I’ve been doing a lot of work on Pox, the third member of The Also Rans, and the last character for the base game. In the story, she was kicked out of The Hero’s party because she didn’t do enough “deeps.” Pox doesn’t actually know what “deeps” refers to, but she absolutely swears she can do that thing, whatever that means, just so that she can play more. What she is is a tank, and her improbable toughness and tendency to commit bodily harm in the name of playtime make her a formidable foe. She also has the attention span of a goldfish, which makes her… unpredictable.

The look, the feel… of tanking

Tanking is all about getting the bad guys to focus on you, not the squishy deeps or the squishier healers. Pox’ attacks don’t necessarily hit hard, but she steals swords, she spins helmets around backwards for the joy of it, and she throws fairy dust as a blinding attack. She is very much an up front, in-your-face attacker, and has very few ranged options. This is in keeping with her easily distracted nature — why fly over the gnoll bruiser to get to the necromancer in the back, when you have a big shaggy doggy buddy right in front of you to play with?

Of course, that is just her attacks. Pox , like the rest of the cast, also gets her “charge up” moves. These are her Impulse moves.

Tank? More like a tank of sugar and squirrels, amirite?

Impulses are drawn two at a time and you get to choose one of the two per turn. This means that while you have a little control of which Pox move you can do, you don’t always have the ability to choose the optimum move. Optimum is boring. Playtime is fun! So, expect Pox to be body throwing monsters to the back, dragging them to the front, throwing whatever ranged attacks she’s receiving back, or just generally being a pest to somebody who, well, ok, they do deserve it, but maybe not with Pox’ level of zeal.

There is one more bit of randomness that Pox must always confront: Shiny objects.

If you draw an “Ooh Shiny,” Pox must chase it! It is shiny and oh so neat. Drawing an Ooh Shiny cancels Pox’ attack and she also can’t do an impulse move against anybody. She also cancels any attacks done against her, because she has darted away from the battle this round. So there are upsides here; if she has everybody’s attention and they were about to hit her, well, she’s not here, and the moment was lost for the bad guys. The downside is, maybe her other moves were really good this turn, but.. shiny object…. nnnggh.. must… get!

Now you face this fully operational battle fairy

Ooh Shiny is the fuel for Pox’ power meter move, Harass. The idea is, Pox may notice something in her pursuit of the Ooh Shiny that she brings back to the battle. Like, say, an ox-cart. Or a large tree. Or grabbing monsters from other player’s columns and adding them to hers.

The biggest struggle I had in designing Pox in this way is that she really can’t use these sorts of abilities versus a boss monster. Moving monsters around or ejecting them from battle entirely doesn’t really mean much against a boss fighting the whole team. So, her Harass moves do need to have two sides to them to allow for their use in single target boss fights. Still fleshing out these, but expect them to be cinematic — Pox is a creature of chaos, but when she does get an idea in her head, like “Pox hit badthing manymany!” expect cans of whoopass to be heading to the recycling bin afterwards.

In MMORPGS where there is a tank, usually there is some sort of build up mechanic to allow the tank to hold the attention of the monster first, then the rest of the party, your deeps and healers, can get to play. In designing Pox as a tank, I wanted her to have the option of building up her power meter at a decent clip. Of course, dropping a 1 power ox-cart is much less impressive than dropping a 3 power ox-cart, but if the goal was to get into the front of the fight, then Pox can do that at 1 power. Alastrina is back loaded for her power; she definitely needs time to build up her jaapa in order to unleash her full potential. Flonk is front loaded; his ability to “side” with monsters is great early in the fight, and works exactly once. So Pox has to be a little more flexible to accommodate her friends, with more of a trade off of time versus big whammy.

(Unlike Alastrina, Pox does not have to spend all of her Ooh Shiny at once; she can drop a 1 power ox-cart even if she has 2 Ooh Shiny. Pox is severely ADHD but not stupid.)

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So that is the status on Pox. I really like games that have multiple play styles while facing similar challenges; it rewards innovation and learning. So in designing the main three characters, I wanted to include themes of their personality into the play, as well as to give a strong role to the player. Is Pox a perfect, focused tank? Absolutely not; that is why she is an Also Ran. Her character flaws are very much evident in her game design. She simply cannot be a tactical wargamer’s dream girl, because she can barely string two sentences together while staying on topic, let alone survey a battlefield for a cunning multilayered plan. But, she needs to be fun to play and effective when played to her strengths.