Re: feats as special moves

From: Kevin P. McDonald <paul_mcdonald_at_...>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 10:09:30 -0400

> From: "Terry Harvey-Chadwick" <terryhc_at_...>
>
> However, I like to use feats as special moves within a combat. Since the game
> designer has taken such pains to come up with all these lovely feat names, it
> seems a real shame, in a game like Hero Wars, to reduce the Deep Cut feat
> to a ^5 edge when it could be used to cut an opponents arm off, thus causing
> a much more dramatic effect.

I want to chime in to agree with Terry here. In my game I have a house rule (which I may get around to posting to my website someday) that allows folks to use a single feat to augment a *single action* without taking an unrelated action. "I strike at him using Humakt's 'Shield Breaker' feat!" (Player rolls for the feat to generate an edge, then rolls Close Combat). The feats must also match the situation. IE You can't use "Shield Breaker" if your opponent is not using a shield.

Much as Peter seems to be suggesting, I also only allow "generic" feats to last the entire contest. In my game, feats that seem to describe single actions can *only* be used to affect single actions. (IE Truesword Stroke only affects one single stroke with a sword) This cuts down on the amount of pre-contest power-ups and makes the contest itself more colorful. It *does* increase the dice rolling, which will not be to everyone's taste...

In simple contests I allow all the augmentations to be accumulated together as a bonus, as usual.

~Kevin