Rules

Challenges

After seeing how the challenges work, after the new character creation system, various changes and a few years of character development, I’ve come to realize that the way challenges were handed was not longer entirely adequate. For a number of reasons, I’ve changed a few things.

Challenges will be handled as follows:

Prowess Equal	No Advantage
Prowess Higher	+1 Advantage
Prowess Double (or more)	+2 Advantage

Example:

An angel, a demon and a Fallen are attacking each other. The angel has a Warfare of 8. The Fallen has a Warfare of 4. The demon has a Warfare of 3.

The angel is double the Fallen and the demon and when it attacks either, it will have a +2.

The Fallen is higher than the demon but not double, so he will get a +1.

Comparable

A Comparable or Compared Challenge will be handled as follows:

You are Comparable to an opponent if your Prowess is equal to or higher than theirs.

Winnowing

There are now two types of Winnowing attacks

Standard	You take two Disadvantages (-2) when making a Winnowing attack
Powerful	You take one Disadvantage (-1) when making a Winnowing attack
Guns at Medium or Long range and the Dramatic Maneuvers: Achilles Heel and Storm are Powerful Winnowing attacks.

cinematic points

There are now new ways of using Cinematic Points.

1 Cinematic Point

Give Opponent a Hindrance (lasts one round)

Ignore one Disadvantage from a Winnowing attack

Ignore one Mortal wound but give opponent Inspiration for True Death Challenge.

Nephilim/Humans who do this have a 4-6 chance of dying whether opponent wants this or not.

The Old system

The previous system was:

Prowess Equal	No Advantage
Prowess One rank higher	+1 Advantage
Prowess More than one rank higher	+2 Advantage

Comparable was one rank lower, equal or higher.

Winnowing attacks were 3 Disadvantages.

Cinematic points gave a +1 to Challenges.

Why?

Why? Why, why Trent why? Okay, the reasons:

I updated the Prowess ranks from 1 to 7 (with 3 and then 2 and then 1 being human average) to 1 to 9 (with 1 being average) without considering how the challenges would be affected.

The character creation system limits a player from maxing out key Prowesses but at the same time, if you don’t build the most efficient combat character you will be left out in the cold.

It’s easier to explain. Experienced players still got the old system wrong (I’ve heard of situations where a player had 4 ranks higher than their opponent and presumed it was an auto win). New players always looked at me with an air of confusion.

Any +2 Advantage in a fight scene is largely academic. You’ve pretty much won the fight, you’re really just rolling to see how many rounds it takes you to win.

It limits the highest Stat Rat Race; Power gamers would do everything that they could to make sure that their Prowesses (particularly Warfare) was as high as possible, high enough to get that precious +2 Advantage (see the above point). Players will still go after the highest stat but that does not guarantee them a win in a fight.

A +1 Advantage is quite a huge advantage over an opponent. Bad luck will certainly play a factor, but on average, the +1 Advantage will allow a character to win with some consistency.

One of the big reasons requires some explanation: In a recent fight scene, I had treated another character as a warrior, presuming that he could have been a challenge to my own character. Certainly I felt confident, from a character point of view, that I could beat him (I was the good guy after all). When we did the challenges, I came to realize that although I put him in my ‘class’ of warrior, I was very wrong. He was two ranks below my Warfare and thus, we wasn’t even a challenge. I walked over his character and didn’t feel very good about the system.

Up until this point, I had treated him and others as ‘in my league’. We were the warriors of the city but we were largely equals. I suddenly realized that myself and a few other Divine were actually in a category above them. We were the Heavyweights, they were the Middleweights and all other characters (the so called non-combat characters) were the Lightweights. I realized that ultimately, the system is punishing players for not making their characters as efficiently and focused as some of us Divine. We should have the edge, for taking more Body Archetypes, certainly, but we shouldn’t be in a position to own them.

Flaws of the New System?

There are two ‘flaws’ as I see them but they are entirely forgivable. On the whole, the typically challenge will be balanced.

If you are sitting at an Average (1) Prowess then everybody who is higher than you is also Double your Prowess. Therefore, by the system, Good (2) is infinitely better than Average (1). But I can live with this. Fallen should, in general, not be sitting at the floorboards of humanity. They should be better.

Once you have an Impressive (5) in a Prowess, you can no longer be doubled. This is important in combat situations because it’s rather easy to get a 5 in Warfare and this makes it so that not even a character with a 9 (the highest) Warfare can double you. But here is the deal. A character who achieves a 9 Warfare must have 7 Body Archetypes, which will net him 24 points in his Body stats. This type of character will have so much raw physical power, from Techniques, to beefy Prowesses and Preeminences that the character with a 5 Warfare will be no contest. Yes the 5 Warfare can hurt him. No the 5 Warfare character isn’t really going to win.