Chi Questions

With a cut of the GAT rules off to some review (and posted here--feel free to review) I'm turning back to Chi: mystical martial arts moves. The idea is to be able to play Mortal Kombat / Street Fighter type guys while amping up to the Hero-style Kung Fu army-fighters (at higher power levels).

Mechanically we want:

• A rich variety of fighting styles and strategies available
• Rules that ensure you don't just do one thing (throw a Chi Fireball) all the time over and over
• Encourage strategies that carry over from Round to Round rather than having very little bearing from Round to Round
• Don't get bogged down with complex rules or "Chi Points" or other Chi-only mechanics.

As expected, we learned a lot from the GAT creation--and I'm now applying that learning to the Chi rules. Here's the outstanding issues and questions for now:

1. We presently don't simulate "unlocks"--that is powers that can only be used when some event has passed (such as "I took a lot of damage" or "I successfully blocked six strikes" or "I knocked out one opponent" or whatever). As such we either have to change the simulator (and that would be a pretty big change) or estimate. We also don't simulate large battles so the "I knocked someone out" unlock would only apply in a minority of the fights in our line-up and thus wouldn't tell us everything we'd probably want to know.
2. We don't do strategy around fire decisions. A Chi Bolt or Chi Punch can be "charged" by not using it each Round of a fight. If you unleash it on Round 1 it doesn't hit that hard. Wait for Round 2 and you get your money's worth. Wait for Round 3? It hits pretty darn hard. Round 4? I'm not sure we're going to track that far--but still: we can simulate each attack but not the decision making as to whether the combatant holds off or not. I'm not sure we need to--but it factors into the costs.
3. Use Only If Last Attack Hit. Combos and certain other attacks are slated to be useful only if each attack in a chain hits--so I declare "Three Chain Punches for 12 REA!" If the first two hit (and are not blocked/dodged) I get to throw the third one--but if the first two miss or get blocked the rest of the REA is wasted--so it's a risk. We don't simulate that. We could--but it's a bit complex. Some moves, likewise, will only work after another attack has hit ("Finishing Move") but don't need to be declared up front. Is this really a defect? I'm not sure.
4. Charge-Up-Armor: We can allow characters to pay REA for defenses (to keep a Force Field up or to have Armor so long as they pay REA for a step--but don't really move). The simulator doesn't track that. If they lose the REA the armor won't go away. It also will never make a decision to dump the armor (represented as a 0-damage attack that costs REA) and go for extra attacks--something a character might well do.

So we need to decide what to do about these things ... and a few others.

-Marco