Attack with DCV Penalty, then Abort (How to stop this?)

[bigbywolfe]

I never understood that quote from the rules. By RAW "aborting" to your held half action wouldn't reset your DCV anyway, your DCV only resets "at the start of your next phase". Aborting to use a held half phase still counts as part of the same phase in all respects, you don't get to "reset" penalties, you can't reassign any assigned CV's, you can't change the allocations of MPs/VPPs if you did so in the first half, etc. Specifically "reseting" your DCV is not a function of Aborting at all, it is a function of the fact that you have entered a new phase, you just did it earlier than normal.

 

As for aborting to a whole new phase to reset the penalty as a GM I would allow it in most cases. Giving up an entire phase to defend yourself is penalty enough and removing the ability to do that can be punishing to high spd/high DCV characters who rely on their DCV to survive. Remember that there is nothing that "halves" DEF like there is for DCV so if you remove the ability to abort for that you are basically saying it is just fine for Bricks to use penalty maneuvers (as they generally don't rely on their DCV anyways) but High DCV characters can't ever afford to use them. (This is also one of the reasons Bricks tend to be slower than other archetypes, they don't need to abort to survive attacks so they need fewer phases per turn to be just as effective).

 

Aborting is starting a new phase just early. It DOES allow for the reallocation of Skill levels and technically should allow for the reset of CV penalties. You are giving up your next phase to do whatever you are doing during the abort phase. If you like I CAN look up the text in 5.x and 6e that spells this out.

People always like to point out that if you Abort a held action/half phase you can't reallocate your CSLs. How often do you allocate your CSLs to OCV before[\i] attacking? You don't have to set your CSLs at the beginning of your Phase. If all you've done in your turn is a half move and all your CSLs are already allocated to OCV something strange is happening or you just need to stop declaring where you are placing your Skill Levels until you are actually going to use them.

 

EDIT: I guess you might allocate all your CSLs to DCV and half move then decide you want to Block or something when you Abort later. I get that it would be very easy to do some munchkin gaming if they were allowed to be switched more than once a phase, I just don't see it as being very influential of the Abort situation.

[Tasha]

I never understood that quote from the rules. By RAW "aborting" to your held half action wouldn't reset your DCV anyway, your DCV only resets "at the start of your next phase". Aborting to use a held half phase still counts as part of the same phase in all respects, you don't get to "reset" penalties, you can't reassign any assigned CV's, you can't change the allocations of MPs/VPPs if you did so in the first half, etc. Specifically "reseting" your DCV is not a function of Aborting at all, it is a function of the fact that you have entered a new phase, you just did it earlier than normal.

 

As for aborting to a whole new phase to reset the penalty as a GM I would allow it in most cases. Giving up an entire phase to defend yourself is penalty enough and removing the ability to do that can be punishing to high spd/high DCV characters who rely on their DCV to survive. Remember that there is nothing that "halves" DEF like there is for DCV so if you remove the ability to abort for that you are basically saying it is just fine for Bricks to use penalty maneuvers (as they generally don't rely on their DCV anyways) but High DCV characters can't ever afford to use them. (This is also one of the reasons Bricks tend to be slower than other archetypes, they don't need to abort to survive attacks so they need fewer phases per turn to be just as effective).

 

Aborting is starting a new phase just early. It DOES allow for the reallocation of Skill levels and technically should allow for the reset of CV penalties. You are giving up your next phase to do whatever you are doing during the abort phase. If you like I CAN look up the text in 5.x and 6e that spells this out.

There are a bunch of things you only get to do once in a phase. ie Allocate Skill levels (you may have put all of your Overalls into Turn mode. or made a skill roll where you used all of your overall levels etc). You can only reallocate your Multipower once a phase. So if all if your character points were put toward Movement, you couldn't suddenly reallocate them to Defense if you "Abort" your half phase delay. I was just trying to point out that there are definite limitations to aborting a half phase delay.

[TheRealDeal]

I think I have to agree with BigbyWolf on this one. If you spend half of your actions recovering from your other actions, you're paying a pretty steep price for them. And if you do so by having a really high SPD, you've really paid a high price for it. That, paired with the prohibition against aborting to an action in the same segment you've already acted, seems like it's fair to me.

You can do that in 2 ways, one is to just have the PC be a full SPD 3 in this case (real SPD is 2 with the +1 only to Abort) and just keep an eye on them and if they have not Aborted in a Turn and Phase 12 comes up for them, they must either skip it, or just use it for a defensive action they could Abort to and move on.

 

The other way is to just keep them at SPD 2 and then let them Abort 1/Turn for "free" without using up their next Phase. That way is a bit easier to track but is probably not the most technically correct way to do it.