State of the Commonwealth - Knights-Marshal of the Commonwealth Update!

Currently for Knights-Marshal of the Commonwealth, I am at work on a system to track fatigue from physical and mental exertion.

In BASH SCi Fi, certain activities - like Martial Arts, Psionics, etc; - cost Energy. Everybody got the same amount of energy and you spend it doing these things. I am playing around with tracking things differently - allowing for various sources of fatigue, and a more dynamic system for its tracking and expenditure.

Why do we want to track fatigue and energy? After all, a guy with a blaster can shoot as long as he has ammo, and doesn't have to worry about getting tired. True enough, but someone with, say, psionics, has an integral power, that cannot generally be neutralized with a disarm maneuver, and it draws upon the person, rather than an external energy source. So it make sense to have limits upon its use that are not exactly ammo, and Energy in BASH Sci Fi is kinda ammo with a different name. 

And Fatigue is is part of the science fiction/ science fantasy genre that we are working in for KMotC. In Star Wars, we see Luke strain to lift his ship from the swamps of Degoba, and fail! In Sci Fi, and definitely in Knights-Marshal of the Commonwealth, heroes and villains can do amazing, even superhuman things. But they are not in a superhuman universe, with capes and tights. In a supers setting, tracking fatigue may be counter to the superheroic four-color feel you are trying for. But in the gritty, more 'realistic' Sci Fi and KM settings, the heroes get tired, and have to push through it to triumph.

We also want to make players think about what they are doing in terms of a limited power source. Resource allocation is a facet of a lot of game play across many genres and platforms [including video games, tabletop rpgs, and more]. Just as the gun guy has to track ammo, the martial artist has to worry about endurance or the psyche has to worry about whether she has enough juice left to blast, mind control, what have you. If there is no limit, there is also no reason not to do everything at the highest power setting. it makes playing the game simpler, but less challenging, and less engaging.

OK, so that is WHY I want to ensure that we have a way to measure energy expenditure in KMotC. Here is the HOW - I hope. This is very much a work in progress, and I have run through a couple of others that I have dumped already. But be warned - I have not yet playtested this, So I don't know how well it will fly. Almost certainly, I will need to tweak things afterward, based on how things go.

The Fatigue System:

Characters have Zero base Fatigue, unless some unusual circumstance [like an Advantage or Disadvantage] applies.

Starting at Zero, add all Fatigue Factors that are constant, such as Armor worn, penalties for extended strenuous activity, or ongoing fatigue effects, such as from ongoing powers, etc. This is your Base Fatigue, the starting Threshold for your Fatigue check.

SO - if you are wearing heavy armor [Fatigue 3] and are tired from marching through the dunes for several hours [the GM decides to assign a Fatigue of 2], your Fatigue Threshold is 5 when you use your Telekinesis 3 to lift a heavy piece of machinery off the access panel to the underground base. Make a Check for your TK use as usual, but compare what you rolled on the 2d6 to your Fatigue Threshold. If you rolled 5 or more on 2d6, you manifest the TK, and your Fatigue does not change. However, if you roll below the Threshold, your Fatigue rises by the Fatigue Cost of that power [in this case 3] to 8. The attempt tires you significantly and you fail.

Because BASH uses a mechanic of a special result on a roll of doubles, which allows multiple possible effects, I am adding a new one. If you double on the dice and still are below your Target Number for Fatigue, one of the effects you may choose is to count the double as a success for the purposes of your Fatigue. You might still fail on the power or ability check, but your Fatigue TN does not rise.You may elect instead, to roll an additional die as usual, in hopes of getting up to your TN, but sometimes you might prefer to go this way instead [ex. If you roll double '1's and your Threshold is currently 10, rolling another die doesn't look as appealing].

Since fatigue is an issue in this system, there should be some ways to reduce, or increase, its impact.

Firstly, It is possible to reduce the Fatigue cost of Powers. Each Power Point spent on Fatigue Reduction during character creation reduces the Fatigue cost of a power by 1. So 2 points spent on reducing the Fatigue cost of TK would mean that you suffered no Fatigue when using TK at Rank 2 or lower, and higher levels of the power would be reduced by 2 fatigue.

You can also reduce Fatigue cost in play. For each Hero Point you spend, you can reduce the Fatigue Cost of a failure by 1.

Characters can also take a set time period to rest, and reduce Fatigue by 1. One point of Short term Fatigue, say from power use, or a Martial Maneuver, can be recovered by resting for a panel, in which you can do nothing other than a normal move. Long term fatigue [like from a day of marching through the desert] usually requires an hour per Point of Recovery. You might also want to track these differently on your character sheet. In the example above, if our psyche failed, she could rest for 3 panels to reduce her Fatigue TN to 5 again, then try to lift remove the obstruction. She would need to rest for an hour to recover 1 Fatigue from her Trek, however.

There are also a number of Advantages and Disadvantages that can affect your expenditure and recovery from Fatigue. First is an alteration to the Armor Familiarity Talent from BASH Sci Fi.

Armor Familiarity: 1-3pts: You are used to wearing armor, and it does not impede your movements in any way. For 1/2/3 points you can wear light/medium/heavy armor with no penalty. For each point in armor familiarity you lack when wearing a given type of armor, you take a -1 Dice penalty on all Agility rolls. Thus, a person wearing heavy armor without this power has a -3 Dice penalty on all Agility rolls. If a person with 1 point in this power wore heavy armor, they’d have a -2 Dice penalty on their rolls, and so on. With any degree of Armor Famiiiarity, you also suffer one less Fatigue in the armor you wear. So, light armor causes no fatigue, Medium causes one, heavy two, etc.

So our tired psyche in the example above, would have a fatigue Threshold of 4, if she had any form of Armor Familiarity, because it would reduce the fatigue associated with wearing armor by 1.

Advantages:

Peak Condition: You are in terrific shape, or are very efficient in the use of energy. Your Fatigue Base starts at -2, rather than the usual 0.

Quick Recovery: You recover at twice the normal rate. So short term fatigue recovers at the rate of 2 per panel, long term at 2 per hour. This power does not affect the amount of recovery from powers such as Psionic Rejuvenation.

Disadvantage:

Out of Shape: your base Fatigue begins at 2, rather than the usual Zero. Add any other fatigue to 2 to calculate your Fatigue TN.

So in the example above, the tired psyche in heavy armor would have a TN of 7 for her Telekinesis attempt.

That is where my thinking is at the moment. Chances are good that things will change in playtesting. I will post an update to this article in the comments below. If you have any suggestions, I would be happy to see them.

Art is by Lukas Poduch