Board 8 > Mercenaries Draft Week 15 Results: Shine On You Crazy Diamond

(+) Yeah! (+)

not really
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Got delayed but making progress. Have a preview of the titles of the primer:

Mercenaries Ability Manual

1. What is an ability?
1.1 The components of abilities

2. Types of abilities
2.1 Peacetime abilities
2.2 Pre-Battle abilities
2.3 Start of Battle abilities
2.4 Mid-Battle abilities
2.5 Trigger abilities
2.6 Results abilities
2.7 Cross-phase interactivity

3. On ability targeting
3.1 Targeting types
3.2 Ability resolution steps
3.3 Resolution keywords
3.4 Untargetability and Immunity

4. Recharges and ability power benchmarks
4.1 Recharge 0, Recharge weekly, and higher Recharges
4.2 Cooldowns, Recharges and Every X Week: Ability recharge terminology

5. Effects and Ability Interactions
5.1 Removals: Big Four, Untyped, and Other
5.1.2 Intimidation and Subversion: The new Removal types
5.2 Damaging abilities
5.3 Sidetopic abilities
5.4 Manipulations, and the Lone Change Clause
5.5 Positive, Negative and Mixed effects
5.6 Ability modifiers, and cross-ability interactions
5.7 Ability Resolution Order, and what goes when

I think that covers everything? If there's any major contentious topics I missed, lemme know and I'll slot them in somewhere. The idea is to make something pretty exhaustive so people only have to consult that to make sense of anything that isn't a true case of unclear ability writing.
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That seems to be all of it.
I'd say remove the terminology of recharge weekly and the like when writing abilities though. this needs to read more along the lines of a CCG comprehensive rulebook, where there is absolutely no question on it. The writing can have the fluff writing, but it needs a very technical writeup as well, that has no questions to it.

This simplicity of explanation would also allow the idea of energy storage for some abilities, to reduce the cost if you decide not to use it on a week.

Recharge (X) - this ability, once used, gains X recharge. An ability can't be used if recharge isn't 0

Restore (X) - reduce the recharge of the ability by X

Storage (X) - When an ability is on Rechage 0, restore adds to the storage up to X. Storage is spent at Restore to boost the restore on a one to one basis.

Start of week - At the start of week Restore.

This is the kind of information that is needed on mercs to minimize the yelling and the like.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

5.1 Removals: Big Four, Untyped, and Other
5.1.2 Intimidation and Subversion: The new Removal types

- Having both "untyped" and "other" removals seems unnecessarily complex. I would say that anything that is a removal but not one of the Big Four counts as "untyped," and leave it at that. (Or, if you want to be extra clean, get rid of untyped removals altogether and require everything to be classified as a specific removal type. self-kidnapping gogogo)

- Possession is mechanically weird - the merc is removed from their team, but is not removed from the battle. I remember this causing trouble in the past (thought not the specifics). I wouldn't be opposed to removing possession from the category of removals altogether, and just having it be its own category.

- I'm not sure what a Subversion is. But offhand I think all "cannot be rostered" type effects should just be a single category (unless there's a reason for differentiating them that escapes me atm). I also think they should remain distinct from removals because, mechanically, they're quite different - the merc is not removed, he's still there and can declare and be targeted by abilities as normal.

ZeeksFire posted...

I'd say remove the terminology of recharge weekly and the like when writing abilities though.

Of all the things that are potentially confusing in abilities, I feel like recharge terminology is the least of our problems. "Every three weeks" is perfectly clear. "Goes on cooldown for two weeks" is also clear. I guess I wouldn't mind it being standardized but it doesn't seem like a priority issue.
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The only real unclear thing is people tend to be unclear what the cooldown is on an every 3 week ability for abilities that refer to cooldown.

But I feel like if you put "Cooldown X" near the ability descriptor that confusion goes away and I think "every x weeks" reads better, but yeah not really a priority as long as you have the Cooldown X tag.
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KanzarisKelshen posted...

major contentious topics I missed

what does possession do
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I kinda like the idea of a Priority keyword. Idea being that stuff will explicitly resolve in order of ascending priority, with Pre-Battles resolving in order of declaration as usual.

For instance, you could have something like this.

Taunt (Start of Battle, Priority 1, Recharge 2) - Once every three weeks, Dan may taunt a preselected enemy merc. Incensed, they will prioritize taking out Dan above all else. Additionally all of their damaging abilities used this week are redirected to him.

Because it's Priority 1, there's no question it'll resolve properly on higher. The idea is you would then clean up the write-up, explicitly giving an order of resolution on multiple abilities hitting a guy, when needed, and you'd generally give all redirection effects high priority to remove that confusion implicitly.

You could also do something wacky like load the Priority keyword with game mechanics. For instance say you do something like make pretty much all Priority 5 abilities of the damage type, then you could say something like, additionally all of their Priority 5 abilities used this week are redirected to him rather than introducing the "damaging" issue. And if you wanted to make a weird ability that does damage but can't be prevented, you just give it a different priority.
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- Having both "untyped" and "other" removals seems unnecessarily complex. I would say that anything that is a removal but not one of the Big Four counts as "untyped," and leave it at that. (Or, if you want to be extra clean, get rid of untyped removals altogether and require everything to be classified as a specific removal type. self-kidnapping gogogo)

"Other" here refers to stuff like Morrigan's PSification which is effectively a removal (as you do not show up for the fight) but not blocked by anti-removal tech. By contrast, 'Untyped Removal' is Dragonborn's Fusrodah, which is *explicitly* untyped as a selling point for it.

I'd say remove the terminology of recharge weekly and the like when writing abilities though. this needs to read more along the lines of a CCG comprehensive rulebook, where there is absolutely no question on it. The writing can have the fluff writing, but it needs a very technical writeup as well, that has no questions to it.

This will go into the Ability Boldtext. You can see an example on page 1 for Little Mac's Title Bout, I think - is there anything you'd say is missing there?

- Possession is mechanically weird - the merc is removed from their team, but is not removed from the battle. I remember this causing trouble in the past (thought not the specifics). I wouldn't be opposed to removing possession from the category of removals altogether, and just having it be its own category.

- I'm not sure what a Subversion is. But offhand I think all "cannot be rostered" type effects should just be a single category (unless there's a reason for differentiating them that escapes me atm). I also think they should remain distinct from removals because, mechanically, they're quite different - the merc is not removed, he's still there and can declare and be targeted by abilities as normal.

Possession being its own category is something I'm open to - as you said, it works very different from the other members of the Big Four and even Intimidations (more on this in the next paragraph). The thing that ties it together is an interp of 'removes the merc FROM YOUR TEAM', but I think 'removes the merc FROM BATTLE' is probably clearer and better overall. Maybe say 'blocks Removals and Possessions' for stuff like Terra if you gotta, it's still pretty clear.

Re: Codifying 'can't be rostered' effects, that's precisely what Intimidations are - it's a keyword for stuff like Akuma Weaklings and Algus' Common Maid. It was a distinct and interesting effect so it made sense to make it 'official' so people can look at ability effects for inspiration.

Re: Subversions, that's the term I made up for any third party-izing effects - see Neclord, Ellie's Confusion, Charizard's Won't Obey, etcetera. They're very clear and distinct effects, they remove a merc from your team, and I think it's worth codifying them so we don't have to argue 'is this a possession or not'. I feel like there's value in them being distinct because overall, Subversions have a very different power level to Possessions, which makes them kind of incomparable. Gaining a merc while taking one away from an enemy is much more powerful than taking a merc away and having them show up to the fight as a spoiler.

I kinda like the idea of a Priority keyword. Idea being that stuff will explicitly resolve in order of ascending priority, with Pre-Battles resolving in order of declaration as usual.

Mid-Battles are sort of meant to address this - the new definition for them is 'effects that occur after mercenaries gain the ability to act', in contrast to SoBs that explicitly occur before a merc can do anything about them. So for example, X's Dark Hold turns a SoB damaging ability into a Mid-Battle. Priority seems useful too regardless, tho - Dark Hold as Priority 0 makes sense, for ex.
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(Up. Still working on this!)
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