Acrobatic Dodge

[hcobb]

A figure with acrobatics can declare an acrobatic dodge and if they make a 3/adjDX roll this works for a turn. The extra concentration this takes disallows combination with an occult staff strike of any level.

All attacks (ranged and melee) against the acrobatic dodger need to roll 5/DX to hit them.

[larsdangly]

Sure; that works for me. One thing I like is that it makes a creative and basically fair use of an existing talent, rather than piling on a new 'kewl pwrzzz' talent. I dislike the latter quite a lot - TFT already has lots of talents and will not benefit from adding more until it mutates into late-period 3E D&D. But this idea is cool. I might make it more specifically tied to core rules by noting this is a tweak of the Dodge action. I.e., you perform the Dodge action, and if you both have Acrobatics talent and succeed at a 3d DX roll then its 5d rather than 4d to hit you.

[Chris Rice]

No, not for me thanks. Acrobat isn't a combat Talent - it has its own advantages and is costed for that. I don't want high DX characters in plate dodging everything in sight - that clearly wasn't the intention of the Talent if you read the description in ITL.

[Skarg]

It adds a VERY powerful dodge to a talent that before had few uses in combat.

I think 5 dice to hit is excessive, and 3/DX is rather easy, especially for a talent that requires DX 12.

There's also no downside to using it, as written.

As such, it reminds me of the silly TV/film trope where people cartwheel and backflip their way into combat and this is supposed to be accepted as awesome instead of silly.


(Compare to GURPS, where Acrobatic Dodge requires a roll which if failed results in a -2 rather than a +1 or +2 to your Dodge (usually your lowest defense) if you succeed, and where it only applies to one attack. i.e. it's a limited minor bonus with a risk to it.)


So to reduce the super-ness of this, and make it less an "of course I always acrobatic dodge" thing, perhaps it should be 4/DX roll, a failure should mean it's only 3/DX to hit you, a critical failure means you fall down, and/or the effect is only an extra -1 or -2 to hit you on 4 dice, not 5 dice to hit?

[hcobb]

Make each attack a contest of DX?

[Skarg]

Making attacks a quick contest (which BTW was an optional rule for faster combats in GURPS before 4e) is nice in that it represents defensive ability, but if just dumped into TFT, would sort of double the importance of adjDX on melee combat... and adjDX is already one of the most important factors in melee combat, so no, not without developing it into something that would work better and wouldn't imbalance things.

[larsdangly]

There is an alternative universe where a couple of core concepts from GURPS combat were ported over to Legacy Edition TFT, and that universe is great - basically the same simple, fast playing game but with somewhat more granular and realistic treatment of the exchange of blows in melee combat. But we don't live in that universe. And bringing over just one feature of GURPS without the others (passive defense, how shields work, armor working better overall) would be very unbalancing. So, I don't think you can go there without seriously re-tooling your game or accepting a big shift in ideal character types.

[Jeff Lord]

We've used contested rolls in combat for ages now. They've worked out pretty well.

[larsdangly]

How do you avoid having armored characters basically out-classed to the point of extinction?

[hcobb]

Reduce DX penalties from armor by one for each level of toughness.