For ease of reference, I'm putting Frank's most recent CAN notes here.
Frank Trollman wrote:So to pull numbers out of the air, imagine for the moment that you had 3 tiers of damage before dropping, and each of them were 4 numbers long. Each of them heaps a +1 CAN bonus on you, and they are cumulative. The difference being that they come harder and harder to remove. Now let's say that Dropping comes at 20. Meaning that:
* On an 8-11 you get scuffed for a +1 to enemy CAN.
* On a 12-15, you get scuffed and bruised, for a +2 to enemy CAN.
* On a 16-19, you get scuffed, bruised, and wounded, for a +3 total to enemy CAN.
* On a 20+ you drop.
* A scuffed condition can be removed by you spending an action to catch your breath, which makes you have your guard down for a turn. During that period, enemies have +1 more CAN against you, and afterwards both the guard down and a scuffed go away.
* A bruised condition can be removed by using various abilities, most of which have charge limits or recharge times.
* A wounded condition cannot be removed in combat under any circumstances.
Then, when you face lesser enemies like hobgoblin soldiers, you start with a +5 CAN on them. That means that initially you're going to be dropping them on a 15 (almost 10% of the time), and you'll be progressing on every hit (literally a 3+ to cause the least of the damage effects). Chances are you'll drop the target in 3-4 hits.
On substantially lesser opponents, like grunts, you'll have a +10 CAN, meaning that you drop them on a 10+ and provide at least a second tier damage effect on any blow that doesn't drop them in one. You'll take them down in a hit or two almost every time.
On imps and wisps, you have a +15 or higher CAN, meaning that you drop them on virtually every hit, and with a second hit you are genuinely guaranteed to drop them.
Now obviously, these numbers can be fiddled with and probably should be. If these numbers are too high, for example, one could very plausibly drop to 2d6 and all the CAN numbers would get adjusted accordingly.
I don't terribly understand what would constitute a flashy attack, or even a Save-or-Die, unless it's just an eloquent way of describing a high-CAN attack. And if the flashy attacks aren't the high-CAN, what kind of mechanical benefit would we apply to consider them flashy other than flavour-text?
There was also talk of attack bonuses & AC being a static value, not subject to change as levels rise. This will largely imply amongst players, who have a very limited imagination at times, that every hero becomes a walking pincushion that will exceed even the most extreme parodies concerning HP; strolling towards the enemy looking like a hedgehog of arrows and a dozen axes stored in his spine.
It will also mean that the 'dodgey' archetype reaches his prime at level 1, as will the 'accurate' archetype, and needs to start looking at thematic abilities for the rest of their career. We can mitigate this by having abilities which just negate penalties, rather than grant bonuses, which end up the same but without knocking anyone off the RNG. In order for this to work, though, we need to have healthy list of situational modifiers to attack/AC.