One of the groovy combat rules in & Sword is that you can use your victories to counter "non-victory" dice of either yourself or your opponent. One of the attractions of this is that you can avoid Total victory.
I can't figure out WHY anyone would want to do any of these things.
Can anybody tell me why this is supposed to be cool?
Its not so you can avoid Total Victory, its so you can achieve it. Total victory is if ALL of my dice beat your high die.
Your high die is an 8 (on d10). I roll 10, 9, 9, 5. Thats 3 Successes, but the 5 keeps it from being Total Victory. By using one of my successes to cancel my own 5, I now have TOTAL success. ALL of my dice (the 10 and one 9) beat your high die.
I don't know that I've ever actually bought into it as a rule (seems kind of gimmicky to read it), but then I've never seen it used in practice to judge it properly.
Hi there,
This issue was discussed in some detail in this thread (http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=588).
Best,
Ron