viewtopic.php?f=4&t=35377
1.
Adjust the Pass skill.
Pass (Passing)
A player with the Pass skill is allowed to re-roll the D6 if he throws an inaccurate pass or fumbles. Additionally, if the first pass roll succeeds then the pass has been particularly good, making it easier for the target player to catch (or the thrown player to orientate himself, and the reroll may be used on the catch or landing roll instead.
This transfers the risk from the thrower to the catcher and improves the passing odds by up to 20% for low AG teams and under 10% for high AG teams. This overall improvement will require a nerf of some sort – more on that later.
The “or landing” bit is purely thrown in as an idea. You can see from the stats how few TTM attempts work, so I thought this might be an option to buff that.
2.
Remove the Catch skill. It’s rather nugatory given the above, although it does have use for handoffs, interceptions and the like, which is why the next point is in:
3.
Adjust the Diving Catch skill.
Diving Catch (Agility)
The player is superb at diving to catch balls others cannot reach and jumping to more easily catch perfect passes. The player may add 1 to any catch roll from an accurate pass targeted to his square. In addition, the player can attempt to catch any pass, kick off or crowd throw-in, but not bouncing ball, that would land in an empty square in one of his tackle zones as if it had landed in his own square without leaving his current square. A failed catch will bounce from the Diving Catch player's square. If there are two or more players attempting to use this skill then they get in each other"s way and neither can use it.
Additionally, it also allows the player to re-roll the D6 if he drops a hand-off or fails to make an interception.
The effect of this is that a skill which I rarely see (not sure about the objective frequency) is buffed considerably by mixing it with another subjectively rarely taken skill.
In terms of the odds, this increases the odds for passing to AG2 and 3 players while having a minimal effect on AG4 targets.
A spreadsheet of the effect on the odds of the above changes can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?71u8f5cbiejs37b
or in this googledoc:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... XFfU3U1RXc
The top of each worksheet is the basic passing stuff for passers from AG2 to AG5, with skills added in the bit below. The overall passing odds from start to end are all headed by “AGX Catcher” from AG2 to 4 with the skills (catch or DC) in the second column of tables. The first sheet is the current odds under the current ruleset, the second is the odds under my proposals above, and the third is the change in those odds (absolute change, so a change from 40% to 60% would show up as 20).
Importantly, the odds of fumbles and missed passes stay exactly the same. The odds of the catcher dropping the pass have been reduced across the board though, although by more for low AG teams than high AG teams. Furthermore, we’ve removed a skill which is on several starting rosters. To compensate I propose the following further changes:
4.
Players who start with Catch get Diving Catch instead
This will allow humans and Amazons to take full advantage while allowing the AG4 players to take advantage of any missed passes while maintaining ball-handling capability in the form of RRs for interceptions and hand-offs.
5.
Increase Pass Block range to 4 squares
This is to make the use of passing a touch more difficult. If passing becomes a more popular tactic due to this then PB will itself become more useful, and a 4 square allowance will mean that a single pass-blocker may be able to become a thorn in the side of a passing team.
Because the above changes are to A and P skills this should have a small effect on the bash teams who have little ability to take them. Orcs might take a few more goblins
tl;dr version
- Some teams are passing very little at all
- Those teams are generally AG3 with A and P access players
- Adjusting Pass and Diving Catch, while removing Catch as a skill buffs passing across the board but more for lower AG players, and may lead to an increase on the uptake of those skills.
- Buffing Pass Block will nerf passing a little across the board and encourage uptake of that skill.