Defense vs. Barrier

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hobbit_marco
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Defense vs. Barrier

Post by hobbit_marco »

It seems that Barrier does the same as defense. Only to have a barrier up costs endurance and you can redirect damage from health to endurance.
This redirecting can be usefull, because you can heal endurance faster. But you don't want to burn up your endurance either because you use it for power moves and spells.
Defense is effectivly the same as a Barrier, but you cannot redirect damage to endurance. And it doesn't cost endurance to defend.

I thought about it for a while and came to this.
With the rules from the book defense seems somewhat better. (Barrier also can look magical and unnatural. So this might cause problems in some settings)

What I would change would be:

In the rules it is stated you can take a defense against anything that tries to damage you. But even in most anime you don't see good swordsman defend against super explosions and rockets.
It would be nicer if you can use defense against "normal" attacks like other melee attacks (maybe even bullets). But you can use Barrier to defend against everything, since barrier is some kind of magical shield.

What do you think about this?
Clay
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Post by Clay »

The main advantage to Barrier is it's theoretically infinite. The more Endurance you spend, the more damage you can block. In this way, if your opponent unleashes his super killer death move which inflicts, say, a bazillion damage, you can be sure you can dodge the attack by using your Barrier move instead. As you said, taking off Endurance is in effect damaging yourself, but as you also pointed out, you can get Endurance back. Health is gone for the battle.

It's also a mood thing. Many of OVA's Abilities and Weaknesses are similar, but not quite the same. And as you pointed out, certain attacks may have special perks that make them "undefendable." Though I think you misunderstand Defense. Defense isn't, necessarily, parrying with your sword. It covers all matters of defensive maneuvers, including just leaping out of the way.

Hope that helps!
hobbit_marco
Shelled Plebeian
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Mar 08, 2005 5:43 pm

Post by hobbit_marco »

Clay wrote:As you said, taking off Endurance is in effect damaging yourself, but as you also pointed out, you can get Endurance back. Health is gone for the battle.
Health is gone for the battle. That is a good point. If you only lose endurance in a fight, you are ready to go at full power again shortly after that. But if you lose lots of health, you're not. (unless you have someone with Heal in the party.)
Clay wrote: Though I think you misunderstand Defense. Defense isn't, necessarily, parrying with your sword. It covers all matters of defensive maneuvers, including just leaping out of the way.
I know that defense is anything to keep you from harm. But let me give an example of what I meant.

Two people are standing in a concrete place with nothing to hide.
One char has alot of defense and the other has Barrier.

If there were to explode a bomb right next to the two. How can you take a normal defense against that? You can't exactly leap out the way (unless you leap faster than the explosion, wich is highly unlikely. (of course in anime anything is possible. But not every campaign may have a high anime influence))
But the Barrier-guy can or course easily defend/absorb the damage.

What I am trying to say is. With just normal movements like dodge-ing and parry-ing etc. It's impossible to escape from some dangers. But with the Barrier you can defend against anything. It depends on the Game Master ultimatly of course.

(btw, you may see me asking alot more questions on the forum ^^. I hope you don't mind.)
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