Inspired by the group-super mechanic of Rival Schools and the Striker mechanic of King of Fighters, MotM features a Team Up attack system!
Team Up attacks involve characters combining their existing attacks to create exciting, all-new attacks that inherit aspects of all the contributing moves. This page will outline in detail the relevant commands, rules for contributing to the attacks, rules for defending against the attacks and other important details.
Executing a Team Up Attack
When you decide to do a Team Up attack, you would pose as normal, and then initiate the attack with:
teamup/start <target(s)>=<Name of the Team Up Attack>
You would immediately follow this with:
teamup/join <Name of attack you want to contribute>
At this point, your turn is over and the costs of the attack will be deducted. The next person to contribute to the Team Up attack should pose, and then enter:
teamup/join <Name of the player who started the Team Up Attack>=<Attack to contribute>
Their costs will be deducted and their turn will be over. Every subsequent person that wishes to join in the Team Up Attack will repeat this command.
Once everyone who is going to participate has posed and entered teamup/join to contribute their attacks, any one of the participants may enter:
teamup/finish
At this point, the attack is queued against the target as normal. Please note that the person that enters 'teamup/finish' will be the "center", or person who delivers the attack to its destination, and therefore incurs certain gameplay effects, which will be outlined in the next post.
Team Up Attack Rules
An important thing for a Team Up attack participant to remember is that you cannot contribute a FREE or GLOBAL attack to a Team Up attack! The attack you contribute MUST be a Special, SUPER, or a MAX.
As stated above, there are no gameplay implications for entering 'teamup/start'. Anyone who is going to participate in the combo can start it, so it should typically be whoever is first in pose order to pull the attack off, unless there are compelling IC reasons to change the order. If that's the case, make sure to request permission from any participants to change up the pose order for a round so that everything comes together in a way that makes sense. Everyone contributing to the attack will need to take their turn before the person reacting to the attack, or else they will have to skip their turn on the next round until the attack gets reacted to. Remember, you can't attack a target if they already have a Team Up attack from you!
Aside from that, most of the gameplay effects fall squarely on whoever enters 'teamup/finish'. So let's talk about that.
The player who enters 'teamup/finish' becomes the Team Up attack's "Center". The Center is the one that can be interrupted if the target of a Team Up attack interrupts. Only the Center will take damage if the Team Up attack gets interrupted.
The Center's attack determines which types of interrupts will work. For example, if the Center contributes a pure CHI attack, then the Team Up attack cannot be countered but it can be reflected EVEN IF the contributing members add physical or throw elements! If the Center contributes a pure PHY or THROW attack, the Team Up attack cannot be reflected but it can be countered. Dualtypes with energy and physical or throw elements can be countered or reflected as normal.
Because of this, when it comes down to posing, the Center might want to make their pose read as some sort of initial attack for the full combo. I.e., maybe they throw a projectile to stun the target so the rest of the attacks land, or they'll be grappling the opponent so that the rest can get their hits in, etc. This isn't mandatory, and for some Team Up combo poses, it might not make sense. Just use your discretion there and keep in mind that if the Team Up attack gets interrupted, it is the attack of the Center that actually gets interrupted.
Finally, if you start to do a Team Up attack but are unable to complete it for any reason (The target is no longer in the fight perhaps), you can hit teamup/cancel. teamup/cancel will abort the Team Up attack but the resources, DMs, abilities, etc., will not be refunded. In addition, if you are participating in a Team Up attack but try to take another action before the Team Up attack has been queued via 'teamup/finish', the Team Up attack will automatically get cancelled. There will be a prompt before your action so that you can confirm that you do intend to abort the attack.
It is legal to start and join a Team Up attack as your final action in a fight. You will be unjoined upon entering 'teamup/join'. However, you MUST be in the fight to enter 'teamup/finish'. So if /all/ participants are going to fall unconscious after hitting teamup/join, you shouldn't fire up a Team Up attack.
The Teamup Attack Stats
So now you know the commands and the rules. Let's talk about what goes into a Team Up attack that makes them so special.
First off, the name of the Team Up attack is whatever was defined by whoever entered 'teamup/start'.
Now for the really important stuff. The TYPE of the attack is a combination of all contributed types. For example, if one character contributes a PHY attack, another contributes a THR attack, and the third contributes a CHI attack, the Team Up attack will be PHY THR CHI. You can, in fact, go all the way up to Quad-Types and have a PHY THR CHI PSI team up attack. Don't forget, though: it's the Center that determines what interrupts are effective against the Team Up attack.
The Power Level of the Team Up attack is calculated by first sorting the power levels of the contributing attacks from highest to lowest. The highest power level is taken at full value, the next power level is taken at 1/2 value, the one after at 1/4 value, the next one at 1/8 value, and so on.
The Speed of the Team Up attack is calculated by first sorting the speeds of the contributing attacks from highest to lowest. The highest speed is taken at full value. Each additional move will contribute a fixed percentage of its speed. The precise speed contribution will not be published at this time, since that is the area likely to receive the most tuning once this feature goes live. Eventually the speed contribution percentage will be published. Suffice to say, each additional attack contributed to the Team Up attack makes it faster. The faster the attacks are that are contributed, the faster the contributing percentage.
The Effects of the Team Up attack are a combination of the effects of all contributing attacks. Note, however, they won't stack in most cases. If all the contributed attacks have crush, for example, the Team Up attack will still only behave as if it has a single Crush flag. If all the contributed attacks have Priority, the Team Up attack will behave as if it has a single Priority flag, and so on. Power Level modifying flags, such as Smash, DM/power, etc., don't stack, but are added to the total power level of the Team Up attack in full. This means they don't get divided down the way the contributing attack power levels get divided down as described above.
For the most part, trait-based flags are also added. For example, if one person contributes a Deadly attack, the Team Up attack will have the Deadly flag. Keep in mind that certain reactive bonuses that come from trait usage, such as Relentless or Rhythm are treated specially and will be discussed in the Miscellany section.
With the composition of the attack is finally determined, it's time to look at how damage is calculated. The Offense stats used to calculate the final damage are an average of the relevant stats to the attacks that were contributed. What this means is if the first player contributes a PHY/CHI attack and the next player contributes a CHI attack, the final O stats used for determining the damage will be the first player's PHY stat and an average of both players' CHI stats.
Reacting
So you're looking at a Team Up attack. Now what do you do? Well, you can still perform the same reactions as you could against any other attack: dodge, block, endure, accept or interrupt. However, there are special rules for interrupting a Team Up attack that need to be addressed.
Note that there is no special syntax for interrupting Team Up attacks. You will enter: interrupt #= < attack > based on where it is listed in your default 'check' output just like always. The 'check #' output will accurately reflect your chances of interrupting just the contributed attack, whereas the Dodge, Block, Endure odds you see are an accurate representation of your chances to dodge/block/endure the full Team Up attack.
When you interrupt a Team Up attack, you are only interrupting the attack contributed by the Center, i.e. the character that entered 'teamup/finish'. This means the interrupt options you have are based primarily on the new aggregated speed, plus the Center's contributed attack TYPE and FLAGS were.
For example, if the Center's contributed a CHI PRIORITY projectile, your interrupt chances and options will be based on reflecting an energy priority projectile with the base speed of the Team Up attack. This means that you cannot counter the Team Up attack, but you can opt to reflect, projectile interrupt, or poke it. Your poke odds will suffer because of the PROJECTILE flag as normal and your projectile interrupt and reflect odds will suffer if your projectile or reflect does not have PRIORITY due to the contributed attack having PRIORITY on it.
If you COUNTER the contributed attack and succeed, you will deal your normal damage back to the Center and take no damage from the rest of the Team Up attack.
If you COUNTER the contributed attack and fail, you will deal no damage to the Center and will suffer the entire damage from the Team Up attack.
If you REFLECT the contributed attack and succeed, the outcome follows the normal Reflect rules. You will do immediate damage to the Center for melee reflects, send the contributed projectile back at the Center for reflecting projectiles and you avoid the rest of the Team Up attack.
If you REFLECT the contributed attack and fail, you will do nothing to the Center and will suffer the entire damage from the Team Up attack.
If you PROJECTILE INTERRUPT the contributed attack and OVERCOME it, you will send what's left of your projectile back at the Center and avoid the rest of the Team Up attack.
If you PROJECTILE INTERRUPT the contributed attack and NEGATE it, you will send nothing back against the Center but you will still avoid the rest of the Team Up attack.
If you PROJECTILE INTERRUPT the contributed attack but only SLOW it, you will be hit by the full damage of the Team Up attack -minus- any power levels you managed to slow out of the incoming projectile.
If you PROJECTILE INTERRUPT the contributed attack, but fail, you will take the full damage from the Team Up attack.
If you POKE the contributed attack and succeed, you will deal damage to the Center and also take damage from Team Up attack but at half it's total Power Level (plus any modifiers from abilities, DMs, traits, etc, per normal interrupt rules).
If you POKE the contributed attack and fail, you will deal no damage to the Center and will take the full Team Up attack damage.
Tactics
The whole point of a Team Up mechanic is to promote teams and team tactics. Of course, tactics should never overshadow IC behavior. However, when you're part of a cohesive or disciplined team, there's no harm in trying to get the most out of your team attacks. During play testing, there will be no limit to how many times a player may participate in Team Up attacks. But once the feature goes live, a character may only participate in a Team Up attack ONCE a fight. More specifically, while there is no actual limit to the number of Team Up attacks POSSIBLE in a fight, each individual character may only participate in one. Since this mechanic is pretty new, here are some pointers:
Generally, Team Up attacks will do less damage than the individual attacks would have done if they all hit but will be more difficult to react to than any of the individual attacks would have been on their own. However, in some cases, the Team Up attack might do more damage than the individual attacks would have, especially if DM/guard comes into play: a defending player using DM/guard would take 3 PLs off a single three person Team Up attack, but it would effectively take 9 PLs (3 PLs each) if faced with three separate attacks.
In addition, they are a great way to mix types that you might not normally get to. It is possible to create Tri or Quad damage types!
Team Up attacks are also a good way to combine various DMs and abilities with each other. For example, one character could be intending to MAX that round, but doesn't have dm/power. Their partner does, however. Character 1 can contribute their MAX and Character 2 can contribute a dm/powered special. The final attack will be both harder to react to and will have the added bonus of a dm/power to let the MAX deal even more damage than it would have. Alternatively, you can mix abilities together such as have one character contribute RUSH and the other contribute SMASH, resulting in a RUSHED, SMASHED team up combo.
Keep in mind that only the Center can be hurt by an interrupt to the Team Up attack. You can use this to your advantage. If one partner is low on health and perhaps a bit fatigued, but the other partner has a lot of health and is at full speed, the two characters could throw a Team Up attack at their opponent with the more healthy character being the one to hit teamup/finish. This lets the lower health, slower partner contribute an attack that around without being vulnerable to interrupts.
Team Attack Ownership
When you queue a Team Up attack via teamup/finish, everyone who participated in that attack become an 'Owner' of that Team Up Attack name. This means that only those who participated in the Team Up attack name will be able to initiate future Team Up attacks with that name.
However, if they go on to initiate that Team Up attack with different players, then the new batch of participants will become Owners of the name and the previous owners who didn't participate are no longer owners of the attack name.
For example:
K' initiates a Teamup Attack called Chain Execution and contributes Chain Drive to it.
Kula joins K''s Teamup Attack with Freeze Execution and then queues it via teamup/finish.
At this point, no one besides K' or Kula can start a Teamup Attack called Chain Execution.
If Kula later goes on to initiate a Teamup Attack called Chain Execution with Igniz, then Kula and Igniz become the owners of that Teamup Attack name and no one else, including K', can make a Teamup Attack with that name. And so on.
The actual attacks that were contributed to the Team Up attack are also tracked, representing a sort of 'formula' for that Team Up attack going forward. Every time a Team Up attack is performed by the same characters contributing the same attacks, the Team Up attack will level-up slightly to reflect the increased proficiency the participants have in executing it.
If the ownership of the Team Up attack changes, or the attacks contributed to create it change, the Team Up attack's leveling progress resets.
For example, if K' and Kula go on to use Chain Execution 3 times, and each time they contribute Chain Drive and Freeze Execution, then the Team Up attack will have leveled up 3 times. If they eventually perform Chain Execution but contribute moves other than those to it, the Team Up attack will start over in its leveling.
The bonuses for leveling up Team Up attacks have yet to be defined but some information will be forthcoming once that has been designed.
You can view the existing Team Up attacks by typing:
teamup/list
You can view Team Up attacks that you or someone else are an owner of by typing:
teamup/list <name of character>
You can lookup Team Up attacks with partial name matching by typing:
teamup/list <match string>
And finally, you can view the attacks that were contributed to a specific Team Up attack by typing:
teamup/list <name of Team Up attack>
Extra Misc Info
Contributing players with traits that have a beneficially reactive component generally will not help the Center, unless the Center has the trait. What does that mean? Here's an example. Let's say there's a Team Up attack. If the Center has Cruel, and the Team Up attack power hits, the attack will get the extra Cruel damage and the Center will get the Cruel proc for their next attack. If the Center doesn't have Cruel, Cruel will never process in a Team Up attack.
However, a person can carry a trait-based bonus INTO a team up attack. For example, a person that has a Vengeful bonus can add this to their contribution to the Team Up attack. Basically, you only add what you brought with you, and only the Center gets the benefit from any processes that they were already privy to. Still confused? Don't worry. All you need to know is that certain traits react oddly with Team Up attacks, but never in a bad way.
If all the contributing attacks bear the EX flag, the Team Up attack name will bear the EX.
If all the contributing attacks bear the EPIC flag, the Team Up attack name will bear the EPIC flag.
No one participating in the Team Up attack will gain any super if it connects and deals damage. However, the target of the Team Up attack will gain a small percentage of additional super for being hit by a Team Up attack.