Avatar: Legends - the Balance mechanic explained!

[@tokageki]

Someone really made talk-no-jutsu into a game mechanic.

[@snakesonthismondaytofriday1750]

I think the balance system can be cool for social and story moments in combat. But for combat in general i think my players would appreciate a more Blades in the Dark system.

[@krisfire]

Thats understandable, blades has a GREAT system for this stuff.

[@adnanhammedsadiq8665]

Is this game out? Cause I cant find it online at all

[@adnanhammedsadiq8665]

@@krisfire is this game coming out soon or is it already

[@krisfire]

@@adnanhammedsadiq8665 the games quick start (the basic rules) are out and you have to go to their website, submit an email and you can download it then. The full game book will be out in February. 😁

[@krisfire]

@@adnanhammedsadiq8665 the games quick start (the basic rules) are out and you have to go to their website, submit an email and you can download it then. The full game book will be out in February. 😁

[@shade8816]

Balance will indeed be a tricky aspect to grasp early on. But once it is grasped, I think it has a lot of good rpg potential.

[@OkamiHausofDreams]

Thank you so much for these videos! They are really helping me run the game smoothly.

[@krisfire]

Awesome! I’m glad their helping 😁

[@РитаВоробьёва-в2о]

You have a video explaining the "Moment of Balance" I am re-reading this paragraph several times and still do not fully understand what this action does.

[@MaVoelk]

Thanks again! Oh they just changed the way balance works in the 3.0 update

[@MaVoelk]

Just kidding.

[@krisfire]

You kid but I checked drive through RPG in a (joking) panic ready to attack my computer 😂😂😂

[@noralockhart4340]

I actually have a question. This is bound to come up in some groups, and in long campaigns it's more likely to happen, but how does this game handle PvP situations? Players and teams aren't perfect, and are bound to have moments of tension and strife.

[@krisfire]

Same as regular combat. The two people decide they’re doing combat, choose their actions and go in the order the actions dictate. Player combat is more about strategy and planning than brute force. Especially since you have access to around the same moves.

[@Jerry-bp9et]

i really dont understand how or why this affects combat, but this somehow balance mechanic is crucial to combat

[@QueenLizby]

Conceptually I think it's pretty neat, but since there's not really an easy way to test the system out right now for people who can only play online (and don't have enough income to afford all of the costs of the app they have) I'll sadly have to go without knowing for now

[@vexhia6792]

i read through the manual but im a bit confused about power scaling between characters. What does it look like when a much more powerful bending character fights a less powerful or experienced character? Why don't certain bending disciplines have advantages in certain areas (I.E. it should be easier for a water or earth bender to trap an opponent than for a fire or air bender to trap an opponent)? If a bender does not have their element nearby to use, how does that effect their approach and technique options? So many questions. What is there to stop a player from trying to do absurdly difficult feats of bending? I feel like combat gameplay will end up looking like: DM: "You see in front of you that the invading army of Earth Kingdom earth bender tanks is steadily approaching your position. What do you want to do?" Player: "I choose Smash! Stones McGee uses his earthbending skills to attack the environment and make all 100 tanks crumble into dust." DM: "You think your character could defeat 100 earthbenders in a single exchange?" Player: "Oh look! I rolled 10+, that means I accomplish my goal." How would I prevent this from happening? Sorry for the long comment ':D

[@vexhia6792]

Also I'm a bit confused with how attacks work. If a player chooses "Strike" and runs a baddie through with an icicle, would it inflict the same penalty as if another player chooses "Strike" and hits them with a gust of wind? What about if a player chooses "Strike" as a lava bender and coats a baddie in lava? Would it still have the same effect as the icicle and the wind?

[@krisfire]

There are power differences between NPCs and players, some NPC are weak and only need 1 condition to fall. Others need 5 and have 10 fatigue. Players are all all even for balance. Idc if you’re a “lava bending master” you’re hits do the same damage as the novice for balance. As you go on different players and NPCs will have different techniques that will set them apart power wise. And we don’t know if there will be mechanics like that as of yet. A lot of that comes down to GM deciding a move could inflict a status. The GM stops it. At the end of it, everything goes through the GM. They say no, it’s a no. Aside from that combat moves are targeted unless said otherwise. You wouldn’t be able to target an army but you could target a soldier. It’s the same as in DnD. Player “We’ll I rolled a nat 20, I should be able to cut the demons head off!” DM “No. because you still didn’t end all its hit points. It’s still standing and it’s the demons turn.”

[@krisfire]

A strike is a strike is a strike. You can try to impale someone, but the exhaustion/condition could be anything from an injury to the exhaustion of having to avoid it. It’s up to the GM and players to explain how things happen story wise but mechanic wise it doesn’t matter if you use ice, fire, water or lava. It’ll have the same mechanic use. By in large a lot of it will come down to players and GMs working together story wise. Both Players not trying to break and cheese the game with “it’s how my character works!” with the GM keeping things within the range of possibility for the players.

[@ROldford]

They don’t have the full GM advice in the quickstart, but other PBTA games have a concept of fictional positioning. For example, in Monster of the Week, if my character is in the building across from the monster with a sniper rifle, I don’t have to roll the Kick Some Ass move. I just do the damage, and unlike Kick Some Ass, I don’t have to worry about taking damage. (How the monster reacts is another story.) On the other hand, Dungeon World has dragons that only have 15 HP. That doesn’t seem like that much, but doing damage to it needs fictional positioning. From the book, just “attacking a [powerful] dragon… is like swinging a meat cleaver at a tank”. So how do you prevent it from happening? Look to the fiction. That character might be able to launch boulders, but 100 at once? Not likely. But if they could describe using their abilities in a clever way, they could try. It’s a bit like Aang destroying the Fire Nation Drill. He could only really try it because of all the prep they’d done, and because he knew how to do that level of Earth and Air bending.

[@EmmaMaltz]

I still don’t understand losing your balance.. what does the booklet mean when it says you have to “reset your balance to your new center.” what is a “new center” as opposed to just shifting your balance?

[@Joepug96]

Take another look at the balance track shown in the beginning of the video because I will use that as a visual here. The center of balance visually is the white diamond between Trust and Self Reliance's modifiers. So when you start the game your center of balance is dead center which happens to also be where the 0-0 modifiers are. Lets say you roleplay very trusting; maybe even a bit foolhardy. Your principle will begin to shift that way to the point where you may have a +3 to trust and a -3 to SR. If your principle is to shift away from center one more time you will leave the the balance track. That is "losing your balance" to reset you need to move your balance to your new center. Remember the "center" is the white diamond. You lost your balance by overloading the trust side. So you need to shift one diamond towards trust. So now your "new center" of balance is not 0-0 it is actually +1 Trust, -1 Self Reliance. Remember your center of balance is where you are most comfortable; that is where your character likes to be. So this explains why you can only use your "ultimate ability" moment of balance when you are at your center of balance.

[@eulermachado3968]

Loved the video, not much to add, just will re read the book to understand if a PC loses their balance and get to shift the center, where do they start - probably the new center but maybe the zero, Idk

[@ricoxkiller]

Their center shifts over one unit to the side they fell off balance.

[@PpAirO5]

I'm as scepticle as i love Avatar... and that's a lot.

[@krisfire]

You LOVE to see it 😁😁

[@PpAirO5]

@@krisfire.. I love almost everything about Avatar, but i don't know about this rpg... an Avatar rpg is would be awesome, but i don't know what to expect from this system. I'm sceptical of nature.

[@krisfire]

Well I can say this system functions really well in a storytelling environment vs a combat focused one like DnD. All my friends have been loving it for a avatar based RPG 😁

[@PpAirO5]

@@krisfire.. I guess i'll try it out someday. You write as fast as you speak 😄 i had to slow the video down to keep up 😅

[@krisfire]

I’m sure you’ll have a blast! And yea 😅😂 I’m trying to slow the speaking part down. Comments still fast tho!

[@cyborghuey]

"This unique mechanic is really involved and complicated, how do I help people understand it? Oh, I know! I'll talk so damn fast that the auto-generated subtitles/closed captioning can't even keep up with me. That is surly the best possible way to help folks understand this confusing mechanic!" In all seriousness, and I don't care if it is your schtick, S L O W D O W N ! And I'm not trying to call you out or anything, I talk way too fast at times as well. But I have learned over the years, when I am trying to convey important information (in my case such as teaching friends a new board game) I have to slow down the speed at which I talk so that they don't miss something vital. You have some really good points here and after watching it a second time (this time slowing down the video to 0.75 speed) you answered a lot of my questions that I had about the balance system. But you obviously do not have to listen to me; I'm not the one with over 8k views on a video and don't have over 5k worth of subscribers. Do what works for you, though it might not hurt to have a little thing on your page that says something along the lines of "I talk really fast. You may want to watch at 0.75 speed." Either way, good stuff, keep up the good work, and happy gaming!

[@patrickcox8990]

I really dont like how much freedom they strip from the player. If you cant actually make your characters own decisions, then whats really the point of playing a ttrpg.