Description
You are a true believer. Whatever your chosen cause, you are certain in its righteousness and unwavering in your support. It is possible you are a fanatic seeking to convert others or you may simply hold quietly to your convictions. You know you will be constantly challenged and others will always question your cause, but you cannot be swayed from the path you have chosen.
Details
GM Intrusion: You have experienced a moment of doubt. Your actions for the next round are one step more difficult.
- Connection:
Choose one PC. You feel protective of this charge and when you are within an immediate distance of them they may make use of your Determination or Resolve ability. In addition you may make use of your Guardian ability within in short range of this PC.
- Additional Equipment:
You have a badge, charm, token or trinket of your cause to remind you of your duty. Once ever, as long as you possess this item, you may add 4 to a die roll after you have learned of your success or failure.
- Tier 1:
Champion: You have rigorously trained both body and mind and have persevered through many trials. You are finally ready to represent your given cause to the world. Add +2 to your Might pool and Speed pool. You have +1 armor against any mental attacks. You are trained in any tasks calling for great endurance. Enabler.
- Tier 2:
Guardian (2 Speed points): When someone within an immediate distance of you is struck for damage you may move yourself adjacent to them and take the attack in their stead. When you do this you suffer only half the damage the attack would normally deal. Enabler.
- Tier 3:
Determination/Resolve: Choose one of the following options
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Determination (2 Might points) – You may re-roll a Might defense roll that you failed the previous round. If you succeed any effects of the failed roll (except for pure damage) abate at this time. You may only re-roll any failed Might defense roll once and you may not re-roll a failed use of the Determination ability. Enabler.
- Resolve (2 Intellect points) – You may re-roll an Intellect defense roll that you failed the previous round. If you succeed any effects of the failed roll (except for pure damage) abate at this time. You may only re-roll any failed Intellect defense roll once and you may not re-roll a failed use of the Resolve ability. Enabler.
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- Tier 4:
Zeal (4 Speed points): After making a successful attack against a target you may immediately make another against the same target. This cannot be used more than once per round. Enabler.
- Tier 5:
Fervor (5 Speed points): You may move up to a short distance to engage with a foe and immediately make a melee attack against them. If this attack is successful you deal an additional 3 points of damage. Action.
- Tier 6:
Smite (6 Might points): You strike a vengeful blow against an enemy who has wronged your cause. If the attack is successful you deal an additional 4 points of damage that ignores armor and any other special defenses possessed by the target that may normally protect them from harm. This must be a melee attack. Action.
While I like the flavor this focus is underwhelming and suffers a few flaws.
The tier 1 ability is underwhelming. Consider adding either a skill or two or an additional ability.
The tier 2 ability is already rolled into Take the Attack that everybody is capable of doing, and is mechanically the cheaper option (except when considering edge, but still) refer to page 101 of the Core Rulebook.
Tier 3 is thematically nice, but depending on interpretation is either a little too weak or too powerful. If you can continue paying each following round to reroll the previous round reroll then it should probably have an increasing cost of +1 per consecutive round used. If it does not allow for this then it is a bit underwhelming for a 3 cost tier 3 ability, but would be nice as a tier 2 ability.
Tier 4: I’m generally happy with this one.
Tier 5: Rather costly and placed at a bit too higher of a tier. Possibly better as a tier 3 ability costing 4 speed points instead of 5. Even in this case it is a highly situational action that in my experience as a GM pretty much won’t come up. If you bump it +2 damage, effectively making it a sort of “charge”, then it makes sense as an opener.
Tier 6: “If the attack is successful […] cannot be dodged” – this already applies in general to the whole combat system. Player attacks are not dodged after they are successful, that is against the very definition of a successful attack under the Cypher System. What was your intent with this power, other than ignoring armor? In any case ignoring armor to the tune of 6 pool points is a waste, you could get 9 extra damage out of that using effort: any damage in excess of the targets armor would translate directly to damage.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea and flavor, but with these problems I would consider the focus mechanically unsound. Multiple of the abilities can be done better using already existing options outside the focus.
Thanks for the feedback. Here’s some of what I was thinking or going for with this focus along with some response based off your concerns.
Tier 1: Champion: You have rigorously trained both body and mind and have persevered through many trials. You are finally ready to represent your given cause to the world. Add +2 to your Might pool and Speed pool. You have +1 armor against any mental attacks. You are trained in any tasks calling for great endurance. Enabler.
My thinking on the tier 2 Guardian ability was that Take the Attack option in the core book takes up your action for the turn meaning that you won’t be doing anything else this round. In my experience thus far no one has been willing to use this unless it was to prevent another character from final death. The idea with Guardian was to allow you to still leap in harm’s way without removing your ability to act for the round since this ability is an enabler and not an action which has been more warmly received from my group. This also means you could, if you so choose, do this multiple times in a round assuming you were a glutton for punishment and were in range. My potential solution to make it more palatable would be to make it so when using the Guardian ability to take damage for another character you suffer only half the damage the attack would have normally inflicted.
My intention with the Tier 3 abilities was for you to be able to re-roll the failed check only one time. I will amend the wording. I’m not necessarily opposed to lowering the cost of the ability but my experience shows that by Tier 3 this character is going to have an edge of 2 or 3 in at least one stat and they are likely to pick the ability that matches up with their Edge making this essentially free or nearly so. I didn’t was this at Tier 2 because the re-roll is something you’d normally pay XP for which is a much more scarce resource than a stat pool. Personally I would happily blow 3 stat pool on having a second shot at not being poisoned, diseased, bleeding, mind controlled, etc.
I think I will amend the Tier 5 to add some additional damage (either 2 or 3, I think) to the attack. From what I have seen so far this seems like something that will come in to play frequently, at least for my group. We are playing with maps and minis and coming from playing a lot of pathfinder so only moving 10 feet and taking an action is a big adjustment and feels like a lack of tactical maneuverability. Thus in some of the my own home brew stuff I have been trying to give options to help with this perception.
The wording in Tier 6 was to act a catch all to cover circumstances and other abilities I may add in over the course of the game. It may also apply in PvP situations where there are some chances to mitigate or get away from otherwise successful attacks. If you look at some of the creatures in the bestiary there are some that either cannot be affected by physical attacks or have various other ways of not being hurt by certain things (insubstantial, out of phase, consuming the weapon struck with and healing, etc). This is the way you can make sure you can make an attack that counts. It’s when I first debuted this ability elsewhere it also dealt additional damage, but the responses i got seemed to be that this was extremely overpowered. Originally I had the attack dealing an extra 4 points of damage in addition to ignoring armor, and being unable to be mitigated, avoided, etc. Also, technically it takes 7 Might to spend 3 levels of effort to get an extra 9 damage :p