Decoding the AGE Action Economy

We now have a number of clues to start understanding the AGE system and go beyond "major" and "minor" actions. In the current rules it is not clear how much value these provide as you could go from "Charge" which adds a +1 on a potential 3d6 attack to "Heal" which is baseline 1d6 value.

Clues

MP to SP to 1d6 Relationship

As discovered in https://herdingdice.blogspot.com/2023/07/decoding-mp-from-spell-descriptions.html we can safely say that 1MP equals 1d6 value as well as 2SP equals 1MP. The spells descriptions and basic combat/spell stunts lead us to that conclusion. Given those measurements a "Melee Attack" major action can range from all the different melee weapons so from 1d6-1 to 3d6. This would be equivalent to about 1 to 3 MP or 2 to 6 SP.

Move/Run

In the blog post we also determined that 1MP equals 10 yards of movement. This matches the move action and thus we can say a minor action would be equal to 1MP or 2SP. Looking at run you get to move double speed which is to say two moves. This puts a major action at 2MP or 4SP.

Cast A Spell/Healing Touch/Fixing Minimum Strength

This is the most basic spell and can be used to compare against attacks. 1-3 MP gets you 1d6 to 3d6 in value. This implies a variable result which isn't great as we were looking for a single number and not a formula. What we would need to do then is find some equivalent mechanic that allows us to translate MP into something for attacks.

We can look to "Minimum Strength" attribute of weapons to draw from but only very loosely. If we look at two handed attacks, they generally have a minimum strength of 3. This matches with a 3MP cast of Healing Touch. The rest of the weapons degrade in matching as you go down with 2d6 weapons having Min STR of 1 rather than 2, and then there is the light weapons with 1d6 and having Min STR of 0 to -2. It would be in my opinion to keep Min Stat/Strength as a matching mechanic to MP but align it with MP values. Therefore treat the Min STR required of any weapon exactly like crafting a spell (including range weapons) and use the resulting MP as the Min Stat/Strength).

Another interesting piece from "Healing Arcana" is that it is the only spell arcana with it's own stunt. It is called healing power and essentially is the same as mighty or lethal spell, but worded for healing. It allows you to spend 1SP per 2HP in variable amounts. This ends up being similar to 1MP = 2SP when looking at mighty spell but if 1d6 was divided by 2 and rounded up (3.5/2 = 1.75 = 2). This gives us another useful relationship when determining equivalence.

Defend Action versus Defensive Stance Stunt

Defend is an action that provides +4 defense while defensive stance costs 3SP and provides +4 defense. Using "Healing Power" as a template for plus style bonuses, this should be priced at 2SP for the +4 and not 3SP. At 2SP this would move Defend more as a minor action and that would be way higher than we see. Perhaps we need to distinguish between HP modifying and test modifying bonuses.

If we go back to https://herdingdice.blogspot.com/2023/06/decoding-mana-point-and-target-number.html where TN = 0.5*MP + 9 that means there is a 2 TN per 1 MP relationship which also means there is a 2TN to 2SP or a 1 to 1 TN to SP relationship. This would suggest that we do not use healing power as the template but instead use the "Powerful Casting" template. Therefore "Defensive Stance" increases in price from 3SP to 4SP. This also reinforces this action as major action with 4SP of value.

Aim/Guard Up/Stand Fast

All of these minor actions provide a +1 bonus test bonus or +1 SP bonus. Using the ideas from above with defensive action/stunt we know that test bonuses are 1 to 1 with SP. Given that move is a 2SP valued move it would seem that these should be buffed to a +2 bonus instead

Results

We have identified some value patterns with the following equivalences.

• 1MP = 2SP = 2TN = 4HP = 1d6HP
• Note 4HP = 1d6HP implies rounding up only once. So 3d6HP = 10.5HP = 11HP if you were pricing something with +11 effect

We have identified some likely budgets for major actions.

• Using move and run we could say that a minor action is worth up to 2SP and a major action is worth up to 4SP
• Using defensive action/stunt we could say that major action is worth 4SP
• Using spell costs for MP we could say that the value of the major action is dependent on MP or a minimum stat on a weapon and that the plain major action would be 4SP and imply an min stat of 2 to match.

Altogether I think we can conclude that the action economy of major and minor action could be balanced around the following.

• Major actions are worth 4SP in value
• Matches "Fast Casting" stunt at 4SP, but does not match Lighnting Attack at 3SP
• Minor actions are worth 2SP in value

It is noted that existing major and minor almost match these budgets and could be improved if they better matched the budget.

• some minor actions could be buffed from +1 to +2
• some major actions are higher value than the budget and should be moved as a talent action
•  Charge for sure, potentially all out attack mostly for being to much for a basic action even though it might be fair with the penalty.

Bonus - AGE Action Point System

Using the fact that major and minor are 4SP and 2 SP each then you could say that a character has an overall action budget of 6 points that can be spent to create a combination of actions on their turns. Individual actions could be price more exactly than conforming to the major/minor. Just start calling them action points instead of stunt points.