BCG Retrospective XL: Ally NPC Reinforcements

Allied Reinforcements are the last bit of hard rules in the book. They're not used a lot or even well known, which I guess is logical since they're hidden in the back half of the manual. They serve two important purposes that make them worth looking at, however: First, they allow the GM to include friendly NPCs in the battle without having to write detailed sheets for them. They do this without drawing attention and screentime away from the PCs, which is nice because their owners still have earn that victory. Second, they're a good way to adjust difficulty mid-battle and make things easier for the PCs when things become accidentally too hard. A GM can have them show up and immediately heal a PC or do a bunch of damage to one NPC, then either continue assisting or have them leave afterwards if their help is no longer needed.

Their three available Actions emphasize this support role: They can do chip damage with Barrage, draw fire away from the PCs (and probably die heroically in the process) with Overwhelm, or use Knowledge is Power at no GP cost with Analyze.

By default, the GM controls Reinforcements just like any other NPC. But my favorite application of them is allowing the PCs to command their allied NPCs during battle. The other Players have to decide together which abilities should be used and when they should be used, so it takes a bit of planning and coordination, but it's not too much. This way they can become a regular fixture of Operations adding another tactical element to the game and involving NPCs more in battles.

The six Reinforcement Powers include: An offensive buff (Formation G), a GP bonus (I'll Grant you Power), a defensive buff (Raise the Shields), doing a moderate-to-large amount of damage to a single target (Focus Fire), an extra Action (Carry our Hopes) and lastly a big heal effect (Live!). Focus Fire is the only one that isn't some kind of support ability to benefit PCs, most of them being considerably stronger than anything available to PCs.

Formation G
Formation G is one of the strongest buffs in the game and, until the expansion, the only way to gain Aim + Suppression bonuses to an immediate attack that didn't cost an arm and a leg in Energy + MP. I think the power level and flavor are solid, since it's just a big buff that sets up a PC to make a strong attack but they have to use the right weapon and hit the right target to make it count.

I'll Grant you Power
This is a very strong utility power. Because RPs regenerate over time, these can grant potentially infinite GPs to the PCs. This is the kind of ability that only works because the game is so fast paced that, while the Power is strong, it can't really slowly turn around a battle by sheer attrition. At least I don't think it does. I'm sure there's some build out there made to exploit this ready to prove me wrong.

Raise the Shields
A bonus of 10 to Defense can make a PC all but invincible momentarily, but I think this one should have been a Damage prevention effect instead. This Power often goes on PCs that are already wounded and would be taken out by some direct damage effects, which do happen quite often, and it would make them better at surviving a wider variety of enemy attacks. A damage prevention shield of, say, 15 Damage would have worked fine I believe. It'd be worse against generic Grunt swarms but better against nearly everything else.

Focus Fire
This is a waste of RP during the first few Rounds of an Operation, but it's crazy strong afterwards, easily taking out a whole Threshold Level of whatever it is pointed at with each activation. I think I overdid it with this one. Doing 5-8 Damage per activation is fine but after Round 5 it is just gross and completely trivializes Bosses. Reinforcements don't have a lot of variables to work with though, so there's not a lot of ways to guarantee it doesn't spike to doing 10+ without making it too weak. The best alternatives I can think of would be Tension + Level or just plain 1d10.

Carry our Hopes
It is almost as good as getting an extra Turn. I say almost because the target doesn't get extra energy regeneration or other beneficial triggers that happen at the beginning of their Turn. It still lets them double attack, maneuver and attack, double suppress (it stacks!), repair and maneuver, etc. The flavor is, I admit, sort of a big shrug, sadly. Still, few things boost PCs as much as giving them extra Actions. Things like the very last Reinforcement Power below...

Live!
I knew from the beginning that the best and strongest of the RP effects should be one that heals for a lot. It's the staple turnaround effect, after all: When the hero looks like they're done for, they stand up again one final time. This is very strong and gets the job done, but I think the effect could have been better. I would have liked for it to restore a defeated PC with their last Threshold Level healed, but that didn't work well with the ejection system, punished people for using Live Another Day and forced retconned descriptions of mech explosions. Resurrecting the dead and healing them is a very cool effect but it wasn't working out in the end. I do miss how badass it was, though.

That's all six Reinforcement Powers. There aren't any in the expansion, only because I don't think that any more are necessary. I made the abilities as varied as I could in the core book, so they could represent anything from sidekicks with grunt mechs or support from transport ships to Deus Ex Machina like the will of the Getter Rays from Getter Robo or the Bullet X from GaoGaiGar. I think they do a very good job of representing the former two examples but aren't as bombastic as they could be for the latter. Then again, I'm not sure just how much more bombastic they could get. The ability to repeatedly heal PCs for 15 is already very close to just plain saying 'you win' in its description. Perhaps the abilities should be divided into two systems, one for repeatable abilities and one for big turnaround effects that save the day. I suppose that is one of the big lessons from the NPC section of the book: Three categories of enemies isn't enough and one category of abstracted allies isn't enough either.

And that's all for the rules design aspect of BCG, closing in at a nice total of 40 updates. Posting is going to slow down now that this series is done, at least for the rest of February. I'll do BCZ eventually but I want to give it some time first, seeing how its been out for less than a year. This has been insightful and I hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

Until then, Gimmick Out.