Change is Progress

After a rather successful week of playtesting, we've made the first round of major changes to Public Beta versions of SARPS. Received enough great feedback to start tweaking and modifying, finding things we wouldn't have found by ourselves (kind of the same as why you can't proof read your own work).

Change log is as follows:

Archetypes

• Now all Archetypes receive 1 free Bump on their Skills, on top of +1 to each Skill at Generation. Without this, they were kind of meaningless.

Skills

• Removed alternative references to Combat Skill as Combat Style. Clarified the Combat Skill base skill in descriptions

Combat

• Removed requirement to 'Declare Actions' and removed the reference to it in the Order of Combat.
• Highest Initiative simply acts first, and may delay their actions
• Categorised Actions into Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Actions; Primary were main actions, Secondary remains the same, Tertiary are free actions.
• All Primary and Secondary Actions produce Slides on subsequent actions, regardless of which type.
• Added the Execute Exploit Action; previously the Bump/Slide economy was left a little vague, Exploits are ways to use a character's Skills in conjunction with an attack to grant a Bump. Exploit Actions can be opposed, and don't add a Slide to subsequent actions like regular actions do.
• Shields allow for the Block Defence to be performed as if holding a weapon with the Fast trait.
• Weapon Skills have their effects removed, these will now be added as Traits on individual weapons. Weapon Skill now simply act much as proficiencies, and detail which attribute is used with the weapons.
• Burst Fire and Indirect Fire have had the penalty removed and changed to allowing anyone targeting them to Execute an Exploit with an Intelligence based Combat Skill check.
• Mounted Combat allows the rider to move 1 Range Category as a Tertiary Action instead of a Secondary.
• Unarmed Attacks work much like untrained attacks do.
• Untrained attacks (always a tricky mechanic in an RPG system) now simply use the Combat Skill base skill and suffer a Choke.
• First Aid is updated to match the previous change of damage per Wound. Now 3 successes on an Intelligence based Academics check is required to heal 1 Wound, and 1 per damage during combat.

Equipment

• Updated the sample equipment list to include more traits since the weapon skills had them removed.
• Added a few more entries because I could.
• Tweaked Wealth success requirements for purchasing items. We're sill not 100% sold on the Wealth system and but may end up just leaving there for those that don't care for book keeping coins.
• Added the Slow, Armour Piercing and Bump on Exploit traits; Slow provides an additional Slide on subsequent actions, Armour Piercing removes Slides on armour and Bump on Exploit provides a Bump...on...Exploits...yeah, thought we didn't have to explain that one.

Playtesters, expect the newest version in your inboxes soon, this time they're amended with a version number for reference, which is the date of the update in day/month/year format.

If you find any references in the rules that don't make sense, flag it as it's probably something we missed after we made the changes. Keep it coming in!