Fatemaster Tool: Mobs of Things

[Malsqueek]

Hey all, one thing that I'm sure many of you have noted is that our Fated have an infuriating capacity to kick out extremely high volumes of damage on a focused target. This can make it challenging to craft a good combat, as has been noted several places.

 

I took a note from one of my other favorite RPG's and worked out a similar concept for TTB, which should help allow for fights that are more objective centric.

 

Mobs of Things

 

The idea of Mobs is that there are piles of a thing that would be irritating on its own, but perhaps not outright dangerous. However, in a seething mass, they are significantly more concerning.

 

A Mob has four fundamental stats. Movement, Wounds (how many hits it can take before it dies. No crits here), Defense (TN to hit), and Attack (TN to Dodge). A Mob takes up an area of space, and can engage anything that it touches. It has a single move action, and then automatically hits anything it is touching. It is relatively mindless (yes, even a horde of villagers), and as a result is not affected at all by anything that requires sentience. Anything that defends on Wp, but would affect a mindless thing uses its Df value instead.

 

Dealing damage to a Mob: Mobs take damage differently than normal creatures. They are a mass of things together, so it is more about how well you hit, rather than how hard. A Mob of Things will take 1 Wound for each successful attack, and an additional wound for every full margin of success that an attack succeeds by. Succeed by 6? That's 2 wounds, kids.

 

Taking Damage from a Mob: Mobs automatically attack anything they are touching. They will deal 1 point of damage, plus one for every margin of failure on the Defense flip that cannot be reduced.

 

Mobs will suffer 1 additional wound for every blast marker an attack inflicts upon them.

 

As a generality, Defense and Attack TN can be pretty well similar (9-12 are good values) and should be related to how nasty the things are in general. 7 for rats, 13 for villagers for example. Wounds should be a multiple of this number, and related to the size of the mob.

 

I like these for encounters where you are looking to apply pressure to a task which has to occur WHILE you are fighting, and to help mitigate those particularly nasty min/max combat characters and allow your less combat oriented to shine a bit.

[Brewmaster]

Possible suggestion: rather than "can't be affected by Wp", what about "Fated take - - when targeting Mobs with Wp"? It would take effort to affect them normally, but someone with Skill Mastery and Focus, or Calm and Collected would be able to handle Mobs.