You won't be

He said grainy. Heh.

Speaking of this ability - since it is new to the game, I'd love to hear what everyone thinks of it.

In a way it's a game mechanic to encourage engagement. Any adjacent attack ignores the ability, so anyone can just run up to them and smack them. Or take a lot more effort and power to shoot them at range or use an SA or FP to do the work.

It encourages engagement on both ends too. So often in the game now, if you expose someone, they die. Period. This ability encourages the player playing Republic (in this instance of the ability) to step out and take a shot, get into the action. And it also encourages the opponent to advance so they can base the enemies with this ability to negate it.

IMO there are too many 50/50 "all or nothing" saves in the game. Complete avoidance of damage or taking it all (evade, parry, LS defense, etc, etc, etc). This is an ability where you have a good chance (75%) of reducing damage on anything OTHER THAN an adjacent attack. But only reducing it, not avoiding it completely (unless of course it's only 10 damage). So even a twin 30 dam hitter probably won't kill this character from range. It harkens back to the days (first few sets) of the game when it was more about attrition. Slowly adding up damage on the opponents big nasty. Throwing everything you have at them for several rounds to take them down. Obviously these guys aren't "big nasties" by themselves, but with the damage ceiling having gone much further up than way back then (much of it done by later WotC sets), we wanted to introduce more abilities like this that aren't "all or none" saves. They can be negated, and not simply by what weapon you hold (melee or non-melee), and even if you don't negate it - you can still cause damage. And the method of negation is old fashioned, in your face engagement - something we want to encourage. Attacks are still the staple of this game, and should remain to be.

Borrowing a mechanic from Dune, I see? :)

This discussion reminds me of one of the recommendations I posted in the requests thread. An ability that guarantees a character can't be killed in a single activation:

Close Call : If this character begins a turn with more than 10 hit points and would be defeated, it instead remains in play with 10 hit points and cannot be damaged for the rest of the turn.

(Might need to also stipulate that the character cannot have damage removed.)

It just takes an extra turn. If it has 10 HP it can die. There probably would need to be an extra line that states any attack that would reduce it to less than 0 HP you get 10 HP etc etc. It is like a stronger, saveless Avoid Defeat.

Yes, there is a Dune boardgame. Quite popular, especially given how old it is.

I don't know if there's anything in the game related to a Flax Shield though. It's kind of a desert, I think. So hard to grow grain.

Close Call just doesn't sound right for an ability like that. I'd say Tenacity would be a better fit.

The Dune board game is awesome! Everyone should play it.

Also, I do particularly like that Close Call ability, and also think you have a very good concept of how it should be used. It would need to be applied carefully to ~10 point backup attackers, and we would need to be sure that those characters don't get boosted too much, because there are some characters in that point range whose only disadvantage is that they are prone to getting killed in a single turn. But I love tertiary attackers and pieces like Jagged Fel; a solid attack value and fairly survivable, but only does 10 damage and you can't really make him scary. Take away his CE, give him 20 or 30 HP instead of 60, drop his cost to 8-9 (since his CE really is the majority of his cost), and give him Close Call, and I would play that piece a lot. An excellent blocker, and even a bit of a strafe counter because he can take up a landing area and can't be removed in a single strafe through.

I also think "Tenacity" is a better name for it as well.