PUCS Hand to Hand Skills Added

The tweaking continues! During the latest melee the need for some additional Hand to Hand skills was realized. Two skills were added: Combination Punch, Flying Kick or for the summary see:
Skills listing.

I think we are going to see a lot more skills popping into the Hand to Hand category. There is a lot of interest there lately. The bruise vs wound damage is working out really well.

Minor Tweaks

Spring play testing has concluded, sadly with the death of 2/3rds of the party.  Oops.  Players and GMs a like still have some trouble accessing risk/threat it seems.  Oh well that is why we do playing testing!  Some conclusions were made based on the latest round.  

Combined Actions

The combined actions worked.  The penalty is steep but balanced and it played out fairly.

Strength Bonus

This was significant change from the previous version, it also played out well.  More often then not it had little effect, however on  a few occasions it had tremendous impact.  In a way its like a critical hit from D20, but with a much broader range of results and higher rate of occurrence.  BEWARE THE STRONG FOE ;-)

Magic in Melee

Weather by design or by omission (no one is quite certain),  the rules stated that spell cast failure did not count as a spell action.  This made for some very interesting melee which all agreed was entertaining.  For example a man charging down a hill, holding out sword & shield while screaming like a banshee and casting Magic Missile every second.  He failed every second but the last one (combined action: casting and double move) but afterward all agreed that at Magic Missile level 1, he was game-ing the system a bit.  So now a failed cast counts as a spell action.  See Magic in Melee. 

The summer has been busy, new family members, a cross country move and vacations.  However play testing continues just at a slower pace.