Jump Factor

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Revision as of 03:00, 23 December 2010

Jump Factor is a derived statistic, used as the top row of a lookup table for jumping distances. It is derived from Agility but heavily normalized, and is affected by Fleetness, and by Spells.

Subject

A character's Jump Factor equals (Agility+6)/3 round to nearest (for Humans and most Humanoid-shaped creatures, anyway), making it a heavily normalized derived statistic.

A character with Agility 9 would have a JF of 5, and a character with Agility -3 would have a JF of 1, while an average person has a JF of 3.

Currently there is no ruling on Jump Factor for non-humanoid-shaped characters, but it is possible that one is not badly needed. For instance, cats have an automatic high Fleetness and a higher average Agility than Humans, resulting in a high JF without the cat character creator needing to do anything, and likewise elephants have a very low average Agility and tend towards an abysmal Fleetness, so their JF will naturally be low.

Giving an ad hoc +1 JF to cats and very similar creatures (probably should not be givne to dogs; they get many of the same effects of a cat from Agility and Fleetness already), and an arbitrary ad hoc -1 or -2 JF to bovines, elephants and similar creatures, would be good, but is probably not critically necessary.

Jump Factor requires the combat reference sheet (which also contains the Action Point cost sheet) for jump distance lookup. The distance given is for a horizontal jump, and must be divided by 3 to get the vertical jump height. Running jumps give an RD bonus to the Jumping Skill roll.

Advice

If you want to jump around a lot, you need a high Jumping Skill, and also a favourrable Fleetness, which you get by having a favourable Leg Strength to Size ratio (or Leg Strength to Frame ratio - the Size rules will undergo some important changes soon, bu it's not yet clear how exactly they'll change) and by not encumbering yourself with armour, gear or heavy weapons. Fleetness affects jumping twice, first by giving you a bonus to your Jump Factor, and secondly by giving an RD modifier to your Jumping Skill (which is an Agility-Heavy Skill, thus it uses the more extreme of the two RD modifiers).

A good Agility helps, but it only helps a little directly. Agility 5 to 7 gives you a Jump Factor of 4, and Agility 8 or 9 (or up to 10 if your species can have it) gives you a JF of 5. If you can have Agility 11, you get a JF of 6. The main benefit of a high Agility is that it increases your Aptitud for the Jumping Skill.

Please note

There are several Spells and Item Abilities that gives you a bonus to Jump Factor, but no item Enchantments can do this; at best items can be Enchated to cast the JF-improving Spells and Item Abilities on you.

Spells and Item Abilities can sometimes substitute for equipment, for instance a light staff (or a Lightened heavy staff) can be an effective weapon if temporarily boosted with the Shillelagh I or II Item Ability. Same goes for a wooden sword. The abysmal Armour Penetration ability of wooden weapons can be slightly mitiated by a Damage Bonus Enchantment. Many such Spells and Item Abilities can also enhance heavier weapons, of course, although Shillelagh only works on balanced and wooden weapons.

Likewise, Spells and Item Abilities can give you a survival edge if you're not wearing armour, although many of these synergize with armour, so as with weapon loadout it's a choice between travelling light, so that you can get the benefits of good Fleetness (including a higher Jump Factor and better RD for Jumping), or using heavier gear that lets you deal more damage and protects you better.

Mini-FAQ

Omitted for now.

The world

Jump Factor is only one statistic among many that makes armour choice a difficult and non-obvious one, in the setting. Fleetness affects more important stats, such as Dodge and even most other combat skills, although most of the others are Agility-light.

World impact

In large-scale stratetic engagements, heavy armour is still a good idea, but in lighter and more mobile combat, especially in tricksy and/or unexpected enviroments, the choice of travelling light is vindicated. Being able to jump up onto or over obstables can be occasionally helpful, and many characters are aware of this. Professional grave robbers even more so than most other adventurer types.

The Ärth setting

The Ärth setting is unremarkable in this regard, at it has the same concerns as any other Sagatafl setting, the choice between travellng light or carrying heavy war gear, and with warriors who choose to travel light rarely doing it so because a high JF is their main priority.

Design Notes

It seems to me highly valuable to have an actual stat that magic and various other effects can interact with, so that a jumping-improving Spell can give a flat numerical bonus to this, Jump Factor, instead of a more cumbersome percentual bonus to jump distances.

It does require a lookup table, but hopefully that table will be useable for a few things beside Jumping, eventually. Also note that not having a table would be silly, because any formulaic conversion of Jump Skill Roll outcomes to jump distance will produce results that are wildly incongruous with how the real world works. The base outcome of a decent but not good Jump roll should be 3 hexes (6 meters), and with the coarse-grainedness of the hex map scale chosen, it will be difficult to get much more than 4 hexes for a character who doesn't have supernatural Attributes or is boosted by Spells or Item Abilities.

Other uses for the Jump Factor table

Not much of an idea, so far. Maybe something to do with Haggling? Instead of hexes jumped, it's percentage modification of final price? Doubled for very haggle-able goods, halved for not-very-haggleable goods, and quartered for absurd haggle situations (e.g. trying to haggle over the price of a single pitcher of beer). It's non-obvious to me that this is a very good use of the table, and Haggling also really requires an Opposed Roll, so probably if something like this is implemented, Haggling will use only a small mid-section of the Jumping Table.

Analysis of expectable values

There should really be two Jump Factor tables, one wide table taking into account the full span of Jump Factors in a campaign with JF-boosting magics, and another using only the more expectable section of the first table. [insert analysis here]

Quick mini-glossary

Agility-Heavy. Denotes a Skill roll (or sometimes other roll) that is heavily affected by the character's Fleetness, thus using the more extreme of the two Fleetness-based RD modifiers. Examples incudes the Dodge, Jumping and Acrobatics Skills, as well as all unarmed combat Skills. Agility-Light. Denotes a Skill roll (or sometimes oter roll) that is somewhat affected by the character's Fleetness, using the less extreme of the two Fleetness-based RD modifiers. For many Fleetness values, this modifier will be +0 RD. Examples include most melee combat skills. Fleetness. A statistic that fluctuates depending on the character's state. Its base is the ratio between the character's Leg Strength and either Size or Frame (see further down), which is relatively fixed, but on top of this it is modified by the load carried, including separate modifiers for armour or heavy clothing, heavy weaponry carried (a sword or heavy staff gives -1 Fleetness), a shield, and other gear carried (called encumbrance). This modifier is always in the downwards direction. Magic tends not to improve Fleetness, but can instead improve it indirectly by increasing Strength or more specifically Leg Strength, or by directly affecting some of the statsthat are affected by Fleetness. Each Fleetness value modifies numerous other statistics, such as two RD modifiers (Agi-H an Agi-L, see above), Jump Factor, movement distance, in such a way that any time Fleetness goes up or down by 1, at least one of these statistics are modified, so that a character is always penalized, in some way, for encumbering himself more, and is always rewarded, in some way, for reducing his load carried. Frame. A new Secondary Attribute that will perhaps replace Size. It will function in somewhat the same way, and the specific differeces are currently unavailable due to a severe computer malfunction. Size. A secondary Attribute that will probably be replaced by Frame. Size defines the "skeletal size" of the character, and is thus independent of the amount of fatty tissue that the character has (as defined by Advantages and DisAdvanages such as Skinny, Overweight and Fat) and by the amount of muscle tissue (as defined by the Strength Secondary Attribute and its Sub-Attributes). Size serves to cap Strength, with base Strength as well as both Sub-Attributes(Arm Strength and Leg Strength) being unable to be higher than 2xSize, except in supernatural cases, e.g. the character Spiderman from the Marvel comics universe, or indeed many Undead such as Vampires.

See also

Fleetness Agility Jumping Skill Jumping Table