Version 0.4 - Reworked Combo and Threat

Wow yes! So there were some big swings here - some big hits and big misses.

Usually I'd playtest a game a lot more internally before showing anything online, but I'm doing things a little differently here. So you get to see Voidhunters, warts and all.

Playing through with an initial group, there were a couple of things that became readily apparent:

• Combos happened way too frequently, such that they lost the 'cool' factor.
• Criticals negated the threat of threat dice by happening non-stop.
• Abilities were way too low, and the necessary successes in the first scene of the sample episode dragged out.

I've already adjusted starting abilities, and made some adjustments to how combos, threat and criticals interact, and they're ready for testing.

Combo Actions and Criticals

Instead of starting these whenever, players now get the chance to start a combo action when they would roll a critical (so about 5% of the time, although Grit allows players to adjust those numbers). A combo lets everyone else join in on the same target, and it will be interesting to see how these function in emergent play.

Combos are easier to track (although it occurs to me now that the raising of hands is ableist, so I'll need to rethink that for something else) and the more people who join a combo, the more chance it will fail. Players are encouraged to join the combo for the risk-free actions and bonus dice, and I'll reward them with XP when that's introduced.

Threat dice are now removed at the end of a scene, and they can be spent to increase the danger of a roll.

Some other thoughts

Starting Items

One more thing came up in the playtest, which is that the mechbound player has to spend their wealth in order to get a mech. Originally, I had it that the mech in the episode would give them the opportunity to shine that way, but it wasn't obvious from the beginning so they felt left out. I'll need to look into some way of giving players a 'starting item' as part of their archetype, in order to try and fix this.

Social Strength

The merging of social and physical is a bit unintuitive. I am trying not to stray into White Wolf's array of 'power, finesse, defence' of 'social, intellect, resistance' stats, but I may need to do so.

Let me know if you've tried it, what your thoughts are! Or if there are any similar games I should try.