Combat System Goals

    The two big goals I have for the combat system is to promote teamwork and to make positioning important. I want the players to feel rewarded for moving their character to the right place to get the flank, to expose an enemy, to protect a range guy from melee or to punish a ranged guy with melee. I want it to be similar in nature to a cover shooter where you can be punished hard for being caught in a bad position without being quite so boring. That is where the expose/exploit and posture mechanics come into play.

    In addition to that I did want to try and break the holy trinity of tank, damage, and healer. I don't want much healing to take place in combat in an effort to keep the tension always high. I do want roles however, and the four character classes will each have their own forte so to speak.

   Unstable Mutant: This dude is melee supreme. In addition he can take a beating and keep on trucking. Now while this may make him like a 'tank' he will need it to close with his enemies and survive. In addition his mechanics allow him to become really powerful but for a very random duration making him inconsistent in his performance which may be bad design but we shall see.

   Techno Marksman: His focus is on ranged damage, specializing in dealing additional exploit damage. His abilities also allow him to adapt to his enemies with bonus to hit, damage, etc. He uses the at will/encounter/daily ability system so he will burst early in the fights but his performance will taper off the longer it lasts.

   Telekinetic: This guy can bring the pain. Using special attacks he can target enemies weaker defenses, expose them, and weaken them while at the same time killing them. He just keeps going all day and with his secondary focus mechanic the longer the fight goes the stronger he gets. Bit squishy though.

   Combat Support Bot: Buffs? Check. Damage? Check. Trickery? Check. His auxiliary systems let him do some cool things like protecting the mutant before a deadly charge, or lighting up an enemy for the marksman to slaughter. And his primary systems give him some much needed, albeit limited, heavy hitting.

   So we have roles but not the typical ones. In addition everyone can deal good damage and take enough hits to do their jobs with luck. I have placed a very rough draft of the toons into the quickstart page but it needs refining and transferred onto a sheet.