My latest thing, shifting numbers from stat lines to actions

[PhoneLobster]

The Story So Far:
Basically, I've changed my mind about almost everything about my current home brew project and have revived something I was experimenting with back during the whole Big Fat Squares thing. Blah Blah Blah, I'm going to try to refrain from rambling about the whys and go straight to the whats.

Its All States and Keywords and Junk
You saw the headline.

Characters do not have attributes. No, really, they don't. Each character instead effectively consists of a list of states they can enter, actions they can take and injuries they have suffered.

So you don't have a Dex 18 guy with a +2 Sword. You have a character that knows the Agile Dodge defensive state and has an item that allows him to perform Magic Sword Attack, which can deal a set of Injuries up to and including a Kill injury.

The numbers kick in with states and actions, which give various bonuses and penalties, especially against other states or actions with particular keywords.

The active character rolls a d20, adds their bonuses, subtracts their penalties, then compares to the targets defense.

The targets defensive starts at that number 10 all the cool kids on the RPG block that use a d20 like to hang out with plus bonuses, minus penalties.

If the active character's result equals or exceeds the defense they succeed. Typically either changing the targets state or adding an injury to the target. Injuries are mostly penalties of various sorts and the most basic and common are penalties to defense.

You only ever have one defensive state at a time. You only ever use one attack/action at a time, you only ever apply the penalties of your single worst applicable injury at a time.

So. Defensive states might look a bit like this...

Stand there like an idiot
+0 Defense vs All
Keywords: Body, Slow, Weak, Stupid
You don't even try and dodge, maybe you are an idiot, maybe you just weren't ready.

or

Dodge
+3 Defense vs All
+4 Defense vs Slow
+4 Defense vs Inaccurate
Keywords: Fast, Evasive, Weak
You try and get out of the way of dangerous things, slower moving and less accurate dangerous things are the easiest to get out of the way of.

And attacks might look a bit like this...

Hit With Giant Wooden Mallet
+0 vs All
+3 vs Slow
+3 vs Stupid
Keywords: Strong, Slow, Stupid
You punish the stupid and slow moving with your mighty wooden club. Before attacking select one injury that this attack will deal on a success and apply the additional penalty listed for that injury.
Light Injury (-0)
Serious Injury (-5)
Death (-10)

Stab with a fancy sword
+2 vs All
+2 vs Weak
+2 vs Strawberry
Keywords: Fast, Accurate, Fancy
Your razor sharp rapier punctures the enemy. Before attacking select one injury that this attack will deal on a success and apply the additional penalty listed for that injury.
Light Injury (-0)
Serious Injury (-5)
Death (-10)

And injuries would look a bit like this.

Light Injury
-5 Penalty to all defense.
Heals: Right after combat
You are injured, you are now easier to kill.

Serious Injury
-10 Penalty to all defense.
Heals: Requires rest and treatment to heal
You are really badly injured, you are now a lot easier to kill.

Death
Removed From Combat
Heals: This might require some effort.
You are wounded badly enough to be removed from active combat. You are also either dead or dying, urgent assistance after combat might just save your life.

Order of resolution in combat is some sort of probably fairly standard roll for initiative like affair, but likely broken into two phases, one in which characters switch states (either switching their defensive state OR switching between available SETS of actions/attacks) and a second phase where actions are actually resolved. Bonuses for the order of resolution roll will be another value determined by defensive state, some will be good some will be poor.

Similar to my ye olde damage penalty system (which this still resembles a lot) injuries and inflicted state changes do not apply until the beginning of the next turn.

Basic combat should be fairly fast with the option of going all or nothing early on to gamble on getting a lucky kill or something on an uninjured target, especially one with all the wrong keywords or an otherwise poor defense state.

But the more complex options added to the system will include special responses to receiving injuries where you can get just your shield cracked in half or have your shirt dramatically torn to cancel or downgrade an injury and other things like that. Also, those options either won't be available, or will be less commonly available for nameless mooks (making the average mooks life measurable in the number of torn shirts it costs your character).

To further punish nameless mooks they may suffer a nameless mook penalty to all attack, all defense, or both.

The general balance of the numbers involved will vary. As you may note in the example some options, like Stand There Like an Idiot, have bad bonuses, bad keywords, etc...

The really bad options are ones characters with any choice don't enter, you only end up in them if caught by surprise, somehow forced into them, or if you actually do just stand there like an idiot.

Basic abilities common to everyone but that require some investment in actual actions or not being an unlucky/stupid target are notably better.

Options that involve the (minor) investment of having and using an item are usually as good as basic abilities, and maybe even a bit better.

Trained options that require expenditure of character resources to learn are even better again. If they require training AND an item... they are still only as good as getting training.

I'm considering (but only considering) having a limited number of “Master” level trained options that are better again, though with more narrow targeting of keywords for their best bonuses.


Now I could go into more detail about other options and junk, but I'd really like to talk about this basic premise here.

I'm pretty sure for now that some of the results/issues of considering this path are...

1) Everyone using the same Scissors Fu options looks the same mechanically. But this is hopefully a good thing since that way everyone knows to use Rock Fu against all Scissors Fu and not to expect Paper Fu to suddenly work on some of them because of some sort of weird variant attribute or build.

2) There is still lots of complexity, this is not a numberless system, its not even mechanically light. I'm hoping that with some reasonably management the complexity will be at the engaging and useful level rather than the difficult and confusing level.

3) There are going to be lots of WTFs from the players when I tell them to start generating characters by going straight to funky ability and equipment selection and skipping the attributes bit. But you know, screw em, I gotta get my entertainment value out of something and I'm sure it will be hilarious.

4) If you use the wrong attack against the wrong defense, or visa versa you will get punished. If you use the worst one you will be punished a hell of a lot. If you use the right one, or the best one, you will reap many rewards. This is what I hope will push the game into territory where a turn by turn and target by target selection of options will keep the players busy and entertained in combat.

Now I hope thats all clear and makes some sort of sense. I also hope there are no glaringly obvious errors, but hey, let me know.

Anyway I want to know, for now are there any opinions? suggestions? Etc...

[the_taken]

From what I'm looking at, this is what I wanted for my "Avatar D20" project, but I was too stuck in d20 thought mode to consider anything other than HD and BAB and feats and spell lists back then. Props, man.
This is what I'll be working on after I complete PkMn SAME.

Suggestion: Let's call this system "SHIFT". Unless there's already one with that name, in which case we could call this one "Tablet", which is a messed up but short way of saying "Turned Based Fighting".

[Username17]

A dificulty such systems have is that boss monsters end up having available conditions like "Be Totally Awesome" - at which point there are cards you can play which are totally unfair.

Also, needless to say you'll have to write up all your keywords well in advance. Having to write up a "Dragonmaster" effect that affects "all drakes, wyrms, dragons, wyverns, hydras, feathered serpents, and sirrush" is annoying.

-Username17

[Manxome]

I don't think you specified whether the list of bonuses for a particular state or attack stack. For example, when I use:

Dodge
+3 Defense vs All
+4 Defense vs Slow
+4 Defense vs Inaccurate

And someone attacks me with a slow, inaccurate attack, does that mean I've got +4 defense (greatest applicable bonus) or +11 defense (sum of all applicable bonuses)?

[the_taken]

Let's make the boss monster template right now.

[Boss]
You are the pinnacle of "boss". You have underlings, and they obey 'cause you are "boss'. You are also in charge, 'cause you are "boss".
You get respect. You are "boss".

Game Rule Information: An entity with the [Boss] tag takes more hits that usual before it becomes weakened and dead. The entity must take 3 light injuries before it is considered lightly injured, be affected by 3 serious injuries before it is considered seriously injured, and must be subject to 3 deadly attacks before it is removed from the fight.

[Username17]

This is the sort of system which actually benefits from having cards because people have essentially "effects in play" as well as effects which are exhausted or even destroyed.

Very minimally you'd want a system of resource management that did for stuff like Breath Weapons: you "play" the option and it goes face down, or tapped or into a discard pile, and it is recovered later by putting it back into your "hand"; that did for stuff like Force Fields: You put it into play and then it stays there until overwhelmed and then it either goes back into your hand where it can be played again on your next turn or gets somehow set aside like a Breath Weapon to be put back up later; and for stuff like Omega Strikes: You play it directly to out of the game area, no longer able to be used once it's been seen once. You could expand upon that, for example playing normally used abilities on top of other abilities such that you kept a running talley of what you've been doing and then using that stack as an entry requirement for the playing of powerful finishing moves.

But once you've done away with the attribute, you should consider doing away with the character sheet. A character hand or even a character deck could potentially work well.

But of course it all depends upon what you want this to represent. Are we talking about guys running around Edwardian London hunting shapeshifting hives of psychic bees? Are we talking about cavemen battling tyranosaurs? What mileu are we dealing with? Are the heroes Wushu bad asses knocking piles of enemies around with every punch? Are they meddling secret agents who get by on wits and wits alone?

I mean, if you're doing a story about people who fight a secret war between fairy houses over control of lands and titles hopping in and out of rings of mushrooms that take you back and forth to a barbarous human land where iron is plentiful and the people die in an eyeblink - then you'll actually want a very different set up from one in which the characters are the champions of a displaced people forced to make a civilization in monster infested lands that the great empire doesn't even want.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Let's call this system...

Well I was considering Strange States, not because it means anything but because it sounds cool. But really name isn't important, and the basic idea as presented here has sufficient additional work and potentially variable results (as Frank mentions with genre stuff) that you could easily end up with systems distinct enough to justify different names depending on where you go with it next.

A dificulty such systems have is that boss monsters end up having available conditions like "Be Totally Awesome" - at which point there are cards you can play which are totally unfair.

Yes. And to some extent that could end up being good, or bad.

At first I thought of potentially giving out an "awesome" bonus (that was the actual term I was going to go with) to bosses defense and attacks.

Then it occured to me that even a small all round additional attack bonus really hurts characters and probably has no place outside of a cthulhu style game (if even there) but that maybe a defensive bonus could still be not too bad.

However at the moment I'm leaning toward "I'm awesome" spare lives for the odd boss character. Starting with access to the "I'm awesome" spare lives named PCs have over mooks and maybe with a handful extra thrown in if they are expected to take the whole party on without henchmen.

I'm also considering that big nasty critters might just function like a group of characters. The Big Giant tentacle monster isn't ONE character, its 8 Tentacle characters who also happen to give fat defensive bonuses to a Body character as long as they live.

Also, needless to say you'll have to write up all your keywords well in advance.

I had guessed as much. And I've got some fairly firm ideas in mind as to what they will be and so forth.

I don't think you specified whether the list of bonuses for a particular state or attack stack.

Definitely stack. You only get one state/action so everything in it adds together. And if someone is dumb or desperate enough to use the WORST option against you they get punished, possibly right off the RNG.

I gotta run, there's plenty in Franks last post to talk about but it will have to wait a bit.

[PhoneLobster]

But of course it all depends upon what you want this to represent. Are we talking about guys running around Edwardian London hunting shapeshifting hives of psychic bees?

That's so close its almost spooky.

Anyway the general idea for how it will actually play is that players will be notably superior to gangs of mooks, enough so that they can take them on in numbers, not excessive numbers, but at least taking maybe three to one.

Then every now and then a particularly tough guy or gang steps out with abilities comparable to the PCs for a close to even match.

So the current idea on how to do that is to try and make a mook penalty work. Which is touchy.

Also to deny mooks access to the majority of the "You bastard you tore my favourite shirt!" spare life/injury cancelling stuff.

Potentially, should it become important enough I am considering separate sets of Mook only abilities and options that are strictly inferior to the similar ability sets used by important named characters.

Another thing I'd like to do is ensure that the various sets of defensive states and available actions are strongly themed toward certain keywords. Then while PCs and the odd supervillain will likely have access to multiple sets of differing abilities mooks, and even many bigger badies, will only have access to one. Even if Brock at stone town has several really kick ass pokemon you know the type they have in common and you can pull out water pokemon and he can't pull out electric.

So anyway the general idea of combat is PCs win. Sometimes they win against a bunch of inferior guys. Sometimes they win against small numbers of tough but not very versatile guys, and sometimes they scrape through against their equals. In the process lots of shirts get torn and shields get broken but there are always more shirts and shields. Even if someone cops a fatal injury a lot of the time as long as the good guys win (or if the bad guys are honorable gentlemen) they'll get some last minute life saving out of combat bullshit treatment.

As to the greater balance of gameplay between combat, fast talking, super spies, etc...

For that I'm leaning toward my favoured model. Which is to do a bit of everything and everyone always having something to do.

So the party will be required to do combat, and everyone has their martial arts or combat voodoo or whatever to contribute. And everyone does something so you have Gun Guy, Lightning Wizard guy, Sword Guy, etc...

Sometimes they will be required to do social encounters. And those will be resolved with very similar rules to combat. (with social defensive states and social attacks and social injuries and everything) And everyone does something, so you have fast talking guy, seducer guy, buddy guy, etc...

Then there's a bunch of abilities for influencing when and how combat happens, so thats where sneaking and noticing sneaking fall, along with movement and travel abilities and a moderately formalized chase system. Characters get to trade off between these abilities and you end up with sneaky guy, anti sneaky guy, (possibly) flying guy and just run the heck away guy.

Finally all the bullshit abilities no one cares about fall into the "Other" category and you trade those off against each other. So if its an ability I don't care about, can't figure out or which can be replicated by various in game events, like the ability to build your own gun instead of just picking one off ground, or be rich or to have a friend who sometimes helps you fight, or whatever then it ends up in the "other category".

And then from week to week different adventures may emphasize different parts of game play. In week one maybe you are mostly fighting for your life, so its all combat and combat avoidance, but in week two maybe its a highly social mystery where you need to pull strings and sneakily spy on people and combat might not happen at all.

But regardless everyone has something to potentially contribute each week and during each phase of play.

So the answer in regards to is it combat/mystery/social etc... is that I want it to represent not a "generic" system but still to manage a good mix of those elements that can have at least some versatility for a not unreasonable diversity in adventures.

The "ideal" representative adventure under this model would then involve a social encounter to gather some information, some sneaking and combat avoidance to try and start a combat on the players terms, some combat, and maybe some running away if they don't crack one of those phases first try. Or all that can happen in some other order.

But once you've done away with the attribute, you should consider doing away with the character sheet. A character hand or even a character deck could potentially work well.

At the moment a character sheet is basically a name, some background and description, and a list to remind you what hand outs (or cards if you like) that you should have handy.

This is the sort of system which actually benefits from having cards because people have essentially "effects in play" as well as effects which are exhausted or even destroyed.

What I'm looking to do at the moment is to have the sets of abilities on print outs I can just hand to the character's. You know downtown kick style? here is the sheet with everything you need on it.

Cards may be a better option, especially because its easier for everyone to see the single action or state in play. But there are formatting and printing issues involved. Not big ones, I actually have some pretty nifty formatting and printing resources and skills at my disposal for my personal messing about, but still.

Damnit, got to go again, I'll talk about resource management and outline my intentions in regards to keywords later.

[PhoneLobster]

Resource Management
OK. So though it had occurred to me that there were similarities to card games what with obvious comparisons to player hands, decks, etc... it had no occurred to me to exploit that directly for resource mechanics. The more I consider it the better it sounds.

I had originally been looking more at a system where most characters step into combat with a bunch of expendable resources (like the tearable shirt) that get used up and need to be refreshed outside of combat.

And which can no longer be used for secondary abilities once used (no shirt attack or shirt defense once your shirt is torn).

Otherwise the main part of resource management would be the action cost of switching your active state or attack set each turn.

But really I have issues with that and I am looking for alternatives.

So anyway currently each character has an active defense state. Like Dodge. And an active attack option, like holding a sword. In order to perform a specific attack, like Evasive Sword Strike or something, you must meet its requirements in having a fast dodge state and a sword in use as an attack option.

Each turn you either switch your defensive state to better counter the enemies attacks, or your attack option for better compatibility with your own preferred options.

I think some fairly obvious issues arise because of that. I have been considering basically doing away with the attack option or vastly reducing the importance of your active attack option.

In which case each turn you only switch Defensive state for compatibility and other things, like holding a sword are just minor requirements that you just have or don't have and have nothing to do with your once a round state switch.

Which would then make defenses stronger and leave more room for funky card stacks and such.

I had also already been considering actions and states that come into play under special conditions or as the result of other actions (either the characters own or in response to other events).

So tearable shirt man gets a new "bulging chest muscle defense" state once his shirt gets torn along with a new set of upper body strength attacks.

Or he has a "rip shirt off and hit you with it" attack that is an attack (possibly an inferior or unusual one) that puts him into the new state.

Or just a "waste a turn to take my shirt off and flex a bit" action which also puts him into the new and otherwise unobtainable shirtless muscle man state.

(I should probably put in a disclaimer that many of my given examples like shirtless muscle man and stand there like an idiot state might not exist in that exact manner in the final product...)

Where I intend to go with keywords
Right keywords need to be planned in advance. But, especially in the early stages and drafting I'm not precisely sure exactly how many there will be and what they are.

So at least to start with I'm going to be using some conventions to try and deal with them.

There will be a limited list of very common nice and generic keywords. Things like Fast, Strong, Evasive, Armor, Weapon... etc...

The vast majority of bonuses, penalties, and compatibility requirements for actions will check for only common keywords.

Common keywords will have two main types.

Bad keywords are ones that usually result in some bonus against you. So having lots of keywords like Weak, Slow, Inaccurate attached to your states or actions make you more likely to suffer. Some bad keywords will be explicitly worse than others, having a Weak defense is more commonly a bad thing than having a defense that relies on the Evasive keyword.

Good keywords usually, or perhaps even never get bonuses against them. Having Fast or Strong tied to an attack or defense only means that you can use actions tied to that keyword, which should be a good thing.

Then I am likely to end up with a bunch of rare keywords. Tearable Shirt man's Shirt Fu set of options are all likely to have the Shirt (or Shirtless) tags. About the only thing ever to check for those keywords will be those same sets of options. "Jam Your Face In My Shirt Attack" checks to see if you are in a state that provides the Shirt keyword in order to be used. On the one hand this is just a way of saying, hey, you need a shirt to do shirt fu. On the other it also means that your available set of options is always tied to some limited available states.

That way if shirt fu is also built so as to have at least one other common keyword on all or nearly all of its states and actions and a small set of other frequently occurring common keywords. Then as long as you are using Shirt Fu people will have some idea of appropriate counters.

In addition if I ever go crazy and insist on it I can have a rival school of Anti Shirt Fu that checks for the rare Shirt keyword for some additional bonus. Though I'm really not leaning toward that. Among other things use of a rare keyword outside of its own set of abilities does push the situation toward problems like the Dragon Mastery example which would be a very obvious issue.

A bit of fore thought and enough editing for consistency should also ensure that when the desire to have a Dragon Mastery bonus against some set of targets turns up that I have a common/semi-common "Reptilian" keyword ready and waiting.

On the other hand, though slightly better, it would also kind of suck to have the Reptilian keyword floating about and not ever getting around to an ability that actually checks for it.

In the end its just, well, something that has to be constantly under consideration and potential revision.

[Username17]

I think that by arranging things into "suits" that you can actually somewhat curtail the inherent awesomeness that would otherwise be multiclassing in a system where characters can see the defensive stance of their opponent and then subsequently choose an attack form out of their hand. If you have to play a certain number of "steam powered" maneuvers before you are allowed the ability to use "Overdrive" than filling your hand with a pile of "steam powered" maneuvers isn't as retarded as it might otherwise be.

And I think you'll need to reconsider the idea of only allowing one state and the idea of allowing multiple bonuses to stack. You are probably going to want to have circumstances like "on fire" or "asleep", and these are not really different from "gracefully dodging" or "psychically protected". And if the bonuses against each word stack, then you're going to be essentially looking for attacks which have as few words as possible, which is unfortunate. I want my lazer to specifically be "Orange" and if that had even a slight chance of giving me a huge penalty on top of whatever else my problems were I'd just go colorless.

My thought is that you should simply take the largest bonus and the largest applicable penalty and apply both of them. I don't fucking want to add a bunch of +2s - experience with d20 has shown that that takes a long time.

So basically, you've got some basic power sources which could act as "suits":

• Hive
  
• Steam
  
• Training
  
• Natural

Right? Looks plausible. Did you want an extra power source for hedge magic, or did you want to classify that under Training or Hive?

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

I'm a bit busy and I'll probably take about a day to get back to this. There's certainly stuff to consider.

[Manxome]

I can sense this all slowly drifting towards a different archetype...

Once you've got cards representing status effects like "on fire" or "asleep," you want the ability for an attack to cause a status effect. You could reduce all status effects in the game to a short list, but that's very restrictive of attack design, and it's actually going to require all your players to memorize every status effect in the game so that when a card "bamboozles the target" they have some clue what that means.

The logical solution to that is to describe the status effect on the attack card, but at that point you need to keep the attack in play as long as the status effect persists so you can keep track of it, which means you can't let the player turn around and use the same attack on a different target the next round...

...which will logically push you towards making all cards play-once-and-discard. Draw a hand of X cards, play one on your turn, resolve it, either leave it in play or discard it, then replenish your hand.

Which, incidentally, provides another helpful disadvantage to multi-classing--the fact that you have 20 different attacks doesn't mean you can choose between them at will; having several similar attacks (or even copies of one attack) provides reliability (and spammability).

And that could be a pretty interesting game. It'll lead to unpredictable battles, and should be easier to pick-up-and-play (since you only need to know what your hand does to get through the first round, not memorize the function of every card in your deck). But it's going to have a substantially different feel from your original idea, and it's not going to cope well with highly situational abilities.

So before you walk blindly down that path one step at a time, you might want to think about how far down it you actually want to go. There's several reasonable points to cut it off...

[PhoneLobster]

Well. First of all I already had plans for On Fire and Asleep. Like most status effects they were Injuries (like the Light Injury, Serious Injury etc... I mentioned in the first post, you also get "KO" and whole chain of three "On Fire" injuries), with the addition that if you were asleep odds are your character was involuntarily in the Helpless Defense State.

So even though you only get one Defense State, you can stack up all sorts of injuries. And even though those only apply the penalties of the single worst injury to any given roll the bit where you are asleep, nailed to the floor and on fire all adds up for the cost to your actions/involuntary defense state and wierd special stuff like slowly burning down.

At least that was the original intention.

Also, so what if its some wierd obscure "Turned into a Duck" injury. For an injury to be played it is going to be right in front of the players, either on a summary sheet or a card. No cross referencing tables, you have a physical copy of the rules for it right there in order to play the thing in the first place.

As for hands, well I'm really leaning away from randomised hands and draws. I'm sure its exciting and probably workable but there is only so much my poor players can deal with and I don't think it goes quite as far as that. Also. It means I'd have to either create more actions or more multiple copies of actions. And I don't wanna.

Now multi classing, suits and resource issues still need addressing but I have to make another attempt to make some machinery work. So maybe later.

[PhoneLobster]

OK three things I want to talk about, so I'll do the easy two first.

And if the bonuses against each word stack, then you're going to be essentially looking for attacks which have as few words as possible, which is unfortunate. I want my lazer to specifically be "Orange" and if that had even a slight chance of giving me a huge penalty on top of whatever else my problems were I'd just go colorless.

Well, yes, smaller numbers of keywords is better. But even if the bonuses don't stack smaller numbers of keywords are still better.

If I change the bonuses to not stack, and modify numbers accordingly you still don't really want an 'Orange' laser attack compared to a colourless one.

However perhaps if I did actually go all the way with a formal and immutable difference between good and bad keywords and made that explicit and up front would that help?

Then you could have your Orange Laser, Orange Weak Laser, and Colourless Laser. You don't like Orange Weak because weak is a bad keyword, but plain old Orange is cool because the only effects that check for the Orange keyword are beneficial and colourless is weaker because it lacks the beneficial Orange keyword.

Because you know, I understand the desire to have funky keywords tied to your attacks that don't weigh them down.

My thought is that you should simply take the largest bonus and the largest applicable penalty and apply both of them. I don't fucking want to add a bunch of +2s - experience with d20 has shown that that takes a long time.

Well, I don't like piles of bonuses too much either, but apparently I like them a bit.

The original plan was that each action/state/whatever would only provide up to 3 entries for bonuses. No state would ever actually provide more than 3 numbers you had to add together.

One number would be an All bonus that would always be used.

Two numbers would target some Bad keyword. It seemed sufficiently streamlined to me.

But its hardly set in concrete, I just think it makes for stronger motivation for players to pick the right attack for the right situation.

I think that by arranging things into "suits" that you can actually somewhat curtail the inherent awesomeness that would otherwise be multiclassing in a system where characters can see the defensive stance of their opponent and then subsequently choose an attack form out of their hand. If you have to play a certain number of "steam powered" maneuvers before you are allowed the ability to use "Overdrive" than filling your hand with a pile of "steam powered" maneuvers isn't as retarded as it might otherwise be.

Time is once again short. So here is the short answer.

Sounds great and I'll probably run with some varient of this.

But, I want to encourage the option of switching out to the cross class kung fu style to some degree. So I'm looking at introducing this as a mechanic that provides a consolation prize to the single class specialist but is not a basic driving mechanic of the game.

So Steam Overdrive may well work like that but its not something available to the average Steam Monkey Mook, and unless you are a specialist in your field you probably don't have Steam Overdrive or anything that works like that. You just get the same sized bonuses from picking the right attacks instead.

(edit: didn't even have time to spell check...)