Editing Purgatoria (section)

== Mechanical Engine ==
The engine of Purgatoria is designed to be easy-to-learn, but has a ton of crazy applications when expanding into some of the game's crunchier applications. 

===Dice Pools===

Purgatoria uses a dice-pool system for determining if player skill checks are successful. When players want to make checks, they roll a number of dice equal to (relevant attribute + skill modifier) and count 4s,5s, and 6s and successes. Even attack checks are done this way to minimize the amount of obnoxious superfluous rules that need to be learned. If a player's attribute is higher than the DC of the check, the check is automatically successful, regardless of the dice roll outcome. Certain techniques can briefly change the rules to count '3s' as successes, making these abilities super powerful. 

===Action Points===
All actions used in the combat system for Purgatoria are purchased prior to use with Action Points(AP). Prior to generating AP as a player, you must load three attributes, these '''loaded attributes''' determine the size of the dice pools that are used for generating AP. While it is normal to load one attribute of each of the three different categories of attributes, it becomes much more profitable to load two or three attributes of the same category, but doing so severely limits the range of techniques that you can purchase. Once you have loaded attributes, before combat has begun, or '''Round Zero''', you gain AP equal to the maximum possible roll for each loaded attribute with this AP you are able to activate defenses. At the beginning of each round, you roll your AP dice pools, and add the number of successes to your AP banks. During the round you spend AP on movement, offensive techniques, and defensive techniques, '''in Purgatoria very few things are free'''. Now, some of the combo heavy classes can act every turn, but doing so will prevent you from using your more excessive combos; therefore it is recommended for such classes to save up multiple rounds of AP.

===Attributes===
There are nine '''primary attributes''' in Purgatoria, and their base values can range from one to ten. One being an awful stat, which shows you are a minmaxing to your heart's delight, and ten being an amazing stat, which shows that you didn't invest enough in your other attributes.
* '''Strength''': The strength attributes determine how close your character is to being Marv.
** '''Brawn''': There is a direct correlation between points in this attribute, and the number of times that your character will ask people if they even lift. Also, it deals with beating people senseless with your body, or objects within reach.
** '''Constitution''': If it's not broken, don't fix it.
** '''Grit''': This is the direct Clint Eastwood levels attribute for your character, which lets you stare down the barrels of guns and not even flinch. Also, it deals with shooting people with big guns, and the requisite cheesy one liners after you succeed.
* '''Speed''': The speed attributes determine how manually capable, fast, and good at seeing things?
** '''Accuracy''': This is the sniper specific stat, and should be the only stat that your sniper has points in, so that you can see a washer at three hundred yards, then put a bullet through the center of it. If you're character is not a sniper, and you have more than three in this stat, there is no excuse. This stat is used for shooting targets that are all the way across the room, drinking your milkshake.
** '''Agility''': Movement speed. Also, this attribute deals with beating people senseless Bruce Lee style.
** '''Dexterity''': Please refer to constitution. Also, deals with shooting people with little guns.
* '''Style''': The style attributes determine how much of a pretentious asshat that your character is.
** '''Charisma''': The Petyr Baelish stat, all you need to know.
** '''Grace''': Grace measures how graceful your stylish, nimble, tasteful, and refined character is, or how comfortable they are with slipping into a dead person's skin like a latex gimp suit. Also, deals with slicing people with sharp, and stabby implements.
** '''Intellect''': The Sherlock Holmes stat, particularly the BBC version where Holmes uses the script that he keeps in his back pocket to solve mysteries. Also, deals with the convoluted combat art form: solving puzzles.
<br>There are also two '''secondary attributes''' in Purgatoria, which are not directly advanced, but which rely on an increase in the relevant primary attribute to increase as well.
* '''Hit Points''': How much damage you can take before you are wounded, and techniques cost extra to use. Relevant stat: Constitution.
* '''Move Speed''': How far you can move on the cheap cheap with the standard movement. Relevant stat: Agility.

===Combat===
Prior to combat beginning each player rolls for initiative, which is a skill roll that the GM determines to be appropriate for the situation. This skill can be the same for all players, or the GM can exclusively require each player to roll a skill that the character has no ranks in, and in the attribute that they have a score of 1, this GM is winning.
Combat revolves around expending action points to build combos and unleashing them on opponents. When combat starts, players select three stats and 'Load' them, allowing these stats to generate AP every turn via skill checks. 

Players can them spend AP on fueling techniques that become combo strings. Techniques fall into four categories:

* '''Base Techniques''': The bread and butter of a character's arsenal. These can range from simple things, like a DDT takedown or head shot, to more insane things, like throwing handful bullets and shooting them to create hailstorms of projectiles or vanishing and exploding out from an opponent. 
* '''Combo Techniques''': Combo techniques add properties to base techniques. These can be relatively minor, such as adding a small bonus to hit, or completely change the technique, such as replacing a regular shot with a grenade and allowing the user to shoot the pin off, or causing an after-image of the character to deliver a follow-up attack.
* '''Movement Techniques''': While all characters can spend Action Points to run around the battlefield, each class has a handful of unique ways of doing it. Examples include the Assassin's Ability to melt into shadows to cross the battlefield or a Gundancer's ability to ride the kick from firing guns full auto to briefly fly. 
* '''Defensive Techniques''': These techniques allow characters to stay alive. There's a diverse range of them that allow for increasing passive defensive or just avoiding attacks entirely.

Now that you know the different types of techniques, you should know '''how to read a technique''', each technique will have some of the following sections, depending on the type.
* '''Name''': The identifying sequence of words used to differentiate the technique from the other 700+ techniques.
* '''Cost''': The AP cost required to use the technique, and if applicable the type of AP required.
* '''Requirements''': Necessary conditions for the technique to be used.
* '''Description''': The part of the technique that you should ignore, it has nothing to do with the damage that you will be doing.
* '''Properties''': The non-damage, but mechanical part of the technique, so you can read this. Although these techniques will most likely be Movement, or Defensive.
* '''Base/Combo''': The properties section for Base or Combo techniques, used to determine between the two, or between the uses for the same technique.
* '''Damage''': The most important part of the technique, tells you the dice to roll when you are using the technique on bystanders.

Because action economy is relatively easy to balance, a turn is broken down into phases, which are as follows.
* '''Base/Attacking''': This is the equivalent of the standard action, it is used for attacks and the most powerful support techniques. You only get one base phase per turn, so don't ever use it for improvisation or reloading, because neither of those techniques involve bullets.
* '''Movement''': Your move action, but with benefits. You can use this to do a standard move, if you move less than your movement speed it is pretty cheap, but every square beyond your movement speed will cost you. You can also use this phase for movement techniques, which are generally great, but if you want to use standard movement as well after using one, it negates your movement speed. You only get one of these phases per turn.
* '''Defensive''': This phase is a waste, because you are using your AP for things other than setting up bullets going into people, or putting those bullets into people. You get as many of these phases per turn as you want.

===Defenses===

Purgatoria's system is pretty lethal, needing only three or four clean attacks  to drop character HP low enough to acquire permanent wounds. To balance this out, a chunk of the combat system revolves around being able to mitigate attacks through one of three defensive styles. 

* '''Damage Soak''': Damage soak measures how much of an improbably badass person a character is. Generating soak in combat lets characters simply grimace and shrug off injuries that would kill lesser men. This is mechanically represented in a form of damage reduction that decreases whenever damage is applied to the user.
* '''Dodge Techniques''': Instead of playing around with comparing stats, dodge techniques allow a character to simply dramatically avoid the attack without a scratch. As these techniques let players just completely dance their way out of trouble, they're the most expensive to use. Most classes feature some sort of mechanic that allows a player to uses dodges for much cheaper, provided certain conditions are met. 
* '''Deflect Techniques''': These techniques introduce new elements into the battlefield to make a character more stylish, and thus much harder to hit. In a sense, this mechanic functional similar to AC in other games, but these boosts are generally very short lived, meaning that players can't simply turtle behind them.
** '''Passive Defense''': As long as a character has one or more Style AP, they receive their passive defense, a flat deflect threshold based on their greatest loaded style attribute. So stylish characters don't have to waste AP on defending themselves when fighting hordes of mooks, and can save that AP for busting out their wombo combos.
<!-- Talk about when which defenses are useful, and when defenses can be avoided. In the case of things like "this attack can not be dodged" or Needle Claws AWP -->