[Anima Hunters] Playtesting with Rich

[Ben Lehman]

Hrm.  I don't have a lot of questions for this post, it's mostly just a chance for me to make some notes for my own consumption.

Whilst waiting for our third Dogs player, Rich and I playtested Anima Hunters combat.  Verdict: Fun.  Generally speaking, under the rules linked above, the first hit decided to the fight.  Comebacks were very rare, and largely due to the fact that my guy had a tremendously over-powered weapon (the short bow.)  Once we switched over to hit-based rules, things were much closer, although both types were fun.

As is appropriate for an early playtest, we changed the rules as we went.  Here's a recap of those changes:

1) Damage no longer harms dice.  Instead, characters have groups of "hits" which look like 5, 4, 2, 2, 1, 1 or whatever.  When you do damage to a character, you check off a group of hits that sum to your damage score or lower.
1a) This necessitated a rules change to Vigorous Struggle, Energy Drain, Healing Touch, and Flaming Strike.

2) Manuevers largely became simpler.  Now, for instance, Dive Roll is just "you may abort maneuver dice to defend.  If you do this, you must move the highest number showing on your manuever dice, without circling or retracing your path."

3) Basically all the Grace and Power scores got bumped a die size, except for the axe, which works just fine.

4) Short bow now has a range of 4-5, and requires an abort like a long bow.  Long bows have a range of 6-20, and require aborting all of your dice to use.
4a) Crossbow is removed for right now.

5) For now, you are still required to defend with your top combat or anima die, thus using it.  This rule may change.

6) Initiative works like this now:  Highest die goes first.  In case of a tie, highest next number goes first, and so on.  Once you're going, you may use all dice tied for a number in any order.  (So if you have 7M, 7C you could move, then attack or attack, then move.)  If there is ever a tie for highest die on the board, the character who last acted retains initiative.  (So if my highest is 7A, and your highest is 7C, but you had the last initiative, you go first.)  Discarded a die unused counts as "acting" for this purpose.  What type of die is facing no longer matters, ever.

Overall the verdict was: Very fun, but needs more power-options.

My attempt to play a pack of wolves (three tokens, no special powers or weapons, each time I spend a manuever they all move) was particularly satisfying, resulting in some really close calls with Rich's axe-wielder.

yrs--
--Ben

[Ben Lehman]

Oh!  What I did do was manage to answer my own questions from the design post:

1) Are there any fundamental tactical breaks in the system -- like it's always good to do this funky thing with your dice, or maneuver in this way, then attack in this way?
2) Is the end of the round (which I imagine will be mostly rolling) satisfying at all?  Does it feel "too random?"
3) How many rounds would it take to finish a combat between two guys?
4) Is getting damage in in the beginning completely dominant?

1)  Not that I can tell.  Of course, powers are the real place where the system will break or not.
2)  Not at all.  There was suprisingly little rolling at the end of the round.  Rather, the end of the round was a great point where your tactical decisions earlier play out in a surprisingly deterministic way.
3)  Around 4.  More importantly, about 5-15 minutes of real time.  Rich and I played maybe 10 rounds in two hours, with a fair amount of breaks for kibbitzing.
4) Yes.  So change it to a different system, dumb-ass.

[Ben Lehman]

And one last bit -- if anyone is going to playtest this, PLEASE contact me for the rules changes.  Don't play it as written in the other thread.

yrs--
--Ben

[Filip Luszczyk]

The changes sound resonable. I suggest that you put updated rules in one place. Possibly I'll try to test the new version if I find the time.

One thing - give me a clear example of the new damage rules in play. And explain how to determine these "hits" for playtest characters.