Timing

[etherial]

A couple of timing questions for you'ns.

1)

Free Actions seem to fall into two basic categories: Abilities that alter or replace other Effects or Tests (Crushing Blow, Great Leap, Tenacious Weave, Wound Balance, etc.) and Abilities Abilities that Trigger off of other Abilities or events (Avoid Blow, Danger Sense, Life Check, Momentum Attack, etc.).

Simple Actions all seem to be things you do during your turn except Dead Fall. The obvious best use for Dead Fall to me is immediately after you take Damage from an Attack or Environmental Effect. Does this strike anyone else as an error, that Dead Fall should have been a Free Action? I remember discussing Dead Fall a while back but I my forum searches haven't found that discussion.

2)

How do you resolve Spell and Talent Durations that last in Rounds? There are several different possible interpretations, but each has different weird side effects, especially as they relate to Initiative rolls in subsequent rounds.

A) Carry Effect over to the same Initiative tick the next Round. Has the advantage of being relatively simple.

B) Round Effect down. A Duration of "1 Round" lasts until the end of the current Round and that's it. This makes the most sense for Spells that have a Duration of "1 Round" (Really, why wasn't that corrected to "Instant" in 20 years?), but doesn't work for Talents and Spells with a Duration of "Rank Rounds" or "1 Round per Success".

C) Round Effect up. A Duration of "2 Rounds" lasts until the end of the current Round and then for 2 full Rounds afterward. This makes the most sense for Spells that have an extended Duration, but doesn't work for Talents like Taunt. B and C also have the advantage of being easy to clean up.

D) Apply Effect separately for each Target. A Duration of "2 Rounds" affects each Target on their Action twice. This makes the most sense for Talents like Taunt, but will inevitably result in some characters being affected long after it has ended on others, and doesn't effectively take into account Debuffs that reduce Defenses and Armor Ratings.

E) ???

[Telarus_KSC]

Let me address Dead Fall (& think about the rest). I see Dead Fall as a "campy" death-scene performance. Um, think Paul Reubens at the very end of the first Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie as an extreme example. But basically, when the turn order gets to you, you go "Aaaarrgh! OOooh, erk..." and keel over. It's a Simple action so you can then reserve your action and act later when no-one is paying attention, reserve action to act first on a subsequent round, etc. It is a Talent (no skill version) so it's supposed to be an active illusion, but not something that takes your full attention like Spellcasting would.