Ghostlier Movement

[Plane]

Perhaps something we could allow is buying "Reliable" for active defenses?

This wouldn't be adding to what the defense roll adds directly.

It'd be like having talent add a bonus to the "requires IQ roll" check you might limit something like "Enhanced Block" with.

Talent adds to "Extra Effort" attempt rolls, so if you wanted to use that approach rather than Feverish Defense, "reliable" (like Talent) could make your EE attempts more successful when wanting to push the envelope beyond your normal non-EE capabilities.

If you normally applies EE just to the defense bonus you got like enhanced block 1 [5] then the penalty would be based on % increase relative to that (ie to double it at -1 per +5% you would be -20) but wanted to use EE based on your overall block (example if you have block 13, that counts as 10 levels of Enhanced Block per PU4p7) then improving to Block 14 would be +10% and only a -2 penalty on the EE roll per the -1/+5% ratio.

To actually get a Reliable/Talent bonus on THAT more generous EE roll would require not just having it on any "enhanced block" you might have, but also your "base block" too, I would think.

Reliable/Talent would also be important if you wanted to get Temporary Enhancements (such as Cosmic: Defensive: counts "No Active Defense" to allow roll) on your defenses. If you didn't have this reliable/talent on all your levels of enhanced block (built-in or additional) then it would only make sense to allow the bonus when temporarily enhancing PARTIAL levels of it.

Another idea might be to allow "Power Block" to temporarily increase your active defense stat. For example, using standardapproach, if I took AOD:Double, if I wanted to use "Power Block" to attempt to double my "Enhanced Block" from 5 levels to 10 levels, with "Block" being my 2nd defense.

If the 1st failed, I wouldn't get any EB (just +0) but if I succeeded, I would get EB+10. Does that seem reasonable?

Extrapolating from that, if you allow a "Power Block" with your ENTIRE block score (example: if you have block 13, that's equivalent to EB10, so "doubling" would improve it to 23 instead of 26, while failed Power Block would lower it to 3, not 0) then to get the benefit of Reliable on that roll would require you to enhanced ALL levels of it, while to get the benefit of Talent on that roll would require you to apply a power modifier (0% or otherwise) to ALL ten levels of block.

It's a pretty niche use (Power Block requiring an active defense makes it utterly worthless if you didn't take All-Out Defense: Double) but I like the idea of how this could perhaps approach in the direction of "no roll required" defenses without technically being that (you still always roll, can always fail).

Another would be to broaden the "double" defense as just operating like a Dual-Weapon Attack rather than exclusively an AOD option: you're -4 to skill (-2 to defend) to both defenses if you specify you want to do a "double-defense technique". That's roughly how it works if you take Double over Determined: trading in a "base" +2 for -2 to both if different.

Since that's non-standard it'd make sense to charge the 'Unusual Technique' perk requiring specification of both defenses and in what order they're made: much like with how you can't just buy up a "rapid strikes in general" technique, but need to specify the attacks/order.

MA80 has other factors which might need to be inverted, like instead of a missed 1st attack causing +3 to defense against 2nd, failure of the 1st defense could cause -3 to 2nd defense ... or instead of +1 to defend against 3rd use of a combination, you're -1 to 3rd use of double defense because your foe is predicting how you'll react and being deceptive-for-free instead of defensive-for-free.

If you did allowed this then a "Power Block Defense" on non-AOD maneuvers would basically be "roll power block at -2, then roll defense it modifies at -2"

Where that might be a bit off is the 2nd -2 might not matter so much if the 1st failed (if you were trying to double all your levels, your defense is down to 3 anyway) and AOD:double doesn't seem to OBLIGATE you to try the 2nd defense, so a way to balance that would be:

1) require AOD:double to specify what the 2nd defense is before the 1st is rolled (ie can't specify Power Block: Enhanced Block then choose to Parry if it fails)
2) since the 1st Power Block is not actually to prevent the attack (just modify the 2nd stat) just treat it like a "fail" where a "pass" does not prevent making the 2nd roll
3) in this context, REQUIRE the 2nd defense to be attempted (can't
4) if the MoF on an active defense roll is enough to cause a critical failure (10+) but it automatically succeeds because 3/4 always succeeds: have the crit fail cancel out the crit suc and it just fails
5) if MoF on an active defense roll is TWICE that to cause crit fail (20+) actually have it count as a crit fail even if it's a 3/4

Application example

1) "I have sword parry 8, I'm buying all 5 levels of above-3 parry with Biokinesis -10%, this lets me power block with it to attempt skill 13 parries!"
2) "I'm taking AOD:double with Powerblock to boost my parry, rather than a Determined Parry, because I think this will give me better than +2!
3) enemy attacks with a -20 Deceptive Attack causing -10 to parry
4) power block fails
5) Parry 3 critically succeeds
6) GM "but wait, your parry wasn't just reduced to 3 from the failed power block, it was reduced to -7 because of the deceptive attack. The 3 you rolled has a margin of failure of 10 points! That's within crit fail margins, so your auto-success on the parry is cancelled out by the crit-fail and is treated like a normal failure. So you don't dodge, and you don't turn your attacker's attack into a crit fail!

Alt:

3b) -40 deceptive attack causes -20 to parry
6b) "it was reduced to -17 because of the DA, your MoF is 20, you not only lose your crit success, but also take a crit fail!"

For comparison: getting +40 accuracy on an innate attack costs +200% as enhancement, halfway between Cheating +100% (no die roll required) and Godlike +300% (no active defense allowed) but given that requires an Aim maneuver it's probably a little more balanced, especially since it's only "no defense on a MoF 20" not "no defense period", so it's mostly useful against foes who have horrible defenses (like 3, in this example) and much less useful against high-defense foes.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Plane

Perhaps something we could allow is buying "Reliable" for active defenses?

I'm not fond of Reliable, and wouldn't miss if they got rid of it entirely. I'd rather expand the use of Talents.

Talent adds to your skill or IQ roll (which is halved for defenses), so I don't have a problem with that.

As for deceptive attacks, I'd be reluctant to allow them against Power defenses in general. At the very least you'd need to expect that defense and read your opponent. You aren't going to be able to anticipate the pattern of a Blink Dodge until you're either familiar how Teleport is used as a defense or guessing that particular character's go to moves.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by naloth

At the very least you'd need to expect that defense and read your opponent.

Deceptive Attack sounds like it can just be "I'm attacking so quickly that you can't react fast enough regardless of what you do" where you wouldn't actually need to know what defense they're going to use, ie MA66 "Deceptive Attack that relies on sheer speed"

The other kind (also MA66 "Sliding a weapon along the enemy’s to bypass his
guard (a “glide” or coulé) is a Deceptive Attack.) sounds like something you would just use to bypass parries or blocks... "slide along" establishes contact too... so that's a key thing you wouldn't want to handwaive in a game of auras and electrified metal weapons...

IMO a "slidealong" sounds almost like a Bash (normally ST-based) that gets floated back to DX, where it only works in respect to a specific defense (bypassing "guard" like this wouldn't make your attack any harder to dodge, or parry with the non-COULEd weapon) and doesn't transfer to allies...

That or maybe it sounds more like a Counterattack (penalizes parries worse than dodges, can only be done after a parry)

MA76 "Add in Deceptive Attack (p. B369) for fast snaps and other tricky moves" covers both concepts even though "fast tricks" and "sneaky tricks" seem to be different (explosive v slow) applications of DX.

Originally Posted by naloth

You aren't going to be able to anticipate the pattern of a Blink Dodge until you're either familiar how Teleport is used as a defense or guessing that particular character's go to moves.

Makes sense with ranged, if you're referring to MA121 Tricky Shooting - Prediction Shots ?

That only works against dodges, in which case your bullets aren't exactly "harder to defend against" (you can't take a DX penalty to shoot faster, or from weird angles ... there's no penalty to parry or block them, but you normally can't do that anyway, barring Enhanced Time Sense) so much as it seems to interpret dodging as "moving unpredictably" (not actually reacting to the firing of the shot at all) and TSPS predicting it anyway.

"can read his adversary’s body language and guess when the shot will come" explanation under Ranged Feints sounds like something, if I were to try and adapt it to the Dodge This rules, would be instead of making the Per roll to perceive the bullet (a Vision roll based on the SM of the bullet) to instead make a Per roll to perceive the trigger/finger, and just know "I'd better jump somewhere" when that happens.

That's pretty much how Dodge and Drop is intended to work I think. You bail the entire hex because perceiving speciifcally which hit location is being targeted is usually impossible (possible exception: if they're using a lasser and you can see the dot, you'd know which location to move out of the intended path)

Tactical Dodging Redux (pyr57pg20) is a great approach to me (don't need to declare dodge against specific attacker but must declare it during your own turn) but I'm not sure how well that adapts to "discrete dodges" with activations/FP costs like Warping. It seems more limited for "when I can dodge unlimited times per turn" like how dodges work in Basic Set. Even the cumulative -1 from MA doesn't sound like it would work well with Redux, because that puts together an "order" to the dodges rather than just representing "I move funny".

What might be better is just randomly rolling dodge but rather than considering successes "a win", consider them "MoS penalty to attackers" but that's just a heck of a lot like "Defensive Feint against everyone".

Hm... that actually might be legal if we call that "Whirlwind Defensive Feint" or "Grand Defensive Feint" except those are I think Rapid Strike 5 extra for 6 foes (5x6=-30) halved to -15 for master advantages per http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...62&postcount=8 and some of the technique bonuses (RHL, crits, fixed order, swings) wouldn't apply to feints...

"limited to swings" is weird too, don't Combinations already need to specify attack type?
"all you can do", similarly... aren't you already prohibited from doing a DWA or RS atop a RS? "prohibited from fast-draw" sounds like the only extra here, and you'd want to word it "can't be done after a fast-draw" since that's done before the maneuve rbegins

Cole had something along those lines (maneuver dedicated to penalizing attackers) as Move and Attack (Evasive) which didn't work on Suppression Fire. B409 didn't have anything excluding Defensive Feint penalties but then DF did not exist at the time that was written...

B409 requires you to fire declared shots into an area regardless of whether or not anyone enters, so the way that's treated as actual attack rolls based on your skill is actually pretty strange. Hosing an area mindlessly just sounds more like Bombardment, so maybe the skill roll should be purely based on shots fired into hex and not on skill at all, except for that of targeting the hex at +4 ?

There's no visibility penalties but there are bonuses for aiming... which sounds like "I got X many bullets into the hex". With SF cap at 6+RoF bonus, that sounds like a great bombardment formula, and maybe you could just do a roll to target the hex and treat your MoS/recoil "rounds hit the hex" as the RoF for determining the RoF bonus for the 6+ bombardment effective skill which can't be penalized by Deceptive Feint?

MA100 could let the Warper use Evaluate on the attacker to cancel out a Deceptive Attack or Feint bonus used against them...

The strange thing about feint to me is how it seems like a "fake attack" yet doesn't actually trigger defenses, so no FP is wasted on Feverish Defense, or buying off Warp's -10 or similar...

Makes me wonder if maybe Feints emulating actual attacks should just be min-damage hits that stop short (ST 0) which can cause opponent to waste parries (-4) or dodges (-1) penalizing them that way...

Whereas the traditional feint isn't so much "he's making an attack" but "he's moving in a weird way, I'm losing track of him, and can't predict when he actually will attack" so that when he does, the normal MoV defense penalty occurs.

Kinda feel like folding 'Defensive Feint' bonus into that too, because "moving unpredictably so I can't predict where he'll be to target him" and "moving unpredictable so I can't predict where he'll be to defend against him" sound indistinguishable. Folding them together makes feints super-awesome (present-time defensive, future-offensive) and even more appealing in fights.

MA111's 3 kinds could maybe have different rules, like with change-up being a last-minute target change, throat>gut actually might not prompt a defense at all if someone was wearing a gorget. Change-ups could maybe be something like where you roll to target a location, prompt the choice to defend or not, but before defender actually rolls (they merely choose to defend or not) you can specify a last-minute chance. Then the defender could also change, and contest determines how well they change?

"Radical angle" sounds more useful to get around DB, and the problem with "field of vision" explanation is varying traits related to that, so that actually should be a mechanical sometimes-avoidable thing.

I like the "sheer speed" as the simplest in terms of hex/location, but it only goes so far. "Dodge This!" for example penalizes DX based on Speed/Range so at some point you're going to reach "faster than a bullet" kind of penalties from DA, and there should maybe be realistic limits on just how much of a DA penalty you can explain away from speed (thinking good guideline would be capped to Basic Speed on the Speed/Range table representing limb, plus whatever your velocity in last turn) and that should obviously make it equally hard to target fast-moving body/limb with attacks too, not just harder to parry...

Rather than make it a 'special effect' it might actually be possible to define all DA variants with different rules. This would make it easier to describe/RP them since the effects would match the tactics.

MA122 "body partly conceals" for some reason only gives -1 deceptive when actually taking a deceptive w/ Reversed but normal or telegraphed reversed don't get...

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Plane

Deceptive Attack sounds like it can just be "I'm attacking so quickly that you can't react fast enough regardless of what you do" where you wouldn't actually need to know what defense they're going to use, ie MA66 "Deceptive Attack that relies on sheer speed"

Given that you use the same Dodge to duck bullets, lasers, and arrows speed obviously isn't something that would penalize your dodge. Besides, reliable is "hits better" not "hits faster". If your attack cannot be dodged, there's a Cosmic for that.

The other kind (also MA66 "Sliding a weapon along the enemy’s to bypass his
guard (a “glide” or coulé) is a Deceptive Attack.) sounds like something you would just use to bypass parries or blocks... "slide along" establishes contact too... so that's a key thing you wouldn't want to handwaive in a game of auras and electrified metal weapons...

This doesn't apply to what we're discussing. Power Parries attack the incoming attack directly. Power Blocks double your effective DR. You shouldn't be able to bypass either either those tricks.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by naloth

Given that you use the same Dodge to duck bullets, lasers, and arrows speed obviously isn't something that would penalize your dodge.

unless using Dodge This :)

That's why I like the idea of rolling it beforehand in Cole's Redux, it seems more like 'dodging the aim'.

I wonder if one possible idea might be "aiming is always mandatory" for all ranged attacks, and to allow dodges against those aims without the projectile speed involved, instead you'd dodge with the much lower penaltes based on the speed of the aimer's arm instead?

That doesn't need to slow combat since Cole's "On Target" also introduced a "Quick Aim" technique. TBH those rules are so brutal that I think a lot of people will just skip aiming altogether unless it's made mandatory.

In cases where you can't take Aim maneuvers (like Berserkers) we could just consider them to always take free-action quick aims.

Originally Posted by naloth

Power Parries attack the incoming attack directly.
Power Blocks double your effective DR.
You shouldn't be able to bypass either either those tricks.

In the case of a Power Parry I could see it being something like "you misdirected them so when they shot their fire to neutralize your ice, it missed the ice".

I could see Power Parries since they're basically just defensive free-action Innate Attacks as maybe being subject to 'Hitting the Wrong Target' on failed parries.

Since "you missed" isn't exactly plausible when using AE attacks to power-parry, a better explanation might just be like a failed power dodge: you ended up shooting the power, but you took too long to do it, so you only did so AFTER the attack landed.

Power Block is different though since a failure doesn't just fail to increase against the attack, but actually drops your gambled DR entirely, like a momentary crippling of the power you recover from right after...

I see that as probably something like "you did manage to double your DR but you focused it at the wrong point where the attack was not directed, the attack instead the attack penetrated your DR in the hole left behind by you shifting your DR around!"

That explanation doesn't work so well against AE effects though... maybe power blocks with DR should only be possible against non-AE attacks?

Or in the case of AE maybe it's something like "when you double your DR you temporarily overload it" so a successful power block means "I doubled it at the correct moment" whereas a failed power block could be "I doubled it too soon, and then it dropped and the attack hit"?

I guess it could be "I doubled it too late" as well since it could be something like "you temporarily drop your DR to SAVE IT UP and then add it to your DR the next moment!" but then the attack hits during that "savings" period of vulnerability instead of the correct moment.

I guess using those 2 explanations (timing, not positioning) works better since it could apply to AE and normal attacks alike for Pparries/Pblocks

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Plane

That doesn't need to slow combat since Cole's "On Target" also introduced a "Quick Aim" technique. TBH those rules are so brutal that I think a lot of people will just skip aiming altogether unless it's made mandatory.

For what it's worth: this is not how it's worked out in play when I've used thee rules, played under them, or heard about others using them.

But I digress. Please return to your regularly scheduled walls of text. :-)