Basic Action Super Heroes!

I have been thinking about skills recently and how they can be divorced from things such as powers, soak and defence. Whilst I can see the point in this to some degree I was wondering if there might be a work around using relevant skills as +1-X modifiers (similar to Heightened) based on player description.

For example:


Flycape is hurtling towards the giant Oddzilla in a busy city. Narrator asks him to make an Athletics test, which he passes on a second roll as he has a speciality in Acrobatics. Oddzilla starts throwing cars at Flycape who describes that he jumps out of the way of the first one and uses the second to propel himself to a third, narrowly ducking a forth. He then rolls his defence x3 which just comes up short, but the narrator gives him +2 for adequate description with a relavant skill and the def roll succeeds - i.e as Flycape has taken Athletics 2 (Acrobatics) the Narrator can give him + 1-3 to his roll [max 2 for skill taken twice, max 1 for speciality) depending on description given.

I didn't give the modifier to the pure athletics test as I don't think it warrants one. However, the rule (if it is sound) actively encourages players to give flavour to their character, as well as meaning I don't have to explain to my players why they had to make an athletics roll to get to the monster but their great athletics had no bearing on their defence when they were being athletic.

Potential problems: I have not checked how this will work with all powers or mental skills. Possibly a bit too much like Feng Shui's stunts. Could be a similar but better alternative (static bonus to defence in this case). Not sure of balance - 1-3 for instance might be too little/much

thoughts

We tried something like this in our game and it worked fine. It is especially good for playing without maps and miniatures to bring the scene to life.

hey AngryGhost! I have been thinking along the same lines for a while. Here are a couple of articles I wrote on two methods of doing something like this in BASH:

http://d-infinity.net/game-content/exci ... difier-way

This one involves using the skills of the game and skill checks to allow for more exciting combats.



http://d-infinity.net/game-content/fast ... -3-careers

his one involves using Careers rather than individual skills and them adding their ranks to other checks for a more active, descriptive game.

Both are quite similar to what you describe, but add a numerical way to determine the degree of bonus to the roll.