I’m not a huge fan of adding Armor to the Brace for impact move, as I feel dexterous/enduring characters with weak/no armor should be able to evade/parry/absorb some of the damage.
How viable is it to replace Roll + Armor with Roll + Physique?
How can armor helps if I got with this? Would it give an extra injury “slot”? How would you do it?
/sub
Face Adversity is what lets you evade
Random design musings!
The base damage in UW is very harsh: A single gunshot will incapacitate someone, a heavy weapon going off will cause permanent damage, organ damage, limb loss. Brace For Impact adds a last-second save-the-day system, occasionally dealing lower damage than what the player was anticipating (which I admit is a little game-y, but it did cause positive emotional reactions in playtests). This is why the Gm is supposed to announce what the “real” damage is before the roll; to have the player emotionally brace for the impact.
Anywho. Because of the high-tiered damage plateaus and the relatively squashed Stat-lines, it didn’t make sense for stats to affect the Brace For Impact. Armor was introduced as a stat that uniquely interacts with the Brace For Impact system. Note that Armor values have no other purpose in the game: Stats belong to the active-game-loop, Armor alters the reactive state loop of harm.
Armor is not really a stat, any more than the value of Cargo is. Sure it alters a dice roll, but it’s actually part of the planning-reward sub-system in UW’s Assets. Anticipating harm and equipping Armor gives you a passive bonus, in the same way that anticipating spelunking and procuring an Exploration Kit gives you narrative possibilities. Tying Brace For Impact to an active stat would break that sub-system, the same way that tying Influence to Acquisition would undermine that sub-system.
If a situation/danger is such that physical characteristics are important to the overall success, then usually the Face Adversity will involve the Physique stat. Thus strong or nimble characters will approach a situation and avoid harm by using narrative description.
Parries, evades and such should be considered in the action leading up to potential damage, not part of the suffering damage. Once damage “connects” with the character and we go into Brace, it’s already too late to avoid damage. The stat has already failed (or didn’t apply).
That’s not to say that there is no place for using physical characteristics to alter sub-systems! But I reserve that for Skills. Toughness, for example.
Makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the in depth explanation!
No prob! I will add (and this is very important): Don’t take my decisions as written in stone! Try! By all means make alterations to suit the kind of game that you folks want to run.
Just promise you’ll tell me about the results, ’cause it may well inform future design. (For example Douglas Santana ‘s post about having “Keyed” on all weapons gave me an idea that spawned an entire page in Far Beyond Humanity.)
Sure! I know what you mean I’ve designed my share of rpg systems 😉
I know for a fact by reading this game and your comments that this is a work of heart (no pun intended muhehe)!
I’m just having fun with the system, musing about the implications of such or such. You know, just for fun 😊
I don’t feel like I need to “fix” anything about the system, actually!
Sean Gomes very happy to help! I am taking notes on feedback and ideas every session.
Oh what’s that, Far Beyond Humanity?
FBH is the UW expansion that adds aliens, psionics, magic, cybernetics, etc. Science Fantasy stuff
By the way, writing down session leading questions, a lot of prompting for npcs and threats for the events leading to The Fall of the Eclipse Phase setting.
Yeah, I figured out early on to lean on Face Adversity and only engage with Brace for Impact as a hard move after a failure on Face Adversity.