The simplest thing to do here is to treat each fencing school as a package of benefits -- say, three -- that's accessed through a stunt. I'm thinking there would be a number of these to choose from, organized in tiers that are unlocked by your Weapons skill. I concede that this is double-dipping a bit with Weapons, since it determines both how good you are in a fight and how versatile you can be, but c'mon, it's a swashbuckling game. That said, depending on the school a different skill could be used to determine just what you have access to. I'm thinking here of something like Academics or even Mysteries.
What fencing schools can do:
- +1-3dF (keep best four dice) with Weapons, Fists, or Guns for attacks, defenses, or specific type of weapon
- +1 in broad circumstances only with a particular skill that doesn't directly deal stress -- e.g., +1 Athletics to cover ground, +1 Intimidation in combat
- +2 to maneuver with a skill
- Use a different skill when rolling initiative
- Some other skill substitution in combat with non-stress-dealing skills
- One secondary skill can only complement and never restrict Weapons, Fists, or Guns
- No penalty to Weapons et al. when using a particular skill as part of a supplementary action
- +1dF when you have Advantage
- +1dF when you don't have Advantage
- Withstand an additional Minor consequence (this would be a very high-tier benefit)
What fencing schools can't do:
- Grant flat, blanket bonuses to Weapons, Fists, or Guns
- Grant flat bonuses to stress dealt on a successful attack
- Grant flat reductions to stress when successfully attacked
- Skill substitution that lets you use something other than Weapons et al. to deal stress
For example:
Salon de Montcharles: A school whose techniques revolve around understanding the opponent's mind and intimidating him into submission.
Novice Techniques (Prerequisite: Average Weapons)
- +1dF Weapons with rapiers
- +1 Empathy in combat
- +1 Intimidation in combat when you don't have Advantage
- Use Empathy instead of Alertness for initiative
- +2dF Weapons with defenses
- +1 Resolve when you have Advantage
- +1dF Weapons with attacks
- +1dF Weapons with defenses
- +2 Intimidation with maneuvers
- When you take a physical consequence, you may choose to take a mental consequence of equal severity instead
When you take the stunt for a particular fencing school, you pick three of its techniques from any available tier. The idea here is that I'd stat out a number of schools -- a dozen or more -- for players to pick from. That shouldn't prevent players from coming up with their own, but having pre-established schools would be an important bit of setting, I'd think. Techniques that grant bonus dice stack with each other, but techniques that grant flat bonuses don't: Use the highest applicable bonus. To take an example from the above, if you have +1 to Intimidation in combat and +2 to maneuver with Intimidation, using Intimidation in combat as part of a maneuver will only net you a +2 bonus. Keep in mind the rules of Advantage here. Normally, getting a +1 to Empathy in combat wouldn't be an especially big deal, but when a good Deceit roll can give you the ability to inflict consequences, having a decent Empathy suddenly becomes more important.
I'm not exactly sure how I'd handle other stunts (or their equivalent) here, but it'd be great if I could get away with limiting bonuses to Weapons solely to aspect invokes and tags. Oh, and the other thing I'd do is limit aspect invokes to once per scene, to encourage more maneuvers and the creation of new aspects.
3 comments:
Well done! Not just for the fencing schools idea, but rather on the thinking that went into the "balancing act". I haven't thought through all the implications yet, but you've proposed some rather playable and interesting flavor options without upsetting the flow of the game (like our previous discussions about jedi in the old D6 Star Wars game).
Thanks for sharing!
All credit to Leonard Balsera for introducing the roll-and-keep idea for Fudge dice. In his implementation, they're used for weapons, but I think the idea has all kinds of applications. Besides, the core of cinematic games is, IMO, an emphasis on character ability over equipment. It shouldn't matter whether I'm using a dagger or a huge battle axe -- if it's a cinematic game, I ought to be equally capable/dangerous with both.
So while I want the choice of weapons to matter in a swashbuckling game, I don't want them to matter too much. Thus, the only real thing that matters about a weapon is how far away you can attack someone with it, but all other advantages are matters of skill and training.
Ohh, I really Leonard Balsera's roll-and-keep idea. I'm absolutely going to use that for something.
It sounds like a great idea for how programs should work in my game. It even works well thematically, programs won't be able to make you better but you are more likely to do your best (get closer to +4) with them.
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