Stances – Part One
Most stances aren’t finished. The general idea and the conceptual idea are in my mind for most stances as I’ve described to Rasmus and Patrik on the session I went through the skills. But most of them needs to be applied more to be possible to see where changes are needed and to see how they’ll work in practice.
Stances
These stances are the stances I have most clear in my mind. I also think they are the ones which will be used the most. Try to remember them and what each of them does. Also, try not to mix up the names. If you have suggestions for better names, name them and I’ll take them into consideration. Note that the stances following are in alphabetical order, not in order of importance or anything.
Conservative Stance
This is a pending stance meant to conserve and regain SC, but not to become as vulnerable as you are in the Resting Stances. This stance require Combat Arts LvL 2 or above. This stance is only passive and thus disables you from interfering as in usual ways with pending. You cannot interfere or give warning or attack, what you do will only benefit you in first hand. Every phase you’ll get 1 SC and you can use one passive skill. You can also move one step in any direction. One other requirement for this is that all your weapons are sheeted or you will not gain or lose SC. You can always stick your weapon on the ground. Bows that are stringed but have no arrows drawn counts as sheeted. For every phase that goes by you decrease your initiative with 3. When initiative is 5 you can no longer be in Conservative Stance. From conservative stance you can only use passive skills such as Observation and Rate.
Dual Wielding Stance
First to know and remember about this is that for everybody who isn’t Tekkan, there are only TWO stances here. The focused stances are locked to Tekkan’s until I give you opportunities to learn them in-game. This will only cover the stances, all skill techs will not be brought up here.
General
The general stance is obtained through the skill at LvL 1, you cannot even mimic this stance without the skill other than with Fast Adapt. The general stance has two modes, active and passive. I’ll begin with active from a general perspective1.
The active aspect of the stance is meant for dual wielding. While in this stance you’ll only dual wield in every attack. I’m not sure yet how I will utilize this skill for unarmed combat but for armed combat you will be in an offensive stance in active mode. The standard attack will now consist of a dual attack with both hands, and it will cost the same as a standard attack (2 SC). Unless you have high enough on your skill you won’t be able to use techniques. You can use the Standard Attack (2) and the Standard Parry (2).
Standard Attack – Just to describe how this skill works. To begin with, it’s only ONE roll. PRO+Skill+Weapon+1+(LvL-5) is the SR2, PRO is whichever PRO is base for the attack, Skill is weapon skill or enhancing skill, and +1 is a basic bonus for dual wielding unless the weapon has a special dual wielding bonus too. Weapon is the offensive SR from your weapon, if you use mixed weapons, the lowest is the only one that counts unless stated otherwise. An example;
PCN(13)+Swing Weapons(2)+Korsven(+3)+1+(Dual Wield (2)-5) equals 13+2+3+1-3 equals 16 SR or LvL 4. Note that this is assuming you have at least 3 higher in FOR than your Korsven and that you only have one dominate hand.
When counting damage with Dual Wield you count Weapon+DB+Min Weapon. So with a Korsven and 12 PCN it becomes; D2+3+1 = D2+4. If I had had a weapon with 2D2 it would have been 2D2+3+2 = 2D2+5. A weapon with only 1 or negative damage like a regular knife will have +1 DMG on the second weapon, example;
Knife(-1)+PCN(+3)+Dual Wield(+1) equals a total damage of 3. So using a weapon with -1 won’t make it become less damage. A weapon will always inflict at least 1 more damage than using in a stand alone attack. Knifes are best used dual wielding, just as a side note.
A last note about Standard Attack with Dual Wield is if you aren’t in dual wielding at all you pay for two standard attacks when you dual wield. Thus taking more energy to perform.
Standard Parry – This doesn’t need as much explanation as the one before. The way you use it you count it the same as the Standard Attack. PRO+Skill+Weapon+1+(LvL-5). The difference with the parry though is that in case of a duel of strength you gain +LvL FOR. Also, depending on the situation, your weapons take less damage and can get away with only one weapon decreasing it’s DUB if at all. You cannot counter from this position.
The passive aspect of this stance is meant to be able to use Techniques and non-dual wielding actions. In active stance you cannot use regular non-dual wielding actions and must always use both arms for this. In passive you instead is able to use it but mustn’t do so. Your standard attack is still only with one weapon. If you want to dual wield one attack you pay +1 SC instead of +2 as you do without the stance. In this way you can use techniques and other things which isn’t dual wielding and you can also use defensive skills such as dodge which is not permitted to do while in active stance. You cannot use any other skill in Active which isn’t related to your attack or parry action.
Improved
The expert stance will only be achieved through LvL 5. This is not to be confused with Ambidexterity. Ambidexterity sure allows one to do different things with different arms at the same time, but this doesn’t really do that. It only improves the general stance in a great way so all the skill techniques in Dual Wield including skills you can learn that require you to have the skill Dual Wield, become more powerful.
The major difference now is damage and SR. Your SR is calculated almost the same with an exception for two things that will change. The first thing is that the LvL-5 is completely gone to begin with and the second thing is that your small bonus for using dual weapons (+1) is now +2. So in addition to not having -5 to deal with you are much better now with your weapons.
The standard attack and parry costs the same in active and passive as in the general, but now the damage is greatly different as well as your parry force. The damage is; Weapon+Weapon+DB, which is a major increase. When it comes to parrying your FOR will be counted twice instead. Good luck taking down your parry with FOR without a technique is all I say.
But this isn’t all. The improved also has the possibility to do two separate attacks with each arm. Non-dual wielding attacks that is, but you can attack twice in the same phase. Note though that both attacks cost SC as usual.
Tekkan
Tekkan’s will from now on have three focused versions of the regular stance. At first I thought about weapon specific stances but I think that is too limiting so I decided to instead play on Offensive, Defensive and Pending versions of the Dual Wielding stances.
Defensive – Defensive will improve the Standard Parry so it costs 1 SC less than usually. Note that the Tekkan can use his Defensive Dual Welding stance in both General as well as Improved. So it must be noted which stance we talk about. The catch with this stance is that no offensive actions can be taken plus that the Tekkan is not allowed to change stance after a successful parrying. So if he uses this stance he has to stay in it until it’s his turn again.
Offensive – Just as the defensive version of the stance this will improve the Standard Attack with 1 SC less than usual. Also as in the defensive stance he won’t be able to parry, avoid or block from this version. Only actions with the DUR of ATK are possible to use, so he can’t use actions with DUR ACT. In addition though, he can change his stance in the end of his phase.
Pending – This stance though is something only Tekkan’s will have. Usually when you use Dual Wield with a pending stance you’ll have to pay the addition of 2 SC for the attack. But the Tekkan has a special stance to be able to use their Dual Wielding in a pending stance without the addition just as the General stance. This stance works as general stance, it does not work with the improved stance though. Note that this works with throw weapons as well as close range dual wielding weapons. It’s a pending stance, so you are not allowed to have acted in the same phase and use this, meaning that if you walk or run a couple of hexes and then switch to this stance you won’t be able to attack afterwards until the phase is over. Also, after a successful attack you will end up in the general active stance, not dual wielding. You cannot change this.
So far that’s all for Dual Wielding. Still, the unarmed aspect is not complete but what I know is that it will differ from the above described way.
Intuitive Stance
This stance is available in active and passive mode. The pending version of this stance is called Precautionary Stance. This stance is not available for those without Intuition of LvL 1 or higher. It’s also not a battle oriented skill but is possible to use in battle as well if you don’t have any better stance to be in. Skill techniques will most likely not be included in this description even though most of them are only possible to use in intuitive stances.
Active – In active intuitive stance you can only move 1 hex at a time. You are watching every angle possible. And most likely even turn around every now and then as you walk carefully. This stance will take 3 SC per phase in battle, thus not making it the most effective battle stance. In this stance your senses are as tense as they can get. This though will be a double-edged sword in some cases when it comes to sanity rolls, but you can take precautions against sanity rolls with skill and abilities. In any case with this stance you’ll get +3 per level in SR instead of +1 when it comes to all concerning rolls from COG to REF. Note that you can, out of combat, instead of using SC to use this skill, use AC. You can in battle use AC too, but it will also cost you 1 SC. It costs 1 AC per time which can vary from one roll to several depending on the space between the rolls and the situation. In this stance you can immediately change to the stance you deem appropriate for the situation if you aren’t taken by surprise or horrified. But in general you will succeed if you are in Active stance, if you want to be sure, pay 5 SC or 2 AC and 1 SC to succeed without a roll3.
Passive – Passive only cost 2 SC per phase in battle and also only gives you +2 per LvL when you are in this stance. You are sensing more than usual and listening to your inner self with this. You can move your base movement only when in passive. Note that movement is included in both active and passive stance. In this stance you don’t have to worry about sanity as much as in the other. Sanity is less of a risk in passive than usual contrary to the active mode. Though in this stance you cannot brace yourself. In this stance though you must pay SC and cannot use AC instead. Other than this it’s a general passive stance.
The document with stances is now four pages long, I’m still working on it, but I’m a little bit stuck since I got hungry and people started to call me about shit. There are three more stances I’ve intended to write about that will come in Part Two. If you have any stances you know about and want to make sure you get to know a little about it, say so and we’ll see if I include it if it’s not one of the three I’ve started to work on.
Best Regards,
Herid Fel
Well I just skimmed through this now and I’m not sure I completley understand everything, so I’m going to reread this later when I’m not tired. But I wanted to point out which stances I want to know about.
Obviously I’m interested in the stances for the a would-be markader (did I get that right?) and also any stances that might be in meditation, both tekkan specific and otherwise.
There are no Markader-specific stances… Not yet anyway.
I removed Meditation and Multitrance from the document since I consider their stances as not important, but I guess I’ll bring them back.
There are no more Tekkan Specific Stances other than the above mentioned. There are Warrior Specific Stances which will be brought up in the next document though.
Sorry for the late reply but I was out.
So, some more stances to read about
Well for starters I think the clarification on conservative stance was good since that seems like a good stance to use now when the battle is in abit of a stand off but could turn into a bloody mess any second.
I assume that one of the points is also to be able to defend yourself when attacked or react when something is happening, although that will probably mean you change stance and lose the SC gain, but still not as vulnerable as in resting?
As for dual wield I got abit confused when it comes to non-Tekkans, me as a warrior and currently using a shield+korsven usually when fighting, if im in this active dual wielding stance, im able to both attack and parry at the same time?(if lets say im attacking and getting attacked at the same time) Or is it 2x attacks or 2x parries no mixing together?
Also when it comes to the basic bonus of dual wielding:
“PRO+Skill+Weapon+1+(LvL-5) is the SR2, PRO is whichever PRO is base for the attack, Skill is weapon skill or enhancing skill, and +1 is a basic bonus for dual wielding unless the weapon has a special dual wielding bonus too”
Isnt this abit weird to give dual wielders an additonal +Hit bonus when the advantages of dual wielding is already plenty? and this bonus even grows to +2 when you have 5 in this skill, and yes I know that having 5 in a skill is very epic and not that many has it.
Still isnt this abit strange if you consider a person who has trained all his life in just wielding a single weapon to actually be “outskilled” against a dual wielder who should in theory have a harder time becoming as good(unless he is ambidextrous or dual handed)
Example: Same weapons, same PRO, same weapon skill, only difference is that one of them is dual wielding and has achieved skill lvl 5 in dual wield(meaning he has no negative from dual wielding and only a +2 on the SR)
In this example a person who has devoted himself of being really good in just a single weapon would actually be “outskilled” against a dual wielder? Or am I missing something?
Anyways, moving on, dont have much to comment on the Tekkans focused stances except that they sound pretty reasonable and gives abit of an edge compared to a non-tekkan.
My much beloved intuitive stance, I really like the concept of this one and its a stance you can actually use before a battle if people are hiding or maybe a ambush up ahead and for alot of other situations aswell, nice that you can spend AC instead or split them in some situations, gives you a more mix of the energies and the other energies not feeling totally useless unless you are a ki user or mage.
Well, well thats all for now. I guess I would like to hear about focus, although it might not have any stances it feels like a skill which could be worth getting as a ki striker aswell. Other than that I cant wait to hear about the warrior specific ones since they have been abit diffuse what they actually give. oh, yeah acrobatics would be nice aswell.
As stated above the description the Skill Techniques is not included. What you want, attack and block, and block and attack. Is a Skill Technique which is possible to use in the active stance, if you have the require level. Though the Standard Attack in Dual Wield is NOT, and I repeat, is NOT mixed weapon+shield. For this passive stance is better. Unless you have the skill tech, no mixing!
Eh… They don’t get any benefits other than increased damage when dual wielding. Look;
A regular non-dual attack;
PRO+Skill+Weapon
A Dual attack
Pro+Skill+Weapon+(LvL-5)+1
Without the +1 they don’t get better chances to hit, rather the opposite. They get worse SR by using the dual attack and if they fail, they fail the entire attack and the increased damage doesn’t even take effect. It should be a little harder to avoid/parry a dual blow than a single one, thus the bonus.
And since LvL 5 IS expert in the matter and not many has it, especially not in a skill such as this. Increasing the bonus from +1 to +2 doesn’t seem far-fetched to me. But you obviously missed something here… with -5 from the Offhand the attack actually gets harder to perform, not to mention the REQ.
In this case we speak of a single handed fighter. And if you fight a dual wielder they HAVE better chances to hit you even if they flail around. To become good however is a lot harder.
To begin with… this is about stances. Not about skills. STANCES. Focus doesn’t have any own stances, though it alters a lot of shit. I will not bring this up now. It’s too high level to deal with anyway if you aren’t Mage and then it’s only the skill techniques you’ll need. Focus is in essence just an power enhancer.
Acrobatics will have a stance, but I don’t think I’ll bring it up. The stance isn’t really current for the moment or even of any value to your characters either. Acrobatics is something which will eat actions as if it were sugar, not to mention SC. It’s best to keep to the Skill Techs on that one until you’ve started to get the hang of the others more important stances.
Hmm well alright, well im curious about counter aswell, seeing as my character have it, and I havent really got the full picture of how it was supposed to work.
I will include it then. But in essence, Counter is very similar to Dual Wield, only that it’s a defensive stance which you often use in a passive mode. But well, more details later. Need to work on Chapter Three for ADS.
Just as a side note for Dual Wield.
If you are Dual Handed or Ambidextrous dual wield works a little bit different.
To begin with the LvL-5 will for Dual Hand be -3, and when the -3 is 0 or above it won’t give any bonuses. For ambidexterity the part with LvL-X will be completely gone. The only thing the Levels will do for an ambidextrous person in enhance and make the skill and skill techs easier to perform. You understand?