Brawler Archive

Hey! I posted this on the GenForum but it dropped in under a minute with no replies, so I guess this is the place to put my idea. It's to make tanking a viable strategy, but updated it into the sci-fi Star Wars world in a way that makes sense.

Here's an idea to makemeleemore fun, strategic, and viable, in addition to adding in a way to "tank" high-end content and have long fights.

Allow elite melee professions to block damage to a certain HAM pool via three skills (Head Block, Body Block, Leg Block). These would be normal, queued skills that would take up one turn. When they work, if the next hit you take damages the HAM bar you blocked, all damage to that HAM bar would be stopped. This could be restricted to melee as balancing would suggest (against ranged doesn't make quite as much sense, and certainly not against the Force ;-P). Either way, it would be an entirely defensive skill and lose you an attack round. The benefit is that it makes fights more strategic (imagine a melee v. melee fight with blocking all over the place) and allows melee fighters to "tank" in an immersive, dangerous, and non-continuity breaking way.

The downside for melees is that (a) it's not offensive in any way (perhaps counterattack could be permitted, but not sure), (b) it still draws upon HAM for its usage, and (c) attacks can still damage the other two HAM pools, so if you don't know what you're doing, there's a 2/3 chance you'll get whomped. In addition, a successful block would drain heavily on the weapon's condition (50 or so per block, more against ranged weapons if they end up getting added to the blockable damage).

However, it also allows the high-end content to be defeated by a smart player. Someone could spam the right blocking pool and only take residual damage, but when MOBs are doing damage in the thousands, residual damage would likely be high. There aren't many MOBs that only attack one health pool. There could be a 5-10% chance of failure incorporated as well.

One more thing, certain melee elite professions should block better than others (Pikemen best of all, and the rest scaled).