I've written about Impairing in Mythic Bastionland, but what's the plan with this tricky little mechanic in Intergalactic? Well first let's go back to the start.
Impaired was born in Into the Odd as a catchall mechanism to make somebody's attacks worse, reducing their attack to a mere d4 damage. Its opposite was Enhanced, which increases the attack to d12 damage. There are a few key points that make it a good fit for Into the Odd:
Attackers generally roll a single die in combat, with most weapons sitting between d6 and d10. Even a pair of swords gets mashed together into a single d8. Altering the size of this die is an easy, tangible thing to understand.
Every attack contributes to the damage, so even if you roll a 1 or 2 on your Impaired d4, you're still chipping away. Even if Impaired, a group of attackers ganging up on a single target can do serious damage.
Impaired is framed as something that can be applied situationally, not something that you can reliably impose on an enemy. It's meant to evoke the feeling of "urgh, this sucks, I want to change the situation so I'm no longer Impaired".
We'll come back to that last one.
Moving over to Electric Bastionland, Impaired moves across quite naturally. The "ganging up" rule, where only the single highest die causes damage, does dampen the second bullet from the list above. If you're rolling d4 and your allies are all rolling d8s and d10s then it can feel a bit like you needn't bother rolling at all.
Mythic Bastionland, of course, wound up being quite different. I won't rehash the original Impairing Impairing post here but looking at this timeline of Impairment I think the main issues are:
Combatants have much more combat capability, often rolling multiple attack dice each and augmenting them with gambits and feats, so being bumped down to a lone d4 is a much larger drop.
Knights and some enemies have more armour and access to the Deny feat that combine to make them more resilient than their Odd and Electric cousins. That d4 damage is now even worse than it was in the other games.
Impaired is now a condition you can reliably attempt to impose on an opponent and have imposed on you via the gambits system.
While those first two points are important, that third bullet is the biggest issue, contradicting the third bullet from the Into the Odd list above.
Impaired is designed to suck, right down to the awkward feel of throwing the d4, and that's good as a situational tool for the Referee. When it is weaponised then you have a part of the game that is about making other combatants suck, which can feel unsatisfying, especially when the difference between "functioning normally" and "impaired" is heightened, as it is in Mythic.
So what's the plan for Impaired in Intergalactic Bastionland?
It's not set in stone yet, but I've tested out a few options.
1: Change Nothing
Intergalactic isn't Mythic. You aren't Knights charging around smiting wyverns and deflecting arrows. In many ways it's closer to Electric in terms of the player characters, who aren't assumed to have combat training, and might go whole sessions without finding a reason to jump into a fight. Most of the combat I've seen in playtests has been punching other crewmembers. This is an important option to consider when revising rules for a new game, but in this case I would like to try some tweaks.
2: Make Impaired less... impairing
Early on I tried out a version where impaired attacks still roll their full number of dice, but those dice all become d4s. Doesn't change anything with a d10 attack, but the gear list here has a bunch of weapons that roll multiple dice, so they become more useful at avoiding the worst effects of being impaired. This feels like a very soft change, and I might keep it in as a secondary tweak, but I don't think it's enough on its own. Another tested alternative involved reducing Impaired attack dice down to the next size, rather than down to d4, which is fine but requires some edge case explanation and something about it just didn't feel right for me.
3: Remove/Replace Impaired as a Gambit Choice
This is the version that's currently awaiting playtest. Gambits are the same as in Mythic, minus strong gambits, but the list of options is a little different.
Attackers may discard any number of Attack dice of 4 or higher to perform Gambits, each causing one of the effects below.
• Bolster the Attack for +1 total Damage
• Disrupt the target, granting +1 armour to anyone they attack on their next turn
• Move after the Attack, even if you already moved or are unable to move
• Feint to reroll any other die in the attack pool, keeping the new result
• Repel the target away from you unless they pass a Save
• Stop the target from moving next turn unless they pass a Save
• Other effect of a similar level of impact, allowing a Save if appropriate
A target that Saves against a specific type of Gambit cannot be targeted by that type of Gambit again until after their next turn.
Disrupt and Feint are the two new options. Forget about Feint for a minute, as that's more of an experiment, but Disrupt slips into the niche left by Impaired, acting almost as an inverse-Bolster, essentially a -1 to their next attack. Importantly, this can stack multiple times, so pouring a bunch of Disrupts onto one target might have the same effect, dropping them down to negligible damage, but at least that's taking multiple attack dice rather than just a single die that gets through the target's save.
I'm also not too happy about having separate but similar effects for the near-synonyms Disrupted and Impaired, giving me flashbacks to Fatigued and Exhausted in Mythic, but I want to see if it works at all before I get hung up on terminology.
When I saw there were 6 standard Gambit types in play, I couldn't resist trying out something with damage types. This feels a touch excessive, but we'll see how it plays.
Each damage type is especially suited to a specific gambit type. Attackers can perform the associated gambit type by discarding any die of that damage type regardless of its value, even if it's below 4.
Pierce: Bolster
Crush: Repel
Burn: Feint
Erode: Stop
Warp: Move
Infect: Disrupt
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This post was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site the week after its original publication.
If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.
