Fellow hackers, a quick question :
Most hacks I’ve seen follow the “Twelve Actions in Three Attributes” to the letter, mostly reskinning the vanilla BitD Actions with new names, fitting the setting better. But how would you challenge that ? Do you think nine Actions (3 by 3) is too little ? What about fifteen (3 by 5) or sixteen (4 by 4) ? What are the balance issues that’d come up doing this ?
Mainly the only balance issue is resistance rolls. With 4 actions per attribute, that attribute has a range of 0-4 possible dice to roll for resistance purposes. In that sense, it’s good to keep 4 actions per resistance category, since that’s really all the attributes are.
In hacks where resistance doesn’t exist or works differently (like World of Blades), feel free to have as few or as many per category as you like.
Girl By Moonlight, I believe, has only 3 actions per attribute, but it uses the difference between being mundane vs transcendent to impact action and resistance ratings.
Consider the XP needed to increase an Action also.
I stick with the 3×4 because it seems to cover everything for me. In my hard Sci-fi hacks, I have trouble thinking of a replacement for Attune.
If you look back at the early podcasts of the Bloodletters, where they show char sheets on screen, I seem to recall that John had like 4 x 4 Actions, so if you like a different combo, there is certainly precedent. (Also kinda sad that the prior version of Skirmish was “Murder”. I miss that.)
Ah! That’s probably why p. 188 says “The player characters have sixteen actions”. I was wondering what that was counting.