the professional to have dealt with it with more aplomb. And while some of that can be modelled by having you're super delta force dudes having high HT, high HT is a general advantage.

But then I do like any system that stops PCs being the combat robots where each second is used to maximum efficiency to execute each well planned action decided from the comfort of the table top as many times as it takes to achieve a kill.

Of course the problem with this is different combat situations are different so sometimes have I haver reassess AP totals (or even reassess AP totals for specific actions). I try to get the players to work with me on that.

But as an example someone with some points in the CQB technique will get some APs for taking actions in kill house etc, etc.

Incidentally going off the examples of athletes in the other thread, I'd give APs for running skills when running etc, etc.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Combat Reflexes. Meh, this one I'd say not likely, as it seems mostly emotional/perceptive.

Tiring rapidly in combat is probably emotional as much as it is physical and it seems rather in character for the veteran with Combat Reflexes to expend less energy in a fight than the rookie without it. Going by game mechanics, it grants a bonus to active defences and so should probably give APs to perform active defences, just like Enhanced Parry does.

Balanced against that is the fact that Combat Reflexes already grants more benefits than its [15] cost justifies...

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Tiring rapidly in combat is probably emotional as much as it is physical and it seems rather in character for the veteran with Combat Reflexes to expend less energy in a fight than the rookie without it. Going by game mechanics, it grants a bonus to active defences and so should probably give APs to perform active defences, just like Enhanced Parry does.

Balanced against that is the fact that Combat Reflexes already grants more benefits than its [15] cost justifies...

Leaving aside the question of CR pricing (Which I don't disagree on) I'd say thematically CR is good for AP. In my mind CR is all about functioning efficiently under combat conditions, and that would include expending energy efficiently in combat.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Leaving aside the question of CR pricing (Which I don't disagree on) I'd say thematically CR is good for AP. In my mind CR is all about functioning efficiently under combat conditions, and that would include expending energy efficiently in combat.

That's how I see it, yes.

[Icelander]

I'm toying with the idea of allowing a technique which lowers the AP cost of attacks and defences down to 0.5. As AP cost is rounded up, this is only good if you need to make more than one per turn, but since mighty warriors often need to make several attacks and defences per turn, that's okay.

I was thinking that Pacing Attack was at skill-3 and did -1 damage (or -1/two die) and Pacing Block/Dodge/Parry was at [Active Defence] -2. The former an Average technique and the latter a Hard one.

Thoughts?

[DouglasCole]

You seem to be doing so much work to avoid the impact of spending AP, why use them at all? The entire purpose is to pace combat. If you want warriors to have lots of attacks before they have to rest, have them buy AP regeneration, extra AP, or all the other things designed to allow longer flurries.