[Circle of Hands 1.1]Combat rules discussion

[John W]

Hi Ron,

just reading v1.1 and I came across this in chapter 5:

It is allowed, at the moment of your character's turn, to say he or she aborts the action. This affects nothing else about the ordering sequence and does not permit an alternative action to be announced or attempted, so the character simply goes to the end of the line without doing anything.

I thought we had decided that this rule was getting axed.  Is this legacy text?

Or if not: does this only apply to actions declared in the fair-and-clear intentions phase?  Or does it also apply to those subsequent actions that we telegraph at the end of each completed action?  (I thought that those prefigurings were narrative only, having no mechanical effect.)

What shall we call those little signs of our future intentions anyway?  We need a name for those. Too bad "intent" is already taken. 

Thanks,
-J

[John W]

Unarmed combat:
We had a situation in the 2nd playtest session in which I had to house-rule the unarmed combat rule a bit.  Two NPCs: Horst was trying to restrain Althea without hurting her.  The unarmed-combat rules specify that "such damage is healed exactly as an injury," but Horst was trying NOT to injure Althea. 

So what I did was treat the BQ "damage" resulting from Horst's grappling attack as a measure of his success in restraining her.  When the accumulated BQ/2 equaled her B or Q, I declared her completely restrained and unable to act.  Once Horst released her, those BQ of restraint "damage" disappeared.

For your consideration.
-J

[John W]

Oh, about mail: something I've been meaning to raise.  From the book:

Mail is a highly specialized garment. It does not impede combat motions, as that would defeat the purpose, but it does make any other activity more annoying as shown in the table, and it's too heavy to wear in any other circumstances. One does not ride around in one's mail, but keeps it in the pack-horse's luggage and pulls it on in the knowledge of upcoming combat. For surprises, too bad – grab your shield and go, just like everyone else.

So, as the GM, is it my prerogative to tell the players when their characters are wearing their armour?  As in: "On the road to the wyrm's lair, you are ambushed by bandits.  You ARE NOT wearing your mail or helms."  Or do I give them the choice?  Something like: "You are ambushed on the road.  Tell me if you are wearing full armour; if you are, then you are at a disadvantage for being fatigued."  ?

Thanks,
-J

[Ron Edwards]

The "abort" is still in the rules. It is not changing an action, it is switching from "do X" to "do nothing." I don't think that creates a problem for any of the other rules or situations. Can you give a concrete example of what's concerning you about that?

It has nothing to do with fair-and-clear vs. any other time. I hope you can see that fair-and-clear at the outset is nothing but an everyone-together version of the end-of-turn "intent" statement, meaning that I have finally reached the point where there is no difference between the start of the fight and any other point during the fight.

(I have not officially adopted your term intent for the allocation rules. I think I may prefer the term for the end of turn action-initiating statement.)

Unarmed combat:
We had a situation in the 2nd playtest session in which I had to house-rule the unarmed combat rule a bit.  Two NPCs: Horst was trying to restrain Althea without hurting her.  The unarmed-combat rules specify that "such damage is healed exactly as an injury," but Horst was trying NOT to injure Althea.

So what I did was treat the BQ "damage" resulting from Horst's grappling attack as a measure of his success in restraining her.  When the accumulated BQ/2 equaled her B or Q, I declared her completely restrained and unable to act.  Once Horst released her, those BQ of restraint "damage" disappeared.

I'm not criticizing you or how play went in your session, and I'm glad this gives me a cue to write about this kind of thing in the text.

My ruling is different. It's based on my judgment that Hollywood "grab and subdue" is pure fiction, and that actually to grab and subdue someone who really really doesn't want to be subdued, requires hurting them. I plan to treat this with the same non-lethal attack rules. The BQ damage is treated as genuine damage, non-lethal, but injury nonetheless, just as if he were beating her, narrated perhaps as him tiring her out or creating enough incidental/joint pain to break her will. Once down to 0 B and 0 Q, then she is helpless, and it's up to him whether to hurt her some more, which apparently he did not want to do, and which is as close to "trying NOT to injure Althea" as the game will permit.

To clarify my outlook, somewhat grimly, people who are subdued by police in "harmless" fashion have concussions, broken wrists, damaged knees, separated ribs, burst eardrums, bruised kidneys, bruised larynxes (and worse), and lacerated wrists from the cuffs, with the reminder that "bruised" means bleeding. Submission holds work very well against bullies and other fundamental cowards who will cave as soon as they feel pain or look silly; against a determined opponent, one has to break their joints, concuss them, or choke them out.

I'm also inclined to assign the advantage to a spider-hag in any grappling situation, but that's another issue.

[Ron Edwards]

Ah, mail!

I'm taking it as a given that all ordinary travel, either to the adventure at the beginning of play, or to and fro within the adventure like "going to the merchant's house" or "wander down by the docks," is without mail. I play it that way and remind the players that it's that way.

If you're talking about a local journey, within the adventure, to somewhere they know is distinctly dangerous, then it's important to ask them whether they're wearing mail at the outset. I think that's a necessary habit for playing this game. "We're going into the forest." "Are you wearing your mail?" Do this all the time. After just a single session, or even half a session, I've found that players come to treat the act of putting on mail as a serious statement, which I like very much.

So in your example, saying "on the road to the wyrm's lair" in the first place already front-loads the answer to your question: the GM has to ask before a single hoof moves, "Are you wearing your mail?" And that solves your problem; in such a situation, no one is stuck wondering.

In both cases, my presumption is that helms and shields are ready to hand, bound onto the horse's haunches or right there in an accompanying wagon.

[John W]

Is there any consequence to riding or hiking around in mail?  Or is it an atmospheric choice only?  I can see the answer always being "yes, we're all wearing our mail."

Besides the social consequences of arriving in a new village fully armed and armoured. 

[John W]

The "abort" is still in the rules. It is not changing an action, it is switching from "do X" to "do nothing." I don't think that creates a problem for any of the other rules or situations. Can you give a concrete example of what's concerning you about that?

Here's my understanding of the rules.  During fair-and-clear, you announce the action that you will take on your first turn.  And after each turn, you announce what your action on your next turn will be - or at least, you show the beginning of that next intended action (e.g. reach for a weapon, turn towards somebody, etc.).  These announcements are non-binding, have no mechanical effect, they are there to orient everyone in the fiction and to provide strong overlap between mechanical resolutions and the fiction.

So, given that these announcements are non-binding, it doesn't make sense to say, in effect, "you can abort your announced action but you can't change your mind and perform a different action instead."

That's the contradiction that I'm experiencing.  Please let me know where my misapprehension is.  Thanks.

I agree that "intent" is an even better label for these action announcements than for Q allocation.  For the latter, I finally dredged up the word I was originally trying for.  "Commitment."  What's your level of commitment?  Full attack.  Balanced.  Plus three.  Etc.

About restraining somebody: okay that makes sense, especially with regard to an animal like a spider-hag.  Agreed, it would be pretty hard to get the advantage over a spider-hag in a grapple!

-J

[Ron Edwards]

Maybe I wasn't clear about when the GM asks the question. For all incidental, not "going to a fight" travel, they're unarmored. It's not negotiable.

I can be a lot more helpful when the questions are less general. I can't talk about "when you show up" unless I know more about the specific situation. And when I try to describe something, I try to provide specific context, but that can get get lost between posts.

Let's talk about traveling to the adventure in the first few minutes of play, and similar times during play when the player-characters, as a group, are going somewhere else inside the adventure, in a "let's go over there and stay a while" way. So not a warband on the attack.

In these cases, the presumption is that the whole support staff is going. That means the characters do not "show up." It means people have already ridden ahead and smoothed out some welcome context already. It means that then riding in with arms out and armor on is already a blatantly hostile breach of the very contract the riders-ahead just established, and isn't perceived as an attack, it is an attack. Conversely, if the destination is unexpectedly hostile, then the characters know about it long before arrival, either because one of the outriders has returned to say so, or because none of them came back at all and you just rode past their bodies in a ditch.

Explaining anything besides this model needs specific details. 

[Ron Edwards]

I'm starting to see your point about the abort. You're right that it might simply get junked and lose us nothing.

Intent and commitment - I like them! I think I'll describe the latter as offensive/defensive split in commitment, or something like that.

[John W]

Okay, so about the armour.

In not-going-to-a-fight travel, nobody's wearing armour, and that's non-negotiable.  Balancing this is the fact that the GM shouldn't surprise attack the PCs.  Worst case, the PCs discover via their support staff (in one of the described ways) that they are approaching hostile territory, and can then choose whether to armour up.

That's interesting, about the support staff preceding knights into a community.  That should go into the book.

And then, of course, when knights are traveling from a village or camp into danger, e.g. looking for the wyrm, they are most likely fully armoured and traveling without their support staff.

How about this extreme case, for completeness: the knights are searching a 24-mile stretch of road for a band of highwaymen.  They could find a fight at any time over the next 8 hours.  Some of them choose to wear full armour.  Is there any consequence or penalty for that choice, in terms of fatigue, travel speed (probably irrelevant), or perceptiveness?  (Aside from the issue of bandits being disinclined to waylay a troop of fully-armoured knights, anyway).  I'll repeat my previous suggestion that, after a few hours of riding around in armour, one will have a disadvantage in combat due to fatigue.

-J

[Moreno R.]

I would like to add another similar question about the armor.

Until now the discussion was about chain mail. What about the gambeson?

From page 31: "Armor adds the cone helmet and in Rolke, the gambeson"

Does this mean that when fighting npcs from other lands, they don't wear the gambeson under the mail, or that apply only to the professional class?

From page 72: "In this setting, gambesons are usually made along with the mail, so wearing the gambeson by itself is not widely observed. However, freemen in Rolke have recently taken to making and using the gambeson this way, and some Circle knights have adopted it from them. Anywhere else, doing so looks weird, as if you'd put on your underwear but not your pants. Soon, someone is going to think of lining it with leather."

What does this mean in practice? That in ventures in Rolke there are no social problem associated with traveling wearing the gambeson, and in other lands there are? But from the text it seems to not mean outright hostility ("weird"...)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Moreno,

I remember some of your questions about this from an earlier thread, so it's been on my list of things to talk about.

1. Wearing mail also means wearing a gambeson underneath, always, no exceptions, no "but what if," period. The amount of BQ stopped for mail presumes a gambeson underneath it. You don't add the two values together. Whenever I say mail, it means mail + gambeson, always.

2. In Rolke, some people have taken to wearing the gambeson by itself, probably because so many people were involved in the civil war and took part in enough regular fighting that they found ways to armor themselves better using already-known material.

I don't really know how to answer your question about the cultural side of this because your paraphrase seems accurate to me, and neither my text nor your paraphrase raise any questions for me. Can you be more specific with a situation in-play which you'd find difficult on the basis of that text?

[Moreno R.]

1. Wearing mail also means wearing a gambeson underneath, always, no exceptions, no "but what if," period. The amount of BQ stopped for mail presumes a gambeson underneath it. You don't add the two values together. Whenever I say mail, it means mail + gambeson, always.

This was my interpretation, too, according both with other parts of the manual and what I know about historical armors (but the depiction of gambeson that I have seen were from later centuries, I am not sure about their aspect in this setting). My doubt was about the meaning of that quote at page 31 about armor adding the gambeson "only in Rolke".

Wait, maybe I get it...  professionals get to add the gambeson ONLY (and NOT mail) in Rolke, but in other lands they have only shield and helm. Is this the correct interpretation?

2. In Rolke, some people have taken to wearing the gambeson by itself, probably because so many people were involved in the civil war and took part in enough regular fighting that they found ways to armor themselves better using already-known material.

I don't really know how to answer your question about the cultural side of this because your paraphrase seems accurate to me, and neither my text nor your paraphrase raise any questions for me. Can you be more specific with a situation in-play which you'd find difficult on the basis of that text?

Let's see some different cases, in each the knights travel to a local community to seek shelter and food, with no intention to fight:

1) The knights are wearing mail: the locals normally assume that they are attacking the village (probably is not a infrequent event, being sacked by people in armor, in the villager's life) and they defend themselves. Being in Rolke makes no difference at all regarding to this reaction.

2) The knights are wearing normal traveling garments: the reactions from the local depends on other factors, the way the knights dress usually don't enter into it.

3) The Knights wear gambesons. So...

...if they are in Rolke, the villagers have the same behavior that they would have if the knights did not wear them, wearing gambesons is not considered "strange", "weird" or in any way "hostile"

...if they are not in Rolke, according to the text, they are considered "weird" (but not "hostile")

But "weird" in this setting what doest it mean? Is something that is simply a not very important addition to the general weirdess ("look, these people are really weird. The are from that weird land on the south, they wear these weird patches, and there are rumors that the people with these patches use very weird magics. Ah, and they wear their underwear as armor, but it's normal for people weird like them to dress weird, too, I suppose") or is something like "Don't trust these people, they are weird, look how they dress!"? It's something that put a serious handicap to communications or not?

[Ron Edwards]

Wait, maybe I get it...  professionals get to add the gambeson ONLY (and NOT mail) in Rolke, but in other lands they have only shield and helm. Is this the correct interpretation?

Yes. In addition and not in any contradiction to your points, I also think that certain successful fighting professionals, well-established in an area and probably tied to the local gentry, very likely with Martial (high), include individuals in mail.

I'm pretty sure that the word "weird" is causing trouble for you, as if it were supposed to be a hint to you as GM do something specific. It's not.

Consider that new arrivals are already penalized to a single die for important rolls like Charm and fights in some cases. If that's the situation, then if someone's wearing only a gambeson, it's merely colorful detail to include in a local person's dislike of the stranger. Pure additional Color in Forge jargon. Similarly, if the knights do what they ought to and pitch in with the community's ordinary activities, generally behave themselves, and don't gratuitously spit on (or kill) someone, then the "weird clothes" is again, merely Color for interaction during the process of rolling Charm vs. 12 on 2d6 instead of one. So either way, if one of these rolls is made, it only means the local person is favorably disposed toward the character despite the latter's odd armor-choice.

It's not supposed to be a major plot point. Merely, as with so much of the text, useful raw material for using in any of a hundred possible interactions and outcomes.

[John W]

Hi Ron, just want to repeat this question, as I think it got lost in the ensuing discussion about gambesons.  Thanks.
-John

How about this extreme case, for completeness: the knights are searching a 24-mile stretch of road for a band of highwaymen.  They could find a fight at any time over the next 8 hours.  Some of them choose to wear full armour.  Is there any consequence or penalty for that choice, in terms of fatigue, travel speed (probably irrelevant), or perceptiveness?  (Aside from the issue of bandits being disinclined to waylay a troop of fully-armoured knights, anyway).  I'll repeat my previous suggestion that, after a few hours of riding around in armour, one will have a disadvantage in combat due to fatigue.