Wednesday 7 January 2009

Creating Combat Styles

It's been a productive year so far, not just with this blog but in actual gaming. Today I'll have my fourth session as a player this year, which matches the number I played in all of last year! I'm not the only one that's glad to be getting out of the GM's chair for a little while. A side-effect is the time spent not worrying about preparing for my next game is spent on making the system itself better. In this case, more combat styles!

One of the key features of A Wanderer's Romance is the use of combat styles, which are either attacking or defensive. I wanted to capture that feel of different martial artists fighting with incredibly evocative styles with poetic names, certain styles countering others and bringing their legacy with them. 


This week I've had a little help in coming up with concepts for some new styles to add to the list in AWR, which has recently trickled over 60 in total. Amongst others, my assistant through this idea onto the table for me to clean up into something that would work in the game.


Desert Heat
(Spear) - Fire + Water
The sun weighs heaviest when the air is still.
A Style based around holding back and letting your opponent get worn down before making a finishing single blow.


Sounds like it has potential to me! As a general rule a Style would only make the cut if I could picture how it would look in motion. This is where the little line of flavour text comes in. This was largely inspired by Magic: The Gathering cards, which always seemed to get a lot of flavour across from these really short snippets of text. Here it's easy to picture a fighter holding their Spear in a high stance, letting their opponent wear themselves out attacking them, before killing them in a single doward thrust. From this we can determine the Abilities of the Style.


Initiate: May be used as a Defensive Style. Obviously the concept is based around tiring an opponent before finishing them off, so the style will need to be useful both offensively and defensively.

Student: Whenever an opponent misses you they must choose an Element with a score higher than 0. This is reduced to 0 for the duration of the duel.  At first your opponent missing you won't be a huge deal to them, as they're likely to have at least one disposable Element. However, after missing four times they're going to look pretty helpless. Ripe for the picking with that final attack!

Master: For every Element your opponent has at zero or below, add one to their Damage rolls. Well, this is where you're in real trouble! You'd better hope you can hit a Desert Heat Master on the first or second attempt or your goose is cooked.


So there we have it, the making of a combat Style for A Wanderer's Romance. Here's the finished product.


Desert Heat
(Spear) - Fire + Water
The sun weighs heaviest when the air is still.
Initiate: May be used as a Defensive Style.
Student: Whenever an opponent misses you they must choose an Element with a score higher than zero. This is reduced to zero for the duration of the duel.
Master: For every Element your opponent has at zero or below, add one to their Damage rolls.


Definitely something I'd want for my character!

2 comments:

  1. Just read A Wanderer's Romance and I am definitely digging all the styles and how they work with elements.

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  2. @Mad Brew: Neat. Be sure to let me know if you ever decide to run it or want to play for yourself :-)

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