TNE: Combat Advantage Number

[ishy]

I can't actually talk about this example but : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXWAEX2jlg

Smacking people around == friendship.

[RadiantPhoenix]

There's a bit of a distinction there. "Soft" mind control like Charm Person, UMI-level Diplomacy, and so forth shouldn't (IMO) be assisted by stabbing them. "Hard" mind control like Dominate Person, or especially fear effects, I could see benefiting from that quite easily.

So, we classify things as, "hard CAN modifiers," and, "soft CAN modifiers"

"hard" effects, like clubs and fear magic, add hard and soft conditions to determine CAN. (charming people makes it easier for you to slit their throat, and harder for them to slit your throat)

"soft" effects, like charm magic, only count soft. (slitting someone's throat doesn't make it easier to charm them)

Note that hard effects can add soft conditions and vice-versa, so you can go: (simple system for demonstration where the applied condition always has a magnitude equal to the modifier it's being compared to plus 1)

• PC A: Distract (vs -0 CAN; result: -1 soft CAN)
• PC B: Stab (vs -1 hard CAN; result: -2 hard CAN)
• PC B: Fear spell (vs -3 hard CAN; result: -4 soft CAN, NPC stops attacking, and tries to retreat)
• PC A: Bluff check (vs -5 soft CAN; result: -6 soft CAN, NPC follows you) ("This way! I'll save you from ${PC B}!")
• PC A: Seduction check (vs -11 soft CAN; result -12 soft CAN, NPC seduced) ("So, wanna have sex now?")
• PC A: Pokeball (vs -25 hard CAN; result -26 soft CAN, NPC captured) ("And now you are my newest Pokemon")

Obviously the actual numbers would be somewhat different, but I think this demonstrates what I'm thinking of.

This makes people who inflict soft CAN vs hard CAN the best and people who inflict hard CAN vs soft CAN the worst, so you would obviously need to make the conditions inflicted by the latter more severe and those inflicted by the former less.