Monday, April 26, 2010

Actions Wanted

Brainstorming a short list of action cards that I think Warhammer 3rd could really use. Most of these would be actions you can buy with XP, not new basic actions.
  • Hold Them At Bay - a card that makes it tricky for people to engage you, or get past you. This sort of thing can be done with existing Location rules, but it's a little fuzzy, and someone who rushes you will always get to attack first. This could be an on-going effect that causes fatigue or penalty dice to anyone trying to get close to you while it's recharging. Since Fatigue=Wounds for most NPCs, that would work pretty well, I think.
  • Set To Receive Charge - a card that does bonus damage if it's your first attack since the opponent engaged you. (Alternately, this might actual be some sort of interrupt / pre-empt type action, but the game doesn't do much of that. Fake Out is the only such card I can think of.)
  • Feint - Strikes me as odd that they made Parry, Dodge, and Block into action cards, but didn't include the other assumed part of melee combat: the Feint. This would probably be a card to let you boost other attacks later. The trade-off would have to be pretty good, since you'd be losing an attack in one round to boost the later attack. Or maybe it could work like an active defense that gives bonus dice instead of penalty dice, but doesn't use your action?
  • Double Parry - The one extra black die given by a Main Gauche seems a little under-powered. Perhaps that's for the best since it doesn't require any skill or investment to get it. There's certainly room for a better (or more frequent) two-weapon parry.
  • Trample - An attack card that uses your Riding skill, with damage based on your mount. There's attacks that use Observation, Skullduggery, and even Leadership, so why not Riding?
  • Trick Riding - Currently, any sort of Trick Riding would be done with the Perform A Stunt card. I feel that it's an oversight to not have any cards in the whole game that make you roll Riding. You can be generically "good" at riding, but not have any specific tricks that give a real benefit or showcase your talents, which is pretty odd given how many other cards there are that give tricks and special moves for various skills.
  • Something good for Roadwardens - This probably overlaps with the last two, since riding is one of their skills. There's just nothing special for Roadwardens at the moment. They have an odd combo of attributes and skills that just don't apply collectively to very many action cards. If there was an Intelligence + Weaponskill card, it'd be great for them, but no such thing exists.
  • Boating Tricks - The Boatman Career has the special power of reducing a black die of penalties suffered for being on a boat. Which really only matters if you can talk the rest of the PCs into getting onto a boat with you. If you want to make the boatman stand out a bit more, you could easily add some sort of Master of the Tops or similar swashbuckling actions. Crazy flamboyant actions along the lines of the Roger's pirate swordsman school from 7th Sea.
The game already has a lot of actions, so the demand for actions in general is perhaps not great. At least not unless someone wants to make a particular character type. Coachmen and Boatmen, for example, don't have much to make them special, so the riding and boating tricks could be really useful if someone in your group drew one of those for their starting career. I could easily see how a Watchman or Soldier character might want the ability to hold a spot of ground.

No comments: