We dumped party sheets. I really thought initially that I liked the idea, but we just really never used them. I now allow commoner, bailiff, and scribe to just choose an extra action or talent instead.

I also dumped the "socketing" mechanic. This was something that I felt was simply too clunky and unnecessary of a mechanic and was taking away from the roleplaying of the game. The only thing the sockets matter for now is to determine which talent categories a character can purchase.

My players noted they were happy we did that. I've had it said more than once that there was an unnecessary amount of card shuffling, and we just eliminated a big chunk and they told me, improved the game system.

jh

Huh.

Well, whatever works for your table and keeps people interested and coming back for more! On my side of the fence, my players actually like the socketing aspect. They like how it forces them to make some decisions.

what do you mean when you dumped socketing ?

PC can use as many talents as they want ? or they still only use 2 but dont need to match focus with focus, reput with reput ?

I dunno, I think a clever player should be allowed to make use of some well placed talants. Plus do you not think that takes from the benifits of an advanced career?

Emirikol you never answered this ? How do you handle talents now?

NOT USED: Active Defense Recharge - Your highest active defense (block, dodge, parry, improved parry, etc.) plus your armor defense score is your Total Defense Score that you will report to the GM when you are attacked.
NOT USED: Talent Socketing –They are always “on.” Exhaustable talents
recharge at the end of the encounter and are not recharged otherwise. DISEASE cancels one talent until cured on individual. If talent socketing is crucial to your career, we will discuss options.
NOT USED: Party Sheet - Fortune generally only recharges at each new session or with well-roleplayed activities. Any effect on party tension or talent slot instead causes relevant characters to lose/gain one fortune point for each session this is active (for example: Infectious Diseases, Paranoia insanity).
NOT USED: Rally Step -If your career or ability has something to do with rally step, let the GM know and we’ll house rule.

Thanks for the run down on your rules

I only a couple of questions:

- dont you find that this causes players to have greater incentive in making one-trick characters ie. less need to satisfy requirements for multiple defencecards?

- How do you handle all the action cards allowing full or partial recharge of an active defence?

- How do you find this impacts non-close-combat characters? ie. in my last campaign I was playing a rogue/archer ...and whenever I got attacked I would usually try to max out my defence with everything available in order to trigger Advanced Dodge's free disengage ...and then run like the wind... (essentially if I was in close combat something had gone wrong)

- Whats the impact on low armour swashbuckling types? ie. perhaps something like rapier/spiked shield ....dodge, block, parry, celerity, dirty tricks, perhaps even a couple of swordmaster or ritual dance cards?? (is it just me or should those cards be limited to medium armour characters only?!)

thanks in advance - dont misunderstand me Im pro clutter-clearing .....

- dont you find that this causes players to have greater incentive in making one-trick characters ie. less need to satisfy requirements for multiple defencecards?

I have a max starting characteristic of 4 and make players make a wide variety of checks. No one-trickery yet Most min-maxing of any importance comes in the form of Training, Too-Many-Action-Abilities, and

- How do you handle all the action cards allowing full or partial recharge of an active defence?

Omens of War is full of these. We take them on a case by case basis. Mostly we just estimate what they normally would be and go from there.

- How do you find this impacts non-close-combat characters? ie. in my last campaign I was playing a rogue/archer ...and whenever I got attacked I would usually try to max out my defence with everything available in order to trigger Advanced Dodge's free disengage ...and then run like the wind... (essentially if I was in close combat something had gone wrong)

The players have to adapt. Combats in my game are quick and deadly I've done a lot of math on this subject: The average chance to GET HIT is like 92%, so defenses are essentially don't mean much anyways and are just another accounting/boardgame waste of time. Only soak has any REAL effect on combat in my experience (and calculations), so I never really saw the point of the defenses anyways. Here is a long discussion we had on the subject.

- Whats the impact on low armour swashbuckling types? ie. perhaps something like rapier/spiked shield ....dodge, block, parry, celerity, dirty tricks, perhaps even a couple of swordmaster or ritual dance cards?? (is it just me or should those cards be limited to medium armour characters only?!)

My house rules specify that slayer, dance, sword, and I think one other are limited to their appropriate careers anyways. We take these on a case by case basis. We had a wardancer for a bit, but he quickly got bored in our Rogue-campaign and the player switched characters to a Smuggler.

I'd like for light armored characters to have better benefit without all the extra dicing and considered higher defenses for leather armor and no armor, but I don't want to mess with 'too much' I thought about having an automatic challenge to the attack if the character is in light/no armor rather than just adding more dice to the mix.

The loss of "Socketing of Talents" has been a godsend otherwise. IMHO, there's too much card shuffling, accounting, and dice-bloat already so I want to minimize it where it counts. Some game adaptation will be required through the tangled web of cards

jh

..

Sounds like you have given it a lot of thought AND tested it ingame .... so wont argue with that

btw. I had the same gripe about defenses ... but they do have a point, in that you might not dodge and weave harmfree through combat - they do often mean the difference between taking a few wounds or lots or or a crit to boot ....

Boehm said:

True, except that we're dealing with abstract components as it is. Block, dodge, parry are all just "words" with dice associated for probabilities. D&D has it simplified down to "AC." There could be even more nit-picking about defenses with Fellowship (You wouldn't punch a guy with glasses), Willpower(stare-down) or intelligence (sherlock holmes defense), but we're down to the main three instead..and as far as I'm concerned I'm not even going to bother with those three..not because I don't like the concept, but because I'm cuttting out what I consider unnecessary /impractical/clunky/slow-down game mechanics for combat.

Speaking of game speed, I'm moving all players with the same initiative to declare and roll at the same time (ahead of time). That has saved a dramatic amount of time. I ask. They report. Done. Before, we were waiting on someone..and then at the same time, they were creating their giant dice pool..and then waitign while they double checked..and then there was the roll..and then waiting for them to assess..and then sometimes even adding a defense die because somewhere we forgot something. Was very clunky, now is fast

jh

I'd also like to remove active defense cards but I never found a rule to replace ii that satisfied me.

Giving 1 or 2 points in Defense to a character... hmm I don't know. It's a good compromise but it doesn't translate well when a character uses all his active defenses at the same time against a single attack. That's 3 to 6 blacks.

We never allowed more than one defense per attack anyways, but you could simply raise it permantly by one point if they hafe a 2nd defense.

Modification of fortune points never hurts either: 1 black per qualified defense. This would work on top of the above rule as well.

jh

I limit it to 1 defense per attack too.
effe
The only thing that semi-worries me about having them on recharge 0, is that there is an improved parry, and soon an advanced parry.
Those make a bigger difference in the to-hit. I'd hate to change the rules for the basic effect, but then revert to the standard for any subsequent "level".

Maybe a recharge 1 would be easy enough. You don't recharge until the end of your turn, so during others, you can use it and the 1 token shows you used it already. No fiddling with multiple tokens, but the 1 is still there at the end....

Well, like I say, a 92% chance to be hit, WITH an active defense could probably use a purple die instead anyways. Great idea With the improved version, we don't stack. We just use the purple die instead of the 2 blacks (because players always min-max train coordination/weaponskill or whatever).

IMHO - Hold no allusions: there is no grand math scheme behind this game. There was no mathmatician checking probabilities for its design and current releases (as we can tell by the absolute random concepts of penalty dice on otherwise useless advanced action cards). So, I argue that iIt doesn't break it to have a constant defense up.

I'll see what Hero's call brings..but my campaigns dont' go that direction anyways.

jh