Indeed, it's all a bit too complex. Instead, if you think about it, everything governed by CC, BS, PH and WIP would be a lot simpler if reduced to the universal stat "Competence" or possibly "Heroics". How competent or heroic a unit is determines how much they can carry, how good at dodging bullets they are and how well they shoot. Even how large they are! The more heroic, the larger the base and silhouette!
I assume you're being sarcastic. There's always a balance to be struck in any game over how granular you want to make the stats. In Infinity we have a single BS stat, but there's no reason you couldn't have sidearms, rifles, and heavy weapons governed by different values. It wouldn't be terribly appropriate to the scale of the game, but it's definitely a design decision you could make. I agree that PH sometimes feels a little bit overloaded, as it reflects both strength and agility, and those are somewhat independent attributes. Especially when HI mostly had 4-2 MOV, it was odd to me that they were slower than the average troop, but could still dodge bullets better than someone who was unencumbered. The main benefit I would see to splitting PH into two attributes would be getting rid of the dodge penalties for TAGs, REMs, and motorcycles, and probably the hyperdynamics skill. Most troops would have about the same number in both stats, and it would only make a significant difference in a few cases. In the end, something like this comes down to deciding where you want your bloat - do you want to make the statline of every profile more complex, or do you want to add special rules that modify how some units use their stats to dodge.
While we're on the topic of engage, has the suggestion to have Engage use the CC stat instead of PH been brought up in this thread?
I was being very sarcastic, yes, mostly due to the auto-reject without reflection. I see it as simple as this. Keep current PH has the benefit that it doesn't introduce another stat, PH isn't used nearly as much as MOV, BS or S, but still a lot more than CC (but that's true for everything). Split PH has the benefit of severely reducing the number of exceptions to remember and allows for slightly less confusing notes on melee damage and more granularity between different types of particularly melee units. The risk is that Agility becomes over-burdened compared to Brawn, I just don't see a lot you can put on Brawn except melee damage, carry capacity and possibly 'nades. Does benefits outweigh risk and brevity? I'm ambivalent on the topic.
I agree that there's a risk, but at the moment I'm actually finding it hard to think of anything other than the evasion skills (dodge, change facing, engage) that would go under "Agility".
It doesn't need to exist and it doesn't need to confound physique (strength and fitness). Chances are if you are in good shape you are also quick, especially when it comes to soldiers. For characters that are physically weak but somehow capable of great feats of agility, give them hyper-dynamics but with a better name. I don't know if PH was ever the right stat for infiltration rolls but I can't really think of a better one.
Big thumbs up to the "Fold Engage into Dodge" argument. Dislike failing Engage because your 1mm out, but not failing Dodge in a similar fashion. Dislike splitting ARO in a link between Engage and Dodge. Dislike having to remember if Engage avoids templates or attacks from models other than the target, if it uses kinematica or not, or if it differs from dodge in any other way. Fold that shit together, and put a clause saying that dodges into base contact are placed by the enermy etc etc. I just can't keep track of these fucking rules anymore.
Those also make up the majority of the rolls associated with the stat, other than sneaky infiltration and precision landing from air drops. Brawn would also protect against glue. If we look at two extremes - anime Ninja and anime fat guy (Fat Yuan Yuan) - we see that while the Ninja has slightly increased physique compared to a normal human, Fat Yuan Yuan, owing to his immense size, is significantly better at precision work and at evading incoming projectiles and flamethrowers. Now, I don't read many manga nor watch many anime, but the fattest dude you can play (who also has problems walking through doors) being better at being Neo than a literal Ninja? My line of reasoning here is that the primary decider of whether a unit has heroic level PH or not is strength which makes the actual rolls you make with PH weird. You could just as easily completely nuke anything relating to strength and bulk from the PH stat and tie your capacity for carrying friendlies to your size (bipedals/infantry/TAGs can carry units same size or smaller, quadropeds/REMs/vehicles can only carry stuff if they have Baggage) and assign a DAM value to melee weapons that's affected by whether the unit is a TAG or not (and possibly whether the unit is a HI). The benefit of this approach is that it gives a better control over what a melee weapon actually does and you get a PH stat that is more relate-able and means you don't have to make compromises with quite as much.
To be clear, like you I'm fairly ambivalent on the topic, I was just responding to the point that one might be overloaded compared to the other, and in my cursory, not-even-looking-at-the-wiki-shoot-from-the-hip thoughts, I found them to be pretty even.
We did that for the 'using Infinity Rules for an RPG' my gaming group did back in the day. That's a pretty good argument for either splitting PH or giving more models some flavor of Agility skill (oh, and nuking the 'Meta-Agility' skill that is Climbing Plus and Superjump together.)
I feel like Biometric Visor should provide either an automatic success, clear all levels of impersonation, or just allow the user to shoot the impersonator. As it stands, it is functionally useless in the reactive turn. The first and third options would actually make it useful in the reactive turn.
Biometric Visor does actually ignore Surprise Shot/Attack from Impersonators, which would be very handy if an Impersonator actually had to go through the BV user to complete their mission.
