So, in looking over the Magic effects I feel that Melee (and maybe Raged) attacks could use some extra options. I like the idea of Strain cost gating additional effects on attacks, as well as increased difficulty.

I also grabbed some of the SW "attack" talents and created a few of my own to flesh out other things I found lacking. For the most part this is a draft, any suggestions on tweaks would be appreciated.

Melee.pdf

These are great! I'm thinking about adding most of these (and manipulating others) for my Avatar conversion! This will definitely give melee and martial arts more combat flavor and variety!

9 hours ago, sehlura said:

These are great! I'm thinking about adding most of these (and manipulating others) for my Avatar conversion! This will definitely give melee and martial arts more combat flavor and variety!

That was my goal. My group plays a super modded out version of D&D 4e, so I knew I'd need something like this to "convert" them over to Genesys. Plus, I hate non-casters getting left behind on all the neat tactical choices.

Those options are super cool and add a lot to the game! They are specially useful for a swashbuckling game and I think there is a guy on the forums that will find them very useful for the 7th Sea conversion he is doing.

Thanks a lot for the time you put in this. I am eager to see how this doccument evolves.

I like most of the options you came up with... just not too sure about allowing the "basic melee options" to add qualities to attacks that weapons normally do, without an XP cost (via a talent or something) attached to them.

Or else what is the point of even having different weapons at all. Why not simply take away all of the weapon names, and just make Melee Light +1, +2, or +3 weapons? And give all melee players a list of Qualities they can choose from to add to their attacks at will?

What if you made the "Hobble" effect into a talent or something... to at least make it show some training involved in order to know how to hit a target properly to slow them down?

*** I am an idiot...and failed to read the very first statement that says "Spend 2 Strain", might need to re-evaluate everything I said! ; )

These are very, very cool, and I'm going to shamelessly crib these for my own campaign. Thank you for posting this!

A couple thoughts and questions:

• Perhaps have some of the talents mirror the add-on effects a bit more closely, which could give the net effect of allowing a talent purchase to offset the strain cost. Example being Hobble as the effect, but make Crippling Strike its talent equivalent. Granted, I like both descriptions, though...
• Manipulative : assuming the attack happens at the Engaged distance, does the force move push the target back to short range (with the benefit of no longer being engaged for others targeting it) or medium? It's a helluva shove if it knocks them to medium!
• Sweeping Strike : I'm not a Star Wars veteran, having only played around 10 sessions and never had a grenade enter the mix, but Blast 1 seems likely to not actually do much. You'd need two advantage to trip it, and then it will only do 1 + x, where x = net successes, but you've increased the difficulty by 1 to do it. Even average soak would probably negate the damage. Perhaps if it were Blast X, where X = ranks in Discipline. Otherwise I'd take the far more dangerous Cleave at no extra difficulty and full damage to an additional target per 2 advantage. It's probably rare that you'll need to hit more than two targets unless they're minions (and are basically cleaved automatically)
• Flurry : can it stack with two weapons?

A quick look over the pdf provided. One glaring thing stands out. Dual Strike sounds like the same rules that already exist for Two-Weapon Fighting. Is there something I'm missing?

There are a lot of useful Melee Talents within the Force & Destiny line that would be great to use in Genesys. I like how you incorporated Bodyguard (and Improved....I think there is a Supreme one as well). Sarlacc Sweep from the Warrior (Force & Destiny) is the same as D&D Cleave or Whirlwind Attack. (Not exactly sure, as I am not a fan of D&D rules, so I don't know them.)

So... the first six are given to Melee users without difficulty upgrades?

Some of these make melee insanely powerful. For instance, the Additional Target upgrade for any harmful spell requires two difficulty upgrades, but melee users can have it for 2 Advantages? That seems a bit much to me. Especially considering Melee is always rolled against Average Difficulty, which means that any melee attacker with decent skill is likely to be swimming in Advantages. The balancing point for Magic, everyone keeps telling me, is that when you roll against higher difficulties, you're less likely to have all the Advantages you need, so it makes taking an upgrade risky.

I'm only gonna comment on the talents as I think other posters are bringing up most of my thoughts on the first options.

Most of these are quite good and I'd be surprised if they need much more tweaking than +/- a tier here or there and a few of the wordings could use some help. I do see one or two talents that need a bigger adjustment.

Feint: This is way, way less powerful than you're thinking it is. I played a character with this talent in star wars for a while and it was generally awful. The big thing is this talent does absolutely nothing unless you fail an attack roll. Even if you made this a tier 2 and I bought 4 ranks of this talent, I would still wish I never had the opportunity to use it. Plus, getting 1 rank in this talent is worth almost nothing, as you can already spend 1 triumph to upgrade the opponent's next attack, and when you do it that way he can't run off to attack someone else and just ignore the penalty. I'd recommend making it a tier 2 talent, even if the idea of 4 upgrades on a combat check sounds crazy.

An opinion on Dual Strike: This ability (very similar to the 25 xp Spitfire talent in star wars) would be far more useful in ranged than melee (although it might be easier in a fantasy setting), but it is very powerful when it works. This is because you can attack the weak minion group in range, then give the secondary hit to the nemesis with adversary 3. I've always found it to be a cheesy, metagaming talent because of this. You could get rid of this rule by specifying you have roll against the highest difficulty target, but that makes for annoying conversations at the table as you have to decide if you're using dual strike beforehand and find out exactly what defenses each enemy has. To me, its not worth it and I'd cut the talent.

If you want to keep it, I'd recommend separating melee and ranged attacks into separate talents, dropping the strain cost, and making it a tier 4/5.

(The wording could also use tidying up. Here's Spitfire's simplified wording, for reference, though it could probably have been worded better as well: After a successful combine check with two Ranged (Light) weapons, additional hits can be allocated to other targets within range of the weapon.)

1 hour ago, Simon Retold said:

So... the first six are given to Melee users without difficulty upgrades?

You can only pick one, and you have to spend two strain to do it.

1 hour ago, rsdockery said:

You can only pick one, and you have to spend two strain to do it.

To upgrade magic attacks to include certain effects also costs two strain, and they have to increase difficulty to add them. If I were building a list of additional melee effects, this would probably be the standard by which I added these abilities.

The Melee weapons in Warhammer (used this Narrative system 1.0) were not very detailed. We had generic melee weapons such as Hand Weapons and Great Weapons. So, Hand Weapons included any single handed sword, hammer, club, mace, axe, etc. A Broad Sword in FFG's Warhammer actually had the same stats as a simple Club, for example. For a Fantasy game I thought this wasn't enough, so I simply added new qualities to certain Hand Weapons and Great Weapons to describe different kinds.

Some of these weapon qualities are similar to some of your Effects and might be another option. I don't have Genesys yet (arrives tomorrow) but how detailed are their fantasy melee weapons? Is there a Flail, Short Sword, Long Sword, Mace, etc, or have they gone Warhammer-FFG style and kept it overly simple? If so I will be adding qualities such as Staggering for a Two-Handed Warhammer, Piercing for a One-handed Warpick, and Blunt for a Club.

8 hours ago, Dragonshadow said:

These are very, very cool, and I'm going to shamelessly crib these for my own campaign. Thank you for posting this!

A couple thoughts and questions:

• Perhaps have some of the talents mirror the add-on effects a bit more closely, which could give the net effect of allowing a talent purchase to offset the strain cost. Example being Hobble as the effect, but make Crippling Strike its talent equivalent. Granted, I like both descriptions, though...
• Manipulative : assuming the attack happens at the Engaged distance, does the force move push the target back to short range (with the benefit of no longer being engaged for others targeting it) or medium? It's a helluva shove if it knocks them to medium!
• Sweeping Strike : I'm not a Star Wars veteran, having only played around 10 sessions and never had a grenade enter the mix, but Blast 1 seems likely to not actually do much. You'd need two advantage to trip it, and then it will only do 1 + x, where x = net successes, but you've increased the difficulty by 1 to do it. Even average soak would probably negate the damage. Perhaps if it were Blast X, where X = ranks in Discipline. Otherwise I'd take the far more dangerous Cleave at no extra difficulty and full damage to an additional target per 2 advantage. It's probably rare that you'll need to hit more than two targets unless they're minions (and are basically cleaved automatically)
• Flurry : can it stack with two weapons?

• I've debated back and forth heavily between making these talents and just granted effects. Magic gets so many similar options "for free" that these seemed more feasible as talents. The big issue was making these all worth the Strain cost. I like the idea of perhaps making them all "until the end of the next round" or similar then creating talents for things like Increased Duration/Effect.
• Manipulative: Intent is to move only to Short range.
• Sweeping Strike: I suck, totally read Blast's rule wrong and totally thought it meant the range bands effected by the blast, not the damage.
• Flurry: Should probably limit to just using a single weapon, maybe a "third" hit when wielding two weapons, but that's probably going to make two-weapon fighting too strong.

6 hours ago, Simon Retold said:

So... the first six are given to Melee users without difficulty upgrades?

Some of these make melee insanely powerful. For instance, the Additional Target upgrade for any harmful spell requires two difficulty upgrades, but melee users can have it for 2 Advantages? That seems a bit much to me. Especially considering Melee is always rolled against Average Difficulty, which means that any melee attacker with decent skill is likely to be swimming in Advantages. The balancing point for Magic, everyone keeps telling me, is that when you roll against higher difficulties, you're less likely to have all the Advantages you need, so it makes taking an upgrade risky.

Yes, these are intended to be given without difficulty upgrades. A basic magic attack is an Easy skill check, a Magic attack with "Burn" is an Average check, exactly the same check as a Melee attack with the "Bleed" effect. Both cost two strain, so would seem to balance. Melee might be a point or two stronger, but they'll likely be getting hit more often.

@Doctor Xerox and @ApocalypseZero Dual Strike I took right from the Gencon character sheets (Feint is from Force and Destiny), so those might be under powered/broken/not working right because of that. I might scrap both and wait for official releases as they were mostly "ehh, throw it in" Talents.

As with how I'm treating magic (Ranks in magic=how many different spells you know) I am debating limiting how many effects a player "knows" to their ranks in Melee. You'd start with two known at Melee rank one and then gain one additional for every rank of Melee after that for a total of six.

2 hours ago, Cyvaris said:

Yes, these are intended to be given without difficulty upgrades. A basic magic attack is an Easy skill check, a Magic attack with "Burn" is an Average check, exactly the same check as a Melee attack with the "Bleed" effect. Both cost two strain, so would seem to balance. Melee might be a point or two stronger, but they'll likely be getting hit more often

Magic base attack is Easy because the base ranged attack difficulty for attacks at Short Range is Easy. Additional effects pile on the difficulty. But it’s your table, so it’s your rules.

2 hours ago, Simon Retold said:

Magic base attack is Easy because the base ranged attack difficulty for attacks at Short Range is Easy. Additional effects pile on the difficulty. But it’s your table, so it’s your rules.

These are designed for Melee only, not ranged, so both are two strain for an Average check + effect.

I probably will go back and make some for Ranged, not sure how to handle those yet though.

5 hours ago, Cyvaris said:

@Doctor Xerox and @ApocalypseZero Dual Strike I took right from the Gencon character sheets (Feint is from Force and Destiny), so those might be under powered/broken/not working right because of that. I might scrap both and wait for official releases as they were mostly "ehh, throw it in" Talents.

I think you mis-remembered it then. I double-checked and the Gencon sheets say you may spend 2 strain instead of 2 advantage to activate the second strike.

I notice on Lethal Blows, you added in the stipulation of 'non-nemesis'. I disagree heavily with making Lethal Blows not apply to Nemesis-type enemies. Nemesis-level opponents are exactly the type of foes Lethal Blows is intended for! A critical injury against a Minion is an instant-kill regardless, and Rivals aren't likely to be recurring characters, so inflicting lasting and meaningful crits on a Rival hardly matters. But on a Nemesis, say you inflict the critical that causes them to lose a limb. The Nemesis then escapes the battle. Next time you see them, boom! Mechanical limb! It makes the occasional encounters against the recurring Nemesis-level foes feel more personal and interesting! Sure, being able to massively up your crits against foes does mean it's harder to make a Nemesis survive, but you build the encounter to adjust for that, rather than needlessly nerf a really neat talent.

5 hours ago, Cyvaris said:

These are designed for Melee only, not ranged, so both are two strain for an Average check + effect.

I probably will go back and make some for Ranged, not sure how to handle those yet though.

I think you misunderstood the comparison I was making. You said that the reason Melee got upgrades without a difficulty increase was because Magic attacks started out as Easy while Melee ones started out as Average. That's a false comparison, because Magic attacks are considered Ranged attacks, and Ranged attacks start off as Easy for Short Range, too.

The real comparison would be to look at a Magic attack at the same range as a Melee attack - Engaged. In order to make a Magic attack at Engaged Range, the difficulty goes up one, making it the same difficulty as a Melee attack at Engaged Range . So... let's compare. A Magic attack at Engaged Range that includes the Manipulative upgrade has a difficulty of Hard. The same attack made a Melee attack action, using your chart above, is an Average check with an Advantage cost.

Now let's look at Ensnare. With a Magic attack at Engaged Range, the character has to increase the difficulty of their attack to add the Ice effect, so the difficulty is Hard. Then there is an activation cost of two Advantages. With Melee, per your chart, the difficulty doesn't go up, so it's Average, and there is a cost of two Advantages to activate Hobbled. So... for the same basic effect, Melee gets to perform the check with an easier difficulty. Not only that, but they don't even have to state their intent before making the roll.

Can you see now why giving these upgrades with no difficulty increase is overpowered? You're essentially providing effects normally provided by weapons (that still have an activation cost with the right weapon in hand) with no real cost to the character. If you have a weapon that does Ensnare, you've likely paid the cost for that Quality by having to select a tool that does less damage, or that has a higher Critical rating, or some other downside. But with your chart, suddenly any weapon can be used to add certain qualities without having to pay any real price at all.

6 hours ago, Underachiever599 said:

I notice on Lethal Blows, you added in the stipulation of 'non-nemesis'. I disagree heavily with making Lethal Blows not apply to Nemesis-type enemies. Nemesis-level opponents are exactly the type of foes Lethal Blows is intended for! A critical injury against a Minion is an instant-kill regardless, and Rivals aren't likely to be recurring characters, so inflicting lasting and meaningful crits on a Rival hardly matters. But on a Nemesis, say you inflict the critical that causes them to lose a limb. The Nemesis then escapes the battle. Next time you see them, boom! Mechanical limb! It makes the occasional encounters against the recurring Nemesis-level foes feel more personal and interesting! Sure, being able to massively up your crits against foes does mean it's harder to make a Nemesis survive, but you build the encounter to adjust for that, rather than needlessly nerf a really neat talent.

I posted a list of Talents I was porting over form SW on reddit and someone pointed out that Lethal Blows is incredibly strong, so the non-nemesis stipulation was to prevent some of that. Probably depends on the table/group I suppose. The mental image of a nemesis constantly getting limbs lopped off is great though.

@Simon Retold I don't see a Caster doing Engaged+Other effects so much, unless they've made some rather odd build, since they won't have the Soak for it. More often than not, they'd be casting at Short Range + Effect. Perhaps a good way to balance the damage is to not make these cost Advantage to activate but Success. Either way, I much prefer the "This is a fighting technique I've learned" style of play opposed to "This weapon gives me something special" style. You could kick them all to Hard and then have some sort of signature ability or Talent downgrade one or two to Average though. I'm limiting these anyways based on ranks in Melee (two at rank one, one at every rank there after), so perhaps only the first two you learn are Average, the rest are always Hard checks.

@Doctor Xerox It's probably more, "my brain was dead after work and I read things poorly" than anything. Going to go amend that now.

This brings up something I have been struggling with. Where do you draw the line between adding an Effect that any player can trigger and a Talent needs to be purchased?

What if the Effects you listed cost a Maneuver to initiate instead of / in addition to the Stress cost?

I'm not sure that trying to balance Melee / Magic is necessary. I think that's entirely setting dependent.

Half the reason I posted these is to try to determine the line between Effect and Talent. Originally, all my effects started as Talents, but when compared to Spell effects that seemed an unfair XP burden on "Martial" characters. If new Spell effects cost XP, I think the table of effects here would too. It's a blurry line, but I always come down on the side of "are the non-casters having fun" as a GM. Most RPGs have never sat well with me because the "Fighter" ends up just smacking stuff with his sword each round, instead of having a few tactical choices. Spellcasting brings enough extra utility as it is, so even if the "damage" balance is off in combat, it's fair enough the other direction.