This is a follow on to my previous thread, rather than a whole new game design.

Previously I talked about having players earn a pool of disposable points, some of which they would always retain out of combat, that they could use to 'fuel' heroic fighting. I'd like to expand upon my idea a bit.

At first blush, even to me, my idea seems to draw upon action points, a la D20 games and Fate Chips from deadlands (in their ability to counter damage). However, there is a fundamental difference. In those systems the points are an add on, a benie, an extra. I intend to make them the core element of combat.  

One aspect of them that occured to me after I posted the last bit was the idea of having 'durable' points and 'burning' points.  I'll explain.

After figuring out the advantages that a combatant has earned, the player has ten points. He puts three into defense, making him hard to hit, these points would come either from his inate pool that he starts with, or from cover and other suitable modifiers. They remain there until he either loses defense advantages or burns them. He also moves three points into offense, making him a killing machine.

Now, this is still in the conceptual stages, but there should be a mechanical disadvantage to keeping durable points in a catagory, rather than having them in your pool. Likewise, in addition to providing longer term benefits, there should be a mechanical benefit to having points in one or the other catagories.

Burning points is a core concept. Certain advantages are very short term, but very useful. Surprise, or ambush is one, getting behind someone is another. Advantages earned from such situational modifiers could, in theory, be put into a durable catagory, but would be lost as soon as the intitial 'ambush' ended, or the opponent turned around to face you. They are better off being burnt for things like 'extra attack' or 'goes first this round', which directly contradicts the 'everyone acts simultaniously' standard presented earlier. They could also be 'burnt' for automatic hits, or automatic damage.  

Points can be burnt from anywhere, you can burn a durable advantage point for an appropraite 'shot misses' effect, or you could burn one from your pool of unallocated points.  Obviously some things would cost extra.

One mechanical 'advantage' to not having a durable defense point is the idea that a short term burnt point offers double value. Say, dodging for this round is worth +2 per point, compared to the +1 value per point for a Durable.  However, burning a durable point for an appropriate action might be cheaper.  Of course, I don't want to make the rules too complex.



One facet I've been holding on to is the idea of 'grouping' pools. The GM particularly treats NPC's as a faceless horde drawing from a single pool of points, while significant enemies would have their own individual pool. This is both a book keeping idea AND an outgrowth of my ideas for mass combat and 'ship combat', treating both as outgrowths of a single character.

On the other hand, having all 'mooks' be one big meta-character is unsatisfying on many levels, as is the concept of 'mookdom'. The intent is that, on the character scale at least, anyone can be a threat, but that PC's are still significantly better than most of their opponents.

Another facet is 'leadership and teamwork'. I'm not certain how, exactly I want to handle this. A proper leadership roll from the acknowledged leader of the party could result in pool bonuses for people who are 'followign orders', but reduces the decision making of individual players. Alternatively, the leader could 'farm out' points from his pool to the players in his party 'at will' if he can 'lead them', ie communicate with them.  This means that the leader is slightly more vulnerable to attack, and less effective on offence, but can drastically extend the effectiveness of the members of his team.  Perhaps a combination of the two.

Teamwork: I have a few ideas about this, from a coordinated team, workign together earnign extra points (useable even at the two man 'buddy team' level), to having a 'party pool' that can be drawn upon when two or more characters are 'supporting eachother' in some fairly clear way.

Any ideas? Comments?

I'm scratching my head a little on this one.

The durable/expendable *could* be problematic.

If both are advantageous, you get a divide between those who will horde points (being less useful earlier but becoming uber-powerful later) and those who will expend points (doing amazing things early on, but not quite being up to snuff afterwards).

You could put an upper limit to encourage expenditure, or a limited duration.

Anyway, I'm working on a similar concept here.

It's an interesting idea - I actually quite like the "blob of mooks" concept - sure, it's a sacrifice, but there's so many times in action movies where you see the heroes fighting/running from a couple of dozen faceless badies, and you know the only way you'd ever run it straight is by arbitrarily saying "only three of the have a clear shot at you".

The accumulating points stuff is all still too confused for me to say much about it - it puts me in mind of Torg - where characters build up useful hands of cards to play in the climactic stuggles - and the allocation of levels in hero system/champions.  As you say, those are subsidiary rather than core mechanics.  What I'm geeting is that points can be used either for an ongoing (but smaller) advantage or burned one-off for a bigger advantage, and you need some mechanism to make it worthwhile keeping some in the pool (and, for the matter, to burn them - if we're talking a tradeoff between +2 for one round/+1 per round for the rest of the fight then you'll only ever burn late in the3 combat, which could be a kind of cool dynamic).  I'd suggest having points allocated to permanent offence or defence only be useable for two or three specific stunts, while unallocated pool points give you access to all kinds of interesting special effects ("his weapon breaks","the cavalry shows up" - depending on your views on pc dictating in-world events).
Without another mechanic underneath you'll need hard to create any kind of ebb and flow - if you don't get the mechanics just right people will either sit on their points foreever or spend them all more or less instantly.  I'd consider borrowing Torg's system of an explicit round by round "tide" that turns to one side or the other.

Ah... I think I assumed I had made certain parts of the Advantage idea clearer than I obviously did.  Part of the problem was breaking it up into two threads.

A good portion of your advantage points come from what would be modifiers in other games. Being in cover doesn't give you a flat bonus to defense, but gives you an 'Advantage' which you could either put into defence OR use for something else, representing the moral bonus being in cover can provide, or the stable firing platform you might have.

You can then LOSE advantages when the modifier goes away, which can provide incentive to Burn the points when its likely to happen. This would then  provide a solid mechanical reason to NOT charge people in cover, as they will burn their cover advantage to stop you, rather than lose the point for nothing if you reach them alive.  

This also creates a flow to combat, a give and take of Advantages as people maneuver for position and so on. As for the temptation to burn everything in one agressive, fight ending push, I feel that does capture the essence of how many battles end. When one side feels it has a clear advantage it may attempt to overwhelm the other in an orgy of violence. Of course, doing so might deplete their stock of 'Innate' points for a while, making them vulnerable to a fresh opponent. That too is 'realistic'.

The big issue for me is making sure that I communicate to GM's in text that they should not be shy about awarding or removing Advantages throughout the game.  Rather than attempt to create an exhaustive list of modifiers and their specific results, the Advantage points should help combats move faster and easier while still giving players reasons to make sound tactical decisions.

One thing I may not have pointed out was that the advantage points also represent, to a degree, your health. One of the big uses of 'burnt' points would be to absorb or deflect otherwise lethal injuries.  Not every possible 'advantage' should be useful for this necessarily, for example Durable Offensive points would be useless for 'defensive' burning.

A possibility I've been toying with: having different point costs for different actions, the exact point cost being dependent on the 'style of play'. Cinematic play will have much cheaper points for flashy stuff, say.