New Wild Animal, New Take Root

[plasmoid]

Hi all,
for a long while I've been toying with streamlining the negatraits, to make the rules simpler to remember. I'll admit that I probably went overboard when wanting to reduce all negatraits to a 2+ roll at the beginning of an action.

Still, 2 of the negatraits that do not follow this pattern are also the ones that are least balanced, and has caused the most concern among coaches.
I'm talking about Wild Animal and Take Root.

---Take Root---
Having an entire half riding on a 4+ seems a bit extreme. Using a halfling team as an example my underline the point. With 2 treemen, then a full 50% of the matches will have either coach at a serious disadvantage.

My suggestion for a new Take Root is this:
Roll d6 after declaring an action with this player. On a roll of 1 the player can not move or be moved out of its current square, until a touchdown is scored or the half ends.


---Wild Animal---
We've seen WA evolve over the past many years, getting increasingly convoluted and devastating. A rookie WA is best used only for "dead turns" until it has acquired some skills. This is hardly desirable. The report from resurrection in BBMag4, where a coach had to keep his own WA down all half indicates to me that something is wrong.

Rather than tweaking the rules text yet again, I think that it would be a good idea to redo WA from scratch. IMO, this would also mean that the WA's should lose frenzy, which has actually developed from the old WA description.

My suggestion for a new Wild Animal is this:
Roll a d6 after declaring an action with this player. On a roll of 1, you are allowed to re-declare. However, if the player does not manage to cause an injury roll, then his team suffers a turn over at the end of the WA's action.

(If this is too harsh, then the criteria could be just an armor roll).
(Note that a stunned WA's action is best saved for last).
(BTW - if you wanted a harsh negatrait, so that frenzy could be kept, keep the description but not the die roll: i.e. the WA must cause carnage each turn).

How do you like these?
Martin

[franck_le_grand]

On a roll of 1 the player can not move or be moved out of its current square, until a touchdown is scored or the half ends.

But if a player on your team is having a chainsaw he can cut him free. Roll for inj. on the treeman...

[Munkey]

Does the Wild Animal still have to go first?

If not then this will mainly mean that they are the last players to move in a turn.

Without frenzy this is probably deterrent enough. It does create the problem that you are making an extra dice roll a turn often for no effect but this is no big deal.

[Starfish]

how about this:


Original Wild Animal desc.

Wild Animal
The player has a nasty tendency to get a bit carried away
during a match. Wild Animals must take their actions first of
all during a turn (they must be activated). If you take an action
with another player before moving all Wild Animals, then your
opponent can call you for illegal procedure exactly as if you
had forgotten to move the Turn marker. In addition, if a
standing Wild Animal is adjacent to a standing player from the
opposing team then they must take either a Block or Blitz
action, and throw a block at an adjacent player. Wild Animals
can never receive assists when they Block or Foul; they are
simply too out of control for other players to help them out.


Amendment:
Players can only assist against a Wild Animal if they have the guard skill.
(As few players start with the guard skill (none on the official teams) this
would allow the wild animal to reach 6SPP and get his block skill before anyone
has guard and stop teams from 'playing the wild animal and not the ball'.

Fluff reason:
Wild Animals attack in such a crazy way that it is nearly impossible for players
to help a teammate who is being attacked by one.


If this amendment makes the wild animal too powerful then add in the following:

If an enemy player is lying prone next to the wild animal then on a roll of 1-3
the wild animal must declare a foul action on that player (and can be sent off
as a result).

[Mestari]

Take root seems like a good suggestion, WA does not.


My take on the WA skill:

Wild animal
--------------
Fluff: Wild animals are unpredictable players and are hard to control. Games including a WA are characterised by the coach constantly screaming commands like "This way!", "That way", "The ball, not the BOB, the BALL!", "STOP, STAY!"!

Rule: To represent this, the WA's have to move first and take actions as follows: For each square that the WA moves, the coach puts the throw-in template over the WA pointing to a direction he desires. A d6 decides to which square the WA moves to.
If the roll indicates that he'd move to a player(friend or foe), the WA blocks him. After the block, he can carry on moving and thus block multiple times per turn. If he blocks during his movement, the teams blitz is wasted. If he moves to a prone player, he fouls him, thus ending his action, and the teams foul is wasted. If he has the ball and hasn't blocked or fouled he can end his action by a pass or hand-off, thus using the teams corresponding action. In other cases the WA moves his full movement plus any gfi's if the coach chooses so.

-------------

How about that?

[Starfish]

Mestari, I don't like the idea of having to roll a dice for every single square I move a wild animal. It would all get a bit random for moving and you could end up having to make dodge rolls that you don't want to with the WA.

Slows the game down too much with all those dice rolls too IMO.

any comments on my suggestion?

[plasmoid]

Hi Mestari,
kind of like the CJ squigs?

The CJ squigs didn't have to dodge though. Should the WA have to - 'cause that might just make them useless (again).

Also, although I must admit that it clears up some potential problems, I personally don't like forcing any particular player to be moved first.

Martin

[MickeX]

To me, Plasmoid's Take Root and Starfish's Wild Animal seems like they'd work really good. Takes care of the problem without making things the least complicated.

[Marcus]

Change "must block" to "must block or forfiet the WA's action" and it's fine.

[Furelli]

Amendment:
Players can only assist against a Wild Animal if they have the guard skill.
(As few players start with the guard skill (none on the official teams) this
would allow the wild animal to reach 6SPP and get his block skill before anyone
has guard and stop teams from 'playing the wild animal and not the ball'.

The whole playing the wild animal and not the ball is not changed a jot as there is still the, "I have a player next to your WA therefore you have to block or blitz him"
What exactly would this amendment change?

Furelli.

[Mestari]

Hi Mestari,
kind of like the CJ squigs?

Pretty much, except that the WA's wouldn't be as devastating as they don't have Claw/RSC (whichever it was that the squigs had automatically).

Mestari, I don't like the idea of having to roll a dice for every single square I move a wild animal. It would all get a bit random for moving and you could end up having to make dodge rolls that you don't want to with the WA.
Slows the game down too much with all those dice rolls too IMO.

Ok, can't really say anything else against the extra dice roll arguments except that there aren't too many WA's on any given team and they won't cause too many rolls. After all, EXP aging does introduce a lot of rolls and that doesn't seem to be a problem.
As for the random and unwanted dodging argument: EXACTLY! That's what I'm looking for - they're wild animals, after all!

[Krinosy]

Why not cut the crap and use an established rule to save on paragraphs:

Wild Animal
At the start of a team's turn with a Wild Animal on the field, roll a D6: on a result of 2-6 the Wild Animal may be used as normal that turn, however on a result of 1 the player has gone out of control! Until the Wild Animal manages to roll a 2 or over at the start of his turn he moves and acts in exactly the same way as a Goblin Fanatic with a Ball & Chain.

Perhaps not the creative of solutions, but it has the huge advantage of using an established BB rule.

[Styrofoam King]

While not Take Root or Wild Animal, is it okay if I bring up OFAB for just a second?

To save of difficult rules, what if Vampires had not a totally new skill but Bonehead? Treat it under a new name, Anemic or something. the Vampires are too weak from lack of blood or exposure to sunlight that they must stop to collect themselves. Meanwhile they may not make any actions and have no tackle zone.

[Mestari]

Styrofoam King:

Look at their stats - with those stats Bonehead is not nearly negative enough. There is no real setback involved for failing the bonehead roll as there is for failing the COFAB roll.
And besides, COFAB is really simple.

[Kraff]

During a block, don't you halve the STR of a player who has lost their TZ? I thought I had read that somewhere but I don't recall where. Not that that would really make Bonehead bad enough for the current vampires.

Anyway, I had a question about the proposed Take Root. If the Treeman is knocked over, would that free him from being rooted? Sure seems like he would have to be uprooted to be knocked over.

I think I also prefer a 'Don't-roll-a-one' version of WA like what Krinosy proposed except that on a failure the WA has to block and adjacent opponent or Blitz the nearest one, making dodges if needed, if there are no opponents adjacent. Alternately, on a failure the WA could also be forced to block a teammate if no opponents are adjacent or it simply blocks nearest teammate on a failure as the WA forgets where he is or what team he is on.