Petition: “Hit The Deck” on Character Sheet

Starting a petition to the RPG editors to make all future printings of the SCRPG character sheet have the following change.

Right above the two Principles, in the Green Abilities, put a new ability that reads
: “Hit The Deck” : R : Defend against an attack by rolling a single appropriate [Power or Quality or Status] die. Take a minor twist.

Every character has access to this ability, but not every player will remember they have access to it. Does anyone else think this is something they should do?

If you have that I feel like you need to include the basic attack, defend, overcome, boost, and hinder actions as well. It’s an action anyone can take so I don’t feel it’s needed and at worst a GM can remind players.

My only counter to that is what you listed ARE Basic Actions. Hit The Deck is essentially an ability that is a reaction, that everyone has. And since it can be used with a Power or Quality or Status, it can be variable every time. It’s a little less obvious, I think. Hence my request for it to be on the character sheet.

It seems you disagree, and that’s fine. Putting this petition out so that if it IS something people want, the editors have that information.

I don’t think you can use your status die for that.

You’d also have to remove the square brackets. They denote sections that need to be replaced during character creation, which this doesn’t.

I actually do think it’s a good idea, just because it is so different from standard basic actions. It’s almost always better to use a reaction ability you get from character creation, but if you end up not having one…

Nothing says the status die couldn’t be used for Hit the Deck. It also makes it an oddity to add to the character sheet as an ability as well since it doesn’t have a set die to use for it. It’s whatever makes sense in that moment to use.

And that’s the only reason I haven’t added it to mine. There’s no specific die to use, so I can’t concretely define it as a “power”.

Conceptually, I like it, and I hope they look for a way to represent it on an updated character sheet at some point – and maybe we can help them come up with it. Maybe it’s as simple as something like:
: “Hit The Deck” : R : Defend against an attack by rolling a single appropriate Power, Quality, or Status die. Take a minor twist.

It doesn’t say that you can use your status die either. Any other time the game has you pick dice they have to come from your powers and qualities.

This is another thing that it might be worth asking them for clarification on.

The rulebook when talking about Reactions to begin with says this:

Most reaction abilities tell you to roll a single power, quality, or status die instead of the usual dice pool of three

Here are a few Reactions where the single die rolled is the status die

• “Reach through Veil” for Supernatural
• “Dogged Pursuit” of Relentless
• “Cheese It!” of Fragile
• “Absorb Energy” of Indomitable

I do agree overall it’s not clear for Hit the Deck what, if any, limitations there are for what die to use for Hit the Deck!

Yeah, I’d play it based on the situation. If the status die feels appropriate based on how they describe what they’re doing and nothing else really fits, I’d allow it.

Yeah, in a vacuum, I see Status die as the very last option, but I can also easily see a case for it specifically in the Red Zone, i.e. “I NEED to dodge this attack so that I have a chance to repair the engines of this mobile defense platform before we all crash into the ocean and die…” Things are desperate in the Red Zone, so the thematics of it applying to the defense roll make sense to me.