Combat related stuff

[Plane]

Originally Posted by FeiLin

1) IIrc, it’s possible to use the default of any technique (save those that “default to defaults”); does that also mean I can create a “temporary” combat technique based on an attack/action, and say modify it by just subtracting 2 (or 1 per die, whichever is worse), as per MA90 (unless said attack/action already includes something similar, of course)?

The closest I know of to a restriction is MA52's "Unique Technique" perk, but that's only required to use "forbidden" techniques.

Reading 89-95 I'm not entirely sure what that means, so hopefully we can figure it out by examples where we see that perk built into the cost of some templates.

For example in Dungeon Fantasy 11 (Power-Ups) there is:
pg 12 Unique Technique (Running Attack)
pg 32 Unique Technique (Double-Draw)
pg 33 UT (QuickShooting)
pg 34 UT (Botte Segrete and Coup de Jarnac)
pg 35 UT (Disappear)

Pg 7 has "A technique that would otherwise be off-limits, alongside
a Unique Technique perk (p 6) that opens the door to it." as an explanation...

But I guess I don't really understand where all the default limits are meant to lie. Unusual Backgrounds (which UT is, perk-level) can be subjective like that.

Originally Posted by Maz

1) What do you mean by "temporary"? If you want, you can create new techniques, using all of the rules. "-1 per die" is just one way to modify a technique.

I think by temporary he means on-the-fly without actually investing anything into learning it, like for example if you want to punch some super-large hard-to-miss thing (where the SM bonus makes it easy to hit) you can eat a huge penalty to get a massive damage bonus.

That's probably where GMs need to step in and say "I'm going to cap how much damage you can buy by taking penalties" though at what point they draw a line could vary by GM.

[Maz]

Originally Posted by Plane

I think by temporary he means on-the-fly without actually investing anything into learning it, like for example if you want to punch some super-large hard-to-miss thing (where the SM bonus makes it easy to hit) you can eat a huge penalty to get a massive damage bonus.

That's probably where GMs need to step in and say "I'm going to cap how much damage you can buy by taking penalties" though at what point they draw a line could vary by GM.

That makes sense. I would probably not allow it as it sounds open for abuse and people spending time in an active combat trying to min/max a specific attack. Which might be OK in some games, but with 1-sec combat turns I want combat to flow as fast as possible re. real time.

[FeiLin]

Originally Posted by Plane

I think by temporary he means on-the-fly without actually investing anything into learning it, like for example if you want to punch some super-large hard-to-miss thing (where the SM bonus makes it easy to hit) you can eat a huge penalty to get a massive damage bonus.

That's probably where GMs need to step in and say "I'm going to cap how much damage you can buy by taking penalties" though at what point they draw a line could vary by GM.

Yeah, sorry, a bit unclear what I meant. I meant pretty much what you meant; adapt to whatever you’re facing at the moment by seeing the technique rules as more of a toolbox that players have at their disposal.

Perhaps it’s open to abuse, and it would probably be slower (at least to begin with), but I could also see it as a different yet potentially interesting gaming experiencing, which (hopefully) incentivises players become more familiar with the system. “Your wanna do {X}? Well, read the rules same see if you can find what you want, or otherwise use the closest as precedent and suggest something of your own.” Of course, it may be that it’s unnecessary too tweak every move that they do with the techniques options, but it could be a nice option for customisation – at least for cinematic games.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Plane

Reading 89-95 I'm not entirely sure what that means, so hopefully we can figure it out by examples where we see that perk built into the cost of some templates.

It's a patch on an inherent flaw of a playable skill system - things you can learn to do in reality are almost infinitely divisible and recombinable, but no game wants to deal with millions of different skills.

The intent of a Unique Technique is this is a thing that you actually need to train to do, and which isn't so common that anybody learning skill X would learn it, but it also isn't so separate as to justify an entirely new skill. Once you have learned how to do it at all, it just becomes part of skill X, just like all the thousands of things skill X already allows you to do but which realistically you could learn to do (and improve) without actually knowing skill X.

Incidentally flipside of that, the perks for learning some bit of skill X without the rest of skill X also exist. As Skill Adaptation (when you attach it to another skill), One Task Wonder (when you attach it to an attribute) or Shtick (when you don't attach it to anything, it just works). Or you can call them new skills as the generic undefined skills at each difficulty level (Hobby, Professional or Expert skills).

You need this sort of flexibility because skills aren't "real" - they're convenient clusters of lots of different things that are often learned together, but which can be, and sometimes are, separated. Which is also the issue techniques address at a slightly less separate level really.

Most flexible rules, definitely including all generic modifier and trait design systems, were actually designed to work in one direction - you start with the thing you want to model and use the rules to construct it. Flipping them around and using the rule to decide what is possible is basically the opposite of what they were written for. Sometimes it will give you a reasonable enough result, but it may not.