I love the idea of Interrupt Actions! But I am confused about "Full Defense".

Per preview #2:

"Reaction - Reaction is about reflexes, awareness, and your character's ability to respond to events happening around them."

"Willpower - Willpower is your character's desire to push through adversity, to resist weariness of spellcasting, and to stay upright after being nailed in the head with a sap."

Per preview #4:

"Full Defense - A character may choose to focus on deliberately avoiding incoming attacks.... This action adds the character's Willpower to their Defense tests for the entire Combat Turn."

What??? 8-/ In my mind, the Reaction attribute makes WAY more sense to be used with Full Defense than the Willpower attribute. Can someone please explain to me with how the attributes are defined why Willpower should be used instead of Reaction. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Thanks!
~j2klbs

Yeah, I find it weird too. But reaction is already involved in normal defense so obviously they did not want Full defense to be Reactionx2.

I guess the idea is that someone with high willpower is better able to stay cool underfire and act sensibly. I'll use it as written first and see what happens.

Game balance would be my guess, people will have like 8-10 reactions if combat focussed that would make them untouchable. Willpower has a much narrower range of normal and the effects wont be as pronounced and as diverse. It will be odd that mages are apprently the best trained at bieng on full defense though.

Preview #4 does not share what contributes to Defense, and I honestly don't know. Is Agility also already factored into Defense or is it just Reaction. If Agility is not already factored in, it seems like the Full Defense Interrupt Action would make more sense to use Agility over Willpower. I understand the need for game balance, but as Shinobi points out, it is just weird that mages make the best defenders in a gun fight. If Agility was used, then street sams would be better which makes more sense in my mind.

~j2klbs

From the quickstart the standard defense is Reaction+intuition, then you can mod it with the interupt actions. I am not sure we can rely on the quickstart being finalized rules though.

That's kind of how I was thinking of it, too. Willpower also represents self-discipline, keeping a cool head (as you mentioned) as well as having the discipline to keep your freakin' head down when all you want to do is jump up and pull the trigger.

Magicians are naturally better defenders from all the years of being shot at.

But seriously, I'll use magic to have the best possible initiative rolls, and my naturally high willpower will allow me to go on full defense early. Plus, I'll make certain to sprint to be even harder to hit while I recklessly spellcast. Okay, maybe that wasn't so serious...

Of course, I would much rather see a threshold based on range and abandon the dodge rolls for ranged combat. Similar to the optional rules they had in SR4A