Rules:Speed Statistics

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Speed is often one of the most impressive aspects of powered fighting. With excesses of it, a person can zip around their peers, avoid taking hits, and be impossible to avoid themselves. Those who lack speed must often rely on a steadfast defense, instead. These statistics are based on speed, and use the same unit of measure for their scores. All of them are, one way or another, based on a character's power level(s).

Speed

Speed, of course, is the core speed statistic. It describes how quickly any person or object is moving, or can move (if referred to outside of combat). A speed score of 1 does not denote anything in particular; you cannot reliably translate speed score to real, measurable velocity. However, any speed score below 50 is considered "mortal" speed -- a speed that any person -- even unempowered people -- can perceive. Everything above that level is considered a powered speed; unempowered people cannot perceive it. Speed scores are merely used to compare to other speed or speed-based scores to determine which is quicker, which reaches a destination first, or if one can keep an eye on the other.

Any time you make something of importance to combat move, you should denote what speed it is moving at. Most attacks performed in a post have their speed scores listed at the end of the post, in brackets, after an at sign (@). If you see a line indicating [[ 300 @ 500 ]] then 300 would be the damage of the attack, whereas 500 would be the speed of the attack.

Please check with the rules page for your character's power type or the technical details of a technique you wish to use to find out what the speed of something in particular is.

Attack vs. Defense

While speed is very important to super-powered combat, it is not everything. If an attacking move (a thrown punch, for example) is faster or slower than a defending move (such as dodging), that does not mean the attacking move will necessarily hit. Instead, it merely gives the defender an idea of likelihood of an attack landing. In AltDBZ, a person receiving an attack always dictates whether that attack actually strikes, and if it makes any difference, how. This is a priveledge of trust; players are expected to use their best judgement to help make a fight scene fun by being fair with taking hits.

Generally speaking, when an attacking move and a defending move have the same speed score, they each have about an equal (50%) chance of prevailing over the other -- the attack landing, or the defending move working. As one side of the conflict becomes faster than the other, that side becomes more likely to succeed, until it becomes so much greater than the other that only a fluke can prove otherwise. For instance, if an attacking move is twice as fast as a defending move, there is generally only about a 1~2% chance the defense will work. There is always at least some tiny chance that the smaller of two speeds will win in a conflict, but as the possibility becomes more and more remote, the player who decides to take it falls under more scrutiny, and is expected to properly describe how almost impossible such a risk was. Failing to abide by these rules of courtesy can cause a player to be alienated from others, labelled as a bad roleplayer, or even reported to staff for disciplinary action, if the abuse continues to occur.

One factor that can tilt the tide of a conflict is distance. If someone is attacking at range (such as with a gun, or a ki blast), it will take the attack longer to arrive at the destination than if it was launched in hand-to-hand combat. This gives the defender time to see the attack and react, and as such, the likelihood of ranged attacks striking their targets decreases reasonably with distance.

Restrictions

A character cannot voluntarily move, as a whole or in part, faster than they can see, regardless of statistics stating they can do so. The only exception is through psionic senses, which are considered to be sufficiently accurate and detailed to act as a second, more powerful eyesight. In this case, the higher score between the character's psionic senses and the character's eyesight score determine the fastest their body can move.

This does not apply to ranged attacks, which can move however quickly they have been allowed to move by their individual rules without regard of eyesight or senses.

Detection

There are two kinds of "detection" statistics: Eyesight, and Senses. Each determines a character's ability to pick up on and track something (whether it is a character, an attack, or some other entity) as that thing moves. Each performs this service for the character in a different way, but both have a given speed score that determines how quickly something can move before they are no longer able to perceive it accurately.

Eyesight

The Eyesight statistic measures ability to follow quickly moving objects with one's eyes. Unlike Senses statistics, Eyesight depends on actually looking in the right direction, which can be a significant handicap. In most cases, eyesight does not detect energy, only actual visual cues, so a number of things can interfere with eyesight, whether it's simply hiding behind something, blending into the environment, transparency, or overwhelming the eyes, such as with pitch darkness, or a bright light. However, almost everything that matters can usually be seen somehow, whereas other senses may miss large categories of things completely.

For most characters (excluding psions), eyesight determines how quickly a character can bodily move (see the Restrictions section above for details).

Most characters, regardless of power type, have an eyesight score equal to all of their power levels added together. Nameks specifically have an eyesight score one and a half (1.5x) times that.

Senses

Many power wielders in AltDBZ can often sense the particular "energy signature" that many other power wielders and their effects give off. These signatures show up as blips on a mental radar for the detecting character, who can use this information to help track down their foes, or things that may endanger them. Not all characters have a form of energy sensing, however. Detecting energy is also generally a messy business, and does not convey some crucial details like the exact positioning of an approaching enemy, or what an energy attack looks like. However, sensing is considered to be constantly at work, detecting in all directions at once, and are usually not (as) hindered by obstructions like walls or trees that may interfere with eyesight.

Psions, in particular, have extremely powerful senses, which can pick out almost every energy signature in existence, including body heat. They can feel out objects and matter around them with astounding clarity as well, allowing their paranormal senses to actually entirely surpass their eyesight, as far as combat detection is concerned. See the Restrictions section above for details.

Note that, except to psions, some energy sources are so small to characters that they are difficult to detect when they are moving at super-powered speeds. Generally, any signature score equal to or less than 10% of the sum of all the detector's power levels cannot be accurately sensed while they are moving at greater than mortal speeds.

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