Manifest: Death
How do Manifestations die?
“Die” probably isn’t the best word for it. In Pokémon, the mons simply “faint.” You can’t permanently lose a Pokémon, and I doubt Manifestations are any more transient. They must be able to “demanifest,” however, else combats will last forever, and all the damage-dealing and condition-applying is so much nonsense.
So, how does a Manifestation demanifest?
The obvious answer is, as always, their HP reaches 0. That’s not a terrible metric — there are reasons why cliches stick around — and a lot of systems will naturally fit into it. While I may find a more interesting ludo-narrative later, this is a good place to start. Let’s play with some numbers.
The weakest Manifestations will be dealing d4 damage on an attack. The most powerful have d12 damage. We don’t need to worry about reliability yet, as the dice are unpredictable things and un/lucky rolls will happen. If we compare the weakest to the strongest, we can see that at their luckiest, a weak Manifestation will take three actions to deal as much damange as a strong Manifestation can with one.
Interestingly enough, a second-weakest Manifestation, a d6er, will only take two actions. I think that’s a good sign, as it means the curve between d6 and d12 is a fractional one. A d8 takes three actions to do what a d12 can do in two, and a d10 takes six actions to do what a d12 can do in five. This means the difference between a d4 and a d6 is larger than between a d10 and a d12.
So how many turns does it take to kill a Manifestation?
One of the balancing acts with tactical games is combat length. You want the combat to be short enough that it doesn’t take a whole evening, but you also want it to be long enough that tactical decisions and strategic planning have a chance to develop.
For this game, I’d like to err on the side of shorter: games like Magnagothica: Maleghast manage to cram tactics and strategy in short and sweet bursts, and tend to be quick and bloody affairs. I think that fits better with the ludo-narrative of emotion-combat.
If we want quick and bloody, a Manifestation should probably only take two or three hits before going down to a well-matched opponent. A significant advantage should net you an extra action’s worth of survival. If we assume a three-fourths average, due to all actions being taken “at advantage,” we can say:
| Average in 1 turn | Hp done in 2-3 turns | |
|---|---|---|
| d6 | 4.5 | 9-14 |
| d8 | 6 | 12-18 |
| d10 | 7.5 | 15-23 |
| d12 | 9 | 18-27 |
Is there an easy number in each of those ranges? Double. What if a Manifestation has double its maximum Tier?
| HP | |
|---|---|
| d4 | 8 |
| d6 | 12 |
| d8 | 16 |
| d10 | 20 |
| d12 | 24 |
But what about Bond? If a player trains up a 4d6 Manifestation, they’ll only have 12 Hp, while a 1d12 will have 24. That d12 Manifestation will be able to kill the 4d6 Manifestation in two blows more than half the time, while the d6er could need up to 6 to take out the d12. That’s far too unbalanced. Remember that each player gets two actions a turn, and that means a 4d6 Manifestation could die in one turn, while it could take two turns to take out the d12 at best.
So what if Bond served as a boost to LP? If it’s simple addition, the spread looks something like this:
| Math | HP | |
|---|---|---|
| 4d6 | (6*2)+4 | 16 |
| 3d8 | (8*2)+3 | 19 |
| 2d10 | (10*2)+2 | 22 |
| 1d12 | (12*2)+1 | 25 |
Not terrible, but they still feel a bit off. What if Bond was a multiplier to straight Teir? Then the math would look like this:
| Math | HP | |
|---|---|---|
| 4d6 | 6*4 | 24 |
| 3d8 | 8*3 | 24 |
| 2d10 | 10*2 | 20 |
| 1d12 | 12*1 | 12 |
Now this is interesting. The highest LP Manifestations aren’t at the edges, but in the middle. Players would have to decide between three options: High Tier (high damage), high Bond (high condition/special), or high LP (high resiliance). I like that.
But 1d12 is a bit of a glass cannon, drastically lower LP when compared to the others…what if we look at the Max levels, assuming 5 level-ups?
| Math | HP | |
|---|---|---|
| 6d4 | 4*6 | 24 |
| 5d6 | 6*5 | 30 |
| 4d8 | 8*4 | 32 |
| 3d10 | 10*3 | 30 |
| 2d12 | 12*2 | 24 |
This feels like a good baseline. Is it balanced? We’ll have to check the playtest to know for sure, but at the moment it certainly seems viable.
But let’s play in the ludo-narrative a bit more: Manifestations are strong emotions, and they are connected to the player. How, then, does a Manifestation become “resiliant?” An enemy Manifestation might strike your Anger Manifestation multiple times, but they still stand…why? Because they are just that powerful? Is it something in them, or something in you?
This might be where emotional stats come in. We have HP and stats, what if one of these was armor for the other? Stats could just be a flat reduction of damage: an Anger stat of 4 reduces any Anger damage done to your Manifestations by 4, and keeping them alive longer.
There are possible alternatives to this, but if a player’s stats fluctuate, going up and down as energy is gained and spent, this will give a strategic wieght to the question of spending points to do powerful attacks, or saving the points to protect the Manifestations.
If stats ranged from 0 to 5, that would make for a much longer combat. Worth exploring, or is this too much mental load? Either way, it’s worth holding onto for the playtest.
What about Agents? They can “die” too, but how? Killing an Agent must end the battle, so why wouldn’t every strategy eventually become “dogpile the enemy agents?”
We could say that Manifestations can’t target agents, but then, why bother with Manifestations at all? Just walk into the room with a gun, and the enemy manifestations are no longer an issue.
Let’s tackle the Agent’s strategic importance next time.