I've ahd a thought about "Decapitate Foe" that I'd like to toss out.
Clearly we want it to be a useful ability. Magic has increased costs relative to munadne abilities, and because it's, well magic, it shoudl allow you to do amazing things more easily than munane abilities. The tradeoff is that it's more specific in it's application.
In the case of Decapitate Foe we want to be able to chop people's heads off with it, but we don't want to completely unbalance the game. From the rules it seems like the resistance for this feat should be 14, except that a special rule says that characters can defend against magical attacks with their best magical abaility. This means most characters will defend against it about as well as they would a physical attack, since almost all characters will have some vaguely appropriate magical ability they can use for a defence.
Decapitate Foe sounds to me like Dificult Magic, so why not use those rules? Make it an all-or-nothing feat. If you win, by any margin, you've decapitated your foe. If you lose, you suffer appropriate consequences. the resistance though is 14 Plus you're foe's best apropriate ability for defence.
This makes it significantly harder to get a win because your enemy's defence is going to be 14 points better than it would be against most other attacks. On the other hand if you get even a marginal victory, it's game over for the other guy!
This doesn't realy square with the standard rules on contests. I'm worried about it because I don't like Special Case rules. On the other hand, if you treat it as an "Unrelated Action" in an extended contest it can have instant all-or-nothing effects. Comments?
Simon Hibbs
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