Code talk: Reactions 2
LAST TIME ON CODE TALK
Counterattack in a nutshell - the potential to prevent or even do damage, but at the cost of mana.
Counter is always a tricky option to handle well in a reaction system. To review our basic design goals for reactions, counter needs to be viable if it's going to cost a resource (like mana) that other reactions don't, but not always the most viable; it needs to be tactically interesting. And it needs to capture the feel of magical girl. What did we come up with?
First of all, Counter is on the same reaction penalty system as everything else, just to nip right in the bud the concept that anybody who has the extra mana to burn can ignore the tactical choice of reactions.
Secondly, any attack can be used as a Counter. However, for added tactical zing, only melee attacks can counter melee attacks, and only ranged attacks can counter ranged attacks. (For the record, the only other way that the 'ranged/melee' distinction matters is that there are Abilities that passively improve one's effectiveness with either, Beam Battler and Kung Fu Wizard respectively.) Also, only Finishers can counter Finishers, though that option doesn't automatically unlock when you're the target of one -- you have to already have your finisher available, before the reaction resolves, to be able to counter with it. There is an attack flag, Barrier, that allows its attack to be used to counter either melee or ranged attacks. This is for force fields, and also swords swatting beams back at their owners (or point-blank beams blasting through incoming punches, whichever). Barrier is not a 'free' flag; in exchange for counter versatility, you're giving up some sort of damage potential that you could have gotten from some other flag choice.
Thirdly, the narrative definition of a counter is centered around the potential to actually do damage. (Mostly. There's exactly one counter-only flag, Interrupt, that alters counter functionality a bit, and we'll talk about it in a moment.) I hate to mix genres, but lightsaber combat lends itself very well to this distinction: parrying a blaster bolt is a brace. Bouncing a blaster bolt back at a droid is a counter. Taking an incoming beam with a force field is a brace. Nanoha's 'Barrier Burst', which first absorbs an incoming attack with a force field, then explodes the force field's energy in her opponent's face, is a counter. Blocking a punch with the flat of a blade is a brace. Blocking a punch with the edge of a blade is a counter.
What actually happens within the Counter calculation, more or less, is that the Power Level of the initial attack, and the Power Level of the attack used to counter it, are compared. There's some (fairly small) base chance of the initial attack just punching on through -- it can be modified in either direction by the difference in Power Levels of the two attacks. If the initial attack /doesn't/ just punch through, possible outcomes include the defender taking reduced damage, or the defender taking reduced damage while doing some percentage of their countering attack's damage back to the attacker.
So spending a little bit of mana on a low-PL attack to counter a huge, expensive, high-PL attack is probably unwise; it's definitely a huge gamble. Spending a lot of mana on a high-PL attack to counter a low-PL attack is a solid (and sometimes an over-) investment in defense, with the added bonus that if you manage to do damage back, it could be a lot of damage. Spending roughly the same amount of mana as your attacker did on an attack of comparable PL means you probably won't take full damage, and might well do some back.
The Interrupt flag (named for Tuxedo Kamen tossing roses at incoming attacks, causing them to somehow vanish) alters both the narrative and coded functionality of a counter considerably: in exchange for removing any possibility of doing damage to your attacker, you drastically increase your odds and quality of damage mitigation. Cure White's aikido throw is an Interrupt. An especially powerful force field that you want to represent by spending mana on it, rather than just having a high magical defense and using Brace, is an Interrupt. Same goes for an impressive 'whirling blades of steel' sort of melee defensive stance. One downside: an attack with the Interrupt flag can never do damage (even though its PL will generally be above 0, for the PL vs. PL counter resolution calculations and mana expenditure), and thus tactically speaking can /only/ be used for a Counter. (This is not actually true of the Barrier flag; there's enough 'summon force field, slam it into opponent' to allow it.)
No matter what, if you're spending mana on Counters, that's mana you can't spend on attacks. This is rewarded by having Counters be outstanding at damage mitigation and moderate at actually doing damage. Counter spam is punished when a few rounds into the fight, the only little attacks you can afford can't keep up with your opponent's damage output, and you lose. In short: Counter is effective and dramatic, when used sparingly.
POSTSCRIPT:
Frankly, after watching enough Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, I wanted to make a Beamwar Minigame to handle that ubiquitous and fabulous magical girl moment when someone shoots a big beam at someone else, who responds with their own beam: the two beams meet in the middle and then that point of contact wiggles back and forth through a struggle of will, energy and morale, as the combatants scream invectives (or beg for the other to surrender, whatever). Eventually either someone overcomes, and their attack rams through (though it might be somewhat reduced by the opposing beam), or else the two beams just cancel each other out.
It would be a bidding mini-game, of the following flow:
COMBAT: Sailor Moon attacks Zoicite with Moon Healing Escalation.
COMBAT: Zoicite counters Sailor Moon with Dark Petal Barrage, initiating a BEAMWAR!
The two of them are now nominally outside of standard pose order as well as combat round structure, and just pose back and forth as this resolves.
+beamwar/initialbid #: Sailor Moon and Zoi make their secret initial bids of mana investment. If one bid is (random number between 10 and 30) higher than the other at any point in the beamwar, they win. Otherwise, it can go back and forth up to five times before resolving in a draw. Let's say Moon bids 15 mana and Zoi bids 10. Then they see:
BEAMWAR: Sailor Moon (15) and Zoicite's (10) beams collide. Sailor Moon has the advantage!
+beamwar/bid #: New bids, must be at least 16.
BEAMWAR: Sailor Moon's (20) beam is pushed back as Zoicite (30) rallies! Zoicite has the advantage!
This goes back and forth for a while in a game of mana brinksmanship (possibly mediated by morale, maybe not), eventually resolves.
/ANYWAY/, we're not doing this because the element of complexity that it adds to the learning curve, and the weird way that it would interact with the flow of everybody else's combat in a scene larger than a duel.
But I kind of wish we were. ;)
Next time on Code Talk: probably still not rank. Sorry guys -- let's get a full tour of the character sheet before we start exploring the question of "whose is better" and "how do they advance." ;) It sounds like there's some interest in Abilities, so we might go through them a bit.