-----Original Message-----
>From: Gastón Calero <janderx23@...>
>
>The basic is you have a defense action and an offense action, lucky
>ones with high DEX have additional actions. The thing is that my
>players noticed that with this, a White Hat has no chance against a
>simple vamp, and to a heroe becomes hard to defeat it. After a while,
>the damage level that the scoobies recived by fight against vamps was
>really high against the rate of damage they do against the vamps
>(thank god for those drama points to stake thru the hearth).

As has already been noted, the rule as written is as you describe it:

Everybody has one action (for attack or defense) and one defense-only action.
Characters with high Dex get additional actions, each of which is at a
cumulative penalty of -2 (-2 for the second action -4 for the third, etc.). You
can never take more actions than your Dex allows. The one exception to this is
firearms, where any character regardless of Dex, can take as many shots per
round (with a cumulative -2 to each shot after the first) as they want, up to
the amount of ammunition they have.

I agree that the multiple action rules are the weak point of Cinematic
Unisystem. The question is, (1) how do you balance encounters for Heroes and
White Hats who have wildly different numbers of actions, and (2) are there any
house rules that can help?

One thing that you just have to accept is that Dex is probably the most
important stat. A White Hat either has to accept being completely useless in
combat or keep within 2 actions of the Heroes. In our experience, Heroes
started the campaign with 2 or 3 actions and White Hats with 1. Over the course
of play, the Heroes have ended up with 3 or 4 actions and all of the White Hats
have seen the need to increase their Dex to give them 2 (which, fortunately, is
within the normal human ability range). The White Hats are going to need to buy
their Dexes up to get them two actions or sit out combats. That's just the way
the game is structured.

You've also correctly noticed that villians will need multiple actions, too.
However, swarming is a useful tactic for dealing with opponants who have more
actions than you do. This means that a bunch of low action baddies can take on
your high action Heroes, while still not overwhelming the White Hats in
one-on-one fighting. Conversely, a bunch of White Hats can take out a high
action villain by wearing down its defenses.

Generally, we've found that the ideal combat for balance purposes is a bunch of
monsters with the same number of actions as your White Hats (in our case, 1
early in the campaign, 2 later on) with a couple extra to gang up on the Heroes.
The more important villains will need even more actions if you want them to be
able to go one-on-one with the Heroes, but they'll still need a bunch of goons
(or a ton of hit points) to keep the White Hats from forcing them to use up all
their actions on defense. A monster built to fight a Hero who's allowed to
concentrate on a White Hat is going to crush her... but that's characteristic of
the whole game, not just the multiple action rules. Also, once the combat
starts to go one way, it's usually over pretty quickly -- once a Hero is no
longer out-numbered, she can pretty quickly cut a swath through the goons in
single combat. But then, that is cinematic and this is, after all, Cinematic
Unisystem.

We have modified the standard rule a bit in our game, as we've found that the
multiple action penalty hurts White Hats more than Heroes. A Hero (or
Hero-level monster) is probably going to hit a goon (or White Hat) even at -4 or
-6, but a -2 penalty can be pretty stiff for a White Hat. So we elminiated the
multiple action penalty entirely and have found it to work pretty well. Yeah,
it means that high action characters can REALLY beat up on low action
characters. But we found that, in practice, that was happening anyway.
Meanwhile, this lets 2 action White Hats get a little of thier own back. We do,
however, still apply the penalty to gunfire. I don't even remember if this is
the standard rule or a house rule, but if you're using a gun, you make one roll
which uses all your actions for the round (except your 1 defense) and then keep
subtracting 2 from that roll until you stop hitting (e.g., if you need a 16 to
hit and roll a 20, you hit with 3 shots -- at 20, 18, 16).

Greg Pearson
"We could totally do each other. I mean impersonate each other. Not... while
possessing each other's bodies. Because that would be totally creepy. Although
kinda hot. In a totally creepy way that I would never even think about."
--Drew, Slaying Solomon Episode 5.10, Slayer for a Night