New Advantage: Coordinated Team Timing

Does your team expect perfect coordination?

I sometimes here some or all of these:

"I shoot through this hex, not that hex, because our Invisible buddy is there." Or the invisible guy moves, you shoot, and then he steps back into the spot on his next turn knowing he's clear and no, you don't intend to charge up the middle, not that you said that out loud or anything.

"We walk in perfect formation, with Stealth, even though half of us are invisible and some of us can't see in the dark."

"I yell for everyone to look away from my Flash spell" - you know, they all look away in a split-second without affecting any of their actions. In fact, they all know exactly where you'll throw it, too. The bad guys won't react to your command, though.

The zero turn handoff. That is, I fast-draw and ready a potion and do a wait to hand it off. You grab it from my hand and open it and drink it. Net time? A tiny fraction of a second. Was this planned? No, we just knew it because he's wounded and I know how many FP and HP he's down and his plans for the rest of the fight.

Etc.

Why not just say, okay, all of that works, let's not argue, but only if you pay for it?

The cost for this is based on Adventuring Bond. It does not include any of those benefits.

Coordinated Team Timing
5 plus 1 per additional teammate

Members of a group have split-second timing when it comes to awareness of your teammates and their actions. You have a general sense of where everyone else is in combat, where the invisible guys are standing, how to pass off potons, ammunition, weapons, etc. without a problem, when to reach down to grab a hand beings held up to get out of the water, etc. As long as the action has based on coordinated timing and teamwork (shoot between moving friends, for example) or just basic coordinated practice (march in formation with a gap for the invisible person), the GM should allow it if you have this advantage. This isn't mental communication or anything of that sort - it's only useful for coordinating multi-person actions that should take some coordination to pull off.

All members of the group must have this to function without problems. Any character who lacks it is subject to whatever whim the GM has about facing during Flash spells, running through hexes with Invisible wizards, etc.


I'm mostly joking here, but the basic idea is sound - the GM says, okay, your wildly timing-dependent combat actions will work on a 1-second timescale in a swirling fight . . . if you pay points so that is true. Basing it on the bond means it's low enough cost that players will probably say, okay, that's a no-brainer purchase, but not so low that it's meaningless to buy it. You don't want to cost it so high that players figure it's easier to try to argue each case or apply hair-splitting timing to planned actions to get things done. You just say, yes, you can march in the dark quietly without messing up your formation or throw around your invisible friends that you can't see either, but it'll cost you a few points.