Wings and dropping people

[Taran]

I have to agree with Sanctaphrax.  While I see the maneuvering as very useful, it doesn't make sense to be "at a dizzying height" and have the melee guy walk up to you and smack you, forcing you to use your tag to invoke your Dizzying Height aspect just to make sure he can't.

I like the Throw rule for the grapple.  I'm not sure about moving someone 1 zone being automatic.  According the lifting rules, you can't even throw anything 1 zone unless its weight is 2 levels below your might score...So it might have to be decided on the fly whether you can throw an opponent at all, and it might require a STR power.

As for throwing someone down, it'd be nice to keep some aspect of the the falling rules:

1. Armour doesn't protect from falling damage.  Instead shifts in an athletics roll adds to armour.
2. It does piles of damage (maybe reflected by a high Weapon rating?)
3. It does this damage per 10feet (which I like to translate as "per zone")
4. Did I miss anything?

Edit:  Maybe you could have the weapon damage scale based on the height.

A short fall(falling off a ladder or short wall/1 or 2 zones): 2 
A High fall(off the top of a 1 story building/ 3 zones ): 4
A Great fall: A cliff/ multi-story building): 8
A skyscraper: 16
A skydiving accident gone wrong: 32
Falling from the edge of the Atmosphere: 64

I'm just throwing out adjectives and numbers, to give you a sense of what I mean.  Obviously, they would need to be hammered out.  I'd also use those values for falling damage, in general.

So for a grapple, you'd throw someone 1 zone AND down a Great Fall

[Sanctaphrax]

I figure that the very abstract nature of zones can justify the ability to move someone a zone. Maybe you drag them over to the next zone before kicking them away and running back.

As for falling, I don't see any reason to preserve anything from the falling rules.

Measuring damage based on feet fallen is pretty awful, because nobody should have to keep track of that stuff. Zones is better, but it seems iffy in non-combat situations.

I don't see why falling should be any more damaging or dangerous than gunshots and monster bites and the like.

And making defence rolls provide armour removes the distinction between accuracy and weapon rating entirely for no benefit. If you want to do that, just make "weapon rating" add to the attack roll. I'd rather not do that, though, because it seems too brutal.

As for the weapon values, that stuff is giving me trouble. It seems logical for attack accuracy to scale based on height fallen, because it's harder to land safely from a big fall. But then maybe you'll end up with a situation where falling is more dangerous than being thrown downwards.

[atavistic]

I keep finding myself coming back to this paragraph in the Falling rules.

The falling rules are not an invitation for super-strong characters and spellcasters to start picking people up and tossing them to a great height, only to fall down and take egregious falling damage. That’s an attack, and the stress dealt by any falling component is already included in the stress of the attack. If your
force-bolt “uppercuts” a guy so he flies up and then falls back down with a crunch of bone, the damage dealt by the attack itself accounts for the “fall back down” part—essentially, in this case, falling is a special effect, a detail of color. Additionally, knocking characters off of high places should have plenty of escape clauses.

Add in the actual mechanics of physically lifting an object up off the ground and you really end up needing a lot of strength, maybe even Super-strong character kinds of strength.

he isn’t really going to be able to move much more than a zone carrying something that’s equal to his base Might. A character can carry something two levels below his Might for a short distance (allowing him to make a sprint roll restricted by Might, with the item’s difficulty as a border value). He can carry something four levels below his Might with no real penalty or can toss it a distance of one zone. Something six levels below his Might could be used as a thrown weapon.

Note the actual movement that you may take during a grapple is only one shift, this means you have to beat the lifting value of the object by 4 to negate the carried item border value.

if you so choose, you can freely make an unopposed attack, movement, or maneuver on your opponent as a supplemental action, which has a value of 1 shift.
In other words, whenever your turn to roll the grapple comes up again, you can automatically choose to inflict a one-shift hit to the target, drag the target with you one zone, or inflict a maneuver (like Tangled Up), and then you must roll the grapple at –1 (the other action you take is considered supplementary because it
doesn’t require a roll).

[Sanctaphrax]

As you pointed out yourself, a grapple need not involve physically carrying someone. Given that the text says you may automatically drag the target with you one zone, I think it's reasonable to assume that you may automatically drag the target with you one zone.

The part of the falling rules you quoted is sensible, and goes a long way towards preventing the badness of the falling rules from infecting the rest of the game. But it does precisely nothing to alleviate the need to work out what happens mechanically when a flying grappler drops someone while in an aerial zone.

[Taran]

I keep finding myself coming back to this paragraph in the Falling rules.

The falling rules are not an invitation for super-strong characters and spellcasters to start picking people up and tossing them to a great height, only to fall down and take egregious falling damage. That’s an attack, and the stress dealt by any falling component is already included in the stress of the attack. If your
force-bolt “uppercuts” a guy so he flies up and then falls back down with a crunch of bone, the damage dealt by the attack itself accounts for the “fall back down” part—essentially, in this case, falling is a special effect, a detail of color. Additionally, knocking characters off of high places should have plenty of escape clauses.

Add in the actual mechanics of physically lifting an object up off the ground and you really end up needing a lot of strength, maybe even Super-strong character kinds of strength.

he isn’t really going to be able to move much more than a zone carrying something that’s equal to his base Might. A character can carry something two levels below his Might for a short distance (allowing him to make a sprint roll restricted by Might, with the item’s difficulty as a border value). He can carry something four levels below his Might with no real penalty or can toss it a distance of one zone. Something six levels below his Might could be used as a thrown weapon.

Note the actual movement that you may take during a grapple is only one shift, this means you have to beat the lifting value of the object by 4 to negate the carried item border value.

if you so choose, you can freely make an unopposed attack, movement, or maneuver on your opponent as a supplemental action, which has a value of 1 shift.
In other words, whenever your turn to roll the grapple comes up again, you can automatically choose to inflict a one-shift hit to the target, drag the target with you one zone, or inflict a maneuver (like Tangled Up), and then you must roll the grapple at –1 (the other action you take is considered supplementary because it
doesn’t require a roll).

This is why I said that in order to throw someone using a grapple, at the very least, you have to be strong enough.  We're trying to design it as an attack - it's just an attack using Might instead of fists and it ends a grapple.

And so far, we've used the grapple rules exactly per RAW.

I have wings and I can carry a human sized object/person because I am strong enough.  I grapple and, on the next exchange, use my supplemental to move one zone - it just happens to be up.

There still should be something for falling, though.  Why fly up and drop people if it's just as easy (actually easier)to throw them around, or punch them in the face?
1.  Because it's cool
2. It brings you and your target away from melee
3. Falling hurts?

I figure that the very abstract nature of zones can justify the ability to move someone a zone. Maybe you drag them over to the next zone before kicking them away and running back.

I'm not sure.  There's already a way to move them one zone.  I guess you're trading it off for the risk of "missing".  I really think that you need to be strong enough.

As for falling, I don't see any reason to preserve anything from the falling rules.

Measuring damage based on feet fallen is pretty awful, because nobody should have to keep track of that stuff. Zones is better, but it seems iffy in non-combat situations.

I don't see why falling should be any more damaging or dangerous than gunshots and monster bites and the like.
As for the weapon values, that stuff is giving me trouble. It seems logical for attack accuracy to scale based on height fallen, because it's harder to land safely from a big fall. But then maybe you'll end up with a situation where falling is more dangerous than being thrown downwards.

Not all falls are more dangerous than gunshots and monster bites.  The big falls definitely are.
Falling can and, in some situations should, be more dangerous than being thrown down.  IF you fall from a skyscraper, it'll probably be more damaging than being thrown down a 10 foot pit.

And making defence rolls provide armour removes the distinction between accuracy and weapon rating entirely for no benefit. If you want to do that, just make "weapon rating" add to the attack roll. I'd rather not do that, though, because it seems too brutal.

If you fall, the ground won't miss.  Therefore, there is no target roll, but there still needs to be a way to cushion the damage.  That is why Athletics gives the armour.

[Sanctaphrax]

I'm not sure.  There's already a way to move them one zone.  I guess you're trading it off for the risk of "missing".  I really think that you need to be strong enough.

Why?

Not all falls are more dangerous than gunshots and monster bites.  The big falls definitely are.
Falling can and, in some situations should, be more dangerous than being thrown down.  IF you fall from a skyscraper, it'll probably be more damaging than being thrown down a 10 foot pit.

For any gunshot, there's a more dangerous fall. And for any fall there's a more dangerous gunshot. Point is, I see no reason to make falls an especially dangerous thing.

The issue is not that falling off a skyscraper might be more dangerous than being thrown down a pit, it's that being thrown downwards from a skyscraper might be less dangerous than falling off of one.

If you fall, the ground won't miss.  Therefore, there is no target roll, but there still needs to be a way to cushion the damage.  That is why Athletics gives the armour.

There is no difference between cushioning an attack with armour and cushioning it with a defence roll unless there's a weapon rating involved. And if you're cushioning everything with armour then weapon rating bonuses are exactly the same as accuracy bonuses.

(I wouldn't bother rolling fall attacks either, by the way. I'd use a flat accuracy.)

Just because it hits you narratively doesn't mean it hits you mechanically. And vice versa, of course.

[Taran]

Why?

Because if I had 4 Might and told the GM that I wanted to pick up a car and throw it at my opponent, he'd say no. 

By your rules, I could move a car-sized enemy 1 zone and try to target another enemy doing damage.  So then people are going to go around grappling cars and throwing them on people.

There is no difference between cushioning an attack with armour and cushioning it with a defence roll unless there's a weapon rating involved. And if you're cushioning everything with armour then weapon rating bonuses are exactly the same as accuracy bonuses.

Just because it hits you narratively doesn't mean it hits you mechanically. And vice versa, of course.

That makes sense.  I don't think I'd completely understood what you'd meant.

[Sanctaphrax]

Well, you can already drag car-sized enemies around. Using them as weapons to hit other people doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me. Especially since you need to beat their Might.