After Sundown Conversion Notes: Combat & Magic

[Judging__Eagle]

Combat

Since Frank's earlier assessment that After Sundown isn't ideal for "action combat story tiems", due to having only a single "combat" skill, I was wondering what sorts of methods could be used to widen that aspect of After Sundown.

Thus far, I have the following ideas kicking around

-Combat becomes Initiative (which is how Combat is initially described in AS)

-A short list of generic combat types is presented

If it's strictly "fightan tiems", something as simple as Defense, Missile, Assault works well. Giving the PC 2, 3 and 4 points to assign to the three (?).

I'm unsure of mechanics; I'd like for Initiative (old combat stat) to be added to Combat rolls, to preserve the value of the skill among the already existing skill lists.

I would also like something along the lines of "stunts" as in the chase scenes parts of the rules; but call them gambits. Things meant to break a stalemate in a fight, but can be risky and can leave one vulnerable.

Perhaps having the three roles act like rock-paper-scissors. Defence > Assault > Missile, Missile > Defence. However, Assault is the most effective way to deal damage in melee; while Defense is used to increase the difficulty of being attacked/struck.

Elements of this come to mind, it's a short piece of footage from an old Robin Hood film I've been working on storyboarding for a layout class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnT91LRC ... lf=mh_lolz

Most of the time, the characters keep their defences active, since a sword swing can just insta-kill them, they're both strong characters and neither is wearing real armour.

However, they also make lunges and make risky attacks; that either push their opponent back, or fail, and they take a tumble, drop a weapon, etc..

Westerns with gun shooting would be Defense/Missile type fights; and scenes were everyone goes behind a solid object when the guns are firing makes sense, because you really can't dodge most ranged attacks.


Magic

I've got other things I want to do, like replace the WoD-inspired magic system with something more culturally recognizable as fantasy-science heavy metal special powers.

These powers would be based off of the colour wheel, and uses a modified version of the 3 primary colours (red: warm blood orange: fire; blue: water; yellow: wind); the 3 secondary colours (purple: psychic-lighting; green: flowering-growth; orange: fire red: spilled-blood); the neutral tones (brown: living-earth); and the shades of value (black: Full Value (Electrons, Dark-Lighting, The Electromagnetic Spectrum); Grey: Partial Value ([something] shape changing/topography/mathematics); and White: Blank Value (cold(?), temperature (?), death (?), entropy (?)).

For a total of 10 different powers; each keyed to the crayola basic colours, with 2 additions (white, grey), that most people should be able to remember.

With each colour engaging in rock-paper scissors action based on complementary colours opposing each other (with secondary colours > primary colours); Neutral Tones opposing Secondary Colours (Earth > Mind, Tree, Blood); and the [modified] Primary Colours opposing the Shades (Water > Electrons; Wind > Grey; Fire > Ice).

I don't have any specific abilities written, and will probably create only one power for each to start. Trying to keep them all on par.

The idea of colour coding powers is that I am also drawing and colouring these characters for my portfolio, and have since last may or so.

Having an established colour scheme means that if someone sees a character in Orange it will be an indication that a person is a Fire Mage is just as useful as knowing that the new mage your Squad hired in blotchy red robes is going to ask for your wrist if you want them to cast any spells on your behalf. Since, you know, they are wearing red robes.

This is in line with the AS notion that creatures need to have notable powers, that are associated with their appearance. Every X has Y powers; and not meeting "Steve", the puzzle npc, as the standard for all encounters.

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I'm not sure exactly how well this will work out, but I know that I need to have a special powers system that is KISS. If I can tell my someone who is not really into fantasy games, but wants to play, that "green = plant powers" and "red = blood magic", hopefully the fact that White = Cold/Snow/Death and Orange = fire will be easy to assimilate.

[DrPraetor]

That's a bit of a mischaracterization, actually.

Yes, After Sundown is not *ideally* a heavily combat focused game, but Combat is a single skill for the same reason that Operations is a single skill; because more granularity than that doesn't help people bring their character conception (and the corresponding desired competencies) into line with the game mechanics. Put another way - in a modern setting, who is going to be really good at shooting people with a gun but bad at beating people up with their fists? It's pretty unusual, actually - most people who are good-at-fighting are going to want to be good at both.

If you want, you can introduce two skills instead of Combat: Guns and Martial Arts. Martial Arts is also your defense, and Guns is also your initiative.

Other than that I'm having trouble parsing your proposal, since I'm not sure which spells would go in your complicated color-wheel. A more fundamental question is this - do you want to give people a general description of the sort of stuff they can do (which is much more work!) instead of one or another list of specific powers? You have a list of specific colors for each color?

[CatharzGodfoot]

[hogarth]

That's awesome.

[JigokuBosatsu]

[Judging__Eagle]

I'm leaning towards generic abilities that cost more power points to tack on to an effect, or cause some sort of drain on the user based on the power of the effect, a la SR. With the "flavour" of the power stating that you get Blood-fed Demons, Vine-and-Brambles Orangutans, Dirt Golems or Fire Elementals; or that your powers make your side better; or the enemies worse.

I'm leaning towards taking the total list of Dominions spells and making them unrestricted by element, and more restricted by Effect and Tier/Power Cost.

I'm also in favour of short and long drain costs. I'm fine with characters slinging lowest cost/safe powers, with minimal chance of expending their power points

Perhaps using the FATE stat to limit how many power points a character can feed into a power before it becomes "unreliable", and can cost power points that may take longer to refesh.

So, ultimately, "Effects"; paid for with Power Points, with a characters FATE score being linked to what magic they can "get away with" before "shit goes sideways"*.

*Sideways being anything from body tremors, near helplessness and temporary blindness, to ozone smell, being supernaturally vulnerable to your selected powers weaknesses, water destroys a fire witch, and a candle light can set an earth/wood witch's body ablaze

I'm in favour of "unreliable" magic, so long as all magic is available at all times, and so long as characters can attain "remotely reliable" magic, or even "reliable magic". The restrictions on what can be cast when being a part of how all powers are costed, not limiting specific abilities/effects to niches, while also surreptitiously allowing cross-abilities which ignore assumed effect costs.

I'm not sure how I'd want the power point cost calculation to work out though. Perhaps abilities whose Power Point cost is at, or under one's FATE are only checked for "botches"; while those above are checked for both Botch and Drain; and sometimes a character gets drained, sometimes they don't.

Which isn't exactly what Frank wanted for his rebuild on Mage, but some degrees of homogeneous "unreliability" within the system as a whole is easier to figure out, compared with 6+ systems.

Catharz, I don't understand the mysteries of time cube.

The idea of a time-cube turn system is... intriguing, but probably well above what I could do. Count-down initiative is fine enough for me.

Also, I don't fancy making changes that I don't have to. I'm going to leave Combat as-is, unless I have more ideas on what exactly needs to be changed, and how to go about doing it. I'm perfectly fine with my six archetypeal characters being made in a shadowrun point-buy system, with some After Sundown monsters tossed into the mix.

I'm also in favour of unlocking more of the non-player monster types, because sometimes someone does want to be a goblin, or halfling; and sometimes people want to be Brandon Lee revenants (without brain eating as necessary, but good as a limitation on feeding/power filling cycle; cows brains could make a good substitute).

Overall, AS's tendency to group certain creatures by rough shape and appearance is pretty effective. A gold-spinning baby-buying rumpelstiltskin or a pebble-skinned nocturnal gremlin or an vengeful leprechaun (warwick davis) are just cousins of Willow (warwick davis) or sometimes children of Gizmo the Mogwai/Vaetti/Goblin/.