Manifest: Abilities

Last time I explored the strategic impact Agents had on the game. This time, I’d like to get down to some brassy tic-tacs, and look at one of the most important and fundamental aspects of Manifestation Combat: Abilities.

Abilities are anything from basic moves to special attacks. Each Manifestation has at least 1, possibly 2. They can be active, passive, reactions, stances, or anything similar. They are, in short the possible actions any Manifestation can make.

Each active Ability also has a Sync ability: when a Power Roll is made, any die that shows equal or less than the Manifestation’s Bond level causes a special effect. This can be adding damage, conditions, free movement, or anything that a regular ability can do.

On second thoughts, we could turn Sync from an Ability bonus to a Manifestation bonus: the effect will therefore be the same whichever ability the Manifestation uses.

If a Manifestation has a passive for its second ability, this won’t make a difference; only one Sync ability will be available anyway. For Manifestations with two active abilities, this might make things easier, as instead of keeping track of twelve abilities with twelve Sync bonues, the player will only have to keep track of six Manifestations with individual Sync bonuses.

At the same time, its possible the players will see this as keeping track of six manifestations and twelve abilities with Sync bonuses, (18 things) versus keeping track of six Manifestations with six Sync bonuses and twelve abilities. (24 things)

Really, having a single Sync bonus for each Manifestation would only matter if a Manifestation has two different abilities. A boost that causes conditions goes well with an attack, but not as well with a defensive reaction ability. Is that complexity worth holding onto?

All of this leads to the final question: What do these abilities look like?

We could pull from a lot of different inspirations: Trespasser has a lot of battle actions complete with Solid Hit bonuses. 4th ed, Lancer, and Gubat Banwa all focus on tactical combat, so borrowing from them isn’t a terrible idea at all. Steel Hearts is where I borrowed some Conditions from, so their actions might prove quite helpful.¹

Then there’s Majimonsters, or any number of Pokémon-like RPGs. Heck, Pokémon itself has a large number of abilities. I could just translate all of them into bespoke tactical moves.

But before I do that² I’d like to play about with the Ludo-narrative a bit more.

One of the cliche anime combat moments is the “I’m not finished yet” moment. This is the moment when a protagonist, after having given it their all, decides to give just a little bit more. A fireball attack is given that extra push, an energy beam gets that little bit of extra jucie, an attack is boosted.

I’d like to have something like that in this game. What would that look like?

We already have a boost mechanic in the form of Sync, but that’s largely a random mechanic. What about one that operates on player-choice? What if, similar to the Effort system in Trespasser, there is an asset that players can spend to increase the effectiveness of an ability?

Let’s see… the Four Points RPG System, made by Penflower Ink, is a simple and elegant system where stats are handled not as bonuses to rolls, but as an asset to be spent. Spending points from a stat causes events to happen. It’s a diceless mechanic, excepting the “push your luck” part of it, but on the whole, I like player-choice mechanics giving concrete bonuses, rather than the chance for a random bonus.

So we can imagine an attack like: (to steal from Pokémon)

| Scratch || Anger | |——–:|—————————————————-| | Effect: || Deal POWER Anger Damage to 1 target in Range 1 | | Sync: || Push target Sync spaces |

How could this attack be boosted? Well, a bonus to the Power Roll is an obvious choice, but we could also boost the number of targets, or even the range. We could even go a step further and add another action boost to the ability:

| Scratch || Anger | |——–:|—————————————————-| | Effect: || Deal POWER Anger Damage to 1 target in Range 1 | | Boost: || Move 2 spaces before Effect | | Sync: || Push target Sync spaces |

We could then add multiple boosts to give the player choices:

| Scratch || Anger | |——–:|—————————————————-| | Effect: || Deal POWER Anger Damage to 1 target in Range 1 | | Boost: || Move 2 spaces before Effect | | Boost: || Deal an extra 2 Anger Damage | | Boost: || Target all targets in Range 1 | | Sync: || Push any damaged targets Sync spaces |

The player could then spend 1 to 3 Stat points to augment a simple melee attack into a jump-forward area-attack. I like the choices this gives, but I’m not sure about the cognitive load. This simple melee attack now hides anywhere from four to eight different abilities, depending on how you count them. Apply this to six Manifestations, each of which could have two abilities, and we’re talking 48 to 96 abilities!

Of course it’s never going to be that huge of a load. Every time a player decides “that Manifestation is too far away” or “is the wrong Type for what I want to do,” that’s eight to sixteen options struck off. Still, what if the Ability looked like this:

| Scratch || Anger | |——–:|—————————————————————| | Effect: || Deal POWER Anger Damage(+2) to 1(+1) target in Range 1(2) | | Sync: || Push any damaged targets Sync spaces |

What’s happening here? Each of those parantheticals is a specific augmentation to the ability. The player now immediately knows that they can spend a point to increase damage by 2, add another target, or increase the ability’s range. They know they can only bring the range up to a max of 2, but they can keep adding 2 to damage or an additional target as long as they have the points to spend. This makes sure that abilities keep their flavor without going too far off the rails. Scratch will always be a “close range damage dealer,” without worrying about adding movement or special conditions. Other attacks might look like this:

| Tackle || Delight | |——–:|————————————————————–| | Effect: || Deal POWER Delight Damage to 1(+1) target in Range 1(+1) | | Sync: || Move Sync spaces after Effect |

| Pound || Fear | |——–:|——————————————————————————-| | Effect: || Deal POWER Fear Damage(+2) to 1 target in Range 1 (Inflict Terrified(+1)) | | Sync: || Heal Sync Damage |

| Flail || Grief | |——–:|————————————————————————| | Effect: || Deal POWER Grief Damage(+2) to 1 target in Range 1(All in Line +1) | | Sync: || Deal Sync extra Grief Damage if target has a Condition |

These are all very similar attacks to start with, but can be turned into completely different attacks through judicious use of points.

I like this design, but we haven’t solved the problem of cognitive load. This is design that would certainly work if players only had two or three Manifestations to keep track of…but six? That might be a little much. Perhaps the better solution is to allow players to spend points to increase Sync? Again, for the playtest, simpler might be better to start with.

Okay, I’ve got a lot of “stuff” floating around. Next time, I’d like to congeal it into a bit of an ashcan ruleset.