Hi, i love the game but i find hard to understand for example if a character imposes a critical condition to a villain, how does affect this to the rules?.
I mean, characters suffer minus for their moves when they’re in a critical condition, but there is no clarification for the villain, is the villain condition translated into an attack bonus for the character in order to represent the advantage?. It’s ok to leave all to the fiction but what do you ussually do?.
Thanks in advanced!
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Like most things in the game, it’s tied to the fiction. A good example would be that with a moderate condition you might slow somebody down, while with a critical condition you could sever their arm and make them unable to do certain things fictionally. Basically it’s a worse consequence, just like for players a critical condition is worse fictionally than a moderate.
David Jonasse thanks but i was looking for something more solid. 🙁 . I hope not to offend.
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It can’t really be more solid – it’s going to depend on the game being played and what Condition is Imposed.
Per the rules the only reason to differentiate between the Conditions mechanically for villains is so you know how easy (or not) a Condition is to shrug off or get rid of. A player might be trying to Impose the Condition “dazed and confused” on a villain, but whether they make it a Minor, Moderate, or Critical Condition will determine how severe or long lasting that effect will be. If it’s Minor they can probably shrug it off (and so recover some of their Condition Threshold as well so players have to balance trying to lay a bunch of minors on them to knock them out or go for longer lasting, safer-but-harder-to-Impose Conditions).
What said Conditions looks like in the fiction should depend on your game – is there blood? Is it street level or cosmic? What powers do they have? And so on.
Thanks Kyle Simons , it’s a pleasure to contact you. Thanks for your answer. I find this part, the fiction for the villain conditions in combat the most complicated thing in the game, cause character conditions are treated more mechanically and it’s more abstract for the villains (that’s my point of view). In the other hand it’s been helpful to know villain can even recover from minus conditions during the combat by recovering conditions and his condition limit (one for scene for example?) and moderate or critical conditions will last more time, that’s cool.
I understand your intention is to leave to the fiction in order to avoid the chains of the mechanic in other systems but i’m still trying to find a balance between the invention/creation and the severe rules, just to be honest with my players. I feel confortable for example with Dungeon World but maybe i’m just an old school gamer though not a closed minded one.
I want a play a game type X-men. Not too much powerfull but classic comic game. Though not in the same world. As an example, If an archvillain like magneto is engaged with Storm, Wolverine, beast and Jean Grey, Magneto can be affected in the same turn with several moderate or critical conditions, for example can be shocked from a lighting bolt and manipulated mentally after beast gets to remove the helmet to magneto. If magneto is shocked and confused and maybe hurt with claws, there are yet many conditions to get over magneto. But can the EIC treat these conditions just as hit points or must give to the characters some king of advantage to finish him?. That’s my question, how would you treat this example?.
Thanks again for your help!
Hmm, well the EIC shouldn’t treat them like hit points, that’s for sure. Conditions are based off of things happening the fiction – so if Magneto is confused, then it makes sense that Beast would be like, hey, he’s confused right now, so maybe I’ll use this chance to try and hit him with my de-magno gun or whatever, right? So they can certainly be advantages to finish off an adversary. They’re like hit points in that they give you, the EIC, an idea of how much plot armor they have and when the scene should be moving on, when they should be retreating/getting taken out, etc. It’s a pacing mechanic more than a depiction of how bloody they are at that moment.