Cleaning up/Streamlining and other such fun topics

[VySaika]

Alrighty, so we've been playing this for awhile and I've gotten...as good a grip on TriStat as my sanity can handle. Also I've got a better handle on how this game flows now, so this feels like a good time to talk about a couple ideas. For anything I post here, comments, suggestions and critisicims welcome, this is your game too afterall.

Matter the first: Combat movement

This came up as an issue before, since TriStat doesn't really have movement in combat rules. It's not "move action/attack action" like DnD does or any of that nice stuff. There's a couple ways to read that, the first and most literal being that movement IS an action and thus you can move or act in a combat round, never both. And the one thing I find on movement in the book does seem to support this idea. But...honestly, I don't like that much. One of my big beefs with DnD combat is that it feels like there's no real movement going on most of the time, as folks want to pull out Full Attacks more often then not, so it's get into place then wail on eachother. And not being able to attack period if you move honestly makes that worse.

The second idea here is what the book mostly suggests. Just abstract it. Feels a bit arbitrary to me though, but if we don't want to deal with numbers much more then we already are I can do this. My method of doing such would be largely based on the Body stat, so we could get into situations where say Hikari or Shiro could reach and smack someone, while Mike and Nagare couldn't. Most of you have ranged attacks anyway, so it's not a huge deal for attacking, but replace "smack someone" with "pull that lever" or "grab someone who's about to lose thier grip on a cliff ledge" and it does become more important. I know alot of groups(like most of my old in person group) prefer solid numbers over more GM arbitration, but you all are generally willing to go with however I say something works so that might work here. If you all are comfortable doing it this way, we can do that.

The last idea is to come up with numbers. Again, I'll likely use Body as the baseline, so Shiro will be faster then Hikari(roughly equivilent Body + a level in Speed), who will be faster then Mike who will be faster then Nagare.

So I'll leave that decision up to what you all feel more comfortable with: abstracted speed that relies heavily on GM arbitration or actually getting movement numbers.

Matter the Second: Stat busting

Considering how much the three stats govern in TriStat, it's no real surprise that stat busting is powerful. I'm considering a houserule that basically makes multiple busts of the same type not stackable. Even from different attacks. So if Hikari whacks someone with Betrayal, they only lose 2 body no matter how often she whacks them with it. Likewise for Nagare's Lying Prince and Soul.

On the other hand, this will allow me to use stat busting enemies a touch more frequently without worries that you'll get dropped down to zilch. Since say you could get attacked by like 5 of the same critter with a 2 point Mind bust and not have to worry about getting knocked into "toothpaste!" range by a couple lucky hits.

However, if I do impliment this(pending your reactions to it), I would include a new Special Attack ability called "Stackable". Takes 2 slots, and requires one of Drain Body/Mind/Soul to have any effect. Does exactly what it says, allows the stat bust of that attack to be stackable. And this of course would be available to PCs as well as NPCs, if you care to go that route.

Matter the Third: Social links

Okay, honestly guys? I'm considerig just waving the S.Link Potential CP costs from hereon out to do S.Links. You want to advance a link, you take the time to do such and it advances. I was originally worried about balance of these things, but honestly even the FORTUNE Link hasn't caused Hikari to be that much more powerful then the others, despite it clearly being the strongest link.

If you like this idea, I'm going to suggest simply refunding Nagare 2 cp(as he's spent 8 on SLP while Mike and Hikari both have 6 even), and just moving from there. You all can spend your CP on actually growing your chars out instead of sinking them into the S.Links and just do the links whenever we have the time/urge to do such.

This is probably the biggest thing in this post, so I definately want to hear opinions on this please.

Matter the fourth: Character sheet cleanup/CP counting

I'll cop to this, I've been very very lazy about making sure your CP gains and expenditures have matched up and I'm fairly certain that at least one of you has some CP you haven't spent yet. So I'm going to pour through all your sheets, break the math down, figure out how much CP you should have total and how much you have spent. If you want to do this yourselves you have something for me to check against for errors(on either side) that's great, or you can just trust my math.

Also, you may have some abilities you've never used/want to swap out/etc. This would be a good time to deal with those, since we're cleaning up anyway. Just catch me in the IC channel sometime if you want to go over stuff, or I'll poke you in PM when I'm getting to your sheet if we haven't spoken before that. Even if you don't want to change anything out, I'll still need to confirm that!

[Taishyr]

20:12] * sicktoro looks it over. At a glance through, it all looks good, the no CP for SLinks is fine (maybe stall awards for it if someone's doing too many, but uh eh), re: movement I'm good with abstraction based on Body (and if it's a desperate need, make a Body check to see if the char can do it?), approve of stat downs not stacking unless it sez otherwise, willing to talk everything voer.