there has been some folks in other threads talking about the action card titles. basically, do they have stupid names like cats strike, or flaming hatred cleave or what have you. what I have seen they have pretty modest titles that help describe what the action is. the two that come to mind are something called "hard glare?" and " ive seen worse" both are pretty descriptive and not fluffy.

i have played 4E D&D and the major gripe I have with the game is that all the powers have fluffy, non descriptive titles. when somebody did something you really didnt have any idea what was going on. what it amounted to was people played their cards and rolled damage dice and moved figures.....EVERY STINKIN TIME.....no matter if it was a warrior type or a wizard type.

from what I see so far this game wont play like this....i think the card titles serve to enhance description and imagination. but i reserve the right to be totally wrong.

Cat's strike stupid? I think not. An action card that lets you hit someone with a cat is a great idea...

I hope you are right.

But the Hard Glare (or ICe Gaze) card exists. And that is just one title that feels stereotypical. So now, in the Old World, there is a whole bunch of people walking around giving Hard Glares all around. That simple thought is ridiculous !

The Intimidate skill exists, it is there to deal with all matter of Hard Glares, Insults, Tough Talk, ... anything players and GMs can come up with to intimidate.

Why add this very precise Hard Glare card with its own very precise mechanic ? It dumbs down player inventivity (don't try to describe how your character is acting intimidating, we know already, he's throwing a Hard Glare at his opponents), it puts the spotlight on one very unique and specific character atitude (why do other types of intimidation not have their own cards ?) and it has a ridiculous label that will always make you smile when introduced in play (GM: What do you do ? Player: I, huh, I throw a - Other Players: Hard Glare !!!! Hard Glare the bastard yeah !). Cheesy.

So in V3 we now have Skills, Skill Specialisations, Advanced Skills, and card Actions. But because card Actions seem to be cut out for combat scenes, I guess skills will be used mostly in "story" mode, thus V3 will offer two parallel systems: one for story mode, similar to V2, and a brand new system for combats, filled to the brim with wierd sounding action cards and recharge tokens.

I would love to see a complete list of action cards, spells included. That will tell us if FFG went too far on the gamist road.

vandimar77 said:

vandimar77 said:

LOL....call china and stop the presses. we need this card.

Jericho said:

It represents another form of specialisation. Any character can use Intimidate to give someone a hard glare, but someone with the 'Hard Glare' card is especially good at it. Similar abilities existed in previous editions as Talents.

chojun said:

Yeah than the the cat Eddy twelve-claws would be a formiddable weapon. Not that he`s not allerady is, the most notorious cat of Mousillion. He resides in the seedy establishment of The Fallen Heaven under close care by the halfling crimelord Ezekiah Shortshin and his boys. Doing stage performances at evenings (which Eddy really hates), he compensate by mutilating zombies at night, when prowling his vast estate and constantly looking for mates.

macd21 said:

Absolutely. I can't think of an RPG that I've played that didn't have a special Feat / Talent / Gift / Merit or whatever that granted some kind of substantial bonus to Intimidate checks.

Some people just ooze a threatening presence. Hard Glare might just be a token name- it doesn't necessarily mean that the PC is staring, wide eyed with a huge frown at his enemies. It just means that his attention, when focuses on an individual (in a bad way) is really disconcerting.