Aura attacks and command skill

[Athanor]

Command: Your character may attempt to make a

Command roll before making an aura attack. If successful,

your character is able to modify the opponent’s resistance

roll result as if using an opposed roll

Can someone explain me how it works ? Do you add a certain value to your Aura total if the command roll is successful? How much ?

[Aelwyn]

My guess is it means this: If your command roll is successful, you can modify the result of the Aura resistance roll up one level. Critical becomes Special, Special becomes Success, Success becomes Failure, and Failure becomes Fumble. That seems a little powerful to me, but I would guess Aura attacks are mainly used in Superhero, Pulp, or Space Opera settings where saying things like, "Submit or face the wrath of the Man Outside Time, Cowards!" would actually demoralize a whole bunch of minions.

A Special roll on your Command roll could modify it up two levels, and a Critical could modify it up three if you want to get really crazy. It's similar to the way a parry affects an attack. (Think of the Command roll as the parry and the resistance roll as the attack, even though in this case, Command is the aggressive move that is done first.)

Aura attacks don't seem particularly useful to me unless the target fumbles. The attacking character must take a combat round to make the attack, and the main effect is that the target can't attack back--for one combat round. So using Command skill to induce a fumble makes sense.

Edited April 12, 2010 by Aelwyn