Rules Clarifications from the Backer Preview

[StarRaven]

These might be language nitpicks, but who knows! Those might be useful too, haha.

Blinding
Is "Blinded" (-3 to sight-related rolls) classified as a complication? If not (out of curiosity) why not? Is the target of an Ability with the Blinding perk blinded only if the Ability is used successfully (i.e., on an attack that does damage) or are they also blinded on an unsuccessful use (i.e., an unsuccessful Barrier defense)?

Defensive
Same question as with Blinding: do you get the bonus to your Defense rolls only if the Ability is used successfully, or also on an unsuccessful use?

Most of the other perks are very specific, so I thought I'd ask. Thanks!

[Kahmal]

this is what i take from the reading.

From how it reads it would seem that you would take a -3 dice pool from the attack also. If you are blined you can not see who is attacking you. If the ablity miss then you did not hit with the attack so ther person is not blinded.

[StarRaven]

Blinding says "Your Ability has the ability to hinder the vision of others." So probably not.

(That would make a neat flaw, though!)

[Atmo]

These might be language nitpicks, but who knows! Those might be useful too, haha.

Blinding
Is "Blinded" (-3 to sight-related rolls) classified as a complication? If not (out of curiosity) why not? Is the target of an Ability with the Blinding perk blinded only if the Ability is used successfully (i.e., on an attack that does damage) or are they also blinded on an unsuccessful use (i.e., an unsuccessful Barrier defense)?

Defensive
Same question as with Blinding: do you get the bonus to your Defense rolls only if the Ability is used successfully, or also on an unsuccessful use?

Most of the other perks are very specific, so I thought I'd ask. Thanks!

I think Blinded is a temporary complication, like a bad status.

Defensive i like to think that is a attack followed by a defensive stance, one that really protects the user.

[StarRaven]

I think Blinded is a temporary complication, like a bad status.

Defensive i like to think that is a attack followed by a defensive stance, one that really protects the user.

I think bad status is basically the definition of "complication" in OVA Revised.

I know what the perks do. I'm only asking for clarification on these few questions I had.

I'm just going to run them both as working only on successful use of the Ability.

[Atmo]

Blinding (+20) Your Ability has the ability to hinder the vision of others. It might be a dark, blinding substance over the eyes, a brilliant flash, or some trick of the mind. Characters who are blinded have a -3 Penalty to all vision-reliant actions until the effect wears off or is otherwise neutralized. The blindness wears off naturally in twice the Level of your Ability rounds.

Impairing Complications result in a character being impaired in some way. This is much like a temporary Weakness, giving characters a Penalty to further actions based on the task they tried to complete. A character trying to leap between between buildings may find themselves “Strained,” while a character deep in negotiations may become “Flustered.” Such Weaknesses are usually -1 in severity, but further failures may increase this Penalty. How long an impairment lasts is left to Game Master discretion and logic, but generally they are removed in the same instances characters can regain lost Endurance. (See p. xx)

Yeah, looks like a temporary Complication that gives a temporary fixed Penalty for a number of rounds. I'm happy that the Blindness is based on double Ability level and not on a fixed amount of time, so yes, the attack/Ability must connect with the target to blind him/her.

[Clay]

For Defensive, I'd say it's true even if you miss. After all, you're taking a defensive stance. I imagine even if you miss, the attack remains defensive, whether you're nimbly bouncing about, making some kind of fog occluding your moves, etc.

Blind however is a good question! In some cases, I'd say it would (a blinding flash bomb) while others it would definitely not (ink to the eyes).

Hmm.......

It's such an expensive perk, really. I wonder if it should blind regardless (and it's only damage that's in question). But an automatic -3 Penalty would be cheap. Perhaps the better solution is to include text for, maybe, a -1 penalty instead on miss? What are your thoughts?

[StarRaven]

-3 penalty to sight-based rolls is pretty stiff. (If suggested max dice is 7, that's just shy of half your roll.) Especially when you consider that (in most campaigns, for most types of characters and monsters) almost everything, including attacks and defenses, are based on sight. It makes Impairing (which seems to be a -1 all-action penalty?) a little lackluster in comparison.

I could see making it a +5 perk which gives a -2 penalty to sight-based rolls on successful use of the associated Ability*, with the option to take it again to make it on any use of the associated Ability.

*I'm gonna do some wonky theorizing here and it could be totally off-base but here I go. CRAZY TIME:

As-is, the game states that you can apply Perks to other Abilities besides Attack, so theoretically you could apply Blinding to any Ability with a target (for lack of a better description.) The ones that come to mind are Barrier (used offensively), the Magics**, Psychic, and Spirit Medium (when used to banish.) In fact, since the rules don't mention a limit on varying your Abilities via Perks and Flaws, you could base a suite of "attacks" on any of these abilities (except Arcane Magic which is inherently beneficial in some way) with the proper interpretation of the rules.

I think that's a good thing, by the way! You could make different sorts of characters this way, like a group of ghost hunters (like in the anime Ghost Hunt!) with "attacks" based on the Spirit Medium ability instead of on Attack. (The ultimate goal being, instead of to reduce a Health/Endurance pool to 0, to get the spirit to enough penalties that you are able to banish it via Spirit Medium. You know, before it reduces you to 0 Health/Endurance. Thus, it's still combat, but the character's primary offensive Ability is Spirit Medium instead of Attack I hope that makes sense. I mean, you could also just use combat and say that a ghost is banished when it's reduced to 0 H/E, but then what happens when you want to punch somebody?)

OVA is a simple, yet elegant and deep system and I love the heck out of it ugh.

**I found another thing! Speaking of magic, Witchcraft doesn't specify an Endurance cost for spells. It does mention that Endurance is spent for them (because it says that the caster doesn't get the Endurance back until they relinquish the effects of the spell) but it doesn't have a chart like Arcane does. I'm sure it's supposed to use the same chart, but that's never explicitly explained and that could cause some confusion. If the scale was the same between Abilities and Weaknesses, I would call it a no-brainer, but since Weaknesses only go to -3....