Age and Treachery vs. Youth and Superstrength

We've all seen this: Hypertrophied Man decides to throw down with Crossbow. The fight takes place on a crowded street. Hypertrophied Man decides to use his Infinitely Muscled (4) cliche. The type of combat he choses is Power based. Crossbow's best cliche is Baron of Broadpoints (4). H-Man has a Power Cliche and Crossbow's is Movement/Skill. Using my diagram from 'A Good Cliche Is Never Inappropriate' we find Crossbow is screwed since his cliche is inappropriate against H-Man's. H-Man might just have to beat him in one exchange or just exceed a target number to haul the master of Archaic Archery in. This makes some sense as a steel tipped bolt won't bother a man who survives a tac-nuke going off in his hand.

What can we do to remedy this unwanted realism? Without too big a Risus hack?

Off the bat Crossbow could sacrifice one or more Lucky Shot dice to change the nature of the combat to Movement/Skill at the gm's whim. H-Man has to fall back on Faster Than a Speeding Kestrel (3). Crossbow beats him by loosing a flurry of shots at innocent bystanders. He distracts H-Man long enough to escape! The referee could make it a bidding war to decide the nature of the combat.

Or we could give the street itself a cliche: Innocent Bystanders (4). Crossbow can attack the bystanders instead of attacking H-Man. In effect Crossbow uses the street's cliche. If H-Man wins the combat he gets all the people to safety (innocent bystanders rarely hang around when capes and masks throw down.) If he loses Crossbow gets away (and optionally someone got HURT.) In a case like this you might want to cap the location's cliche at the character's cliche level. So Inadequate Man with B-Villain (2) could only use 2 dice of the street's cliche.

A location could also give a number of Questing Dice. Ducking Behind Innocents (5) would let you add a die five times to your cliche (or brevet dice) roll or absorb five hits.

Finally you can use the idea of relative success. Set a target number for the location Innocent Bystanders 20. Win or lose if you roll under that number you either lose the fight or cause an injury. This works for both characters using appropriate cliches particularly well.

There are other features that could allow a character an advantage; Cluttered Location, Delicate Machinery, Bad Visibility, Electrical Storm etc. A location might attack all the characters fighting in it: Burning House (3) or Poison Gas (4.)





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Proxy? You Misspelled Patsy! Part 1

  Mechane, Atomo and Spatia  had a delightful little trade union going. Things improved with time. Spatia's ships improved their drives and began reaching other forgotten though populated worlds. However, when were people ever content for long?  Nottusa, the most populous, some would say advanced ,nation on Mechane was a republic. It had a well developed and politically active set of corporations, made even richer and more active by the affluence afforded by trade with Spatia. Eventually Nottusa saw a change in leadership. The new regime decided the trade agreements with Spatia were not in their best interest and they demanded a bigger cut of everything, raising the price of goods. This didn't sit well with the Spatians who soon found their trade ships boarded and further harassed by Mechane vessels built on Spatia.  It was a small ship Universe (the people living in it just called it the Universe.) Invasion options were limited. Mechane had a huge population, was already crank
Read more

Trade Relations

 This blog uses Quantum Starfarer tech levels. The three levels in particular are Mechanical Age, Atomic Age, and Space Age. Mechanical age is WW1 to middle of WW2. Atomic Age is From the end of WW1 to about now. Space Age is the near Future with extensive interplanetary and Basic FTL. Let's take three planets Mechane, Atomo, and Spatia. Guess what tech levels they are! I'll wait.  The three worlds are in close proximity. Spatia's free traders and corporations are eager for trade. Spatia figures it can bring nearly anything it produces to trade, as it can make superior versions of everything. Atomus in particular has little heavy industry, is sparsely settled and needs vehicles for explorations, settling, and internal security due to revolutionaries in remote locations. Mechanus has a large population and heavy industry, already trading between its several nations. It also builds vehicles for the various militaries to defend the splintered nations. Spatia as noted has an es
Read more

Traveller: Society in Decline or Post Apocalyptic?

First of all Classic Traveller is a work of brilliance. As Marc W. Miller said he started the game design by reading through sf, and nowhere did anyone tell how much fuel it took to get to Alpha Centauri. He made all that stuff up and he was first!  Second, it gave you the ground rules for a Universe, in three little black books (LBBB) or The Traveller Book . The price then was not high enough to bankrupt anyone.  Third, the rules themselves had and have their fans. In fact, many Traveller games to this day are run are run as Proto Traveller -they use the LLBs and maybe Supplement Four - Citizens of the Imperium (SS4). Okay I use snub pistols and a couple weapons from Book Four - Mercenary . But for the purpose of this discussion let's say just the LBBs and SS4. There's no Third Imperium. what do the rules and equipment say about this Universe?  You can interpret it a lot of different ways. My take away was always that high technology gadgetry was fairly conservative. The onl
Read more