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Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Feng Shui: House Rules for Combat

Since I try to run Feng Shui with the attitude of "Screw it, why not?", I've allowed some variations from rules-as-written. Some of these make the game go faster; many make the game feel fairer to the PCs, which encourages them to be more heroic and therefore entertaining, and also gives me freer reign to try to kill them all horribly.
Spending Fortune After the Roll
This is probably a legacy of playing other games with similar boost mechanics, but I like the notion of PCs saving their limited resources until they really need them. Therefore, I allow the PCs to see their roll and then spend a Fortune to boost it if desired.

Dodging When Out of Shots
According to my reading of the rules, dodging is an interrupt action -- but if you've used all your shots for the sequence, then you have no actions left and therefore cannot perform any interrupts. This strikes me as somewhat unfair, as it puts faster-moving people at the mercy of slower-moving people (although I suppose it could be interpreted as "This is deliberate game balance as it allows the slower-moving characters to get their licks in.")

I have therefore ruled that, even if you are out of shots, you may still dodge -- but doing so reduces your initiative roll for the next sequence by a cumulative -1 per dodge.

Marks of Death and Healing
This is less of a house rule and more a clarification in writing of a question asked by a player: "Since the rulebook says on page 107 that 'If a character is healed before he makes a Death Check, he doesn’t need to make the check', does this mean that healing removes Marks of Death?"

My interpretation of this is Yes. This ruling is partially based on the logic of "If you don't need to make a Death Check, then however many Marks of Death you have is irrelevant as MoDs only affect Death Checks and nothing else", and partly based on the cinematic notion that "If another PC is taking time out during combat to heal a character rather than kick butt, Cinematic Conservation of Action Awesome indicates that healing during combat is far more effective than healing outside of combat."

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